Inferno (17 page)

“Did I really put her there?” Corbett wondered. “Maybe I have betrayed a benefactor. She was kind to me and—”

“Come on, no woman’s worth what they’re gettin’,” Billy said. “We stick together. I never let a buddy down in my life, and I’m goin’ down to the center. Now come on.”

Corbett lost some of his tension. “If you’re really Billy the Kid, that’s right. At least, that’s what the movies showed.” He began moving again, over the arch of the bridge and downward. “Benito, your description is still nonsense. Not only would there be free-fall at the center of the Earth, but this isn’t Earth to begin with. A cavity this size, under the Earth? Can you imagine the
pressure
? And we’d get seismograph readings on it with every earthquake. No, we have to be somewhere else.”

“Sure,” I said. “Infernoland. Somebody built it, following Dante. But the geography’s been the same as Inferno all the way so far, so what do we care if it’s an artifact?”

“It is an artifact,” Benito said, “in the sense that God designed and built it.”

“Okay,” said Corbett. “I was never a good atheist. Not a churchman either. Still, Benito, I’ve seen designs for bigger structures than this. Bigger than Earth, for that matter. Our real problem is, did Dante really see this place himself? And can we trust his reports?”

That was a good question, but I had a better one. How far could we trust Benito? He had never mentioned earlier trips.

Just how did Benito get back uphill after those trips? How did he earn this privilege of running free through Hell? Geryon had said “we” when speaking of both himself and Benito. “We who serve God’s will in Hell.”

Benito was an unlikely angel . . . and Geryon an untrust-worthy witness, I reminded myself. But this was the Devil’s realm, and Benito wandered at whim.

All right, Carpentier: just what
is
the punishment for a soul who defies God’s final command? God or Big Juju, I had plenty of evidence that He was vindictive. He put me in the Vestibule, and I violated my sentence. Minos warned me. Is this the final retribution against Carpentier? To go even deeper into Hell, with no way back, to find my own level and have it worse than He condemned me to?

Or. Suppose this really is Infernoland, a bigger and more powerful Builder’s playground. Why would the Geryon-type engineers have built anything
but
the Inferno? They clearly enjoyed seeing humans suffer. Would they get a similar kick from human pleasure? All the professors told me the
lnferno
was by far the most interesting of the three books of
The Divine Comedy
.

Benito was talking again. “I have always assumed that Dante made his trek in a vision. When he woke he had forgotten many of the details. He filled them in with research in theology and dogma and philosophy and natural history and with his own whims and prejudices and special hatreds. But the basic vision was sound and true. Be careful here.”

The bridge dropped steeply at the end. The inner rim of the trench was twenty feet lower than the outer. We went down backward. The lip of another pit was a hundred yards away. A cacophony of sound rose from it. We stopped for a moment.

“For instance,” Benito said, “Dante’s work gives the impression that he met large numbers of Italians—”

“Sounds perfectly reasonable to me,” said Corbett. We tried to laugh, but this wasn’t a place for laughing.

Benito merely continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Improbable numbers of Italians. Large numbers of famous ancients. He met writers, poets, politicians, but no Hottentots, Eskimos, Askaris, or American Indians. This seems unlikely.”

“Then you don’t trust Dante after all?”

“Jerry, that was not my point.”

I said, “Benito, we’ve met an embarrassing sufficiency of Americans.”

Billy laughed. “Plenty on the island, too.”

Benito was startled. “It’s true. And Hilda Kroft and I met Germans. And—”

“Man tends to notice his own folks,” said Billy. “Let’s get moving.”

We angled toward a bridge spanning the next ditch. Benito still looked disturbed. Why?
That
disturbed
me
.

The smell stopped us joltingly at the second pit. It was like being dropped into a sewer. We didn’t even try to look over the edge.

“Who’s down there?” Billy asked.

“Flatterers,” Benito said shortly, and turned toward the bridge.

We followed. “I don’t get it,” Corbett said.

“In every place of power, throughout all time, the rulers have been surrounded by flatterers. In many places flattery has been the path to power and wealth. In others it is only a good living. Yet everywhere the flatterers tend to push aside the men of real wisdom. Flattery is so much safer than telling unpleasant truths.”

“Not in America,” said Corbett.

“This I doubt,” said Benito. “But you should know best.”

“Never buttered up the boss? I sure have,” said Billy.

I felt uncomfortable. What was I doing at the moment I died but flattering the fans? I glanced over at Corbett, and he looked no better. Flattery? We’d all tried it. What did they do to flatterers?

We clustered at the bridge approach and stood looking at it. The smell was thick as putty. I could feel it clinging to me, and I squirmed. Corbett said, “How are we going to cross that?”

“Fast,” I said. “Don’t breathe.” I didn’t move. I hadn’t worked up the nerve.

“Come on, pals!” Billy hit the bridge at a dead run. As he went over the arch and disappeared from view, we heard him yell. The other side of the bridge would be steep. I hoped he’d rolled to the end and not over the edge. I wasn’t ready to dive in after him, and I didn’t hear anyone else volunteer.

“Billy?” I shouted. There was no answer.

“He’s all right,” Corbett said. His voice was hollowly reassuring. “Sure he is.”

We looked at each other. We took deep breaths. We scrambled up the arch, and when we could stand, we ran.

Was Billy down there? I made the mistake of looking from the top of the arch.

Down into a river of shit, chest-deep. A respectable crowd waded through it.

Disgust can freeze you as solid as fear. At my side, Corbett stopped to look where I was looking. He made a retching sound, took my arm, and tried to pull me on. I couldn’t move. I’d recognized someone I knew.

I called down. “George!”

Heads turned up. They were disguised by what was smeared across their faces, but it was George, all right. I tried to remember his last name and couldn’t.

But he knew me. He shrank away with his sticky arms hiding his sticky head.

Benito had come back up the bridge. “Billy is safe.” He spoke with the pinched voice of a man holding his breath. “Who was that?”

“An old friend. An advertising man, wrote fiction in his spare time. Not very good stories, but he wasn’t a bad guy. How did he get here?”

“Immoderate flattery. There is no other way to reach this pit. Allen, Jerome, there is no profit in standing here. You cannot enjoy the view.”

Immoderate flattery? It fit, in a way. Big Juju’s way. Most advertising is immoderate praise of a product or its users. But like every other torture I’d seen in Hell, it was just too damned much! I wanted to tell George . . . what? That he’d been wronged? That I’d get justice for him no matter what it took? That I couldn’t save him and I couldn’t save myself and everything was useless because we were in the hands either of a cruel God or heartless aliens? I don’t know. But I’d remembered one of his own ads, and I shouted it down to him. It was not to mock him! Only to get his attention!

“You
deserve
to belong in the Xanadu Country Club!”

The response was an explosion of voices. Smeared stinking heads rose, mocking voices called. “The wet-head is dead!” “Aren’t you glad you use Dial? Don’t you wish everybody did?” “I’m Glenda! Fly me!” “Hazel, it turned
blue
!” “Always have . . .
always
will!”

And we three who peered into the moat, we saw where the shit came from.

Another macabre joke. Every one of them had been fitted with a second anus. It became apparent only when they tried to speak.

Corbett bent double, heaving, a ghost trying to expel emptiness from the ghost of his belly. I tried to help him, but he backed away fast. He didn’t want to be touched. The convulsions went on and on.

I tried to turn away from the edge, but it was too late. George screamed up at me, in agony. “Allen! Why?”

“I’m sorry!” I should have left him alone.

Benito spoke in an actor’s voice, calm but carrying. “There is a way out of Hell.”

He got insults and laughter, but a few listened.

“You must climb the pit. Cooperate if you must. It will be hard, but you can do it if you try long enough. Then you must move inward. The route to Heaven is at the center of Hell.”

Smeared faces turned away. George stayed to answer. His laugh had tears in it. “Me, in Heaven? With shit dribbling down my chin? I’d rather stay here.”

Another called. “Listen, when you get there, tell Him. Tell God we will praise Him day and night! I have written a new hymn to His name! Tell Him!”

Benito turned sadly away.

I looked for Corbett—and found him at the outer end of the bridge. He was crying and hiccoughing and trying to run. I shouted, “Corbett! Wrong way!”

He turned. “No chance! I don’t belong here! I’m supposed to be in the winds!”

“You’ll never get up the cliff.”

“I will! Somehow, I will! I belong up there, not down here with—” He flapped his arms helplessly. Corbett had no word for these thoroughly damned souls with whom he would not associate. He went away from us.

Billy was waiting at the inner end of the bridge. He watched us come down, then, “Where’s Jerry?”

Benito shook his head. “Pride. He was too proud to stay.”

III

Malice is the sin most hated by God
And the aim of malice is to injure others
Whether by fraud or violence. But since fraud

Is the vice of which man alone is capable,
God loathes it most. Therefore the fraudulent

Are placed below and their torment is more painful
.

20

T

he
third gully was narrower and cleaner. From the edge it looked empty, so that I wondered if there was a sin nobody would commit, or one nobody thought of. But lights danced dimly down there . . .

From the arch it was clearer. I made out long rows of holes cut into the stone. The holes had raised stone rims. Most of them were occupied, each by a pair of human feet sticking straight up into the air. The feet danced. Flames burned on their soles.

“Another obsolete sin,” said Benito. “Selling holy offices. Simony.”

Billy said, “Huh?”

I translated for him. “Those guys would take money to make you a priest.”

There were signs by some of the holes. “Wharton School of Theology. Earn your Ph.D. in just ten weeks! Write Registrar for application.”

And another: “Meditation. The new way to inner peace and serenity. Meet the greatest guru of all time. Registration fee,
350.”

Billy was aghast. “God does
that
to them? Just for
that
?”

“They stole what belongs to God,” Benito said. “There are popes in those baptismal fonts. And many others. The denomination does not seem important. What matters is the sale of the gifts of God.”

Why would aliens care about that? Well, Carpentier?

“Benito, I don’t like it here,” Billy said.

I patted his shoulder. “Me neither. Let’s get out.” I felt the urge to run. At least I was safe from this pit. We all were. We’d never had heavenly gifts to sell.

The bridge over the fourth gully was just ahead, and I glanced into it from the top, intending to run on past. The strange sight held me. The damned flowed beneath us, and their heads had been turned back to front. Most of them were women.

“Fortune-tellers,” Benito said before I could ask. “They tried to see the future by magic.”

And now they were not even allowed to watch where they were going. I shivered, thinking that a science-fiction writer might well end up here. But no, I’d never used magic. Only logic, and it hadn’t kept me out of Hell. “Why aren’t all the scientists and economic prognosticators here?” I asked. “
They
try to foresee the future.”

“Most of these appealed to Satan for aid. He gave it to them . . . or not. It is the appeal that weighs against them.” He turned to move on.

Then I recognized one of the damned.

A little elderly lady, very prim and proper. She’d been a teacher in my nephew’s school. Now she walked with her head turned backward, and tears ran down her spine and between her buttocks. I screamed. The damned looked up at me.

“Mrs. Herrnstein! Why?” I shouted.

She looked away. Then she stopped and looked up. Face and back turned toward us. She’d always been thin, and I’d never thought of her as particularly feminine. Certainly she wasn’t feminine now. “I belong here, Mr. Carpentier,” she called. “Please leave. I don’t want to be watched.”