Escape From Hell (25 page)

She turned away.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re here because this is the last place I saw Jerry Corbett. I keep hoping I can find out what happened to him.”

“Jerry Corbett? Flew in space?” Sammy asked.

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“Sure, I met him, but do we have to discuss it in this stink? I have to breathe if I’m gonna talk!” He climbed back on the fender and glared at Oscar.

“Ernesto?” I asked.

“I spoke to one down there. He sold breath mints. He may be worth saving, but I do not know how to find him. I confess to having little sympathy for flatterers who die in their sins, so perhaps I should not be the one to decide. But if it is left to me, I say let us continue our journey. Surely there are others more worthy of immediate attention.”

“Good enough!” Oscar blared at full volume.

The car turned and started down the steep slope of the bridge, gaining speed, slipping, turning. Somehow we hit hood first. I banged my head on the windshield. The passengers on the trunk were on the ground now, doggedly picking themselves up.

“I broke a wheelbase,” the radio said. “I can’t move. Am I supposed to heal from that?”

“I do not know what a wheelbase is, but if you healed from falling off that cliff, surely you will heal from this,” Father Ernesto said.

Oscar honked his horn. “Well, that works. Okay, I wait to heal. What’s next?”

Sylvia looked back uphill. “Thais,” she said.

“Thais? Like in the opera?” I asked. “Way down in Alexandria, in wicked Alexandria …”

“This Thais was historical,” Sylvia said. “She was Alexander the Great’s consort the night they burned down Persepolis. I never could figure out why she’s in Hell. What Dante describes is trivial.”

That is the harlot Thais. “To what degree,”
Her leman asked, “have I earned thanks, my love?”
“O, to a very miracle,” said she.

“I would not call her flattery trivial,” Ernesto said.

Phyllis looked puzzled. “She told her boyfriend he’d really made her feel good, and she’s in there? For faking an orgasm? Jeez, every married woman must be in there! Father, you wouldn’t know, I guess, but sometimes women just have to fake it. It’s
kindness.
They don’t belong in Hell for that! Do they?” She looked thoughtful. “I did it sometimes, and Sylvia, you, too, I betcha.”

“And we’re not there,” Sylvia said. “The harlot with the heart of gold has been a literary theme for a long time. Why does Dante put her in Hell?”

“Sylvia, the real Thais married Alexander’s general Ptolemy after Alexander died. I remember now, she became queen of Egypt,” I said. “And I wonder if Dante knew much about her at all?”

“Allen, that’s my point,” Sylvia said. “Father Ernesto, you knew Dante. Was his poem a real vision or did he make it up?”

Ernesto shrugged. “Both, surely,” he said. “I am convinced he had a real and true vision, and that he remembered much of it correctly, but certainly he added details from his imagination.” He paused with a look of horror. “I was not always chaste,” he said. “My Maria was always satisfied. Or so I thought.” He ran over to peer down into the horror below. “Maria! But she cannot be there!”

“Relax, Father,” Sylvia said. “Phyllis is right, you know. If that’s all it took to be thrown in that Bolgia, it would be full up. Which proves my point.”

“So?” I asked.

“Allen, I’ve been trying to get an idea of how far we can trust Dante’s account. And it’s clear he made some of it up.”

“Oh. All right, but we don’t have anything better to go with.”

“Well, there’s your experience going through the first time,” Sylvia said.

“Yeah, there’s that. So what’s next?”

Sylvia said, “Simoniacs.”

“What’s that?” Oscar demanded. “Are they dangerous?”

“Probably not to any of us,” I said.

“Almost certainly not to you, and by experience no longer to me,” Father Ernesto said. “Come, I will show you.”

“Wait a moment,” I said. “Sammy. Jerry Corbett?”

“If he was a pilot who flew Buck Rogers spaceships, yeah, I saw him.”

“Tell me.”

“There was a girl a few places ahead of me,” Sammy told us. “I heard her call to a guy up on the rim. She talked about being in the hundred–mile–high club with him. That didn’t make sense to some of us so we got her to explain. It sounded like fun! Did you know there’s no gravity a hundred miles up? They kept talking, and after a while he climbed down to run with her. Real friendly guy. Funny thing, the demons acted like he wasn’t there. They kept her running, but they never hit him.”

“What happened to him?”

“They ran together a long time. She was trying to talk him into something, but I wasn’t close enough to hear what it was. Then all of a sudden he gave up, peeled off from her and started climbing up the wall of the pit, and damned if the demons didn’t go on ignoring him! Last I saw of him he went over the edge.”

“Uphill or downhill side?”

“Uphill. Toward that big cliff. Never saw him again.”

“I keep thinking I ought to find him,” I said.

Sylvia looked stern. “Why? He’s not your obligation, Allen. Certainly not as much so as we are.”

I thought about that. She was right. “Okay, Father Ernesto, let’s go.”

He led us downhill. The next pit was about fifty yards away. I could barely make out what looked like a bridge off to our left. We left Oscar behind and walked cautiously over to look down into the Third Bolgia.

Chapter 23

Eighth Circle, Third Bolgia

Simoniacs

I saw along the walls and on the ground
Long rows of holes cut in the living stone;
All were cut to a size, and all were round.
They seemed to be exactly the same size
As those in the font of my beautiful San Giovanni,
Built to protect the priests who come to baptize:
(One of which, not so long since, I broke open
To rescue a boy who was wedged and drowning in it.
Be this enough to undeceive all men.)

M
y view into the next pit was a field of small, flickering fires. A shadow danced in the light, man–shaped, gesticulating and shouting.

Ernesto said, “I’d like to talk to that one. I have spoken with the one in the hole. His story is very strange, but I couldn’t pull him out alone.”

I knew about simoniacs — and judged that nothing here would hurt me — but I wondered about the one who was loose. I followed Ernesto downslope. Behind me Sylvia was explaining simoniacs to Oscar.

“They sold what was God’s,” she said. “Dante found priests who sold indulgences. You know what those are? For a fat fee you could get directly into Heaven.”

The valley floor was lined with pits cut into the stone, about four feet across. Sinners’ legs poked out of the pits. Their feet were on fire. Most of the noise down here was screaming; some was cursing; some —

“But you still have no reason to believe there’s a God!” the tall man was saying. He leaned on both arms as he peered into the pit.

The man within, wedged upside down and hidden from me, said, “Look around you, moron! It’s precisely described in the Bible!”

“You never opened a Bible, Jackson! You never even read Dante. You’ve been quoting Disney cartoons!” At that moment he saw Ernesto. He flinched violently.

Ernesto asked, “Sir, how came you loose?”

“Oh, I just got here. I take it you’re not one of the, um, staff?”

“No. I am Father Ernesto.”

“I’m Hal Bertham.” He was keeping the well between him and us, in case we were demons after all. “This is Jackson, Prophet Herbert Jackson Hendrix. Say hello, Jackson!” Burning feet waved. “We were both on the radio. Jackson was a really annoying radio preacher.”

“Really successful, though,” came a voice from the well. “And this fool told the public that there isn’t a God, never was, and shouldn’t be, either. Blasphemer! I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t do anything but preach.”

“Hellfire. Jackson sold hellfire, and if you sent in lots of money you could stay out of it. He was always about to go off the air —”

“But Hal shouldn’t be here, either,” came the muffled voice. “He swore that all religion was a farce, and he did it for forty years. Every few years he’d have totally different reasoning. He was a scientist or a health nut or — I never figured out who’d pay him a salary to do all that. Hal?”

“Why should I tell you that?”

Ernesto said earnestly, “The Devil?”

Jackson laughed hollowly. “Where would
he
get the funding? I wondered if it was the ACLU. Or oil money. Muslims.”

“You son of a bitch,” Hal said. His head and torso disappeared as he reached deep into the well.

I saw a flash that might have been a camera flashbulb, but grade–school training knew different. I threw myself on Ernesto and flung us at the ground. The shock hit us and blew us away. By the time we stopped spinning I was blind, deaf, totally disoriented, and laughing like a maniac.

Ernesto must have recovered first. I felt him pulling me uphill. My hearing was a roar, my sight was all floating fireballs. Gradually it began to clear. I heard Oscar bellow in a staticky scream. “What’s so damn funny?”

“Simoniacs,” I gasped. “Radio talking heads. The one sells God. The other has absolute faith that there is no God. He sells
that.
Get it? He’s an antisimoniac.”

My sight was clearing. I could see a real fireball still rising over the shattered well that had held Jackson. Neither soul was in evidence. I asked, “What happens when a simoniac touches an antisimoniac?”

Sylvia, Phyllis, and Ernesto watched me, waiting for a punch line. Oscar said, “Gamma rays?”

“Yeah. They annihilate.”

“But where have their souls gone?” Ernesto asked.

“I can move,” Oscar said. “Allen, does it get weirder than this?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Allen,” Sylvia said. “We have to talk. All of us.”

“Sure. Oscar, you all right?”

“I’m healing. Look, my windshield is fine now!”

“I don’t worry about your windshield. How’s your wheelbase or whatever it is?”

“Feeling better, Allen. I’ll be all right in a while. Sylvia, what’s the problem?”

“Demons,” she said. “According to Dante, the demons are confined to the Bolgias everywhere except at the Fifth. They’re out on the rim there, and they’re mean. They almost got Dante and Virgil.”

“But they’re only on the far side,” I said.

“No, they’re on both sides,” Sylvia said. “Dante’s first sight of the demons was when one was carrying a barrator to be tortured. We have to be careful as soon as we get onto the fourth bridge.”

“What’s a barrator?” Phyllis asked.

“Lawyers,” Sylvia said. “Stir up unnecessary litigation so they can have jobs to do.”

“Also, one who buys or sells political favors,” Father Ernesto said. “Both kinds are thrown into the pitch with the graft givers and takers and others whose work is done in secret.”

“Then the demons fish them out to play with them,” Sylvia said. “It’s one of the scariest scenes in Dante’s poem. I often wondered if Dante was afraid of them because he’d done some political bargaining.”

“Perhaps so,” Ernesto said. “He was exiled on charges of barratry. I never believed any of it. But if he did so, it was much less than others of our city. Need any of us worry about the pit of the grafters and barrators?”

“Not me,” Phyllis said. “The boss had to pay off the pols to keep the place open, but — Oh!”

“What troubles you?” Ernesto asked.

“Well, I was the payoff a couple of times. Man, I really had to fake it with that city council guy. Father, does that make me a — what did you call them? Barrator?”

“I would not think so.” He paused. “I have spoken with these demons,” he added.

“What were they like?”

“Zealous, like all the servants of God in Hell,” Ernesto said. “They did not threaten me directly, but they would not let me pass, even when I protested that my proper place was in the Sixth Bolgia. They let none pass, upward or downward, without orders from their superiors.”

“Who are their superiors?” Sylvia asked.

“I never met them. I do not know,” Ernesto said.

“I met some of them,” I said. “In the City of Dis.”

“What were they like?” Oscar asked.

I shook my head. “Like bureaucrats, I guess.”

No one was listening to me. They had all turned to look counterclockwise around the rim. There was a motorcycle coming. As it got closer we heard the roar of the motor.

It came on fast, and did a sharp turn that stopped it just short of where we were standing. The rider was a woman. She wore riding breeches, tight at the ankles and baggy at the thighs, and a dark blue tunic. She had goggles but no helmet. When she stopped she popped the goggles up so that they sat at the top of her medium–length brown hair. She looked to be middle–aged, still attractive. I thought she must have been really pretty when she was younger.

Sylvia and Phyllis stared at her.

“Hello!” she shouted. “God bless you!” The voice was Middle Western, loud, and demanded attention.

Father Ernesto bowed acknowledgment. “Greetings. So we meet again.”

“You know her?” I asked.

“No. I know only that she stopped to speak with me shortly after I escaped from the Sixth Bolgia. She offered me a ride which I declined.”

“You look familiar,” Sylvia said.

“Sure she does!” I said. “Angelus Temple, right?”

“Right indeed,” she said. “Sister Aimee Semple McPherson, Lighthouse Mission, Salvation Navy. God bless you all.” She laughed heartily. “Which He must have done, since you’re standing here!”

“You call us blessed?” Phyllis demanded. “We’re in Hell! I spent years in that desert, and then I was whipped around that damned racetrack! Blessed? You got to be crazy!”

“Your scars have healed, and I see no demons behind you,” Aimee said. “Your sins were great, and so your punishment, but you have repented. Rejoice! Bask in God’s love.” She shrugged. “Or don’t, God will love you anyway. He loves all of you. God rejoices that you are no longer punished. Rejoice with him!” She waited expectantly.

I couldn’t tell if she wanted introductions or an argument. “Allen Carpenter,” I said. “I wrote science fiction.”