“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 radiance, 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.”