In the Time of Man

Final Chapter

After he had cleared security at LAX, Elliot Anders found a relatively quiet spot and called Phil Traynor’s parents in Illinois. Phil’s mother, Elaine, who was only in her late forties, sounded drained and listless when she answered.

“Mrs. Traynor?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Elliot Anders. I’m calling from Los Angeles.”

“Yes. Yes, Dr. Anders.” He heard the hopefulness in her voice and the return of energy and he moved quickly to steel her with honesty.

“I don’t have any news of Phil,” Elliot explained. “But I just wanted you and Robert to know that I am heading to Africa to find him and be with him and see if we can get out of there together.”

“You are? You are, Dr. Anders?”

“Yes, I am. I can’t tell you how things are going to go but I am going to try.”

Elliot heard a man’s voice in the background of the call and knew that it was Phil’s stern father who had hoped his son might also become a farmer and love the land and what it produced.

“It’s Dr. Anders,” Elliot heard Elaine Traynor explain while holding the phone away from her mouth. “He’s going to Africa and he says he’s going to find Phil and bring him home.”

“Well, he can’t do that,” Robert Traynor said. “It’s not possible.”

“Actually, Mrs. Traynor? Actually, please tell Robert that the ban on travel into Africa has been lifted. They are allowing volunteers to go in with relief supplies. They just won’t guarantee a return trip until the situation has stabilized. I’m going to find Phil and we’ll hang out together until it’s time for us to come home.”

“Oh, Dr. Anders. That would be wonderful if you could make that happen.”

“I can assure you I am going to try harder than I have ever tried anything. I am confident Phil is still with the tribe in Mali and he’s just lost contact because of a lack of gasoline to run the generator. Maybe Phil and I can get our electricity back at the village and we’ll get an email to one of his friends to contact you both and let you know our status.”

“Oh, thank you, so much, Dr. Anders. Please tell Phil we love him and miss him and we’ll be waiting for him. Everything is normal here, tell him. Of course, I don’t suppose that will make him want to come home much after he’s been somewhere like Africa.  But it’s still home.”

“I’m sure he’ll be back in Illinois very soon, Mrs. Traynor. I have to go they’re calling my flight to London. Good-bye and I hope to be in touch soon.”

“Good-bye, Dr. Anders. Thank you for calling. And good luck and please tell Phil how much we love him and can’t wait to see him again.”

Elliot slept fitfully on the long flight to London and he drank too much wine. He had just slipped into a nice, deep dream when the A380’s wheels barked across the runway’s surface at Heathrow and he looked out his window just in time to see the brief flutter of the great wings as they bent toward the earth. The only luggage he had carried was a backpack with a change of clothes and a few personal effects.  Customs was quick and in less than thirty minutes he was at curbside hailing a limo driver to take him to the Manchester Airport.  

Commercial aviation into Manchester had been halted and the airport was being used as a staging ground for aircraft arriving from around the world to begin their one way journeys down to Africa. Makeshift signs had been erected and temporary electronic billboards guided volunteers and vehicles to specific areas for enlistment in various tasks and aircraft assignment for transport. A web site URL, SaveAfrica.com, flashed on illuminated advertisements where airlines normally posted their logos and terminal information. 

Elliot paid the driver in American currency and jumped out at curbside with his backpack and computer bag. Inside the terminal, gates were serving as staging areas for flights to different African countries. There was no longer any security checkpoint and he walked into a mass of people that reminded him of lunch hour in Manhattan.  He had no idea what to do. There seemed no organization and the energy in the building was feeding a sense of chaos.  

Momentarily, Elliot stopped and went to a window along the tarmac. Outside, in the gray British light were more aircraft than he had ever seen assembled in one location.  There had to be hundreds of jumbo jets and military cargo transports. Double-trailered lorries moved slowly beneath the wings and were offloading thousands upon thousands of crates into cargo holds. No takeoffs or landings were apparent but there was intensive preparation for departure. The U.N. logo was slapped haphazardly on almost every tail fin and freight trailer and colorful uniforms of soldiers and airmen from probably every civilized nation were represented in the hundreds of people moving among the airplanes and trucks. How they intended to effectively coordinate any of this was beyond Elliot’s ability to comprehend but he just wanted a flight to get him as close as possible to Mali. He approached an American wearing sand-colored fatigues left over from the most recent conflict with the Persian Gulf states.

“Excuse me, sir?” Elliot placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and noticed his officer’s stars. 

“I’m sorry?” The man spun around almost defensively and Elliot quickly withdrew his hand.

“Pardon me, but I’m wondering where I might go to volunteer. Do you have any idea?”

“Actually, I think you might be a bit late,” the general said. “I don’t know that there are any more seats on any of the passenger jets or even cargo flights. The response has been a bit beyond amazing. Either people are brutally optimistic or they just don’t give a damn about things they don’t control. I have no idea.”

“Surely,” Elliot said, “there must be some way for me to get to Africa. Where do I sign up?”

“You can use your computer there or your phone and go on the web site you see plastered all over these walls and sign up for flights to a particular country but I think they only have waiting lists now.” The U.S. Army officer smiled at two young women pulling wheeled travel cases. “Or, you might run down to Southampton where all of the merchant freighters and government vessels are disembarking with their loads.  Might be easier to jump one of those than a plane.”

“Nowhere here to sign up? In the terminal?”

“Yep, gates 43 and 44 but the lines are long and I don’t think you’ll have much luck for several days. Good luck, though.”

“Thank you, sir.”

When he reached the queues, Elliot was astonished by hundreds of people waiting patiently to get their names on manifests. It was as if they were eagerly signing up to commit suicide. Along the concourse, he discovered there were large acrylic maps of the various African countries, types of relief scheduled for delivery, locations of arrival, and mode of transport. When he found Mali, he saw that only one flight, an American C-130, was scheduled and it was due to leave for Bomako in the morning.  Elliot had no intention of wasting hours in line hoping to get a trip that ended close to Mali or logging onto a web site that put him on a standby list. He intended to find the pilot of the Bomako flight and convince him of his value to the trip.

He walked down the concourse and noticed people were freely moving in and out of the terminal and down to the tarmac through various stairways and exits. Normally, these were secured but no one seemed concerned about who was hanging around the terminal. There were finally dangers more perilous than those threatened by unnamed terrorists. Elliot strolled down the jetway for Gate 18 and opened the door to the maintenance stairs to gain access to the tarmac.

Outside, he flagged down a man driving a golf cart carrying two large ice chests balanced on the back where clubs were usually lashed.

“Sorry,” Elliot said. 

“But I was wondering if you could tell me where I might find the plane that is carrying relief supplies to Mali?”

The man, pinkish and trim against the pale sky, smiled. “Seriously, sir? Look around you. What chance do you think there is that I might know which of these hundreds of planes are going to where? Mali?”

“Yeah, I just thought I’d ask.”

“Sorry, sir. I’m just an errand boy and I’m delivering drinks and ice to U.N. workers offloading the lorries.”

“Thanks, anyway.”

“Of course.”

Elliot’s next step was to watch for men wearing military flight suits or the traditional jackets of commercial airlines. He figured he could pick out pilots easily because even if they were not in uniform they were likely going to be wearing leather jackets. One of them might know where to find the Mali C-130 or its pilot. He stopped a half dozen men and his assessment had been correct because they were all pilots but not one of them knew which aircraft was bound for Mali. However, a Russian who spoke precise, clipped English phrases, directed Elliot to an office in the baggage operations area where a clerk of some type was on a wireless tablet scheduling departures.

Curled over his screen and squinting through reading glasses, the man shuffled through piles of paper and then entered data with the touchpad. Elliot stood beside him waiting for his presence to be acknowledged.

“Oh, hello,” the man said, barely looking up from his work.

“Hello.” Elliot did not want to sound either anxious or overly earnest.

“Odd, idn’t it?” The man’s knobby fingers and veined hands danced across the glossy screen with an indiscernible purpose.

“How’s that?” Elliot asked.

“Oh, just this airport. I ’s’pose we’re the only one in the world to schedule all departures and no arrivals, eh?”

“Hadn’t thought of it,” Elliot sighed.

“Well, as long as there are people willing to donate themselves and whatever else, I guess we’ll be having a few inbound. But we’re clearing all of these out of here down to the continent in the next twenty four hours.”

“That’s going to be quite a task.”

“That it will. It’s why I’m busy as hell. I’m sorry. But did you need something?”

“Yes, one of the pilots said you might be able to help me find the plane to Mali.”

“I can, indeed, do just that. It’s an American C-130 just down the line there. There’s his tail number.” One hand came away from the tablet and poked down at a blue sheet of paper. “Just dropped off his final manifest.”

“May I borrow a pen?”

“Certainly.”

Elliot wrote down the identification numbers and letters. He had long ago lost his smart phone and refused to purchase a replacement.

“Thank you.”

“Certainly. If you have business with the fella, though, you’d better get after it. We start takeoff sequences tonight and he’s second for departure at about 0800 GMT.”

“I guess I’d better go see him then,” Elliot said as he stepped back outside onto the tarmac.

Initially, Elliot had expected little difficulty getting aboard a flight but when he arrived in the industrial city of Manchester and saw the activity at the airport and the thousands of people determined to help, he worried there might not be space. The journey to Mali, however, seemed to have minimal appeal and there was still capacity for passengers in the cargo bay.

“You’ll have to set in the netting,” the pilot, a former crop duster from Bakersfield, California explained. “I’m loaded with grain, satellite dishes, computers, and medicine but not many people. I guess Mali isn’t that romantic to all of us fatalists.”

“That’s not me, sir. I’ve worked there as a researcher and I am going to look for my assistant living among one of the indigenous tribes. He was stuck there when the travel ban was imposed.”

“What’d you say your name was?”

“Elliot Anders.”

“And you do what?”

“I’m a scientist. I was doing research on tribal histories and traditions.”

“And you are risking your life to go back?”

“If we don’t stop whatever it is that is going on in Africa it won’t matter if we are there or in Bakersfield, will it?” Elliot asked.

“I suppose that’s right.”

“What about you?” Elliot thought the pilot was too young to be surrendering to destiny and had the look of a man who had thrived in the out of doors.

“My wife’s gone. Cancer. We never got to have kids. This is something I can do, you know? Flew these things for the California National Guard for years.” He laid a hand against the green fuselage. “Come on. Let’s go get your paperwork processed. We’re southbound in a few hours.”

The trip down the continent was loud and tiring. Tropical storms bumped them from below and without the passenger module on the plane there was little insulation from engine howl. Elliot was unable to have conversations with the seven other souls on board. A few of them had introduced themselves before the tail ramp had been lifted and they occasionally smiled when he looked in their direction. During the ten hours flying he nodded off to sleep for a few minutes at a time and tried to read a paperback crime novel by an author he had never heard of. When the storms broke apart and the ride smoothed out Elliot stood up to look out the small ports at the tiny lights of Africa and their pathetic attempt to hold back the tropical darkness.

Their arrival in Bomako the next morning was burdened with a palpable disappointment by the airport workers and hungry locals who greeted the C-130.  Perhaps, Elliot thought, they had expected a massive airlift or they knew of the numerous ships and planes bound for the more populous and cultured African cities. The C-130’s captain tried to assure them more help was coming and this shipment was just a beginning. The Bomako airport seemed to Elliot as though it were as sagging and defeated as the Mali men who offloaded the cargo and doled out the medicine and food to waiting U.N. drivers. In a matter of minutes, though, Elliot discovered the two men in a battered Toyota Tacoma who were to deliver medicine to the Dogon villages east of Bomako. He tossed his backpack into the truck bed, slipped his computer strap over his shoulder, and climbed in to settle down with a bottle of water for breakfast. The Tacoma was rattling eastward before Elliot even realized he had failed to say good-bye and thank you to the Bakersfield crop duster that had taken him aboard the C-130.

After several hours, he looked over the cab of the pickup to see the dirt road that approached the Cliffs of Bandiagara near Yougo Dogouru and Elliot motioned for the driver to stop. He got out of the truck when he saw the familiar spire of the Bini Shrine. He thanked the two U.N. workers who were driving another ten miles into a more central location for distribution of the medicine. Elliot walked slowly into the village looking for Ammonu, the Hogon priest-chief, or Abu-Ri, the Hogon from the next village over who had acquired some English. Elliot did not know how Ammonu might respond to his return after he had been discovered inside the crevasses of the Yougo Rock but when he leaned his head into the Hogon’s hut the old man stepped excitedly into the late afternoon sun and began jabbering away in a Dogon dialect.  Frustrated, Elliot smiled and listened as Ammonu pointed in the direction of the Yougo Rock and then back toward the escarpment that formed the cliffs. He understood a few words like Nommo and Yougo and he thought he heard a quick reference to Po Tolo, which was the Dogon term for Digitarria, the star where Nommo lived.

Ammonu motioned for Elliot to follow him and they began walking in the direction of the Cliffs of Bandiagara a few hundred yards from where the Hogon lived. When they got to one of the switchback trailheads leading down to the river, Ammonu stopped walking but continued pointing at the sky and excitedly waving his hands. Elliot had begun to wonder how he was going to get away from Ammonu and find Abu-ri with his limited English when he saw a white man in cargo shorts, hiking boots, and a blue tee shirt walking up the trail from the river. The man, who appeared to be in his 30s, had sandy blonde hair and stubble across his tanned face, put out his hand to Elliot as he approached.

“Hello.”

“Hello.” Elliot tried to mask his surprise at the presence of another westerner among the Dogon. “I’m Elliot Anders. I’ve been living and researching here among the tribe for a few years.”

“Yes. Yes. I’ve heard of you, Dr. Anders. I’m Ethan Medford. I’ve only been here a few days.”

Ammonu had at last fallen silent as the two men before him spoke in a language he did not comprehend. Medford saw the confusion on Elliot’s face and answered a question before it was asked.

“I’m a translator,” he continued. “I was working at U.N. offices in Capetown. I’ve sort of always had a facility for languages and was raised mostly in Africa. My parents were Peace Corps volunteers.”

“And you speak the Dogon dialects?”

“Yes, a few of them, oddly enough. My folks were here during a couple of years of drought and I picked it up from the kids. The U.N. sent me up here for a few weeks to see if any assistance was needed helping the Dogon deal with the outside world. But I don’t think they are going to need much. They seem to be doing just fine.”

“I don’t think the stupidity of the outside world gets in here much,” Elliot agreed.

“Yes, yes,” Medford said. “They’ve got great crops this year and I’ve seen no sign of this Slims Disease. Everyone looks healthy. I’m going to be leaving in a few days, I suspect.”

“Sorry to hear that. I imagine I will be here a while. But say, you haven’t seen my assistant in any of the villages, have you? His name’s Phil Traynor.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m the only outsider I know of but I assume someone brought you here.”

“Yes, I came with a U.N. truckload of medical supplies. They went up the river. But you’ve heard nothing of the other American since you’ve arrived?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“I’m wondering if you might understand Ammonu here. He’s been trying to tell me something and I haven’t got a clue what it is.”

“I can, certainly. Let me ask if he knows of your assistant’s whereabouts. What did you say his name was?”

“Phil Traynor.”

Medford began speaking with Ammonu in the guttural and strangely mellifluous sounds that were the Dogon tongue and in a matter of seconds Ammonu resumed his almost uncontrolled babbling. Medford appeared to listen carefully as Ammonu pointed at the sky repeatedly. After a few minutes, Medford raised his palm and seemed to ask the Hogon for a moment to explain. He turned to Elliot Anders.

“I don’t know much about this culture, I’m afraid, Dr. Anders. I learned the language, as I told you, as a boy and we left and I never got curious about these people because we were always moving into other tribal areas when I was young. So, if this translation doesn’t make sense, I apologize.”

“Of course. Please, what is it?”

“Well, he said your Traynor went with Nommmo to live on Digitaria, which seems to be a star, is it not, where Nommo lives? Nommo I gather is the Dogon’s god and I do recall references to stories about him from my parents.”

Elliot said nothing as he tried to process this absurdity. Medford looked at him waiting for some kind of a response.

“Look,” Elliot said. “Can you ask him again? See if he has details. It’s just a little far-fetched, don’t you think?”

“Obviously.” Medford smiled and resumed talking to Ammonu for a few minutes and then turned back to Elliot. “Well, he said the Yougo Rock was glowing red so they knew Nommo was coming and when he did he appeared right here where we are standing. Traynor apparently walked up this same path to meet Nommo when he came down out of the sky and then he, well, for lack of a better translation, he went back into the sky with Nommo and went to live on Digitaria.”

“There’s no mistaking what he is saying? No chance of mistranslating?”

“No, he’s pretty clear,” Medford explained. “He seems to have witnessed the entire event.”

“What could have actually happened, I wonder.”

“Can’t say. But I can keep asking questions, if you like. He said a few people from other tribal families also left with Nommo. I can ask him to direct you to them and we can try to find out what happened there.”

“No, thank you. That won’t be necessary. It’s not a theory worth investigating, is it?  I appreciate your help.”

“No worries. I’ve got to walk over a couple of villages but perhaps we can talk later. I’ll probably be leaving in a few days, as I mentioned.”

“Of course,” Elliot said as he shook Medford’s hand. “I am pretty easy to find.”

“Perhaps I’ll see you later this evening. I’ve a nice safari tent over there with a small gas stove and a bit of wine. We might have some hot food later.”

“That would be wonderful. Thank you.”

“Later on, then.”

Ammonu followed Medford away from the escarpment and Elliot turned and looked down at the languid Niger River. What in the hell had happened to Phil Traynor? He could not tell Phil’s conservative Christian parents that their son had simply gone to a distant star to live with a tribal god. Elliot doubted such a thing had happened but he had no idea what to believe. All the years he had researched this very possibility, the data he had accumulated pointing in the direction of other intelligences, was now being tested by the Hogon’s astounding narrative. Elliot had to ask himself exactly what it was that he believed. Was Nommo real? How would he ever explain the disappearance of Phil Traynor to anyone, much less his parents? Elliot was the one person outside the Dogon tribe who ought to have the intellectual capacity to believe Ammonu’s story and he chastised himself for almost immediately and intuitively scoffing at the Hogon.

Elliot took the trail down to the river and thought about Phil. This was his place. In the evenings, the graduate student used to love to sit on the rocks and dip his feet and watch the Dogon families gathering in the shadow of the cliffs. There was no sunset here; only the purplish darkness cast out over the river by the escarpment as the sun dropped below the ridge line. Elliot found a smooth boulder on the water’s edge where he had once seen Phil relaxing and he sat atop the great stone and gazed up and down the green dark river.

The Dogon had nice lives, Elliot thought. They grew their own food, lived all of their days with their families, and had no susceptibility to the complexities and ambitions of the civilized world. Their children ran through tropical forests and swam in the sunshine and people were healthy and smiling. Their burial and marriage rituals were colorful and sacred and they never found reason to question their faith in their god.  As oblivious as they seemed to the perils encroaching on their idyllic isolation, Elliot doubted that mattered. Slims Disease was unlikely to reach back into the Great Bend of the Niger River.

Both scientists and Christian creationists had long believed that life had begun in Africa. Paleontologists presented fossilized skulls to make their case and Christians cited scripture that made many of them think the Garden of Eden had been located in Africa.

“If life began here,” Elliot told himself, “it seemed unlikely it would end here.”

The beautiful simplicity of the Dogon’s lives and their exquisite happiness gave him hope. He intended to search further for Phil and perhaps they would be reunited.  Maybe, though, the young Illinois farmer’s son had taken a chance and done what Ammonu had described. Elliot easily saw Phil climbing aboard a strange conveyance and allowing his curiosity to carry him into the unknown. That’s exactly who Phil Traynor was.

There was no denying to himself, however, that Elliot was worried for the world and humankind. Too many people walked the planet, disease was rampant and viruses were mutating, there was hunger and pollution and desperation, wars over resources, and a nameless, shapeless dread seemed to drape all of humanity’s aspirations. Elliot believed it was possible that humans had simply ruined what they had been given.  There was the great possibility that whoever or whatever had created human beings had decided the game was over and Slims Disease was a designer virus to save the earth from the ravages of greed. Elliot often contemplated that everything he had seen and learned in his life was quite possibly the product of chaos and evolution and humanity’s existence was little more than a statistical outcome prompted by the size of the universe. He no longer trusted his education and experience, though, and feared that science, religion, and all of human history might need to be rethought.  The mysteries moving through the cosmos might be even stranger than those long identified by the great minds.

While he was not watching, darkness had fallen and Elliot’s eyes swept the distance where the first band of stars rose over the Bongo Plains. He realized he no longer felt anxiety for Phil or himself and that he was acquiring the wisdom to accept all of those things beyond either his understanding or control.

“I guess we aren’t supposed to know,” Elliot concluded, as he looked up at brightening Sirius and thought about the possibility of his friend alive and moving among the stars. “We were born to a mystery.”

And as he stared in silence at the darkening African night, a dot of light in the sky brightened and appeared to grow as it moved swiftly in his direction.

“They’re coming for all of us,” Elliot Anders decided. “With disease or disaster or just helping us to destroy the gifts we have been given by using our own stupidity against us. Maybe we’ll get a second chance.”

A teenaged Dogon boy touched Elliot’s shoulder and pointed at the shimmering light pulsating low as it approached over the Bongo Plains.

“Nommo come,” he said. “Nommo come now.”

Elliot Anders smiled. “I know,” he said. “And it’s about time. I’m ready, too.”