Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  Here and there among the flowers lie chunks of rock, some big as troop carriers. Wilson tells his helmet to go tight on one of the blossoms next to the big rock. It's long and fluted like a lily, its interior petals convulsed like those of a rose. He's never seen a flower resembling it. Not that he's an expert. The weird thing is, there are no bugs. He scans from blossom to blossom. Nary an ant, an aphid, or a bee. Maybe Intel isn't bullshitting, maybe the ragheads have developed a strain of flowers that don't need bugs to fertilize them. Maybe they're like a cool new drug source. Better than opium poppies. Wilson indulges a brief fantasy. He's back in Greeley, at a party, in a room with Mackie and a couple of girls, and they're about to twist one up when he produces a baggie filled with dried yellow petals and says, "Magic time." A few minutes later he and Laura Witherspoon are screwing on the ceiling, the walls have turned to greenish blue music, the carpet is the surface of a shaggy planet far below. He wishes for things he can't have. That Laura was with him, that he never re-upped. Most of all he wishes that he never volunteered for Special Ops. Depressed, he instructs his helmet to feed him a trippy level of downs via ocular mist. A minute drools off the lip of time. His head feels full of syrup, a warm sludge of thought. He's got Chinese eyes, he's nodding like the yellow flowers in the breeze … They're so close it looks as if he could reach out and snap off a blossom, lift it to his lips and drink secret nectar from the Garden of Allah.

  · · · · ·

  2018 hours

  · · · · ·

  Sunsets from the perspective of the ledge are made beautiful by dust storms raging to the south. Immense swirls of crimson and gold figure the sky, transforming it into a swirling battle flag. Wilson watches the flowers redden, go purple at dusk, and finally vanish in darkness. He removes his helmet, picks up his sidearm, and strolls through the village. Narrow rocky streets; whitewashed houses lit by oil lamps; a diminutive mosque with a blue-and-white tiled dome. At the far end of the village, on a rocky shelf from which a path winds downhill toward the American compound, three teenage Iraqi boys are preparing to burn a cartoon of George Bush painted nearly life-sized on a sheet of cardboard and suspended from a limb of a leafless tree. Bush has been portrayed with the body of a capering monkey. His head is a grinning pasted-on magazine photograph. The boys are dressed in jeans and T-shirts. They're smoking cigarettes, joking around, not apparently motivated by political passion as much as by a desire to do mischief. One adds twigs to a small fire beneath the cardboard sheet. A lanky black man carrying a helmet like Wilson's under one arm is standing off to the side, looking on.

  "Hey, Baxman!" Wilson exchanges a complex handshake with his friend. "S'up?"

  "Checkin' out the rebels here." Baxter's face, highlighted by the flames, is a polished mask. His eyes are pointed with flickery red cores.

  "We oughta clue these guys in there's a new president," says Wilson, and Baxter says, "They know that. They not goin' forget ol' George until he's way longer gone than he is now. Man's the embodiment of the Great Satan for these fuckers."

  Wilson notes his use of the word "embodiment" and wonders if Baxter's working behind IQ. Hard to tell, because Baxter's a pretty sharp guy even natural.

  "Burn his monkey ass!" Baxter makes a two-handed gesture, emulating leaping flames. The boys look perplexed and fearful. "Go on! I'm not goin' hurt you! Burn his ass!"

  "Whatcha got against Bush?"

  "What do you got for him? Dude was an embarrassment!"

  "He chased Saddam outa town, man."

  Baxter gives him a pitying look. "Where you think Saddam's at? He's not dead, man. Some guys're sayin' the flowers might be the front of his secret hideout. I think that's crap. Man probably had some surgery, turned himself into a woman and is right now fuckin' his brains out on a beach in Brazil. My point bein', all Bush did was give Saddam a goddamn golden parachute!"

  Wilson knows Baxter's just acting pissed-off at him; he's driving away the demons of tomorrow morning the best he knows how. "So the flowers aren't his secret palace or something, fuck are they?"

  Baxter pulls a sheaf of print-outs from his back pocket. The heading on the front page is Paradise and Hell: In the Light of the Holy Qur'an. It's part of the library relating to Islamic culture and religion they were forcefed while on board the transport that brought them to Iraq. Wilson's retention of the material was deemed substandard. "I'm down with the ragheads on this one," Baxter says.

  "You think it's Paradise, huh?" Wilson examines the print-outs. "It say anything in there 'bout yellow flowers?"

  "Naw, but you haven't been hearin' what I'm hearin'. The way the brainiacs are talkin' about the bomb, how it maybe broke us through to some other plane. They say the whole area's unstable, but when I ask 'em, 'Unstable how?', they clam up on me." Baxter slaps the sheaf against his palm. "Paradise sounds reasonable as anything else. That's why I'm readin' up on it."

  Wilson's attention has wandered, and seeing that Baxter is waiting for a response, he feels as he often did when called on in class back in high school. Unprepared, and yet compelled to say something. "We're not fighting Saddam," he says. "We're fighting terror."

  "Say what?"

  "We're fighting terror. Saddam's not the target, man."

  Baxter shakes his head ruefully. "Man, you a mess!"

  The bottom of the cardboard sheet catches fire. The flames wash upward, devouring Monkey George. The teenage boys let out halfhearted whoops and glare fiercely at the Americans; then they, too, lapse into silence and watch the cardboard shriveling to ash.

  As they walk together down the path, using their helmets in night-vision mode to find their way, the lights of the compound greenly visible below, illuminating tents and ranks of armored vehicles, Baxter says, "Ragheads got some weird ideas 'bout hell."

  Baxter's voice is muffled by the helmet. Wilson asks him to repeat and then says, "Yeah? Like what kind?"

  "They say most people in hell goin' be women. Hey, call it whatever you want. Hell. Heaven. I don't care. You can put me down in with the ladies anytime!"

  "What else they say?"

  "The usual shit. You drink melted brass, you get burned all over. They work your ass to death, but you never die. One weird thing: they let people out."

  "Outa hell?"

  "Yeah. People in heaven intercede for people in hell and then they let 'em out. Book makes a big deal 'bout the last man gets into heaven. He has to crawl out from hell and then he sees a shade tree and after he goes through some other bullshit, he's honored by Allah." Baxter negotiates a tricky stretch of path banked downward from the hill over a hundred-foot drop. "'Course once he's in heaven, he learns he's the lowest status guy."

  "Probably still be happy," Wilson says. "Probably still beats hell."

  "Sooner later he's goin' think about movin' on up the ladder. It's human fuckin' nature."

  They stop for a smoke, sitting on a boulder barely twenty feet above the operations tent. The sky is starless, the air thick with heat. Faint shouts and rumblings rise to them. Baxter spits down onto the tent and says, "This shit here, man, it's not what I signed on for. I got half a mind to go for a long walk east before tomorrow."

  "I'm not listening to this crap!" Wilson says, and when Baxter starts to come back with more of the same, he talks through him. "Uh-uh, man. I don't wanna even take this to the level of a fucking discussion. You understand?"

  Baxter hits his cigarette; the brightened coal paints his face in orange glow and shadow, making him look both dangerous and defeated.

  "We're gonna kick terrorist ass tomorrow," Wilson says.

  "Mmmph."

  "Our daddy was a stick of dynamite and mama was T-Rex on the rag."

  Baxter flips his cigarette out over the tent and tracks its sparking downward arc. "I'm not playin' that game with you. I'm not into it."

  "How do you spell Democracy?"

  "You heard what I said. I'm not doin' this with you."

  "I want to know. How do you spell it?"

 
"Fuck you."

  "I am a truly ignorant son-of-a-bitch! I have a deep-seated soul-need to know how to spell Democracy." Wilson holds out his right hand to Baxter, palm up. "I need it from you, Baxman. We going hunting together in the morning. I need to get motivated."

  Baxter says, "Shit," and laughs, like whatever, okay, I'll play your dumbass game, but when he slaps Wilson's palm, he does so with gung-ho force. Their hands lock strong in a gladiator grip.

  "How do you spell Democracy?" Wilson asks, and Baxter, all serious now, warrior-mean and going eye-to-eye, says, "With bullets, man. With bullets."

  · · · · ·

  Friday, 0525

  · · · · ·

  Packed into a troop carrier with Baxter and six other soldiers dressed in camo spacesuits, Wilson listens to tunes until his helmet asks him to review his medal file. Using the computer built into the left arm of his suit, he pulls it up on-screen. The file consists of biographical data, likes and dislikes, personal observations, quotes, information that will be provided the media should he perform a brilliant act of bravery and initiative, especially if he should die in its performance, in which case a gorgeous news slut will announce his name on television, breathe sadly and then pick a choice bit from the file to give color to his life, informing her public that Spec 4 Charles Newfield Wilson taught his kid sister to play hoops and had a taste for orange soda. The last item in the file is entitled 10 Things Specialist Fourth Class Charles N. Wilson Wants You To Know. Wilson can't recall the last time he modified the list, but some of it seems incoherent. It's clear he was in a different head at the time, riding a mighty chemical wave, or—and this is more likely—the list is a product of several variant chemical states. He sits with a finger poised over the delete key, but thinks maybe he knew more when he modified the list than he does now and closes the file unchanged.

  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 thing's 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, "… they 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 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 by only 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