Inferno

by Niven, Larry; Pournelle, Jerry

  “Past this round there is desert,” Benito said. “A fiery desert, too hot for life, with flames falling from the sky. I know of only one way to cross it, and that is the way Dante used. A stream runs through the desert, the overflow from the lake of blood. It cools the desert as it moves through it.”

  “Miraculously,” I said. I’d intended to be contemptuous, but it hadn’t come out that way. I’d seen too many miracles, all unpleasant.

  Benito nodded. “Of course. We must find this stream, or we cannot cross. It runs through the Wood. Comrades, we must find the Wood.” He turned left and walked on.

  “Why this way?” Billy laughed. “You ain’t got any idea where that Wood is.”

  “No, but we must reach it if we walk far enough. It is only a matter of time.”

  Yeah, we had plenty of that. And Hell was a series of concentric circles, God only knew how big around. It might take years, and so what?

  “Why not go the other way?” Billy insisted.

  Benito shrugged. “Dante always turned left on his way down. But we will turn right if you like.”

  “Naw. It ain’t important.”

  17

  T

  he noise, the smells, the desolation continued. The damned were here, placed by a macabre humor. Phantom heads rose from oil pools. Some were pecked incessantly by oil-smeared birds. A river ran past like an open sewer, and men and women lined the banks, mourning. The wails were constant in our ears, wails and roaring motors and clanking machines.

  We looked into some of the huge buildings and pulled back out fast. Inside the noise was overwhelming. Here a sizzling hum of electricity, there a scream of metal grinding on metal, elsewhere a roar of flame. There were more of the damned in those buildings, and they were hard at work.

  Our way led through one of the immense factories. Not a head lifted to see us pass. Incomprehensible widgets passed on an endless belt, and men and women screwed on nuts and tightened them and fitted the bottoms and the handles, endlessly. We followed the endless belt for miles until it went through a wall. On the other side more of the damned were taking widgets apart. Machinery hummed, and conveyors took the parts back to the other side of the wall.

  We left the building to find oil derricks raising and lowering their heads like giant prehistoric birds. We crossed a strip mine, and Benito pointed out that it was laid out very like Hell itself: a vast series of descending circular terraces. But there was nothing at the bottom except stagnant water.

  A towering oil-fueled power plant of spidery framework and miles of pipes and valves poured power into a cable thick as my waist. Transmission towers took the cable downhill.

  I peered along its length, but the murk defeated me. How did they use electricity in Hell? But outside the power plant was an athletic man chained to a wheelless bicycle set in concrete in front of the exhaust pipe of the generator. Black smoke poured around him, almost hiding him from view.

  As we watched he began pedaling furiously. The hum of the gears rose to a high pitch—and the generator inside died. There was a moment of quiet. The man pedaled with sure strokes, faster and faster, his feet nearly visible, his head tucked down as if against a wind. We gathered around, each wondering how long he could keep it up.

  He began to tire. The blur of his feet slowed. The motors inside coughed, and black smoke poured out. He choked and turned his head away, and saw us.

  “Don’t answer if you’d rather not,” I said, “but what whim of fate put you here?”

  “I don’t know!” he howled. “I was president of the largest, most effective environmental-protection organization in the country! I fought this!” He braced himself and pedaled again. The hum rose, and the generator died.

  Billy was completely lost. He looked to Benito, but our guide only shrugged. Benito accepted everything. I knew better. This couldn’t be justice, not even Big Juju’s exaggerated justice. This was monstrous.

  Corbett had to be guessing when he suddenly asked, “You opposed the thermonuclear power plants?”

  The guy stopped dead, staring as if Corbett were a ghost. The dynamo lurched into action and surrounded him with thick blue smoke.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Corbett said gently. “You stopped the nuclear generators. I was just a kid during the power blackouts. We had to go to school in the dark because the whole country went on daylight saving time to save power.”

  “But they weren’t safe!” He coughed. “They weren’t safe!”

  “How did you know that?” Benito asked.

  “We had scientists in our organization. They proved it.”

  We turned away. Now I knew. I could quit looking for justice in Hell. There was only macabre humor. Why should that man be in the inner circles of Hell? At worst he belonged far above, with the bridge-destroyers of the second ledge. Or in Heaven. He hadn’t created this bleak landscape.

  I couldn’t stand it. I went back. Benito shrugged and motioned to the others.

  Within the cloud of blue smoke his face was slack with exhaustion. “It wasn’t just the problem of where to bury the waste products,” he told me. “There was radioactive gas going into the air.” He spoke as if continuing a conversation. I must have been his only audience in years, or decades.

  “You got a rotten deal,” I said. “I wish I could do something.”

  He smiled bravely. “What else is new?” And he started to pedal.

  I glared at the nothing sky, hating Big Juju. Carpentier declares war. When I looked down, Benito was fumbling through saddlebags attached to the stationary bicycle.

  The man cried, “What are you doing?”

  Benito took out papers. The man snatched at them, but Benito backed away. He read, “Dear Jon, I could understand your opposition to us last year. There was some doubt about the process, and you expressed fears all of us felt. But now you know better. I have no witnesses, but you told me you understood Dr. Pittman’s demonstration. In God’s name, Jon, why do you continue? I ask you as your sister, as a fellow scientist, as a human being: Why?”

  He began pedaling again, ignoring us.

  “You knew?” I demanded. He pedaled faster, his head bent. I leaned down and put my face close to his. “You knew?” I screamed.

  “Fuck off.”

  Big Juju wins again. Too much, but appropriate. As we walked away, Jon screamed after us, “I’d have been nothing if I gave up the movement! Nothing! Don’t you understand? I had to stay as president!”

  W

  e plunged on. Once we caught lungfuls of something unidentifiable. We were getting used to that by now. This time we wound up at the bottom of an erosion gully, kicking and twitching, unable to control our muscles.

  “N-n-nerve g-g-gas,” said Corbett.

  We lay there for hours. Days perhaps. Eventually the wind shifted, and our legs could work again. Benito and Corbett scrambled up the side of the gully, then came back for Billy and me. As usual we were the last to heal. Big Juju’s biological engineers hadn’t done as good a job on us. We scrambled to the top.

  Beyond the gully we saw trees.

  That was all we could see through the sniffles and the tears and the dark, smoky air: a sharply bordered forest, some distance away.

  We began to run. Trees. Real living things! or close to it; nothing was really alive in this terrible place. But trees! We ran, wearing fierce grins, noses lifted as if the air were already sweet . . .

  Closer, they were not so inviting. Gnarled trunks, black leaves. . . . Mother Nature herself could not have called them pretty. Clumsy birds flapped above them. The forest ended abruptly at a border of flat ground. No, not ground. I stopped at the edge, confused.

  The others ran heedlessly out onto the flat black borderland.

  It was a road. Blacktop, and a white double line down the center. I called, “Hey, wait a . . .”

  Things roared past and drowned my voice. Too fast to tell what they were, but I knew the sound: the whip of air, followed by a shriek of brakes. I screa
med, “Run!”

  Corbett was already running for his life. Benito and Billy stared at me; then Benito just took my word for it and ran toward me. Billy looked where I was looking . . . and for him it was already too late.

  They looked like black Corvettes, 1970s models, but they were lower-slung and more rakish-looking. They’d stopped and turned and were coming back, accelerating hugely, leaving opaque black clouds of smoke. Billy made up his mind to run; he turned, and they were on him. Billy flew high, hit hard, and rolled like a beanbag: no bones.

  I started swearing. The cars roared away . . . two of them did. The third turned hard, right off the road. It rolled over once and landed upright and came for us, bouncing and rattling, but accelerating. Its headlights came blindingly.

  I stopped swearing and looked for cover.

  “What are they?” Benito screamed.

  “Cars. No drivers,” Corbett told him. “I saw. Empty race cars. They must guard the forest.”

  I looked for cover: something to hide behind, or even a jumble of broken rock too rough for a car. Nothing. The black demon bore down on us.

  “There!” I pointed, and ran. It was an oil slick, depth unknown, and it would bloody well have to do.

  I ran straight into the pool. My foot landed on something that jerked away and sent me sprawling. When I pulled my face out of the oil another black, dripping face looked back at me. “Sorry,” I said.

  “That’s okay. We all got our own problems here,” said the stranger, and he sank beneath the oil.

  Benito was waist deep and wading deeper. Corbett hesitated at the edge, looked disgusted, looked behind him . . . squealed, and dived sideways. I ducked under. The glare of headlights was branded on my closed eyes.

  A wave of oil splashed over me. I lifted my head, and there it was: a rakish black sports car, hubcap-deep in the oil pool. Its motor was a demon-snarl; its wheels spun frantically. It found some traction from somewhere: it edged backward, found more traction and surged out of the pool just as Corbett went over the door in a flying dive.

  The horn screamed in rage. The car backed, then turned in a tight circle. I think it was trying to roll over. It never made it. The motor died, the killer car rolled to a gentle stop.

  Corbett stood up in the driver’s seat, grinning all over his face. The keys dangled from his hand.

  Benito and I waded out, streaming oil.

  Corbett had the hood of the murder car up and was inspecting the motor. “I used to race a little,” he said. “I can probably drive this. What do you say, shall we cross the desert in comfort?”

  “You look it over,” I told him. Benito and I went to see about Billy.

  He lay twisted as no living man could be. We straightened him out. His body was mushy and limp. So was one side of his head. The good eye opened and looked at us.

  Benito bent over Billy and took one of his hands between his own. “I don’t know if you can hear me,” he said. “I want you to know that you will heal. It will hurt, but you will heal.”

  I beckoned Benito out of Billy’s hearing. I asked, “Should we take him with us?”

  “I think so. He will be of no help until he heals, but what of that? He should be safe enough in an automobile. He can ride in the passenger seat.”

  We rejoined Corbett at the car.

  “I don’t know the make,” he told us. “It’s got a big mill, but the tuning is lousy. You saw how much smoke it was pouring out. I’ve been checking the brakes, and they look good—”

  “The question,” said Benito, “is whether it will obey the steering wheel and other controls. We saw it driving itself.”

  “Yeah.” Corbett frowned, studying the car as one would search the face of a prisoner of war. Would he give information? Would it be the truth? “The top’s down. We can always jump clear,” he said. “No point in taking chances. Why don’t you two get under cover, and I’ll take her for a spin.”

  There wasn’t any cover. We stood at the far edge of the oil pool, ready to jump, as Corbett turned the ignition key. He drove the car around for a while, trying it on rough and smooth terrain. He brought it back and prudently took the key before he got out.

  “Seems okay. I’ll stay in low gear the whole trip. That way nothing can happen fast. If the gearshift starts moving by itself I’ll give a yell.”

  “There’s one more problem,” I said. “Four of us. Two seats. Benito, shall we ride on the fenders?”

  “I have no better suggestion.”

  T

  he change was gradual. The air got hotter. Then there were no more oil pools. The dead ground gave way to hot sand, and Corbett worried aloud about the tires. A minute later he’d forgotten the tires; he was too busy slapping away fat flakes of burning matter.

  18

  I

  t snowed fire. Great burning flakes fell slowly from the dead gray sky and sleeted on us. We slapped frantically. Billy was slumped like a corpse while fireflakes dropped to his skin and clung. I could reach his head by stretching backward along the fender, and I pulled a saucer-sized chunk from his face. His one good eye thanked me.

  We rolled across a burning sandy waste. The fireflakes vanished when they touched ground, but not when they touched flesh. Another evil miracle. The car weaved drunkenly, then shifted into second and picked up speed.

  I called back to Corbett. “Did you do that?”

  “Yeah! You want to be here forever?”

  “Not really.” The sand was flat enough for higher speed—provided we could control the car.

  Billy grunted in soft protest. I could imagine his fear. He’d never seen a car before or gone faster than a horse could run.

  Fire bored into my back where I’d exposed it stretching to help Billy again. I slapped it off and wished for a Cadillac.

  Cadillacs belong in Hell. There’s something about the car that rots the driver’s brain. Every time some damn fool has almost gotten me wrecked by running a red light or jumping lanes or parking where no car ought to be, said idiot has been driving a Cadillac. There had to be Cadillacs in Hell—and if we’d captured one of those, we’d be riding in air-conditioned comfort! Instead of riding a fender and slapping fireflakes.

  Clusters of souls danced frenetically on the blazing sand. Some stopped, amazed, to watch us pass. A couple of times Corbett tooted the horn at them. He was cursed for his trouble, but he wasn’t mocking them. There was nothing he could do.

  I called across the low hood to Benito. “Who are they?”

  Benito was busy tearing burning gunk out of his hair. “They sinned against Nature,” he yelled back.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Unnatural love. Man for man, woman for woman—”

  Man for sheep, woman for vibrator . . . poor bastards. I wondered about the gay men who’d owned the house next door to mine. Quiet neighbors, friendly middle-aged people like any married couple without children. Were they here?

  I turned my head and hunched up so that the fireflakes hit the side of my face instead of the front. I couldn’t slap fast enough. The windshield gave Billy some protection now that we were moving.

  The fire burned holes in my skin. You’ll heal, Carpentier. You’ll heal, if we ever get out of here.

  But what about them? They danced, they slapped at themselves; they ran in circles; they screamed at us to stop and cursed us when we didn’t, with an insane jealousy that I understood perfectly. They’d be here forever.

  This, just for being queer? But it was no surprise to me that God’s justice and mine didn’t agree. I thought about my neighbors and shuddered. Credo in un Dio crudel . . .

  The industrial section of Hell was only a yellow tinge to the sky behind us. Ahead was nothing but more desert. We must be about halfway across, I thought. Mirages floated across the view, slight variations in the yellow background. They had to be mirages, didn’t they? One looked like an aquarium I’d visited in childhood. One looked like a Dairy Queen.

  Suddenly the car surged for
ward with the bit in its teeth.

  Corbett froze in panic. The motor screamed in inhuman fury as the car accelerated. In a second we’d be moving too fast to stop. I tucked my head in my arms and rolled off the fender.

  Look, I wasn’t running out on my buddies. The car was going to crash, and they’d have a better chance if one of us could move, right? It was what I was thinking, anyway.

  The motor choked off while I was still in the air.

  I hit rolling. I came up screaming and dancing. The other souls hadn’t been dancing for joy either. The pain was as bad as the boiling blood.

  The car rolled to a stop, and I ran for it, yelling and swearing at the fireflakes.

  Suddenly a girl was running alongside me. She’d have been pretty once. Now her hair was raggedly scorched, and her body was covered with burns. “Can you take me out of here?” She screamed.

  “We’ll be lucky to get out ourselves. There’s no room!” I kept running until I reached the car.

  The girl stayed right with me. “Please, I’ll do anything if you’ll take me out of here. Anything.”

  “That’s nice,” Corbett told her. To me he said, “We’re in big trouble. The gas pedal just damned well floored itself. I had to turn off the ignition.”

  “Couldn’t you—”

  “Couldn’t I what? Pull the pedal up with my toes? Allen, this car is haunted. It hates us.”

  “What’s wrong?” the girl asked. She got no answer.

  It was hard to think with the fire settling on me. I danced around the car, shouting. “We’d better think of something. In a minute or two we’ll be under a pyramid of people.” The damned were running toward us from all directions.

  “Raise the bonnet,” Benito commanded. “Corbett, see to Billy.”

  I got the hood up. We looked inside, and Benito said, “Now, Corbett, move the accelerator.”

  Something wiggled behind the engine.

  “Allen, you saw? That moves the petrol feed. You must control it with your fingers.”

  It was a hell of an awkward position, sprawled across the fender with my head and hands under the hood. The motor was as hot as the sand. I couldn’t avoid touching it. But I pulled at the widget and cried, “Okay! I got it! Corbett, go! Go like a bat!” The crowd was very near, and they couldn’t all hang on. Benito motioned to the girl, and she took the fender in front of me.