by Ian Wallace
“I am saying that you made your decision. And it was yours.” She turned to me: “When did you see the new box, to notice that there was no scratch on it?”
“I didn’t. But I saw a box with a scratch go into your purse, and a box with an identical scratch come out of your purse; and I am betting that the Moskovians didn’t think of that subtle a match. Is it a sound bet, Althea?”
She looked down and nodded twice, fingering my lapel. She murmured: “You talk high about the morality of letting me face and make my own moral decision. But if I had decided wrong and blown Kebec—by your sufferance—how would that have squared with your morality?”
“Kebec wouldn’t have blown. I mind-checked your new box, sight unseen. It won’t work.”
An instant longer she clutched my lapel. Then she twisted away from me, opened her purse, drew out a box, held it high in moonlight (I could see no scratch), and hurled it into the falls. The pliers followed; she threw very well. Turning back to me, she put her head far down, gripped my upper arms, pressed the top of her head against my chest, and gave herself over to sobbing.
I took her marvelous desirable-strong shoulders. “You can lead me now to the entrance, Althea, and we’ll go through the mummery of your scheduled inspection. Then afterward—can you somehow arrange to send me back to my suicide?”
Her inaudible sobbing had quieted to the pace of one small convulsion per ten seconds.
It grew faintly audible. Sobbing was not what it was.
Up came her head, she was smiling brilliantly. “There will be no inspection, Pan,” she told me, and her punctuation was chuckle-blurps. “And there will be no return to your suicide. I am not the one to tell you about all this—but I can give you a hint. I did not murder the three men. I merely sent them back to how they were before you arrived—which was nonexistent.”
I stood digesting that—stood befuddled during three full minutes. Then: “God damn.”
“Exactly. We considered that you were a candidate. We tested you. And you have passed. I have to bring you to our headquarters, which are located in Hell, so that maybe you will not too seriously mourn your twenty-sixth-century sun-run—”
“Headquarters, Althea? in Hell? What organization?”
“Sometimes we call it Postscript, sometimes Operation Second Chance. We recreate situations in which souls have lost themselves in the past, and we start a replay, turning them loose with free will and no memory of having done all this before. Sometimes there may be a phantom memory-flash, but they always brush this off as a mere deja vu. But in the replay we offer them just a little bit of a nudge at this or that critical if-node, and then we let them alone to see if they wake up and win instead of losing. There never was an Althea Candless of Nor-dia, Pan—but if there had been an Althea Candless of Nordia, and if she had got herself into this bind, and if there had been no Pan—”
“But her device would not work.”
“We saw no reason to make it workable. But if a real Althea Candless had carried a workable device—”
“But even this time, Pan did nothing decisive—”
“That is the point: you contented yourself with nudging and leaving it ultimately to me.”
I considered that. I nodded once. Had her device been workable, I would have known it; had she nevertheless attached the real device, I would have deactivated it; she would have lost—but not Nordia. But by virtue of my nudging, she had not chosen to attach the real device, and she had won. But, hell, it wasn’t real, it was theater! With a real Althea, would my nudging have succeeded? Who’d have any way to know?
She added: “Pan—do you really want your suicide? You can have it back, if you want it.”
My mind smiled before I did. “I will defer suicide; this is entirely my decision, for evil or for good. But I think you nudged a little.”
“Complex internudge, my friend.”
“That’s the best kind. What shall I call you, now?”
“Althea is as good as any name I’ve had.”
“Shall we go to Hell now, Althea?”
Again she was fooling with my lapel. “We are entitled to a delay en route. Can you bring off a return trip to the hotel, Pan? Scandia is an illusion, of course—but I haven’t yet erased.”
Part Two
Operation Second Chance
.…this sea (in Hell) was composed of the blood that had been shed by piety in furthering the kingdom of the Prince of Peace, and was reputed to be the largest ocean in existence. And it explained the nonsensical saying which Jurgen had so often heard, as to Hell’s being paved with good intentions. “For Epigenes of Rhodes is right, after all,” said Jurgen, “in suggesting a misprint; and the word should be ‘laved.’”
James Branch Cabell, Jurgen
2
When I had come before a mountain’s base—the ending of that steep and rugged valley that lately so had struck my heart with fear…
So did my soul, which still in terror fled, turn back to contemplate with awe and fear that pass which man had never left alive…
These were the verses of Dante’s Inferno that with difficulty and with some contextual license I teased out of the first canto for the sake of doing some kind of contextural justice to the fearsome-gigantic rock-wilderness that now in deep dusk I found myself semiburied in. The old Dore engravings, I reflected, were actually better than the Dante verses from a viewpoint of Gothic horror; but then, perhaps Dante had not been after Gothic horror, except perhaps in a few passages concerning the depths of Hell, as:
Just so were stilled the jaws of Cerberus,
that demon whose loud, raucous bark so stuns
the spirits, that they wish that they were deaf.
or—
Three hellish Furies, all besmeared
with blood, with women’s limbs, and aspect womanly.
About their waists were greenest hydras girt;
for hair, horned serpents in a seething mass
hissed as they twined about their horrid brows.
or—
One, seizing on Capocchio, fixed his teeth
so firmly in his neck, he dragged him down,
making his belly scrape along the bottom.
or—
Two frozen in one hole, so close together
that one was to the other like a hat.
And even as bread for hunger is devoured,
so did the upper one gnaw at his fellow,
just where the head is fastened to the nape.
Not otherwise did Tydeus eat away
the temples, in his rage, of Melanippus,
than this one gnawed his neighbor’s skull and brain.
or, finally—
With all six eyes he wept, and from three chins
the tears and bloody foam were trickling down.
In every horrid mouth he crunched a sinner…
Knowing that I was in fact going to real Hell, and with these sorts of images live in my mind—in themselves pallidly materialistic, less real than the supraimaginings invoked—I found it faintly bathetic to recognize in the crepuscule that in fact I walked in Zion National Park after visiting hours. I was indeed wandering up the trail-corridor in the Temple of Sinawava, between flowered rock walls that soared above the flowers to bare-stab the height of the night, beside the maidenly gurgling Virgin River whose full-moon madnesses had carved the canyon. I had nearly attained to the permissible end of the walking: a closing-in of rock with only a narrow cut beyond, a semidead-end placidly shallow-flooded by the Virgin: here by day children carelessly danced from step rock to step rock across fordable water high-walled by rock; here by night the half-moonlit water purled around the step rocks, the sound of the purling suggesting the riverlet’s potential of lethal anger…
And it was dark, except for the pale moonshine on the water. And ahead of me there was a slender pass, even darker, many miles deep with sheer walls, guarded by a sign warning visitors against penetrating this pass by reason of the peril of flash
floods: you could not run up those walls.
I gazed at the sign. In my mind, it read: all hope abandon, ye who enter here. In my mind, it was guarded by a lion and by a leopard…
I inquired of my tall, slender guide: “Are you a living man, or a specter from the shades? Were you perhaps of Lombard parents sprung? Were you the poet who sang the worthy son born to Anchises, who escaped from Troy after proud Ilion was burned to ashes? Are you then Virgil—that great fountainhead whence such a flood of eloquence has flowed? My blood is trembling in my veins from fear!”
My guide, Althea, answered laconically: “I am Virgil no more than you are Dante, and your blood is trembling no more than I am male. But it ought to be trembling, because it is Hell that I am guiding you into—and not as a tourist, but as a damned soul.”
She vanished through the forbidden rock gate.
I hesitated.
Blood was trembling in my veins.
I followed.
I stood in semidarkness in a hard noisy redflashing place. It was a semihigh place, as though I had descended underground in bedrock and stood now on an intermediate platform of rugged-riveted steel, with plate steel for three walls and floor and ceiling, and on the fourth side to my left redflashing downbelow openness. The noises were clanging-explosive-loud, eardrum damaging, steel-mill-disruptive; the semiblinding redflashes intermitted with the clanging, flash-clang, flash-clang…
Althea said, below rather than above the clamor: “It is Hell’s threshold. What is your wish, Pan?”
I replied: “To enter.” And I felt it and meant it. But a clang blasted the word “enter,” and I did not know whether it had been heard.
Althea said: “Descend.” And the word coincided with a deafening clash complicated by wailing, and I knew that I heard not the word but the meaning.
Moving leftward, I descended a steel-stepped stair without rails, knowing that any wavering would send me plummeting into red-flaring noise-depths. There was high heat, it heightened, sound heightened, flash brightened, all of it should have tortured my eyes and ears and fears, instead I thrilled as I descended…
The ninety-third step was missing. Beyond was only noiseglare.
I hesitated.
Althea said: “Step off.”
I was suspended in noiseglare.
And then in silent glare. And then in silent nothing…
I missed the noise and glare; I was heartbroken for the departed noise and glare. Soul in ashes, too late I knew why I had loved the noiseglare: it was total psychedelic responsibility, whereas this silent nothing was the nausée of total freedom.
Someone invisible (not Althea) said with a mental smirk: “That was the first test, Pan; and in a way you passed, and in another way you flunked. You passed because you dared it, and you flunked because you liked it. We await your suggestions.”
Raising my mental chin a trifle, I responded: “Once there were four souls, a Catholic priest, an Episcopalian rector, a Jewish rabbi, and a Christian Science practitioner, who found themselves occupying the same flame in Hell. And the priest suggested—”
One commented: “We know the story. We await your suggestions.”
I considered the silent nothingness that I floated in. It was not psychospace, it contained no pregnancy. Perhaps it was nonspace. I projected a requirement into it. There was no response. It was not even nonspace.
I was totally disconnected, not only from everything, but even from every real nothing. I had only the resources of my mind and body, out as far as my skin but no farther. And there was nothing for my mind or body to act upon or through.
I was utterly free; that is to say, I was utterly helpless. In my living, more than once I had felt utterly helpless because of the chaos of environing events—because whatever I might try, its effects would go wrong. This was worse: whatever I might try, there would be no effects whatsoever.
I said to nothing: “Althea brought me here assuring me that I had passed some kind of test that qualified me to join an enterprise called Operation Second Chance. Following her, I have entered Hell assuming that Hell would give me opportunity to do something worthy. Instead, it appears that in Hell I can do nothing whatsoever. A human needs relative freedom in order to act with meaning; but if he is perfectly free, he cannot act at all. I recognize that Hell is perfect freedom; and therefore I shall be perfectly passive—until Hell, of its own volition, offers me some sort of environmental countercontrol.”
And I rested, prepared if necessary to pass eternity passive.
Countercontrol came: a voice lecturing…
“Hell has four functions. It provides total punishment for those who have earned total punishment. It offers purging for those who have done generally well but specifically ill. It constitutes a secure place for devils who are sadistic enough to enjoy a variety of aesthetic delights at the expense of both sorts of soul. And it is a base for devils to go forth on command by the Bushy-Tailed Father, forth into worlds to make trouble for incarnate souls who combine the illusions of supposing that one can be virtuous and of imagining that one can chart his own course.
“I now focus particularly on Hell’s fourth function. Any soul who disregards questions of virtue is immune to us in life but will see us in Hell. Any soul who supposes that he can chart his own course will be continually frustrated or ulcerated by us in his life and will probably see us in Hell. Any soul who denies that he can contribute any initiative toward the charting of his course will be disregarded by us in life but will fall into our hands in Hell. Finally, any soul who tries to be virtuous and also tries to chart his own course will be familiar with us in both places. Are you any of those sorts, Pan?”
“I am the last sort. I have known you here and there. Hello again!”
“Ah, there. We concern ourselves now with Hell’s third function. Pan, it is not too late for you to throw in your lot with us: we have delicious cruelties that you have never dreamed of, and every cruelty is prudishly justified by knowledge that the victim has earned it—”
“Sir or madam, the prospect is entrancing for brief periods of vacation; but for permanent identity—no.”
“Then we will turn to Hell’s first function. Your own role in this function would be that of a victim suffering eternal punishment. But from your deposition a moment ago, we gather that you do not consider yourself totally depraved.”
“Not totally, no.”
“Well; unfortunately for us, we agree. So you do not qualify as a victim. So for you there is left only the second function of Hell, either as patient or as practitioner: purging for those who have done generally well but specifically ill.”
“I thought that was for Purgatory.”
“An artificial medieval realm-distinction, Pan: we double in purging, it is rather like KP, we prefer combat. And we have been angling for a suggestion from you as to how you need purging.”
“But it is you who are the doctors—”
“If it is like that, Pan, your Dr. Freud has given us some marvelous guidelines for treating you. He is available here, by the way: do you call for his services?”
“Pray assign your own specialists. I neither call for him nor exclude him.”
“All right. Him we do not recommend in your case, because we have the distinct impression that you have allowed no sin to be repressed into your unconscious, but instead you have made a point of remembering and frequently repenting and to the extent of your ability redressing every sin that you have recognized.”
“Some I have not been able to redress; and some presumably I have not recognized. And so I am perfectly willing to undergo a while of purging, if that is your pleasure; but I should remind you that according to Althea—”
“You were brought here to purge others?”
“Well, the idea did not seem to be quite like that, but—”
Still I hung in void; and the face that now materialized before me plunged me momentarily into profound soul-shock. I was in Hell: this face was benign, in a saturnin
e sort of way. Let me limn it: long and slender, dark-haired, dark-eyed, long-nosed, wide-mouthed, chin neither weak nor assertive; smile-crinkles about the eyes, experience-furrows about the mouth—and the eyes and mouth were smiling. No body: just the head in nonspace…
I blurted: “Thoth!”
The smile stayed, the brows went down. “Welcome, Pan: Althea’s report was excellent, and your semifinal testing here has confirmed it. Relax: I am not the Bushy-Tailed Father, I do not even work for him, I maintain office here by his reluctant sufferance, and purging is not what I do. There is in fact a fifth function of Hell, although it is a thin start that I have given it. By way of explaining it, let me take you to a place of high interest—”
The countercontrol intensified: I was impelled into motion—downward.
Thoth took me so deep into black space that the streaming of the metagalaxies was like a shining snake slithering through indigo: a serpent having a fairly definite head and a fairly definite tail, with all ahead and behind and beyond raw space. And I comprehended that I was surveying synoptically all that was real. All.
He brought me in closer to the tail, and faintly behind the tail of the streaming I descried phantom silver. He demanded: “What is it?”
I told him: “It is Antan, the frozen traces of the metagalaxies, the traces of lives, remote yesterday. It is permanent, from its birth omega-eternal, indestructible. Also it is not alive, although some of it is traces of lives living.”