Escape From Hell

by Larry Niven

“It’s not in Dante. It has to be recent. They’re still building this place. I’m sure they got the idea from Forest Lawn.”

  “Forest Lawn? Oh! You mean Whispering Glades? From Evelyn Waugh’s book?”

  “Yeah. Hey, I didn’t think of it at the time, but it’s a lot like The Loved One. Uh — didn’t the girl in that book —”

  “Put her head in the oven. Aimee Thanatos. Killed herself over a weird love affair. That’s the book,” Sylvia said. “I read it in college. Everyone did. But who’s in Whispering Glades?”

  “Pride, mostly.”

  “The Sixth Circle is for heretics,” Sylvia said. “Pride? Yes, I guess that fits. Why was it depressing?”

  “When I was in there I was overcome with a sense of the futility of it all. Nothing we do matters one way or another. God doesn’t need us, and He punishes us if we think He does.”

  “Oh. Well, does God need us?”

  “I don’t know. If so He has a funny way of showing it.”

  “But how would He show it?” Sylvia demanded. “Allen, all this — it’s not an accident, and I don’t think it’s for His amusement. Allen, this has to be a way for Him to show us that He cares! Just as the whole big wonderful universe shows it!”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  “Then do!”

  “I’ll try, but dammit, I’m still depressed.”

  “Allen, that’s my line, and look where it got me!”

  “Don’t you want to just — go away?”

  “Not anymore. Besides, we can’t.”

  “What if you could?”

  “No. I thought that was what I wanted. Even after I was here. Especially after I was here. But then I started listening to you, even before I had a Sign. Allen, I want to explore, to see. All this magnificent place. It has to have a purpose. It has to!”

  “Allen, Machiavelli said it. ‘God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.’ ”

  “Doesn’t all the glory belong to God?”

  “If He chooses to give some to us, it’s His to do it,” Sylvia said.

  I thought about that. “Okay, but I sure wasn’t going near that mausoleum again.”

  • • •

  So I continued down. The river of boiling blood waited. Somehow I’d have to get across that.

  Dante and Virgil crossed by riding on centaurs. That was jarring. Why would there be centaurs in Hell? And why Minos? And why were centaurs and Minos more difficult to believe in than Hell itself?

  But then, black swans were improbable. Impossible, even. Until they were found in Australia. Churchill kept black swans on his country estate to remind him that the impossible could happen. Just because something never happened before doesn’t mean it never can.

  I thought about going back. Adams and the monsignor had been pretty good company, and I was in no mood to be alone. But when I looked back I realized I had no idea of which way I’d come. I could see tombs and sepulchers and fires everywhere, and a long way up there were the red–glowing walls of Dis, but nothing looked familiar.

  And there were so many tombs and sepulchers! Thousands, hundreds of thousands. Millions, all filled with people who were condemned for believing the wrong things. Men like Adams who’d been a good man, but had the wrong brand of religion. And the poor old monsignor who’d obeyed all his life, but finally at the end lost it all. Why were they there? What did God want us to learn? What did He want from us? What did He want from me?

  That was the mood I was in when I got past the last of the tombs and looked down at the next circle.

  I could see down to the river of blood, but there was no way to get there. The slope down was a jumble of rocks and boulders with no path at all. When Benito had led us down to the river, it had been from the mausoleum, and the way from there was smooth and level. I could see the mausoleum way ahead of me. I headed that way.

  There weren’t many tombs or sepulchers on the way. One thing I did notice. It was getting cooler.

  There was a man sitting on a rock. He stood when he saw me. His look was friendly but puzzled. He was tall, his face long and thin and distinguished looking, and although he wore a robe much like mine, it was easy to imagine him in tweeds with leather patches on the elbows, sitting in a café with students.

  He bowed slightly. “Perhaps you can help me.”

  “How?”

  “Do you know where we are?”

  I frowned. “Where do you think we are?”

  “We appear to be in the Inferno as described by Dante,” he said. “In Hell.”

  “Lucky guess. What makes you believe we aren’t?”

  He shrugged. “Because that is absurd. There is no such place. There can be no such place.”

  I rapped on the rock. “Yet here we are. So why are you here?” I asked. “I mean, of course you’re dead, and in Hell, but why at this spot? Is this where Minos put you?”

  “Minos. Another absurdity,” he said. “Yes, I suppose I was sent here. Eventually. First I was flung into the Winds and whirled about. I could understand that as just punishment if I could ever accept the notion of reward and punishment and purpose in this absurdity, but I was not to stay there. After what seemed to be years I was plucked from the Winds and hurled into a swamp, where I struggled with madmen until I escaped. There were enormous gates in front of me, gates in ruins, and when I fled the swamp I ran through them, downhill through tombs, and came here.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “I have no way to know. My last memories of … what I have no choice but to call my previous life were of the end of the year 1959 and the opening of 1960. Then I woke on a path with many others, and was thrust into a ferryboat. An absurdity! And then I appeared before the impossible Minos and faced the farce of judgment. I believe I was years in the Winds, and years more escaping the swamp. I have not been in this particular place for long at all.”

  He laughed. “Of course this is the Sixth Circle where Dante put heretics, and if Dante and his religion are true, this is exactly where I belong.”

  I held out my hand. “Allen Carpenter. I was a science fiction writer.”

  He smiled thinly as we shook hands. “I believe I read some of your stories. Albert Camus. I was a writer myself.”

  “You won a Nobel Prize!”

  He laughed. “Yes. I was quite proud of it. I never expected any such thing.”

  “I read the speech you gave in Stockholm,” I said. “Inspiring.”

  “Ah. Thank you. You must have read it in English, you were American. I remember that from your story. ‘Cold Fever.’ Quite worth reading, even in the very bad translation published in France.” He frowned. “But your French is excellent! Why did you not translate it yourself?”

  “I didn’t speak French then. Sir, I — thank you. I’m glad you liked my story well enough to remember it.” I couldn’t help thinking how ridiculous — absurd! — this was. One of the great writers of the century, a Nobel Prize winner, in Hell as a heretic. He had certainly been an atheist. But Hell?

  “Did you read many of my works?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I told him. “There was a time when you influenced me a lot. Especially The Plague.”

  “And that has brought you here, I suppose.”

  “No, you were wrong, of course. I mean you were right about what we have to do, but you were wrong about why. There is some meaning in life. It’s not all absurd. There’s more than just doing our job, doing it well, being absurd heroes!”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “A lot of absurdity is just not having figured out the answers.” I gestured to indicate the tombs, the path uphill, the mausoleum. “Look around you. We’re here! We’re dead and we’re here. I think it must be a puzzle.”

  “Why must it mean anything? The world we came from is beautiful and terrible, it has joys and sorrows and pain and love and it has no meaning. Why must this?”

  �
�Too much energy expended! Tell me, sir, if you had known, known, that this place is as real as Earth or the stars, would you have believed that life is absurd?”

  “I am not sure. I thought about the matter. I toyed with religion, or at least with the idea of adopting a religion.”

  “La Chute,” I said.

  “No. Not directly. That was a parody. I had set out to explore some possibilities, but I was led elsewhere.” He shrugged. “But everyone wishes for a true religion. What one must do is accept that there is none. There is only truth for each of us, and those will never be the same truths, and thank you for allowing me to say these things. I had not realized how much I have missed this kind of conversation.”

  “Come with me. We’ll talk,” I said.

  “To where?”

  “Out of here. To where we can learn what is the truth.”

  “And if that truth is not one I can accept?” he asked. “Authors and their characters are not the same people, but sometimes an author accepts what his characters have said. And children do suffer.”

  “Not here,” I said. “I haven’t seen children suffering here.”

  “And you have been everywhere in this place?”

  “No, but I’ve been to many places. I saw children in the land of the Virtuous Pagans. Benito said they might live again. I don’t know about that. But the children I’ve seen since I came here seemed quite happy.”

  “So why were they allowed to be tortured on Earth?” Camus demanded.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because there is no reason,” Camus said. “Nothing can justify the torture of a child! And I for one will have no part in justifying injustice. I have seen — I have seen men do things that cry to Heaven for vengeance. I have seen such horrors that no one can endure, yet God did not intervene. If He has the power to stop such monstrous evils and does not stop them, He is a rock! A stone idol, not fit for the worship of free men!”

  “But —”

  “That is my truth. If yours allows you to have faith, I will be the last to disturb you.”

  “But wouldn’t my faith be evil, then?”

  “To whom? Not to you, and my opinion should not matter to you. You have chosen.”

  “Come with me. We can find out who’s right.”

  “I admire your enthusiasm, but I cannot share your hope.”

  • • •

  “I couldn’t persuade him. Sylvia, I was so close. Or I thought I was.” I broke off a twig.

  “Uf. Albert Camus. We all read him in college. I never met him but I really would have liked to. When I was in Paris I got the boy I was with to take me to a café where Camus was supposed to hang out, but he wasn’t there. Sartre was there, but he wasn’t talking to strangers. Not that I cared. I wanted to meet Camus. But Allen, you read Camus. What made you think you could persuade him? You must have known he wasn’t going to accept any final answer to anything.”

  “He had a lot of influence on me once. I thought like him. Or at least I thought I did. I must not have. Sylvia, when I got here I didn’t believe in this place. Not as Hell. I looked for the logic. I thought it was a construct, we were all constructs, part of some ghastly joke.”

  “But you don’t believe that now. Why don’t you?”

  “I don’t know, it just stopped making sense. Occam’s razor. I kept having to add to the theory. There was too much here. Too much, too elaborate. It can’t be some kind of toy.”

  “It was that way with the universe, Sylvia. All that infinite space, suns and warped space and black holes, expanding universe, quantum mechanics, endless mysteries. It’s beautiful but it’s too big! It’s not just a setting for us, for humanity. It must be for something bigger. I knew there were alien intelligences.”

  “Maybe Camus hasn’t seen enough,” Sylvia said. “He never tried to build a glider to get out of here! Allen, he knows the way and he’s not confined. He can leave when he wants to.”

  “But —”

  “Allen, you said you wanted to know that everyone can get out of here if they want to. You can’t possibly insist that everyone wants to leave!”

  I smiled. “Well, I could.”

  “So could God, Allen. He could make them do it, too. Should he?”

  “Oh. I don’t know.”

  “He does give us clues, I think,” Sylvia said.

  And past those noise’d feet,

  a Voice comes yet more fleet:

  Lo, nought contents thee who content’st not me.

  “What’s that?”

  “ ‘The Hound of Heaven.’ By an English poet, Francis Thompson.”

  “I ought to learn it. I think that’s what Benito was trying to tell the Virtuous Pagans.”

  “I don’t remember all of it. No one reads it now because it’s about a man finding religion, but Thompson was a popular poet at one time. Chesterton and George Meredith thought he was one of the great poets of all time. What attracted me were his warnings about drugs.”

  “Drugs?”

  “He was a laudanum addict, Allen. Until his publisher dried him out. Then he wrote:”

  Love, love! your flower of withered dream

  In leavèd rhyme lies safe, I deem,

  Sheltered and shut in a nook of rhyme,

  From the reaper man, and his reaper Time.

  Love! I fall into the claws of Time:

  But lasts within a leavèd rhyme

  All that the world of me esteems —

  My withered dreams, my withered dreams.

  “From ‘The Poppy.’ He wrote that about opium addiction. I read it in school, and it’s a big reason why I didn’t play with pot and drugs like a lot of my classmates. He talked about how wonderful opium was, but then it betrayed him and ruined his poetry, and that scared me. I wanted to be a poet. I never wanted anything more. Allen — I wonder if he’s down here somewhere? I wouldn’t think so. He died a good Catholic. In a nunnery, I think.”

  “And that’s good enough to keep you out of here?”

  “Allen, I don’t know. Isn’t that what Rosemary’s professor told you? It’s one way, but not the only way? And you’ll note that it didn’t work for the professor. Or the monsignor, so it’s not enough.”

  “Yeah. So what is enough?”

  “Whatever it is, Benito found it. Allen, did you see anyone else up there?”

  “Yes.”

  • • •

  I tried to get Camus to come with me, but he wouldn’t. “If you change your mind, there’s an easy way down to the boiling blood,” I told him. “It’s up by that big building.” I pointed to the Great Mausoleum.

  “When you get there, just run down. When you get to the boiling blood jump in and swim across. It will hurt worse than anything you ever did, but you can make it. There were four of us, and we all got across, and once you get across the guards leave you alone.”

  “It sounds mad,” he said.

  “It’s awful,” I told him. “But you can do it. Just keep going down, you’ll get out of Hell.”

  “So that I can learn the truth, adopt the faith, and enjoy eternal bliss in Heaven,” Camus said. “Which will give meaning to my life. Yes, thank you. I wish you well.”

  “I wish you’d come with me.” He didn’t say anything, so I started walking toward the mausoleum. I kept looking back, but he wasn’t watching me. He seemed to be studying the scene down by Phlegethon.

  It wasn’t very far down to there, but the air was thick and hazy so it was hard to see. Squads of soldiers from every era patrolled along the edge of a red steaming river.

  I was halfway to the mausoleum when I saw a coffin on the ground. It was stone, and the lid was partway over it. Someone inside was shouting.

  “Damn you all! Let me out, damn you!”

  This part of the Sixth Circle was cool enough that I could feel steamy heat from Phlegethon down below. The sepulcher lid wasn’t hot until I started pushing on it. Then it got warm fast. By the time I got it open all the way it was blazing hot and
my hands were blistered.

  A man jumped out. He was short, sharp–faced, beefy with broad shoulders. He reminded me of a policeman I’d once known. “Damn them! Damn them all.”

  “Hello.”

  He looked at me with deep suspicion. “Yeah?”

  “Well, I did let you out.”

  “Okay. Why’d you do that?” He looked at my burned hands, but he didn’t comment.

  “It seemed the right thing to do.”

  “Yeah, sure. Are you a preacher?”

  “Good God no.”

  “Good God. God’s not good and you know it. Look what he did to me.”

  “You’re out now,” I said. “You’re free. Come with me and we’ll get out of this awful place.”

  “Fuck off. What makes you think they’ll let anyone leave here? That would spoil the fun.” He looked up to shake his fist at the gray overcast sky. “Damn you! Fuck you all!”

  “Who are you cursing?”

  “God. The angels. The devils. All of them.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Look where they put me! They want me to love them. To worship them! And if I don’t I get that.” He pointed to the coffin. “I’ll never worship them. Any of them. They can fuck off, the lot of them.”

  “But you’re out of there now.”

  “So what? I should never have been in there. Fuck ‘em!”

  “Who are you not cursing?”

  He stared.

  • • •

  “That doesn’t seem like a very good way to use his freedom,” Sylvia said. “What happened to him?”

  “Sylvia, I saw it all. He kept shouting curses. At God, at Lucifer, and me. At anyone and everyone. Whatever I’d try to say to him, he’d just curse me. And then he started popping.”

  “Popping?”

  “Little explosions, like if you stirred thousands of firecrackers into cotton candy. Little explosions until there was nothing left. As if … well, like he was trying to turn himself into a bomb, like that animal who blew me up on the ice. Like that, but he couldn’t focus on a target.”

  “And he wasn’t back in his sepulcher. I looked. And his tombstone was blank, wiped clean.”

  “That almost sounds familiar,” Sylvia said. “But I don’t remember where from. Allen, do you think he — died? That he was just gone, forever?”