by Larry Niven
“Everyone?” Rosemary asked. “Even the angels?”
“Angels?” I asked, but then I remembered. Dante said there were angels in the Vestibule, angels who’d refused to take either side when Lucifer rebelled against God. That didn’t make sense to me. Angels knew about Good and Evil, and about God and Satan. How could they refuse to take sides? But how could any sane mind take sides with Satan?
But I couldn’t shake the notion that I needed to earn my way out of Hell.
• • •
“We couldn’t find the FDA woman,” I told Sylvia. “And I couldn’t catch that banner.”
She was quiet, so I broke off a twig. She didn’t even whimper. “ ‘Infinite power and infinite sadism.’ That’s a most depressing thought,” Sylvia said. “If that’s true I was justified in committing suicide. Only it didn’t work! He won’t let me die.” She sounded scared now. “Allen, tell me you found proof that’s not true!”
“Proof? No. But I did find the grotto. I did see Benito climb up and out of here. I thought that was proof enough.”
“And you don’t now?”
“Sylvia, I saw a lot of horrible things, but I can’t say that there was no justice in what I was seeing. Carried too far, but it wasn’t just whimsical torture. There were points being made. I was shocked when Benito said Hell was a place of justice. But —”
“Now you think he was right?”
“He might be. He said everyone had choices. No one is here by accident.”
“Did you see anyone who didn’t belong here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know everyone’s story. What about you? Do you belong here?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “I’m right where I belong. I knew better than to throw away my life.”
“Forever?”
Her branches rustled in no wind. “No! Not forever! I know better now. I want out! But I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Me, either,” I told her.
“Something will come to us. You were telling me what happened to Rosemary Bennett.”
• • •
I’d got curious about the undecided angels. Demons I could understand. Lucifer was the brightest of the angels; the highest, God’s prime minister, and he thought it was beneath God’s dignity to have human beings so high in God’s favor. Let them enjoy the favor of God, but don’t put them higher than angels who love and obey! Let these creatures called Men worship God through the angels.
That was the story I’d read. Lucifer made that pitch and some of the angels agreed with him. They chose the wrong side, and were banished with Satan, and now they served God in Hell as guards and tormentors of the damned. If there had to be a Hell, then somebody had to do that work. From what I’d seen they enjoyed it. Was that punishment, herding damned souls?
But angels who wouldn’t choose sides? “Have you met any of them?”
“Met any of what?” Rosemary demanded.
“Angels. Undecided angels. The ones who’re supposed to be in the Vestibule?” At least Dante’s Virgil had said they were here.
“I don’t know. Someone told me they’re the ones who carry the banners, Allen. That’s how you pick a banner: you’re looking for the most sympathetic angel, or the most powerful, or —”
“You mean everyone in here is condemned to chase angels who couldn’t make up their minds?”
“I think so.”
“It might fit.” This came from the silver–haired guy who’d been Crinatelli’s lawyer. “Who would be more appropriate to carry those banners?”
I couldn’t think of an answer to that. “Has anyone talked with them?”
“How?” Rosemary asked. “You can’t catch them. You’re not supposed to be able to catch them.”
“How can we learn from them if we can’t catch them?”
Another voice chimed in. “What makes you think we’re supposed to learn anything from them? Or learn anything? We’re dead!”
“You can still make choices,” I said. “It’s harder, now that you’re dead, but you can still change your path.”
We were still running in circles, and maybe I was a little scared to get on Charon’s boat again. There were a lot worse things to do than run in circles with a following, people to talk to. I wasn’t back in the bottle. The wasps weren’t stinging. I wasn’t getting tired, there was nothing to be scared of.
Nothing except we were running in circles. We weren’t getting out.
“It is a way out for you, perhaps. You have not been commanded to stay here.”
I looked around to see who’d said that. This gift–of–tongues thing has its drawbacks; you don’t know who said what and in what language.
A green banner was coming up behind me. It bore black scrolls. Every time I looked at a scroll, it rolled shut with a snap. Whatever message they carried, it wasn’t for me. I couldn’t see anyone carrying it. It just moved. Its followers were faster than mine, and were mixing with my followers. “Hey! You’re stealing my people!”
“And why are they yours?” the same voice asked.
“Are you an angel?”
“You would say so.”
“Angel. You have powers! I know the way out of here! Use your powers! Help us!”
“I think I would like to do that, but I cannot. But when you stand before the Court, tell Michael that we here obey. Tell him that Ganteil awaits a command.”
“Shouldn’t I tell God?”
“Do you believe yourself so highly favored that you will stand in His presence? But if ever you are, tell Him.”
The banner’s markings were changing faster than I could read them. It moved past me, faster than I could run, but not faster than most of my followers. When it turned away from the river I was left with six followers. I remembered Benito had told me that he often started with many, but only one at a time ever got out of Hell. But some had, he’d watched them go, just as I’d watched Benito go. I wished I had asked him how many he’d saved. More than one, I was sure of that, but I didn’t know how many.
Rosemary Bennett was still with me. “That was an angel.”
“Said he was, anyway. You heard?”
“Yes. Why would an angel need a messenger to tell the Archangel Michael anything? Wouldn’t Michael already know?”
“I don’t know. Why do we need to pray to God? He already knows what we want.”
• • •
“Good question,” Sylvia said.
“It’s too obvious,” I told her. “Any smart person would think to ask that. The preachers and theologians must have answered it already.”
“If they didn’t, Jack did.”
“Did you know Lewis well?”
“Not really well. Dinner a few times. I heard his lecture on pain, and I read his novels. And his essays on criticism.”
“He was Catholic, wasn’t he?”
“Anglican. So was Tom Eliot.”
“How are Anglicans different from Catholics?”
“Depends on the Anglican. And the Catholic. Jack Lewis said he was Christian but what brand didn’t seem to matter. Tom Eliot was more Catholic than the Pope, but he started out Unitarian. They both talked about religion. Everything made sense to them. Especially Jack Lewis. He really believed.”
“You?” I asked.
“Nothing special. I grew up Unitarian,” Sylvia said. “I cursed God when my father died, and I never really got over being mad at Him for that. But like most people my age I didn’t really believe in anything that kept me from doing what I wanted.” She laughed. A nervous laugh. “Ted felt that way, too.”
“And now?”
“Now what, Allen?”
“Now what do you believe?”
“I don’t know! I believe in you, I guess. You could have got out of here. You know what it’s like! And you didn’t. You believe in something. Tell me what.”
“I believe in justice.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t everyone want justice?
”
“Some of us want mercy.”
“All right. Justice and mercy. I want to believe that everyone in here can get out.”
“Do you really? Everyone? Doesn’t anyone deserve to be here?”
“Benito Mussolini got out!” I was shouting now. “If he didn’t deserve to be here forever, who does?”
“Allen, you know him. I didn’t. Did he deserve to be here?”
“The man I knew didn’t deserve to be here.”
“And he got out. Don’t you have your answer, then? Allen, why are you so — well, fervent, about justice?”
I laughed. “I always was. My mother would have said it was because I was the youngest in a big family. I needed to know there were rules and fair play.”
“That makes sense, but I didn’t have a big family, and I believe in justice. Jack Lewis said everyone, deep down, believes in justice even if they don’t want it. We know what fair play is.”
“What about you?” I asked. I looked up into the bare–branched tree. “I don’t think you deserve to be here, but there’s no way to get you out.”
“It’s only unfair if I can never leave. Maybe there is a way out for me,” Sylvia said.
“What?”
“Just don’t leave me.”
“I didn’t think Rosemary belonged in here,” I said.
“She wasn’t in here,” Sylvia reminded me. “She was in the Vestibule. Where you started. Where did you lose her?”
• • •
We were debating the issue, we seven. Why would we have to pray if God knew everything? I had six followers, and they all had opinions.
“Free will. If you really accept God you pray. The one follows the other.”
“And you’re telling me God needs us to praise him?”
“It is commanded that we praise Him!”
“Then He must need praise.”
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow!” Sung, in a pretty good voice.
“Not just any praise,” I said. “I’ve been to the pit of the flatterers. You don’t want to be in there! Hey, we’re here.”
Charon’s ferryboat was different from what Dante had described, bigger, but it hadn’t changed since I first saw it. A medium–sized ferryboat, single deck, ugly, run by an old man with a long beard and a bad disposition. I never saw the propulsion system, but I never saw Charon use his oar except to hurry people along.
There was a big crowd coming when we got there. I waited for them, hoping to get aboard without being noticed. No such luck.
“You again!” Charon shouted at me. “Where’s Benito?”
I pointed up.
“Well, you won’t get away again.” He brained me with his oar, and I fell into the scuppers.
“You are unfair!” Rosemary was shouting.
“Silence!” Charon shouted. “Another word and I put you back ashore.” He lifted his oar to whack me again.
“Don’t!” Rosemary shouted.
Another bolus of people arrived just then, and Charon got busy packing them aboard. I’d seen riders being packed that way in Tokyo, levered into a subway train until they were thick as sardines. Rosemary came and crouched above me, protecting.
Dante had passed out on the boat trip across Acheron, but I didn’t have any such luck. I lay there, dizzy and hurt.
Chapter 5
First Circle
Virtuous Pagans
* * *
People were there with solemn eyes and slow,
Of great authority in their countenance;
They spake but seldom and with gentle voices.
Charon docked at a broad avenue, walled on either side. The road led downhill as far as I could see. Charon used his oar to drive us all off the boat. I staggered off with my arm over Rosemary’s shoulder.
“Auf Wiedersehen!” he shouted at me. The boat backed away.
The crowd surged down the broad avenue. I couldn’t see very far in the dirty air, but I knew where they were going. I wasn’t ready to see Minos again. I thought my best chance of finding someone who’d go with me was right here, if I could get in.
“Why does he say he will see you again?” Rosemary Bennett asked.
She was still with me, the only follower I had left. Where were the others? They must have disappeared while I was dazed by Charon’s blow. Driven to see Minos?
I shrugged. Decided I could stand. “He’s seen me before. And Benito several times. I wonder how many more?”
“More?”
“How many of us are wandering loose? There’s me and Benito, and the exploding man —”
“Where are we?” Rosemary indicated the walls.
“First Circle. Virtuous Pagans. You never read Dante?”
“No. Italian, wasn’t he? Some friend of Mussolini’s? Virtuous Pagans sounds nice. I was a pagan. Well, if being an agnostic Universalist is pagan, and I guess it is. I think I’d belong there, is there a way in?”
“I was agnostic. I thought I’d fit in there, too, but they threw me out.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t want me. Maybe I wasn’t virtuous enough.”
“Oh. Maybe I wasn’t, either.”
Wherever Charon had dropped us didn’t look anything like what I’d seen the last time I was in this circle. The pavement beneath our feet looked like macadam. The walls were smoother and higher. They rose up on either side of us, higher on my left, and a different color of stone. The construction was different, too. The wall on the right showed each course of stone, every ashlar defined. The left one had been plastered over, all one smooth surface.
One thing was the same. There were no smells. There was no smell to the air at all, neither pleasant nor stenches. It was just air.
I walked between the high walls, hoping to find a gate. They didn’t like intruders in there, and my wasp stings had me in a nasty mood. But the stings were healing, and there wasn’t any gate. Benito and I had climbed, that first time. Benito had been incredibly strong. I thought it was because he’d been strong in life, but no one is that strong.
I didn’t see any handholds at all. If I were going to climb, the left wall was far too smooth. The right didn’t look much better, but at least there were some grooves between the courses.
“It’s nice here,” Rosemary said. “Thank you. I should have taken the ferryboat a long time ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Scared. When you hear stories of what they do to you farther in, the wasps don’t seem so bad. ‘All hope abandon.’ We’re dead, how could there be hope?”
“Ever think of prayer?” I asked.
“Sure. Well, not me so much. Some did, but I wasn’t sure who I should pray to. Did you pray?”
“Not really — well, yes, once.”
“Did it work?”
“I didn’t think so at the time, but that’s when Benito came and got me out of the bottle.”
“Maybe we should try it,” Rosemary said.
“I wouldn’t know who to pray to, either. And I guess I wouldn’t mean it.”
She giggled.
“What?”
“Bertrand Russell’s prayer. ‘O God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.’ ”
“As I said. I guess I wouldn’t mean it.”
We’d come to an intersection of sorts. The left–hand wall went on, but the right–hand wall turned a corner, making a T intersection. We turned right just in time to avoid a crowd rushing down the main path.
“Why are they in such a hurry?” Rosemary asked.
“Dante says they want judgment. Driven by guilt.”
“I don’t feel all that guilty,” Rosemary said.
“Me, either, but we both started in the Vestibule.” And maybe I did, a little. I’d seen what others got for doing things not a lot worse than I had.
The path ahead was rough. It looked like an old streambed, muddy, clogged with debris and random boulders. You had to really want to go that way.
“
Is that a bridge?” Rosemary pointed way ahead, down the path to the right.
“Your eyes are better than mine.” I led her down that way. It was difficult. We could go over the rocks, or we could hop from rock to rock. Neither way was much fun. I lost my footing and took a header into a boulder. It hurt like crazy.
“It’s a bridge,” she announced.
It looked like an old wooden railroad trestle, about two feet above the walls. There were more boulders under it, and it seemed I might be able to climb the boulders and get high enough to reach the trestle.
“Worth a try,” I told Rosemary.
“But what is it?” she asked.
I thought about it. “Maybe there are different kinds of Virtuous Pagans. They keep them segregated, but there’s a way to get from one part to another. I don’t know why the Builders would do it that way.”
“Builders?”
I explained that there was a time when I thought this place was a vast amusement park, Infernoland, and I thought I could psych out the designers.
“You don’t believe that!”
“Not now. Seemed reasonable once.”
I scrambled up onto the boulders. The trestle was just too high to reach even if I jumped.
Rosemary came up behind me. “Lift me.”
That was how I’d got over the wall the first time. Benito lifted me up. I helped Rosemary climb on my shoulders. When we both stretched she could get a grip on the trestle. She pulled herself up.
“I didn’t think I could do that,” she said. “I worked out, but I was never that strong.” She lay on one of the trestle braces and reached down. “I think I can catch you if you jump.”
“Worth a try.” I jumped, and we caught each other in the aerial artist grip, each holding the other’s wrist. She pulled and I reached. Between us I was able to get a grip on the trestle. I really needed her help to pull myself up the rest of the way.
We were on a bridge that led down inside the walls.
On my left, now, was a veldt, host to some dry, scrubby plants. I looked in vain for human habitants.
On my right — but motion caught my eye and I looked left again. A score of small black men and women and even smaller children were standing upright, studying us. The plants must have hidden them.