Download the Book - Islam and Science Fiction

eye wheels, encompassing fragmented images of childhood, phosphorescent
flares like the explosive firings of neurons, an assortment of sense memories
accumulated during the past few hours, a kaleidoscopic succession of what
look to be magazine photographs, most relating to a museum display of
Egyptian artifacts, these and other categories of things remembered all
jumbled together, as if overloaded files are spilling their contents and
causing short circuits. The insides of his eyes itch, he can't swallow, his
heart slams, and his vision has gone faintly orange. But soon the flurry and
discomfort settle, and it's as if he's been fine-tuned, as if a bullet-smooth
burnished cylinder has been slotted into place inside his twitchy self, a
stabilizing presence, and he begins, for the first time, to have a grasp on the
situation, to not merely react to its hopelessness, to accept it, and, by
accepting it, by announcing it calmly to himself, stating its parameters, he
comes to believe that all is not lost. They are in hell, maybe with a patch or
two of heaven mixed in, and they cannot contact command. As with any
battlefield, the situation is fluid, and, as has been the case with other
battlefields, they can't trust their instrumentation. He's been here before. Not
in so daunting a circumstance, perhaps, not on a field that—as this one
seems to—was fluid to the point that it actually changed shape. But
essentially they're in the same position they were in during other covert
actions, conflicts that never made the news back home. Recognizing this
gives him hope. If your situation is fluid, you have to become fluid. You
have to understand the unique laws of the place and moment and let them
dictate the course of your survival. He switches off his instruments. He no
longer wants to see things as digital cartoons or confuse the issue with
readings that can't be trusted. They're on the right path, he thinks. Going
forward. GRob nailed it. Going forward is who they are.
As they walk through the flowers, GRob asks him about Colorado,
where he went to school, did he have a girlfriend, and all like that. By this,
he realizes how scared she is. She's never been much of a talker, just a mad
fucking soldier like Perdue … and maybe, he thinks, that's at the heart of her
fear. GRob and Perdue were tighter than he and Baxter. They went on leave
together, and there's no doubt they were lovers, though Wilson knows GRob
had an eye for guys. Plenty of times he caught her checking him out. But
GRob and Perdue were a unit, they neutralized each other's fear and now
Perdue's gone, GRob's unsure of herself. In context of this, he wonders why
he's not more unsure of himself now that Baxter's gone. He doesn't believe
it's just that IQ is insulating him from fear, and he's coming to accept that he
and Baxter didn't have anywhere near as strong a bond as GRob and Perdue.
What purpose they served for one another is unclear. Yet even as he thinks
this, he suspects that he does understand their relationship, that they weren't
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