Inferno

by Larry Niven

  “You can’t speak!” he’d wailed. Then, “Tell me! I’ll let you bite me, but tell me the way out!”

  He was a scarlet splash on a gray rock. Still watching me.

  I pointed downslope, toward the lake of ice. “There! All the way to the center, if I haven’t been lied to myself!”

  I glanced back once more after I’d crossed the next bridge. The lizard was poised on the rim, staring down. As I watched, he made his decision. He leapt into the pit.

  Now what was that all about? Never mind, Carpentier, you’ve got other concerns . . .

  25

  F

  ar below me, the golden monks stood like so many statues. Every couple of seconds one or another would rock forward as if its base were unstable. The broken bridge dropped in a cascade of rock.

  I stopped to catch my breath (Habit, Carpentier! You could give that up), then went down the broken slope with some care. It would have been easy to break an ankle.

  I had reached the floor of the canyon before I noticed that one of the monks had turned completely around to stare at me. His slate-gray eyes were the oldest, the weariest I had ever seen, and I recognized them.

  He said, “Didn’t you pass here a week ago?”

  “A few days, I think. And you’ve only come this far?”

  “We hurry as fast as we can.” The gray eyes studied me. They were so tired; they made me want to sag down and rest. “May I ask, what game are you playing? Are you a courier or something equally unlikely?”

  “No, I—” Why not tell the truth? He wasn’t about to run and tell someone. “I’ve got to steal a pitchfork from one of the ten-foot demons in the next pit over.”

  “Don a cloak like mine,” he said. “See what it does to your sense of humor.”

  I sank down against the bank. Those tired eyes . . . “I’ll wear the cloak,” I said. “You get Benito out of the Pit of the Evil Counselors. Okay?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I pushed a good friend into the Pit of Evil Counselors. If I can’t—”

  “But why would you do a thing like that?”

  I howled. It startled me more than him. I’d been about to say something else entirely. But no words came, and I threw back my head and howled. The tears streamed down my face.

  The monk said something in a foreign language. He tottered toward me and stopped. He didn’t know what to do. “There, there,” he said. “It will be all right. Don’t cry.” With a touch of bitterness he added, “Everyone will notice.”

  There was a howl as big as the world inside me. It wanted out, and it was stronger than I was. I howled.

  The priest muttered to himself. Aloud he said, “Please. Please don’t do that. If you will only stop crying, I will help you get your pitchfork.”

  I shook my head. I got out a whimpered, “How?”

  He sighed. “I cannot even take off my robe. I do not see how I can help. Perhaps I could act as bait somehow?” He lifted his head, his teeth grinding with effort, to look up along the cascade of broken rock.

  I stood up. I patted him on his leaden back: Clunk, clunk, chink. “You’ve got your own problems.” I girded up my mental loins and started up the slope.

  Loose rocks rolled under my feet. This was the high side of the gully. It took a long time to get to the top. I had just one advantage: part of the bridge still projected out from the cliff. I climbed in its shadow and stopped underneath. I waited.

  After all, what could a demon do to me? Rip me to pieces? I’d heal.

  Drop me into the pitch forever?

  Throw me into the Pit of Thieves?

  One of the horned black demons strolled past, his head turned to study the pitch on the other side of the ridge. He held six yards of iron pitchfork balanced in one hand. All I had to do was leap out and grab it.

  I let him go. When he was past I began to shake. The beast had three-inch claws, ten. And eight-inch tusks, two. And Carpentier was a coward.

  I heard clanking and puffing below me. I turned and saw an amazing sight. The priest was coming up behind me.

  I watched him. I didn’t believe it, but it was true: he was actually in motion. He sounded as if he were dying again, but every so often his hand or his foot would move and he’d be two inches higher. When I finally made myself believe what was happening, I scrambled down the cliff, got under him, and pushed up on the rigid hem of his robe. I doubted it helped. I might as well have been trying to lift the world.

  We reached a flattish fragment of rock just under what was left of the bridge. There we rested. The death rattle was in his throat. His eyes were closed. His face glistened.

  “Thousand years,” he got out. “Been walking . . . thousand years . . . in this lead coffin. Legs like trees.” Then, “Was a priest. A priest. Supposed to . . . keep people out of Hell.”

  “I still don’t know how we’re going to do it.” The we was courtesy, and he deserved it. But what could he do?

  “Get me up,” he said.

  I got my arms under his robe. It was warm. Together we got him upright, somehow. Then I looked up . . . at a demon’s hooves.

  The demon looked down at us, grinning. “You know,” he said pleasantly, “you’re the first one ever got this far out of the tar.”

  I said, “You’re making a mistake. I’m not—” Then I leapt for it. The pitchfork struck sparks from the rock where I’d been, but I was in midair, falling.

  I landed hard on a ragged-edged boulder. I rolled immediately, ready to dodge again.

  The priest was gripping the business end of the pitchfork!

  The demon bellowed and pulled. For an instant he had lifted the priest off the rock, robe and all. Then the priest sagged back, still gripping the tines.

  I tried to climb up to help.

  The priest took two steps back and off the edge of the rock.

  The demon bellowed for help. He was trying to lift half a ton of leaden robe, and it wasn’t working out. I had almost reached them when the demon cried out and let go. The priest dropped through space.

  I crawled down to him.

  The robe was bent like tinsel and cracked down the front. The edges glowed yellow. He’d been told wrong; the robe was solid gold. When I touched it it burned my fingers.

  The priest was mangled inside. He looked violently dead, except for his eyes, which followed me. If I didn’t get him out of the robe he’d fry. But you don’t move an accident victim—

  He’ll heal, Carpentier. We all heal, to be hurt again.

  I pulled him out by his feet. The robe wasn’t contoured to let him pass, but it didn’t matter. He came out like a jellyfish. He must have broken every bone in his body.

  I spoke, not to the soft-looking head but to the gray eyes alone. “You’ll heal. When you heal, there’s a way out of Hell. Benito says so. Go downhill. Downhill.”

  The eyes blinked.

  “I’ve got to rescue Benito,” I said. I pulled him over to the side so nobody would step on him. I picked up the pitchfork and left.

  B

  enito!”

  I walked the ridge between the pits, calling like a lost soul. The answering voices all sounded the same, anonymous, thrumming, inhuman. “Here I am, fellah!” “Benito who?” “Who dares disturb the silence of Hell?”

  “Benito! It’s Allen Carpentier!”

  A voice called, “The science-fiction writer?”

  “That’s right. I’m looking for—”

  “I’m Charles Manson. I read your work. Liked Ellison better.”

  Fame is a chancy thing. I said, “Good choice. Benito!”

  “Allen?”

  That had to be him! But a dozen voices took it up. “Allen!”

  “Here I am, Allen! What kept you?”

  “Benito! I’ve come to get you out!”

  I listened for the Italian accent . . . and heard it. “Never mind. I belong here. I should not have tried to leave.”

  All the flames looked alike, but I thought I had him pla
ced now. I reached down with the pitchfork. “Bugger that! Grab the end!”

  The other flames were wandering off. Benito said, “It is not long enough in any case.”

  It wasn’t. I looked along the rim. There was a rough place where I might climb down partway.

  Benito tried to stop me. “You are being stupid. If you fall, you will burn like the rest of us!”

  “Can you reach the end?”

  “Go away, Allen. This is my proper place.”

  I was ten feet below the rim and almost out of footholds. The pitchfork was heavy and awkward. I tried to go farther, setting my feet very carefully.

  “All right,” Benito said suddenly. The huge flame moved to engulf the tines. I felt a feather touch on the haft, and the flame began to rise from the pit.

  He called, “Can you hold me?”

  I laughed with relief. “You don’t weigh as much as an ounce! I could lift a thousand of you!” After all I’d been through, suddenly it was going to be easy.

  The flame rose higher along the haft . . . and I felt the first warming of the metal.

  I waited until I was sure I could filter the panic from my voice. Some of it may have got through anyway . . . “Benito? Hurry.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No, never mind. Just hurry.” I was afraid he’d let go.

  The metal was uncomfortably warm.

  It grew hot.

  Down there where a huge flame was rising in dreamy sloth, the metal began to glow dull red. He wouldn’t notice; his own bright flame would blind him to it. Up here it was too hot to hold, but I held on, my teeth clenched against the scream.

  The scream grew bulky in my throat. I stopped breathing to hold it in. If Benito gave up now to save me pain, I’d never, never find the courage to do this twice.

  The metal was cherry red around the flame. My hands began to sizzle. I wasn’t breathing, but the smell of cooked meat worked its way into my nose. I couldn’t imagine how my hands still held. I was clenching them with everything I had, but the muscles and nerves must have been cooked through. Charred through. I knew that smell too: dinner ruined. My head was thrown back, my eyes clenched tight. There was no sensation but the fire.

  “You can let go,” said Benito. He was beside me, clinging to the cliff, his body no longer hidden by the flame.

  I tried to let go.

  My hands were charred fast to the haft. I tried to knock the pitchfork loose. It came loose, all right, and slid bumping into the eighth bolgia with my charred hands still attached.

  Benito had to virtually lift me up the cliff.

  26

  W

  e went inward. I followed Benito, nursing my charred wrists. He had to haul me up the last bridges by the slack of my robe. The pain never stopped. The nerves gave no sign of having been cauterized by red-hot iron. The charred bone broke away; the black flesh split to expose red flesh.

  It’ll heal, Carpentier.

  Oh, shut up. And call me Carpenter. Carpentier the Famous Author is dead.

  In the empty borderland between the tenth pit and the giants, we sat down. Presently Benito spoke. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry I pushed you in.”

  He didn’t say anything. I said, “I thought I had to do it. I thought it was right.”

  Still nothing. “Look,” I said, “I was raised to believe that Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were identical monsters.”

  Benito sighed. “Sometimes, toward the end, perhaps we were. I didn’t start that way. I meant well.” He laughed bitterly. “I had good intentions. We know what is said to be paved with those.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He spoke musingly, without looking at me. “After the war I saw my country humiliated. No one believed in anything. Corruption everywhere, laboring people working against wealthy people, middle class working against the government, everyone fighting each other and everyone ruining each other. If they’d only work together—we were Romans, once. We ruled the world. We could be great again, instead of a joke for Clemenceau and Lloyd George to swat aside.”

  “So you made people work together?”

  “I gave Italy hope. For years I even stopped Hitler from taking Austria. Allen, if I’d chosen the side of the Allies in the second war, would I have as great a place in history as Stalin?”

  I couldn’t say anything to that.

  “Yet he killed ten million peasants. Adolf never equaled that record. As for me, in the early days we used castor oil, not clubs.” He sighed. “But you can never stop, once you begin seeing what is better for people than they know themselves. The opposition will make a thorough mess of everything you’ve done, and you know they will destroy the country. What do you do? Destroy the opposition. Now they really have grievances. Bigger opposition, more police needed to suppress them. But I meant well. I loved my people to the day they killed me.”

  “ ‘The purpose of power is power.’ ”

  “What?” Benito was badly shocked.

  “Never mind. Quote from a novel, Nineteen Eighty-four. So then you tried to set up a government here?”

  “For my sins, I did.” Benito’s sudden laugh was like my own howling in the sixth bolgia: there was an agonized laugh in him, and it clawed its way through his throat. “Oh, Allen! And you think you’ve seen Hell! A government among the Evil Counselors—When I tried to get out they stopped me; they needed me as figurehead. Never mind, I got out anyway. I had to.”

  “But you never did anything but good for me. Or anyone else you met, down here.”

  “How are your hands?”

  We looked. Two tiny infant’s fists were forming at the lumpy bones of my wrists. “We must wait until they heal. You will never climb with those!” He laughed.

  We sat and talked. Hours went by.

  “I think the worst was when they shot my cabinet people. Italians shooting men whose only crime was to love Italy and trust me—” He shuddered. “Those are strange scars on your chest.”

  “I had to play games with the demon in the tenth bolgia. Funny, we didn’t see him coming back.”

  “Games?”

  Reluctantly I told him. It could have been embarrassing, but it wasn’t. He didn’t thank me again. Instead he smiled and said, “Do you still believe that Hell is a place of entertainment?”

  “No. I didn’t even then. I think Geryon convinced me.”

  “Geryon?”

  “Yeah. You may not have noticed, but Geryon is the only nonhuman in Hell who really looks like an ET, an extraterrestrial, something from another world. He’s consistent. Not like those patchwork demons, animal traits grafted on a human frame. And when I climbed aboard him I kicked machinery around his waist.”

  “So?”

  I had to laugh. “Oh, really, Benito! An antigravity belt? When they’ve already proved they can take the mass and weight out of anything they like? Geryon was lying. Lying without saying a word.”

  “And it was Geryon that convinced you? You have seen no proper miracles?”

  “I saw one.”

  I told him where the pitchfork had come from. “That priest climbed the broken bridge in half a ton of gold. He hung from the demon’s pitchfork until the demon had to let go, and he knew what would happen then.”

  Benito smiled. “Yes, that was a miracle.”

  “Too right. I know a miracle when I see one.”

  “Then you are more fortunate than most of us.” He looked thoughtful. “Geryon has looked a little different each time I have seen him.”

  “That worried me too. Just how often have you made this trip?”

  “Six times. Each has been easier for me, although not for the one who accompanied me to the exit. As I told you, it does not matter how many start. Only one leaves.”

  “And there really is a way out . . . There was a time when I thought you were just leading me into something more horrible. I’m still scared, but not of that.”

  “Now there remains only the lake of
ice. You have nothing to fear.”

  “I’m afraid to relax. Too often I’ve thought I was through the worst part.”

  His look probed my soul. “When the iron began to grow warm in your hands—”

  “Tell me all about it.”

  “I think not. But now there is only the ice. It will be colder than anything you can imagine, but we can endure it. Nothing can bar us now! Soon we reach the center, and then—” He stopped.

  “And then?”

  “You will see.” He looked me in the face. “I think you have enough courage.”

  “Even now I feel it leaking away. Spit it out, Benito.”

  “We will meet Lucifer and pass him. Ignore anything he says. When we have passed that, go uphill to Purgatory.” He paused. “Without me.”

  “But you’ve traveled this route? You know where it leads?”

  “No, and yes. I have not traveled it, but I know where it leads.”

  “How?”

  “By faith, and by Dante’s description.”

  “Dante’s been wrong a couple of times. Admit it, Benito: you don’t know what happened to those six you rescued.”

  “I know. But I have not seen.”

  “Do you want to leave Hell? Or are you afraid of what’s there?”

  “How are your hands?”

  They were a child’s hands now, still too small to support my weight.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I would leave Hell if I could. I belong here, so long as there are lost souls to be rescued.”

  “You sent six men and women into the unknown, but you were afraid to go yourself.”

  He didn’t answer, only looked at me.

  I stood up. “Come on. My hands’ll heal before we need them.”

  T

  hey healed.

  We climbed the torso of a chained giant. It was easier than mountain climbing, and harder: mountains don’t shake, mountains don’t snap at you with teeth the size of medieval shields. We stepped across space from the giant’s shoulder to the flat top of a wall. From the wall I watched Benito slide down on the seat of his pants. A pity he hadn’t found a better way down in six previous trips.

  I slid after him.