Escape From Hell

by Larry Niven

  “If he deserves it, someone will do it,” Sylvia said.

  “Sylvia, you can’t possibly know that! You just want to believe it.”

  “Well, yes, Allen, I do, but isn’t it justice? We both want to believe there’s justice here.”

  I thought about that as we went downhill.

  The dike ended at a sheer drop–off. The stream poured endlessly over the edge into darkness. There were lights out there, far below and distant.

  “It’s peaceful here,” Sylvia said.

  “Want to wait awhile?”

  “No, Allen. We’re on a pilgrimage, and there’s nothing to wait for.”

  “A pilgrimage! Sylvia, we’re fugitives.”

  “Pilgrims can be fugitives,” Sylvia said.

  “Didn’t that boy disturb you?” I asked.

  “Of course he did, but Allen, we didn’t do anything to him.”

  “Other than scare the Hell out of him.”

  “I rather hope we did that, don’t you? It was the only thing that would move him. Allen, you want everyone to be able to leave Hell. But do you really? Do you insist they be able to leave unrepentant?”

  I thought about that. Who was unrepentant that I wanted out of Hell? Elena, still in the Winds? I wanted her out, but I didn’t have the courage to go back there. That place scared me. I shook my head. “Sylvia, I just don’t know what I want.”

  “Sure you do. You want people to learn,” Sylvia said.

  I thought about that.

  “If Angelo finds Father Steve and they forgive each other, would that make you happier?”

  “That would be good.”

  “Maybe that’s how God feels,” Sylvia said. She laughed. “Have you got your fool’s gold? I think we’re ready.”

  Chapter 20

  Seventh Circle, Third Round

  The Violent Against God, Nature, And Art

  Part Four

  Geryon And The Cliff

  * * *

  Behold the monster with the pointed tail,

  Who cleaved the hills, and breaketh walls and weapons.

  Behold him who infecteth all the world.

  I went to the edge of the cliff. Thousands of lights twinkled below. Sometimes the thick air would swirl and I could see the great bowl below, and I imagined I could see the shine off the ice in the Circle of Traitors.

  “Deceivers,” Sylvia said. She stared down at the twinkling lights. “Not just violent like Billy.” She looked farther down. “Hello?”

  “Dammit!” He was fifteen or twenty feet below us, clinging to the rock. “It’s like glass up there! Have you got anything —”

  I dropped him one end of the rope. He didn’t move. I saw now that there were others below him, all clinging to the cliff.

  “Take your time,” I said. “Who are you? What are you in for?”

  “Saving the environment,” he snapped. “Ted Bradley.” He let go with one hand and reached. The other started to slip, and he lunged for the rope, and missed. He screamed, diminuendo, “Where in Hell is Rachel Carson?”

  The rock shuddered as he struck.

  Sylvia looked her question. I said, “He killed millions of people, mostly children.”

  “Saving the environment? And who’s Rachel Carson?”

  “She wrote a book. Silent Spring. DDT was destroying the Earth, killing off whole species of birds and so forth. Lousy research, but a best seller. I kind of resent that, but the rest of it wasn’t her fault. All the real research showed that DDT wasn’t doing most of that, and where it was, the stuff was being used wrong. Bradley and the Fro–mates were pressuring the EPA, and he didn’t read any of the research. He just ran ahead of the crowd. So they banned DDT.”

  “DDT kills mosquitoes. And half a million people die every year of malaria, most of them Third World, most of them children. But as for Rachel Carson, maybe she’s not dead yet. Maybe she believed it all and tried to do good in the world. Maybe she’s in Heaven.”

  “Did you drop him?”

  I laughed. “No. I do wonder where he escaped from.” I coiled up my rope. “Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  I took out the shiny rock I’d collected at the mining camp and tossed it over the edge.

  “Dante used a rope,” Sylvia said. “Technically the cincture of his robe. A lot of critics have argued about what that was for.”

  I said, “We used a burning car. The point is to have a signal. Fool’s gold seems poetically appropriate.”

  Nothing happened for a while, then something occluded the twinkling lights and we saw a shape out in the darkness beyond the cliff.

  “Geryon,” Sylvia said. “Virgil talked to him in private. Should I go away?”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide. But Geryon is a liar,” I told Sylvia.

  “I remember.”

  The face was as the face of a just man,

  Its semblance outwardly was so benign,

  And of a serpent all the trunk beside.

  “Face of a just man but a serpent’s body with a sting in the tail. Duplicity itself.”

  “I thought he looked aquatic,” I said. “Like something evolved on a water world. And here he comes.”

  Geryon floated up like a curious shark. He turned to show his profile, perhaps posing to show off the long reach of his handsomely body. His pelt was gorgeous, all gold–on–dark knots and figures that might have served as camouflage in sunlit water or the halls of Versailles. Now he slid halfway onto the cliff’s edge, leaving the long tail still waving above the depths. To me he still looked more like an alien than a mythological creature, but I could see subtle changes.

  Sylvia gaped. “Just like Dante,” she whispered.

  Geryon said, “Ouch. Who threw that rock?”

  “This has been willed where what is willed must be,” I said.

  Geryon grinned slyly. “Do you think so? Well, get aboard, Carpentier. I see Benito isn’t with you this time. What have you done with Benito?”

  “Haven’t you heard that he escaped?”

  “I wondered if you’d kicked him back into the pit. Actually, I thought you had. They don’t tell me everything. Well, don’t just stand there.” He eyed my pickaxe and rope. “How much stuff do you expect me to carry? All right, all right, get aboard. ‘The Captain had a cabin boy, my God he was a ripper —’ ” His tail was wobbling idly, and I found myself watching the sting.

  His skin was smooth, slippery beneath my palms, as I boosted myself aboard. It would be easy to slip and fall. Sylvia reached up with no sign of fear, and I swung her up in front of me. I could feel the sting behind my neck.

  Geryon slid backward off the cliff. The murk swirled and we had a momentary view like a battlefield at night — smoky black, with fires burning here and there in arcs — and then Geryon dropped like a stone. My legs convulsed hard around his rubbery torso, as my arms convulsed around Sylvia to hold her down. Geryon laughed wildly. “Ever wanted to try free fall?”

  “There are roller coasters, you bottom–feeding bastard!”

  “There are rockets for tourists, too! You should have hung around!” He surged hard under us. His stubby arms and legs weren’t even pretending to fly. Antigravity, sure. We were flattened against his back, and with a thud his belly smacked rock. Dust swirled.

  I rolled us off quick. Flat on our backs, dizzy, dust in our noses, we looked up at him.

  “Now I will teach you fire,” Geryon said, and lifted fast.

  My neck hairs thrilled. That was a quote from one of my own stories. Was he making a prophecy, or just a reasonable guess?

  We lay on a plain at the base of the cliff. Closer to the cliff there were rock piles, and some had rolled almost to the first ditch — Dante called them “Bolgias” — about a hundred yards away. A dark, thin, smallish man in a dark robe was helping Sylvia to her feet. I gathered myself to protect her, though he looked harmless enough. He reached out his hand to me, and I took it. Soft; no callus. “What are your sins?” he asked.

>   Sylvia watched. She didn’t understand him.

  “Dithering,” I said; pointed at Sylvia and said, “Suicide. You?”

  “Hypocrisy. I am Father Ernesto of Florence, taken from Earth in the year of our Lord 1329. Can you help me save a soul?”

  I asked, “Who’ve you got in mind?”

  “Several folk. I’ve spoken to many people. One cannot be sure of any, but a few may be worthy.”

  Sylvia had been listening. She asked, “Do you speak Italian?”

  “I do,” he said, changing to the vulgate. “You died many years beyond my death, by your accent. Can you help me understand a strange machine?”

  “It is possible. Signor Carpenter will be better for that.”

  “Lead us,” I said.

  He led us along a broad, rocky plain that dropped off to our left. And as we walked, we talked.

  He had known Dante. “The famous poet, he rescued me from a baptismal font, the same in which I was baptized. It was a prank, you understand, and I was six years of age. I crawled into it upside down, foolishly, and wedged myself. I would have drowned. The good Dante Alighieri toppled the font and broke it to let me out. My parents made him my godfather. I chose to be a priest for his sake.”

  “How did you come here?” Sylvia asked, perhaps tactlessly.

  “Oh, that I did for my own sake, and my father’s, and my woman Maria and our girl. The church was rich. Those who donated, their souls would benefit, yes? After life I came to wear the leaden robes, until a friend rescued me.”

  I’d almost ceased to flinch at coincidence. “The Reverend Canon Don Camillus? Died in the tenth century?”

  “Yes! Is he well?”

  “He is well and happy and serves ice cream.” I told what I remembered of Father Camillus. “And you? You left the Sixth Bolgia, and then?”

  “Father Camillus told me that down was the way to Heaven. It seemed strange, though it follows Dante, but he had it from a divine source, he said. Who but an angel would come to a soul in Hell and say, Help me?”

  “I could not go downward. There are demons on the rim below the Fifth Bolgia, and they would not let me pass. So I came here, and everywhere I have gone I stopped to talk. I had not talked to anyone new in so long. I talked to the devils and to the souls they tend. Some are monsters. Some monsters are very glib. But a few … I would like to see if they can get out.”

  “And you?” Sylvia asked.

  “I dare hope that I may earn my own pardon.”

  Father Ernesto pointed into the smutty darkness ahead of us. “Here, do you see that? It was black and dull and stank of fire when I found it. Now, black and shiny. A cryptic miracle.”

  Sylvia and I began to laugh. “I never doubted you,” she told me.

  It looked like a Corvette convertible of the sixties but bigger and meaner, lower and longer. Upright, it had been evil incarnate. It lay upside down with its windshield smashed, but it seemed otherwise intact. As we approached, its wheels spun madly.

  Over the shriek Father Ernesto said, “It has done nothing since it fell. Could such a miracle have no purpose? I expect great things of it.” He eyed my pickaxe. “I thought there might be wonderful tools under this hatch” — he slapped the trunk — “but it will not open for me.”

  I said, “Let’s get it on its side.”

  “Do you think we have the strength?”

  We got our fingers under the rim on the left side. The two–seater car wasn’t that heavy. The wheels spun in spurts and we had to avoid those. I stopped when the car rested on the right–side door and fenders.

  Ernesto knelt to study the dash. “I never had the courage to touch anything.”

  Sylvia and I got our heads in close. The ignition key was turned on, of course. It would open the trunk. What would I find? I reached for the key.

  Sylvia had found a knob. She twisted it.

  A man bellowed, “Crazy fool damned tourists — oh, my God!”

  Father Ernesto yelped and banged his head. Sylvia turned the knob off. “Radio,” she said. “Nice.”

  Father Ernesto rubbed the bump. “Miracle?”

  I turned the knob. A man’s voice said, “Please, please, please don’t turn me off again. I’ll do anything you like.”

  “We took you for a demon,” I said. “You sound like a man.”

  “You! You set me on fire!”

  “It’s an ugly habit,” I said. “Are you a demon?”

  “Not … like that. Oscar T.J. White. Maybe you saw me race. Some other drivers might have thought I was a demon! There was a pileup in the NASCAR run in March 2002, and … I guess I burned up, and some other guys, too.”

  “Then things got very strange. Did you meet a kind of a man–bull with a tail that can stretch —”

  “Minos made you a race car?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sylvia said, “Transportation. We’ll need to get past those demons on the Fifth Bolgia.”

  I said, “Mmm? Yeah. Oscar, suppose we could get you turned over. What would you do then?”

  “Anything you say,” Oscar said. “I’d like to get back to the road. I knew I was damned, see, but that was fun. Every so often —” He stopped.

  I said, “Every so often someone would try to cross the road. They weren’t supposed to do that. You’d hit them.”

  Nothing.

  Sylvia said, “How could we possibly get him up the cliff? Do we want to?”

  “No and no. Oscar, Geryon won’t lift you. I don’t think he’s strong enough anyway. We know the way out of Hell, but we don’t know the way back. Want to come with us?”

  “Carry you.”

  “Right. There are devils in the way, but you may be faster.”

  “Bet your ass on that,” Oscar said.

  Father Ernesto asked, “Oscar, what was your crime?”

  “I had to tell that beef monster, but I don’t have to tell you. No offense.”

  Chapter 21

  Eighth Circle, First Bolgia

  Panderers And Seducers

  * * *

  And everywhere along that hideous track

  I saw horned demons with enormous lashes

  Move through those souls, scourging them on the back

  Ah! How the stragglers of that long rout stirred

  Their legs quick–march at the first crack of the lash!

  None for the second waited, nor the third!

  Oscar took us along the ridge, Sylvia in the passenger seat, Father Ernesto riding the trunk. The car had a silver grid to hold luggage, and it made good handholds. My pickaxe and rope stowed handily just behind Sylvia’s seat.

  Downslope to our right was the first of the Bolgias. This one was divided. Last time through I had crossed it on an arched stone bridge, but there was no bridge in sight.

  Down in the Bolgia the damned were running. Black demons kept them moving with whips and jeering commands. The demons had seen us; they watched us curiously.

  The Bolgia was divided into two concentric tracks. The barrier between the tracks was about as high as my chest. A line of sinners ran counterclockwise on the track nearest us. Across the barrier they ran in the opposite direction. There were gaps in the barrier, and sometimes inmates were driven from one ring to the other. Whips cracked, and the runners screamed as they ran.

  They ran in groups. A cluster on the near side wore dazzling gold chains and white fur jackets, the jackets cut to ribbons by the flailing whips. They were followed by men and women in three–piece suits, a regular meeting of the board of directors of any major corporation. I recognized a movie mogul among them.

  Sylvia pointed toward one on the near side coming toward us. “Peter Lawford! What’s he doing here?”

  “Panderers. Marilyn Monroe,” I said.

  “Marilyn Monroe? She was neato! I saw all her movies. When I was a teenager I wanted to look like her. But Allen, she was a suicide,” Sylvia said. “What does Peter Lawford have to do with that?”

  “Lawford used to have h
er over to his house so Kennedy could sleep with her. Both Kennedys. President John and Attorney General Bobby.”

  Sylvia shook her head. “Come on. The President of the United States in sexual congress with the best known movie star in Hollywood? And no one knew?”

  “Lots of people knew,” I told her.

  “Yeah,” Oscar said. “All the reporters knew but they never told the story, not in the regular papers or on TV. Not like with Clinton.”

  “Clinton?” I asked.

  “Never mind. How far is this bridge we’re looking for?”

  “Not far.” I was only half listening to the cursing and crying from the pit below, until a woman’s voice cried, “It’s you! You in the car, help me! You said you’d help. You said you knew the way out!”

  “Hold up, Oscar,” I said, and hit the brake and put us in neutral.

  “You’re the driver,” the radio said grumpily.

  I looked down to see who was calling me. She was on the other side of the barrier strip, with the Seducers. There were a dozen women there, all in filthy robes, and it was hard to tell them apart. None looked in any way attractive with their bruised faces and lacerated breasts. One of the women stopped running and waved. A whip wrapped around her; she slithered out of it, still looking up. “It’s Phyllis! I was in the desert and you sent me here! Allen? You told me to jump and I did! For God’s sake, Allen!”

  She was tall, fair–skinned, blond. Recognizing her would have been impossible, given the whip scars, but she might have been the woman who rode Oscar’s fender out of the fiery desert. Other whips quested after her and she ran, through a gap in the barrier and over to the Panderer side. More whips crackled.

  I eased into reverse, and backed rapidly until we were ahead of her. We stopped.

  “What are you doing?” Sylvia demanded.

  “Paying a debt.” I got out. Now we had the attention of the demons. I hurled the miners’ rope down at her.

  She snatched it, and kicked at a man who also grabbed. He hung on anyway, and I was reeling two souls out of the First Bolgia. Too slow! She thought to kick again, then desisted.

  Two large black demons were coming at a run.