The things he’s learned from Baxter and others about the bomb and the field of flowers, what happened and why, drift through his thoughts. Probably none of it’s true. They float these rumors in lieu of actual explanation, let the men and media sort and combine them into a consensus lie. But there are no media this far north in Iraq, he tells himself. So maybe it’s all true, maybe all the scraps of loose talk are pieces of a truth that he isn’t smart enough to fit together. He wonders what the villagers said when asked why they thought the field of flowers was the entrance to Paradise. He wonders why the answers they gave their interrogators have been classified. Like maybe the villagers knew something command doesn’t want the rest of them to hear. It’s better not to consider these things, better to shoot some battle juice and get drooly and red-eyed. Nonetheless, he considers them. The things he does know, the things he’s heard. Fitting them together—that’s Today’s New Army Challenge. He switches off his tunes, switches on the intrasuit channel and hears Baxter say, “…I’m live in hollowed-out pearls. Each man gets two gardens of gold and two gardens of silver.”
“I ain’t hearin’ nothin’ ’bout what the women s’posed to get,” says Janet Perdue. “Though I guess I can figger it out.” She laughs, and the other woman in the patrol, Gay Roban, GRob, joins in.
The carrier stops, and the lights go red. Wilson knows they’re at the edge of the field. Time to juice up, buckle down, jack your rifle into your computer, make everything secure. Baxter drones on, now talking about the varieties of demons and angels and how people are brought out of hell burned all over, except on their faces, and are laid down on the banks of a river to recuperate. How on the day of judgment, hell will be hauled up from beneath the earth by seventy thousand ropes. Wilson punches up a drug mix on the computer, treating himself to a dry martini of God’n Country, with just a whisper of IQ. The syringe bites his forearm. Within seconds he’s gripped by a pathologically smooth feeling of competency and confidence, underscored by a stream of outrage and devotion to duty. The claustrophobic enclosure of the carrier seems like a seed pod that will soon burst open and expel them, deploying them so as to sow Democracy in its new ground. Though muted by suits and helmets, the ferocity of his comrades-in-arms radiates out around him. Their expressions, partially shielded by red reflection, are uniformly grim. Except for DeNovo, who’s turned on his privacy screen. Instead of eyes and nose and mouth, his faceplate displays a video capture from a home movie, some kids—one of them probably DeNovo himself—playing in somebody’s back yard, splashing in a plastic pool. Wilson’s privacy screen is programmed to show shots of the Rockies, but he’s been thinking about making a change.
The voice of Colonel Reese sounds over the intrasuit channel. Wilson has never met the colonel, never even laid eyes on him. He suspects that Reese does not exist, that he is a computer program, but he hearkens to the words, he lets their design control him. He pictures Reese to be a towering martial figure and not a doughy chaplain type. Standing at crisp parade rest, engaging them sternly, yet with loving familiarity.
“The idea for which you are fighting is too large to hold in the mind,” says the colonel. “If it was visible, it would be too large to see. Like the breadth of the sky or the shape of the universe. Here in this place of terror and iniquity, you are the sole expression of that idea. You represent its burning edges, you carry its flame, you are the bearers of its purifying light. You are the most dangerous men and women in the world. You kill so others may not need to kill, and there is no one better at it. If you die, you will in some form continue, because what lives in you and through you will not die. Even your death will serve to light the way.”
The colonel talks about home, God, the country in whose national interest this beautifully tailored, corporate-sponsored message of warrior religion has been created, invoked to inspire in them a zealousness comparable to that of the Enemy. He mentions each soldier by name and refers to elements of their private lives, to specific moments and people and places. The words seem like a prayer to Wilson, and he closes his eyes.
• • •
0637 hours
There are three patrols, teams of eight each, with two more such patrol groups scheduled to follow. Seventy-two soldiers in all. Now and then Wilson checks his helmet screen, which shows a digital animation of their progress, little brown figures knee-deep in yellow flowers. He can control the screen to give him whatever angle he wants, even close-ups of the helmets that reveal the expression any soldier is wearing at a particular moment, stamped-on features that are individualized, but rendered like cartoon superheroes. Sometimes he commands the screen to give him a low angle looking upward at one soldier or another, a cool point of view that makes them appear to be giants moving beneath a blank grayish blue sky. He’s looking at Baxter that way when a toylike helicopter appears in the digital sky above Baxter’s image. Flashing red words materialize on the screen, ordering them to proceed more rapidly, the patrols at their rear are ready to deploy.
The mouth of the cave excavated by the bomb is four hundred sixty-seven feet wide, but its depth reads infinite on Wilson’s instruments. Even more distressing, the cave appears to occupy the entire base of the mountain—an unimaginable tonnage is essentially hovering, supported to a height ranging from forty-one to seventy-seven feet only by thin rock walls. Thinking his helmet must be whack, Wilson checks with the others. Everyone’s readings are the same. The red words keep on flashing, telling them to advance. Baxter, who leads the patrol, asks for a confirmation from command and receives a go. The thought that he’s about to be crushed does not unnerve Wilson. Death will be quick, his drugs are good, and Colonel Reese’s words were a knife that spread his fear so thin, it has melted away into him like hot butter into a biscuit. He moves forward, swinging his rifle in an easy arc to cover his area. As he passes beneath a toothy hang of rock at the entrance to the cave, he switches to a private channel and signals Baxter.
“Yo, dog!” Wilson says. “Got any more good advice on the afterlife?”
Baxter doesn’t respond for a couple of beats, then says, “Yeah. Get ready.”
“Fucking command knew this all along, man. They knew this was whack.”
“You think?” says Baxter, affecting a retard voice. “Do some IQ, man. Your dumbass is showin’.”
“This here’s no time to be peaking,” Wilson says. “This here’s look-straight-ahead time. Keep-your-mind-on-the-map time.”
“IQ’s good any ol’ time. You been usin’ too drifty a mix, man. You got to burn that shit home. Straight no chaser.”
They walk without speaking for a few seconds.
“All right. I’m shuttin’ it down,” Baxter says.
“Hey, Baxter!”
“Yeah?”
Wilson wants to say something to fortify their bond, to acknowledge it, because in the midst of his lion glow, his sense of supernatural direction, there’s an unfortified part of him that needs a human affirmation, but he can’t bring the words out. Finally he says, “We cool, man?”
“Nothin’ but, man. You know that. Nothin’ but.”
“Okay…cool.”
They trudge onward, crushing the yellow blossoms underfoot, and then Baxter says, “One thing that book tells about Paradise? Said you enter Paradise in the most beautiful and perfect of forms…in the form of Adam.”
“Adam-and-Eve Adam?”
“Yeah, you enter Paradise, you be just like him. You be tall as a palm tree. Sixty cubits tall.”
“Fucking Paradise must be a seriously fucking big joint,” Wilson says, and Baxter says, “Can’t get any bigger’n this cave, can it? ’Least that’s what I’m readin’.”
They remain joined in silence.
“All right, man,” says Baxter. “Shuttin’ it down.”
• • •
0742 hours
There’s no apparent end to the flowers, and the deeper they walk into the cave, the light stays the same, sourceless, as if they’re moving within a bubble of pale dawn ra
diance, carrying it forward with them. Wilson thinks that if the cave is truly Paradise, then all of Paradise must be this light and these flowers. They can no longer see the cave walls, only the rocky ceiling. At last his digital screen registers something round and white at the edge of the display. It’s massive, a white globe measuring more than two hundred feet in diameter. Yet as they draw near this surreal-looking object, he realizes that while it’s big enough to crawl inside and walk around in—there’s an open door for that very purpose—it can’t be anywhere near as big as his instruments say. Its skin is lustrous and gleaming, like that of a pearl. Instead of being set at ground level, the door is maybe eighteen, twenty feet overhead, occupying an area on the pearl’s upper curve. A track of crushed yellow flowers leads away from it, making it appear that the thing was tossed from a careless hand and rolled to a stop. Smears of bright blood streak the inside of the door.
A babble surges over the intrasuit channel. Baxter orders everyone except Wilson to shut up, fan out, and keep watch. Wilson punches up a shot of IQ, straight no chaser. It’s time to be wise. He stares awestruck at the pearl while Baxter contacts command and, as the shot takes effect, he thinks that the pearl might well be two hundred feet in diameter. If they have, in fact, entered Paradise, then their bodies, according to the Qur’an, are twenty cubits tall, and this would place the pearl’s size in a different perspective. That’s bullshit, of course, but this is a bullshit mission. Bullshit might prove the key to survival.
“I can’t raise ’em,” Baxter says privately to Wilson. “Command channel’s dead.”
Wilson waits for an order.
“Go take a look up there.” Baxter points to the door. “Stay private when you report.”
Wilson checks the energy storage units in his magic boots. He crouches, leaps high, catches the edge of the door and swings himself over so he’s braced, perched on the doorsill, looking down into the pearl. What he sees is opulence. Draperies of peach and turquoise silk, and tapestries on the walls; dishes of silver and gold; silken couches and pillows; ornate rugs, inlaid tables and chairs. Everything torn, scattered, broken, as after a violent home invasion. An archway leads to another opulently appointed room. The oddest thing, the floor—according to the placement of the door—should be canted out of true, the furniture all slid down to one end; but though toppled and knocked around, the furniture hasn’t obeyed the laws of gravity, and if Wilson were to drop down, he would not be standing at a lean. It disorients him to see this.
He reports to Baxter, and Baxter says, “I’m coming up.”
Baxter launches himself, grabs the door. Wilson holds out a gauntleted hand, helps him swing over. They crouch together in the doorway, awkwardly balanced, clinging to one another.
“Looks clear,” Baxter says after scoping things out. “Maybe this is the way.”
“The way? The way to fucking what?” says Wilson. “That’s not the protocol, man. We’re to reconnoiter the cave and report on what we find. We’re not supposed to go climbing inside the shit we find.”
“That’s not how I understand the orders.”
Baxter’s indifference, his clipped GI tone, pisses Wilson off. “I fucking respectfully disagree. I think the goddamn corporal’s got his head up his ass.”
“Check your display, man. See what the cave’s readin’.”
The cave reads infinite in all directions except up.
“Command channel is dead,” says Baxter. “There’s no direction out. We can wander around in these fuckin’ flowers ’til we stink out our suits or we can explore this apparent goddamn habitation. I’m sayin’ that’s the way we go.”
“I understand the corporal’s logic. I admit it makes a certain degree of sense. However…”
“Cut the shit, man!”
“…I suggest it may not be the wisest course to jump down the first fucking rabbit hole we come to.”
DeNovo signals on the intrasuit channel and Baxter tells him to report.
“You gotta see this!” DeNovo says excitedly. “There’s a big drop-off. Down in it’s like a forest. Trees…all gold. Trunks and leaves, they’re all gold!”
Wilson spots DeNovo in the distance, a tiny brown figure.
“Hell you doin’ way out there? Get your ass back now!” says Baxter.
“It’s amazing, Baxman!” says DeNovo. “Fucking beautiful!”
Wilson locates the digital DeNovo on his helmet screen and goes close-up on him. His expression is one of maxed-out glee, a delirious Italian cartoon hero. Wilson shifts to an overhead view, sees the drop-off, the ranks of digitally realized yellow trees and bushes. He shifts back to a close-up on DeNovo. Baxter is yelling, ordering DeNovo to return, when something dark sweeps across the screen and he’s gone. Wilson glances toward the spot where he last saw DeNovo. Only yellow flowers. Alarmed voices chatter on the intrasuit channel. Baxter shouts them down, orders everyone back to the pearl.
“You see what it was?” he asks Wilson.
“I was watching my screen, man. It was just a blur.”
Baxter nods toward the room below. “Jump on down in there.”
“Baxman, I don’t…”
“We got nowhere else to go. I need the door clear. Go.”
Wilson jumps, makes a cushioned landing on his magic boots, dropping to a squat. He comes up, rifle ready, reading for life signs. “Still clear,” he says to Baxter.
“Stay there!” Baxter continues urging the rest of the patrol to hurry and then he goes, “Aw, shit!” and screams at them. Wilson hears bursts of small arms fire and the concussion of grenades. He checks his screen. Wolves, he thinks when he sees the figures that are closing in on the pearl. But they’re not true wolves, they’ve got human feet and hands…except the fingers have talons. They’re knuckle-draggers, their arms incredibly long, covered in reddish brown hair, the same color as the mountain. They’re long-jawed, too. Red-eyed. Their limbs are spindly and strings of drool sway from their chins as they move through the flowers, harrowing the much smaller figures who’re racing toward the pearl. Even hunched over, their heads scrape the ceiling, so they must be forty, fifty feet tall…if he’s to believe his instruments. But how can he believe, how can he accept these digital monstrosities as truth? He calls out to Baxter, asks what he’s seeing, but Baxter’s too busy shouting orders to respond. Wilson focuses on the helmet screen. Watches as the shambling gait of one werewolf carries it close to a running soldier. Janet Perdue. It snatches her up in a taloned hand and bites her in half like she was a candy bar with wriggling legs. Blood splatters as in Japanese anime. Shocked, incapable of belief, Wilson hits replay and watches it happen again.
A soldier appears framed in the doorway above and jumps down beside him. Gay Roban, looking terrified behind her faceplate. She unlatches her helmet and removes it, rips off the skullcap that’s covered her close-cropped blond hair. She stares with dazed fixity at Wilson, then casts her eyes over the disarray of the room.
“Is it wolves up there, GRob?” Wilson asks, catching her arm. “Like werewolves?”
She pushes him away and says dully, “Fucking monsters.”
Baxter jumps down, closing the door behind him as he drops, and GRob screeches at him. “Chickenshit asshole! You can’t just leave ’em!”
“Check your screen,” he says, and when she won’t calm down, he shouts, “They’re gone, goddamn it! Check it out!”
Acting stunned, GRob puts her helmet back on. Wilson goes wide-angle on his screen. Werewolves prowling about, bending to sniff at the flowers, then hurrying with a gimpy, hunchbacked gait to another spot and sniffing again. No soldiers are visible, but the fact that the werewolves are hunting for survivors causes Wilson to think some may be alive, their suits shut down, maybe burrowed under the dirt. Three patrol groups. Seventy-two soldiers. They can’t be the only ones who made it. It was all so fast.
GRob lifts off her helmet. “Jesus!”
“Wrong fuckin’ prophet,” Baxter says flatly.
“C
ould be still some of our people out there,” Wilson says. “They could be shut down, they…”
“Could be?” Baxter spits out a laugh. “We ain’t goin’ back out there for ‘could be.’ Put that from your mind.”
“We can’t stay here.” GRob slaps at the wall. “Something picked this goddamn thing up and threw it. You seen the track it left. Like, y’know? They fucking threw it! You wanna be here when the son of a bitch comes back?”
“We’re not stickin’ around,” says Baxter.
“We’re not going outside, we’re not sticking around…” GRob gets in his face. “You gonna make us disappear, Baxman? You got that much mojo?”
Baxter steps away from confrontation and aims a forefinger at her. “You best slow it down, woman!”
Her cheeks flushed, GRob drills him with a furious stare, and even in the midst of fear and freakery, Wilson feels the pull of an old attraction, this long-standing thing he’s had for her. He wonders how he can think of sex, even fleetingly, even with GRob, who’s muscled up but looks like a woman, not a steroid queen like Perdue. Escape, he imagines. His hormones offering him an out. He still can’t accept that Perdue is dead. She was a mad fucking soldier.
“Punch yourself some downs,” Baxter says to GRob. “Light level.”
GRob doesn’t move to obey.
“That’s an order!” He looks to Wilson. “You, too.”
“That’s not cool, man! We can’t be doing downs, we’re in the shit!”
“Hear what I said? That’s an order!”
“I already did up. When the wolves showed,” Wilson says, not wanting to dull his edge. “I went way light, but I did up.”
Baxter eyes him with suspicion, then says wearily, “They’re shaitans, not wolves. I told you about ’em in the carrier.”
“I wasn’t all the time listening.”
“Muslim hell got some devils resemble wolves. That’s what we saw.”
“I thought this was supposed to be Paradise,” Wilson says, and Baxter says, “Who the fuck knows? Maybe the ragheads back in the village weren’t tellin’ it straight. Maybe they’re chumpin’ our ass. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Eternity and Other Stories Page 5