Shimmerers

They had never seen anything like it in the village before. It sat at the edge of a field close to the canal and looked old and battered. Later in the morning it was said that the first to see it was a woman teacher on her way to work in the school over the canal bridge and on the edge of the desert. But as she was only a young woman her claim to first sighting was usurped by a shepherd who was known to be a liar but he was older than the teacher and a man so he saw it first. No matter who saw it first a lot of others saw it very soon after as the village woke up and went about its business.

It looked to some to be made of metal. Others thought it was pottery, or glass. There was a hazy sheen to the pink-grey surface that had pits and holes in it. It was a cube, about nine inches to a side. The edges and corners were rounded. The shepherd who saw it first or so he said had set up camp by the thing. He felt it might be his if he stayed there long enough and perhaps it was valuable. He could sell it maybe. In the bazaar on the main road.

People wondered where it had come from. Who it had originally belonged to and what was it? A decoration piece perhaps? Something that goras might have in their homes. One woman who had worked as a maid in a gora house said she had seen something like it that was a light. Some said yes they had seen lights like that, box-shaped, in TV dramas. They shook their heads. Most went away after not very long because there were goats to gather fodder for and fields to water. A few stayed because it was a bit different and there was nothing else to do except sit and watch the horizon and talk about weddings.

The numbadar came along midmorning. He had heard about the thing in the way that numbadars always do – there had been a queue at his door since eight o’clock made up of people wanting to tell him that they had found something that it was valuable they had found it first and these other men were lying. He was no fool, the numbadar. So he went and had a look for himself and spoke to the shepherd who said he had found it first along with all the others who had found it first. The numbadar asked if there were any others who had seen it first and heard that the teacher from the desert school may have seen it first on her way to work and she was usually the first one to pass this way in the morning. He called the teacher to the spot, sending a man to get her from the school.

She came. On a bicycle. The numbadar was not at all sure that he approved of grown up women riding bicycles but she came from a respectable family and was the most highly-educated woman for miles around. She spoke English, knew how to use a computer and had one in her family house where people sometimes went to ask her to send emails for them. He knew what email was because he had been on some trainings organized by a local NGO and he thought it was a good idea but a bit complicated.  Mobile phones were another matter though, and like everybody else he had one that he was inordinately proud of because it was a camera as well but he had not worked out how to take pictures and maybe he would ask the lady teacher as she seemed to know about these things.

The teacher said that she saw the thing because it was a bit shiny in the halflight before full dawn and she saw it easily by the road. She said she had stopped and laid her bicycle down being careful not to let the books fall out of her pannier-bag. Touching it felt very cold like putting your fingers on the icebox and them sticking to it because it froze your skin and you felt it as you pulled your finger away. The numbadar asked if anybody else had touched it. Heads shook. He bent and laid his right hand flat on the upper surface and pulled it away quickly with a little ‘ouch’. Yes he said, it is like a block of ice but it is not melting.

Had anybody tried picking it up, asked the numbadar. They hadn’t. The shepherd saw what was coming next and began winding himself up in protest at the removal of the valuable thing that he had found first and the numbadar would never cut him in on any deal he might make for the thing. He took his blanket from his shoulders and threw it over the thing.

Nothing happened for a few seconds after the shepherd put his blanket over the cube and then there was a faint shimmer of light and the cube was suddenly next to the blanket not underneath it. Some people ran away saying they were going to get the mullah or the police or both. The shepherd stayed, convinced that this thing had suddenly increased in value and that he was going nowhere, especially if it could do tricks. Those fellows who went around with monkeys and made them dance for money they made a good living or so he had heard. People might pay five rupees to see a jumping thing that moved when he put his blanket over it and he would not have to move from this spot as people would come from other villages to see the trick. So the shepherd did not run away.

The teacher and the numbadar stayed as well and he asked her what she thought it was. She had no idea, but then wondered if it might be some sort of meteorite, a shooting star. They all knew about these and being in the desert where there was no light at night they saw them often and knew that sometimes these stones did land on the earth and they had both seen pictures of them. But they were not like this said the numbadar they are more kind of rough and this is smooth. The teacher agreed. Well maybe it is something to do with the army said the numbadar, some secret thing and we will be in trouble if we do not report it. The shepherd did not like the way the conversation was going. He liked it less when the numbadar said that he was going to the police post at the chowk towards the town by the little canal to make a report and that the shepherd was to wait until he came back with the police.

It was more than a mile to the police post and the numbadar would be gone an hour or more. The thing sat beside the blanket which sat beside the shepherd. Three men sat on their haunches about thirty feet away and watched.  It was nearly noon and December. Desert cold. Thin sun. There was no more excitement to be had and the trickle of foot-traffic passed not remarking the thing, its minder, or the teacher other than to make an infinitesimal inclination of the chin to acknowledge her. The teacher thought she ought to be getting back to school and went to pick up her bicycle.

She walked towards it thinking how strange this was, out here on the edge of the Cholistan desert. What would she tell the children? Should she tell the children anyway? They came from semi-nomadic families and sometimes disappeared for weeks or months on end. They would tell embroidered tales by starlight entrancing those less lucky than themselves with stories of magic boxes and gora lamps. Perhaps she would not tell them after all. They rarely came village-side, hardly ever crossed the canal bridge but went back to their reed matting houses with no electricity and mothers with arms circled by white bangles from wrist to shoulder and golden be-jeweled nose-discs that spoke of wealth but not power.

As she bent and grasped the handlebars she looked back to the shepherd. He was looking at the place where the thing had been the last time he looked. His face was rigid. This was not the plan and things just did not run away unless they are extremely magical or possessed by a djinn or possibly when he had had a few too many glasses of the sharab brewed by his feckless cousin. But it was no longer next to his blanket. The teacher saw him reach out to the spot where it had been and then pull his hand back. As he did she happened to glance down and saw the thing next to her feet.

Fear triggered her bladder and urine ran down her leg. She shook slightly all over and felt more afraid than when the buffalo had attacked her. More afraid than when the man had showed himself to her but then she had laughed and pointed and thrown a stone very hard that hit his head. More afraid than she had felt in her whole life because it was not the sight of the thing that had made her wet herself it was the voice in her head saying her name.

 Afshan.

Afshan it said and it was not the voice you get that is really your own voice in dreams. This was not a voice she had heard before it was a voice from somewhere else and it was not Pakistan. Nor was it any other place she could think of and she was quite good at geography. She knew the voice came from the thing and that it wanted to speak to her but was not sure what to say even though it was a box cleverer than all the clever boxes there were on Earth.

The shepherd was looking at her. The three men looked at her. So did a crow. She had stopped shaking but was still afraid because she knew without being told that many of the things that she had believed to be true – were not. One of those things was that the race of men was not alone. There were other things and she was looking at one of them.

The thing had changed everything for everybody and Afshan knew this without being told. She knew things that she did not know she never knew and one of them was that the thing meant no harm to her; had been travelling a long time and was one of many. Many millions, she thought, and they had all come here to Earth. She knew all this in the seconds that it took for her to glance at her feet, see the thing, her bladder let go, to look across to the shepherd and the three men and the crow. Time was not what it used to be a few seconds ago and was never going to be the same in the minutes hours days and weeks ahead. Afshan knew that. Nobody had told her, though.

There were now two times. At least two. Maybe more but two she knew of. The time that was in the dust at her feet and the eyes of the shepherd and the buttocks of the men and the beak of the crow. That was the time that was the time. The other time was like the black-brown goor before it solidified thick and hard to stir. This time was more like the mud she made with the children from which they formed figures that lay out baking in the sun. Time that was dense and heavy and which she could handle, like a screwdriver or a pencil. Or a cooking pot.

There was a long time between what she was experiencing and the time experienced by the shepherd and the crow and the men. She could live out a whole life in the blink of an eye during which time they would wither and fade and die and join the dust at her feet. She knew this but nobody had told her. It was time to talk to the thing in thing time not shepherd crow men time and it could take a very long time to say the things she knew and wanted to talk about but was not sure how to say them because she had never used the words for things she never knew before.

It spoke to her in Seraiki but she knew it could speak in any language it wanted and that it had learned her language that morning when she passed it on her bicycle in the nearly-light.

Over three days of thing time and a couple of seconds of time time Afshan picked learned a lot. More than her brain could hold she thought and she wondered why it did not have a heart attack. There was no sunrise or sunset she did not need to eat or go to the bathroom or have a wash or change her clothes or talk to her sisters. She was neither hot nor cold nor was she afraid other than when she flicked into time time and wondered how she was going to explain all this to everybody else because she would have to do that it was not something she could keep to herself. Then she was afraid but it was a different sort of fear to the fear she had when she first saw the thing by her feet.

Thing did not have a name and it was not entirely a machine and it was made of stuff other than metals but it was not organic either. It was one of billions of identical things that moved through space like a cloud. Space was very big and things were very small. So even though there were a lot of them they were quite spread out. The cloud thing was part of was about twenty lightyears across and there were other clouds. Afshan was quite pleased that she knew what a lightyear was before thing awared her. Thing was a little unsure about its origins and Afshan wondered what sort of culture never knew who or what its parents were but then things were different, weren’t they? It was made not grown like she was. It was a put-together thing like a car or refrigerator.

The cloud the thing was one of billions within had a job. It was to look for systems that hade life within them. We are scouts, said thing. We come to look and find out. But who sent you asked Afshan? Thing took a while but really not very long because its long and Afshans long were very different. Home sends us said thing. What home where asked Afshan and got no answer. Are there any others here now she asked? Yes another of me is close to here about fifty miles away. So what happens now that you have found us what will happen next and is there going to be a war like there is in films and books. Afshan thought of ‘War of the Worlds’ that she had read when she was at secondary collge. No no war said thing. Trade. We are looking for trade. Buying and selling things? Yes sort of said thing. The scouts tell the cloud of traders and then they come. They are like you? A little but bigger.

The exchange went of for hours of thing time during which the shepherd blinked once the crow was immobile and listening so hard that Afshan wondered if it was talking as she was and the three men just looked at her.

She was aware that her head was filling up with stuff. It was not uncomfortable or even frightening just…strange. She learned that there were other stars with planets around them that had life not unlike that on Earth and that where there were human-type populations there was always conflict that eventually ended in the death of the human-type races. Earth was apparently close to the end of its life which was why the cloud of things had made a decision to move quickly and see if there was profit to be made. Afshan understood that. It made sense. If you were a trader-spacefarer culture it made sense. Thing showed her films in her head of other places. Some looked rather nice, others not. She wondered if she might go to some of the nicer ones. No said thing.

She was suddenly tired and wanted to rest. Thing agreed and she went into shimmer for a while but she did not know how long and when she came out of shimmer the crow was gone but the shepherd was still there and pointing at her and the three men were standing up.