Phil Traynor had stopped taking notes and doing interviews for his research project on the Dogon. There no longer seemed to be much point to his work. About four weeks previously, Elliot Anders had called to relate his experience with journalists when he tried to deliver the Dogon data. His professor’s allusions to a strange disease being treated by a Nobel Laureate in Phoenix had caused Phil a bit of sleeplessness, and the jungle had already provided an abundance of distractions in the dark.
The day after talking to Dr. Anders, Phil checked the news sites for Phoenix and several of the national daily publications to see if anyone had written a story about the Dogon research. He found nothing and then did a Google and Lexis-Nexis search, which also failed to turn up any reports involving Dr. Anders. Links to standard Dogon research sites popped up on his browser along with those of paranormal enthusiasts and religious evangelicals who believed the tribe was at the vanguard of an approaching apocalypse. As tortured as the thinking was, Phil enjoyed reading much of the material as a rare form of entertainment while living in the bush.
A few days later, surfing Web sites in the morning, he came across a short piece about the death of Barton Crawford on USA Today’s homepage. According to the article, Crawford had been murdered in his private lab in the Superstition Mountains outside of Phoenix. Investigators had no suspects but they had held overnight a reporter and editor from a local television station as persons of interest. The couple had discovered the scientist while traveling to his cabin to conduct an interview. There were only three paragraphs and the last one was about Crawford’s career and his Nobel for research on the Ebola virus.
Phil Traynor was not surprised when the supply charter from Bomako did not arrive as scheduled. The next week, however, he became worried. There was no gas left for the Honda generator and when the batteries ran down on his laptop and the sat phone, all contact with the U.S. or anywhere else in the outside world was lost. Phil was almost more disturbed at the loss of his bags of cheese popcorn, which came in with the bush pilot. They were his only indulgence connecting him to civilization. The Dogon often stopped and watched him eating the yellowish popcorn from a clear plastic bag as he leaned against the wall of the Bini Shrine.
After dispatching a final e-mail to Dr. Anders to inform him of the situation along the Cliffs of Bandiagara, Phil Traynor gave extensive thought to his responsibilities. He assumed a charter would eventually deliver supplies because Dr. Anders had paid in advance a year’s fees for staples and aircraft time. Until the next one touched town on the plateau, however, he was disinclined to pursue his research protocols. He would keep watching the Yougo Rock for any changes and tracking the behavior of tribal leaders to see if he might discern any developments regarding their belief in Nommo’s imminent return.
What in the hell was going on in America and, even more critically, in Africa? Phil’s loss of connection to the Internet meant he had no ability to see the English language Web sites of African papers. If more people were dying and a disease was spreading with even greater virulence across Africa, Phil had no way to know. He would not be surprised, however, if a grim scenario was being played out in the continent’s population; nor would he be shocked to learn the killer was a product of mankind’s failure to take seriously its stewardship of the planet’s health. Phil Traynor’s generation had grown up expecting devastating consequences from global warming and new forms of viruses and bacteria that had mutated to resist antibiotics.
He spent a lot of time trying to convince himself that Dr. Anders would not leave him abandoned among the Dogon. Often, he sat along the escarpment and listened for a distant drone of an airplane. Every few days, he used to see contrails of jumbo jets moving up and down the continent from London to South Africa but he had seen no trace of any aircraft for almost a month. In fact, the Dogon existence had probably become much like it was thousands of years in the past because not even the Jihadis were passing through the villages and it had been weeks since an automobile had come down the dirt trails to the cliffs. Fortunately, Phil had seen no evidence of any type of illness in the tribe and his appetite was voracious, even though the Dogon diet was confined to less than enticing foods that did not stimulate his hunger.
Everything, as usual, was beyond Phil Traynor’s ability to control; this was a lesson Dr. Ander’s had taught almost daily. His mentor had argued that nature was the ultimate force in human existence and man was obligated to learn about it and fight its alterations and mutations to the extent of his powers but not to disrupt its basic rhythms and processes. Science gave them the tools and god and nature demanded humanity struggle with all of its might. Ultimately, however, nature’s course was final and man had little choice but adapt to survive.
At the moment, all of this ponderous nonsense was too much for Phil. He was just thirsty and wanted a cold beer. After nursing his case of Tecate for a few weeks, he was down to his last five cans. There was no way to keep beer cold beyond storing it in the tepid river below the cliffs and Phil had sunk a six pack in a hole next to a small eddy. He jammed the cans, which were still held together by their plastic rim, into a tight spot between two large rocks that had probably fallen off the face of the cliffs centuries in the past. Even at the bottom of a warm languid river moving slowly through a tropical climate there were a few cool spots to be found and Phil had discovered one as a location to anchor his beers and avoid the indignity of warm Tecate.
Today, Phil Traynor intended to get as drunk as possible on his last five beers. He had become accustomed to enjoying the end of each day by sitting along the Niger and waiting for nightfall and he made his way down a steep trail to the water’s edge. As always, children were playing in the slower currents near the sand banks as their mothers struggled to wash them along with the few articles of clothing they had acquired in trades with traveling merchants. A group of Dogon men squatted beneath a palm and nodded in Phil’s direction as he approached the water.
There seemed to be a picnic and holiday atmosphere along the river this evening. Phil wished that he had somehow mastered at least a portion of one of the Dogon dialects and had been able to develop deeper friendships with people in the tribe. Frequently, he was acutely conscious of his white skin and how it permanently marked him as an outsider.
He reached his arm deep into the river hollow and pulled up the remaining beers. When he noticed the Dogon men were watching him, Phil held up the cans and swung them around wildly to indicate he was about to celebrate. His dance was greeted with laughter and smiles. Sitting down on the red sand, he saw the broad shadow of the Cliffs of Bandiagara as their leading edge creeped out and cast a purple hue over the slowly moving river.
Nursing his Tecates, Phil watched the families and found himself envying the simplicity of their lives. No one in the twenty-mile stretch of Dogon villages along the Niger was worried about mutant diseases or the failings of mankind. They were just living, perhaps, as nature’s god had intended for humans to exist.
A Dogon Village on the Cliffs of Bandiagara
Finishing his fourth beer on an empty stomach, Phil Traynor was feeling the emerging false comfort of alcohol. Families had begun walking up or down the riverbank or climbing the trails up to the plateau to return to their homes. As a few of the children passed where he was sitting Phil put out his hand and slapped five with the ones whom he had taught the gesture. They giggled and chased after their mothers.
A few minutes later, he thought he heard a low decibel hum from somewhere above him on the plateau. He immediately thought of an airplane. Dogon families on the trail also picked up the sound because they stopped on the precarious switchbacks in the near darkness. Those who had been sitting in the soft sand at the edge of the river’s bend also rose and looked back toward the great cliffs. While he was scanning the sky for the source of the sound, Phil thought he saw lightning from a storm out across the Bongo Plains.
In an instant, an orb of light crackling like balled lightning streaked from behind the escarpment out over the plains and shrank to the size and brightness of a common star in a matter of seconds and then it winked out. The Dogon were calling out and pointing. The humming noise returned and the pitch increased in volume. Phil saw Dogon scrambling up the face of the cliff, pulling their children across the loose gravel of the trail. “Nommo,” he heard a few of them say and then more of them joined in calling out to the phenomenon over their heads. “Nommo. Nommo.” A soft chant was rising from the face of the cliffs and down along the Niger. “Nommo. Nommo. Nommo.”
Light glowed from beyond the plateau’s edge and more Dogon were hurrying upward to see whatever loomed above them at the top of the cliffs. The men were calm as they stepped cautiously past the slower women and children. People were pointing up at the intensifying light and giving it the only name they knew. “Nommo. Nommo. Nommo.”
Phil Traynor dropped his beer and began scrambling hand over foot up a break in the rock face. He banged his knuckles on a sharp outcropping and felt the warm blood run down his reaching arm. Less than 50 feet above him the plateau shone with a brightness approaching midday. A few Dogon had reached the trail head and had stepped into the light beyond Phil’s range of vision.
He jumped from a narrow ledge onto the trail’s final switchback and stumbled awkwardly up the last stretch to reach the surface of the plateau to stand before the phenomenon. Nothing in his reading or experience gave him any sense of understanding what he was witnessing.
“This is interesting,” was all Phil Traynor thought, fighting to resist his curiosity.
And then he turned and surrendered to the redemptive allure of the dimensionless and eternal light.