Inferno. Part 16

Benito spoke in an actor's voice, calm but carrying. "There is a way out of h.e.l.l."

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 h.e.l.l."

Smeared faces turned away. George stayed to answer. His laugh had tears in it. "Me, in Heaven? With s.h.i.+t dribbling down my chin? I'd rather stay here."

Another called. "Listen, when you get there, tell Him. Tell G.o.d 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 d.a.m.ned souls with whom Corbett would not a.s.sociate. 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."

PART III.

CHAPTER 20

The third gully was narrower and cleaner. From the edge it looked empty, so that I wondered if there were a sin n.o.body would commit, or one n.o.body 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 Th.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. "G.o.d does that to them? Just for that?"

"They stole what belongs to G.o.d," 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 G.o.d."

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 d.a.m.ned 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 s.h.i.+vered, 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 h.e.l.l. "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 d.a.m.ned.

A little elderly lady, very prim and proper. She'd been a teacher in my nephew's school. Now she walked with her head tamed backward, and tears ran down her spine and between her b.u.t.tocks. I screamed. The d.a.m.ned 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."

"You belong here?" I could not see Mrs. Herrnstein with a crystal ball.

"Yes. Whenever I had a pupil who had difficulty learning to read, I used-- I was a bad teacher, Mr. Carpentier."

"You were a good teacher! You taught Hal more in a year than he learned in five!"

"I was a good teacher with good pupils. But I could not be bothered with the ones who weren't so bright. If they had trouble learning to read, I said they had dyslexia."

"Are you here because of bad diagnoses?" This was monstrous!

"Dyslexia is not a diagnosis, Mr. Carpentier. It is a prediction. It is a prediction that says that this child can never learn to read. And with that prediction on his record-- why, strangely enough, none of them ever do. Unless they happen on a teacher who doesn't believe in educationese witchcraft."

"But--"

"It was witchcraft, Mr. Carpentier. Please go now."

She walked on, crying uncontrollably, her face toward us as she walked away. I watched until she was out of sight.

"She does not belong here," I insisted.

"Then perhaps she will not be here long," Benito answered dispa.s.sionately. "Yet-- you will note that she did not agree with your judgment."

"Then she's wrong too!"

"Why do you feel so competent to judge everyone, Allen?"

"Get it through your thick head that it's Big Juju I'm judging--"

"It is G.o.d you are judging," he thundered.

"All right, it's G.o.d I'm judging. If He can judge me, I claim the right to judge Him!"

Billy seemed horrified by what I was saying. I was sorry for that. But Benito laughed and said, "How will you implement your judgment against G.o.d Himself?"

The only possible answer to that was a feeble one, maybe, but I used it. "By withholding my wors.h.i.+p. Benito, do you realize that the G.o.d you wors.h.i.+p keeps a private torture chamber?"

"Hardly private."

"Private or public, the G.o.d Allen Carpentier wors.h.i.+ps will have to meet higher standards than that!"

Benito didn't speak for a moment. Then he said, "We must hope our shouting was not heard. Look ahead."

From our position at the top of the arch we had a good view of the rims of the next gully. On both sides of the gap, horned black demons moved. They were larger than men, a little smaller than the demons in the first ditch, but like them they had horns and tails, and their skin was black ebony, very different from a black man's skin. They carried-- "Pitchforks?"

"Certainly," said Benito.

I couldn't help grinning a little. Pitchforks! I'd forgotten that detail. Had Walt Disney's cartoonists ever realized why their devils carried pitchforks?

"They must not see us," Benito said. "None of us are safe from them. They guard the pit of the grafters, of those who stole from positions of trust."

Billy shuddered. "Reckon they'd like me," he said. "Guess I took a few things from my bosses in my day. Not much, but some."

"Not me. Free-lance writers don't have bosses," I said. Then I remembered the advance from Omniverse Publis.h.i.+ng, nine years before I died. Somehow the novel had never jelled, and-- let's play it safe here, Carpentier. Demons wouldn't understand the publis.h.i.+ng business.

There was cover at the bottom of the bridge. It was all a jumble of boulders. We waited our chance, then sprinted down the bridge while none of the demons were nearby. We were hidden before another group came past. We huddled together between the rocks.

"Too bad the bridges are staggered," I whispered. "We could have gone right across." The next bridge was thirty or forty yards to the left, with a troop of twenty-odd demons between.

"For us this is the second most dangerous place in h.e.l.l," whispered Benito. "We must reach the next bridge without being seen. Cross at a dead run, and do not stop at the next pit. Run straight into it. There are no bridges in any case, and we could not reach one if any existed. The demons are on both sides of the pit."

Billy s.h.i.+fted restlessly. "Don't like running from nothing."

"We must," Benito said simply. He pointed. A demon strode past.

A roughly human form nine feet tall, equipped with horns and hooves and a twitching tail. A capriform humanoid.

How glib, Carpentier. Capriform humanoid? Demon! Why play games with yourself?

The demon was carrying a human being, carrying him like a bowling ball, his claws inserted deep into the man's back. The man writhed and struggled. The demon didn't seem to notice. He called to three of the others. "How many New Yorkers this week?"

They joined him in front of our rock. One twitched his tail up to his mouth. Teeth like butcher knives gnawed at the end. "Twelve."

"Make it thirteen. And it's still Thursday on Earth. If Hideous wins the pool again I'll rip his face off."

"You could forget to report this one."

"Why not?" The first demon lifted his human burden to study it. "He hardly counts anyway. He stole a few hundred bucks from a friend who needed an eye operation." He addressed the man: "You won't tell on us, will you?"

"No. I swear," said the man. His voice was choked with agony.

"And you won't show your head above the pitch? Because if we see any sign of you--" The demon hefted his pitchfork suggestively. "We'll pull you out and tear you in little pieces and scatter you widely. It hurts a lot."

"I won't tell," said the man.

"Good," said the demon holding him, and he flung him. The man dropped below the rim with a mournful howl that ended in a sound half splash, half thud.

"What's down there?" Billy whispered.

I answered, "Boiling pitch."

"What'd he do?"

"Graft."

"I kept wanting to try to save him."

Benito said, "I would not save him if I could."

The demons pa.s.sed on. Like the warriors around the lake of blood, they looked always into the pit, always away from us. If we were careful we could move, one at a time, flitting from rock to rock to-- "Gotcha!" a demon shouted, and I had a heart attack, right out there between two inadequate boulders. All they had to do was come and collect me, but they weren't looking. They were clumped at the rim, jabbing down.

A human form came up dripping gobbets of black pitch and trying to wriggle free of the tines of two pitchforks. I heard, "Boss Tweed, ain't it? We been checking with some of those dead men that're supposed to have voted your ticket-- Hold him, Crazyred!" The man lurched free of one pitchfork, but the other held him fast. They beached him. They began to play with him.

I touched Billy's shoulder. "Don't look. We can get a good way while they're busy."

We crawled like snakes. By the time the shade of Tweed had stopped screaming, we were opposite the bridge. I looked back once and had to close my eyes. The demons had opened him up and spread him out like a frog in biology cla.s.s; but unlike the frog, he was still trying to get away.

Benito crouched like a sprinter. "Ready?"

"Yeah."

"Right."

We ran.

I heard a great ba.s.s roar of rage. I didn't look back. But as I went over the arch, last in line, I saw that the demons on the far side of the gully were running to meet us.

One was going to make it.

I stopped. Only for an instant; then I plunged down the arch behind Benito.

But Billy had doubled his speed.

The demon reached the end of the bridge off balance and skidding. "Come to Poppa!" he roared, and swung his pitchfork around.

He was a nanosecond late. Billy shot past the tines and ran up the demon and swarmed over the huge head.

The demon bellowed and tried to reverse eighteen feet of iron pitchfork. Benito slammed shoulder-first into his knee. The demon half-turned, and I hit the other knee sideways. Both huge legs went out from under the demon, left him blind and falling.