by Larry Niven
“I was in there,” Phyllis said.
“But you’re not there now! Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” She turned to Ernesto. “And you, Reverend, have you saved any souls?”
“No, but I have hopes.”
“Want me to show you how?” Aimee had a broad grin.
Sylvia giggled.
“I would be honored,” Ernesto said. “Lead on.”
“Sure. Next place is easy. Lots to choose from down here. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Chapter 24
Eighth Circle, Fourth Bolgia
Fortune–Tellers And Diviners
* * *
And people I saw through the circular valley,
Silent and weeping, coming at the pace
Which in this world the Litanies assume.
As lower down my sight descended on them
Wondrously each one seemed to be distorted
From chin to the beginning of the chest;
For tow’rds the reins the countenance was turned
And backward it behoved them to advance,
As to look forward had been taken from them.
Oscar was worried about his struts.
“You just stay here and heal,” Aimee told him. “We can do this better on foot anyway. Look after my bike, Oscar.”
She led us to the edge of the Fourth Bolgia. A narrow trail led down into the pit. It was rough and in places narrowed to less than a foot wide, but we could just scramble along it.
In the Fourth Bolgia the souls walked with their heads turned back to front. They walked backward, their eyes streaming tears. None looked up to see us coming down into the pit.
“Fortune–tellers,” Sylvia said.
“I feel sorry for them,” Aimee said.
“So did Dante,” Sylvia told her. “Until Virgil said:”
“Here pity or here piety must die
If the other lives; who’s wickeder than one
That’s agonized by God’s high equity?”
“That’s hard. Damned hard,” I said. “You mean we can’t even feel sorry for them? But Sylvia, that can’t be right! We’ve got some of them out. Benito got out, and Father Camillus said the angels rejoiced!”
“I don’t worry about it,” Aimee said. “I figure that if I can get them out, God wants them out.”
“God may will that they leave, but they cannot see to climb,” Ernesto said.
“Just watch,” Aimee said. “Got to pick the right one.”
There were more women than men. About half the men were bearded. Some walked in groups, others alone. Some were naked. Some wore robes with fanciful symbols, stars and comets and meteors. Each head was twisted around so that they looked over their shoulders as they came down the path.
“They walk pretty steady,” Phyllis said. “I’d of thought they’d stumble more.”
“They get used to it,” Aimee said absently. She studied each approaching figure, waited, then looked at the face after each passed. Every face streamed tears.
“What are you looking for?” Father Ernesto asked.
“You’ll see,” Aimee said. She waited. Several more passed us. Then came a man in a worn Oxford scholar’s gown. As he passed I saw he was clean shaven. There were no tears in his eyes. Instead there was a look of puzzlement.
Aimee pounced. She ran up to walk behind him, her face just below his. “You. You like it here?”
“I do not.”
“Where did you expect to be after you died?” she demanded.
“Dead.”
“Atheist?”
“I suppose so. I believed in a lawful universe that might be God, not a personal God in man’s image.”
“So you never prayed.”
“It would be pointless to pray to the law of gravity. The whole concept of religion and afterlife seemed absurd.” He shrugged. It must have been from habit, because his head was facing Aimee but the rest of him was facing away from her. “I have been rethinking that position. So who are you?”
“Sister Aimee,” she said. “Your ticket out of here if you want. You do want to get out of here?”
“I very much want to get out of here,” he said.
“Come over here with me and let’s talk about it.” She took his hand and led him over to us.
He walked backward facing us, and stared at each of us in turn. “Who are you?” He looked directly at me. “I have seen you before. Where?”
I recognized him then. “Boston. Annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. You were giving a news conference on how the world was headed for trouble. Overpopulation. Shorter growing seasons. Everything getting colder, and a New Ice Age was coming.”
“I remember that!” Sylvia said. “You lectured at Harvard. Ted and I went with some friends.” She stared at his clothes. “But why are you wearing an Oxford gown? You weren’t British. But I can’t remember your name.”
“Carl,” he said.
“Sylvia Plath.”
His expression changed. “Oh. I met your husband. But that was long after — after you died.”
“After I killed myself,” Sylvia said. “Why are you wearing that gown?”
“I don’t know. They gave me one when I lectured at Oxford. Minos must have given it to me before I was thrown into this place.”
“What did you think of Minos?” I asked.
He looked slightly amused. “I thought I needed new lessons in physics,” he said.
“I am more interested in why you are here,” Father Ernesto said. “I would expect an atheist to be among the heretics, not here with false diviners.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Aimee said. “What matters is, do you want out of here, Carl?”
“Well, yes. What must I do?”
“Do you repent being a false prophet? Will you accept God’s love?”
“Accept God’s love. That would mean believing in God,” he said. He looked around, at the pit, and the gray skies above, at men and women walking with their heads reversed. “I suppose I have no choice but to believe in God,” he said. “Perhaps a cruel God. Since I don’t know a better hypothesis. Why would God love me?”
“He loves everyone!” Aimee said. “Don’t you know that?”
“I certainly heard it often enough. You say that all I must do is accept God’s love and I can get out of here? To where?”
“We don’t know,” Sylvia said. “But it has to be better than here.”
“Eternal bliss! Bask in the presence of the Lord!” Aimee said.
“To a long and difficult journey on which you will earn the favor of God,” Father Ernesto said. “And learn to love Him.”
“You’re pretty quiet.” He was looking at me. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you, but did you know me on Earth?”
“We had a few drinks,” I said. “I was with the press corps at the time. I’m quiet because I don’t know where we’re going. When I first got here I was sure this was a construct, Infernoland to amuse some sadistic engineers, but it’s too elaborate for that. So I’m looking for answers.”
He looked thoughtful. “All right. I’ll accept God’s love. Get me out of here.”
“Right! Hallelujah!” Aimee shouted. “Sammy. Allen. Hold him!”
“What?”
“Hold him!” she commanded. Before I could move she took a step closer to Carl. She gripped his elbows and kicked at his knees. The knees buckled and she threw him, face down, on his back. He lay there startled and thrashing.
“Hold him!”
Sammy grabbed Carl’s feet. Aimee took his head and twisted, hard. She seemed immensely strong. Carl thrashed and screamed, but Aimee paid no attention at all. It was clear she had studied some martial arts because she had complete control of her body as she twisted his head. Then she threw herself on the ground, still holding his head.
Carl’s scream was cut off. There was a sharp snap, and his head came around, forward, so he was facing skyward. He lay there in silence for a moment, the
n screamed again.
Aimee got up. “You can let go now,” she told Sammy. She turned to me. “It would have been easier and quicker if you’d helped.”
“Slow of thought,” I said.
Carl had stopped screaming. He groaned twice, then tried to sit up. His head flopped out of control. “My God!” he said. He felt the back of his neck. “God, that hurts.”
“It will heal,” Aimee said.
“I hope so.” He groaned and kept rubbing his neck as he got to his feet. His head flopped forward. After a while he was able to raise it a bit. “It still hurts.”
Aimee said, “Part of repentance.”
“Give thanks. Your recovery was easier than mine,” Father Ernesto said.
“Or mine,” Phyllis added.
“Give thanks! Praise Jesus!” Aimee shouted.
Carl turned his head experimentally, then shook it in doubt. “But I’m Jewish.”
“So was Jesus and all his followers,” Aimee said. “Don’t worry about it. Jesus loves you.”
“Does he?”
“Sure! I bring the Good News. Salvation in the Name of Jesus!”
Carl rubbed his neck and looked around in wonder. “Thank you. Sincerely, I thank you.” He looked up and down the pit. “It might be smart to get out of here. There are demons.”
I looked around nervously. “I’m for it.”
“Sure,” Aimee said. “Just wanted to show you how it’s done. Come on.” She led the way upward.
It was easier going up the narrow trail than it had been coming down. Carl was just ahead of me. Every now and then he’d pause two–stepping up the trail to look back at me. “How long have you been here?” he asked me.
“I died in the early seventies,” I said. “And you?”
“I didn’t quite make it to the millennium.”
“So why were you in with the fortune tellers and diviners?” I asked.
We shuffled up the narrow trail. He said, “I did make predictions.”
“All scientists make predictions.”
“Yes, but there’s a difference between making the best scientific prediction you can come up with, and pronouncing with the Voice of God that you know the future,” he said. “I did some of that. It’s the curse of fame for a scientist. People believe you. Even if you aren’t sure. The newspeople want you to tell them the future. If you say you don’t really know, they go find someone who does know, and then you aren’t famous anymore.” He stopped for a moment. “Have to get used to having my head on straight,” he said.
“That’s funny.”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s true, too. I didn’t always have my head on straight even on Earth.” He stopped to look back at me. “I remember you. I thought you wrote fiction.”
“Mostly did, but I wrote enough popular science to get press credentials to AAAS meetings,” I said. “I always thought you had your head on straight.”
“Well, sometimes I did. I taught my students to think critically, to be careful. Wrote books about critical thinking. But I didn’t always follow my own rules.”
I thought about that. “I suppose that’s why you didn’t go into the First Circle. Virtuous Pagans,” I said.
“Probably. Hmm. Do you think I could get there now? That might be a good place.”
“You’d like it, but it’s a long way uphill,” I told him. “Easier to go down.”
“And then what? Do I have to get baptized? Join a church? Sing hymns?”
“Beats me. I haven’t. Not yet, anyway.”
“Yet.”
“Sylvia says that when we have to choose, we’ll know what choice to make.”
“Hmm. Sylvia Plath. I read some of her poetry. Didn’t much care for it, but my wife liked it a lot. How did you find her?”
“Come on, come on!” Aimee was shouting. “You’re almost here, don’t dawdle. Carl, God loves you. If you accept His love, and you love Him, then you’ll want to do what He wants you to do. Just remember, Carl, He loves you.”
We reached the top. Oscar rolled over to us. Aimee hopped into the passenger seat and they drove off. When they came back she was riding her motorcycle.
From up here we could see downhill to other Bolgias, and up to the great cliff behind us. Carl seemed overwhelmed by it all. “I read a translation of Dante in college. Pure fantasy, I assumed. But it’s real!”
“Seems to be,” I said.
“All of it, or just the Inferno?”
I shook my head. “Don’t know.”
“What’s your working hypothesis?”
“It’s just what it seems to be,” I told him. “I started with a different theory. At first I thought this was a big construct, a science fiction Infernoland built by alien engineers, but Carl, it can’t be that. I’ve met too many people I know. Not clones, not constructs. The people themselves. Carl, this is way beyond science.”
“Any sufficiently advanced technology —”
“Is indistinguishable from magic. Sure, but this place goes beyond magic, too! For one thing, the scale is a problem. Dante was trying to describe a cone, or a bowl. But it seems to get bigger as you go down. Dante’s descriptions fit that, too.”
“As if space were expanding downhill?”
“Right. Ballooning out.”
Carl said, “I haven’t seen this myself, but … would it work if souls were getting smaller?”
Sylvia had come up behind me. “Carl, that’s … Allen, did souls seem to get heavier as you went down?”
“Yeah. Denser. Until you’re crawling around Satan and it feels like you weigh tons. Funny, but it fits Dante.”
“High–tech amusement park,” Carl said. “But how would you prove it? Suppose you found a ticket taker —”
“Geryon could appear as a ticket taker. Hah!” Sylvia barked. “You still wouldn’t know! Because he’s a liar, Carl.”
“So. Barring that … we’re in Dante’s Inferno, and it’s run by God. The real one. An old man you can pray to, who counts falling sparrows. Not just the laws of the universe.”
“That’s my theory,” I said. “It sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”
“No.” Sylvia was emphatic. “Mysterious, yes, but not stupid. It fits the evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof! And we have extraordinary proof.”
“Hey, that’s my line,” Carl protested.
“Descartes, surely?” Sylvia said.
“Well, yeah, okay, he said it first. But it was my trademark line!”
Sylvia giggled.
Oscar’s horn sounded. “We ready? Load up.”
Aimee looked to Sammy and patted the seat behind her. He happily climbed onto her bike. Carl took his place on the right fender as Sylvia and I got into the car, and Ernesto and Phyllis perched on the trunk.
“All set,” Phyllis said.
Aimee led the way around until we came to a bridge. “Don’t go more than halfway across,” she warned.
“How will we get past the demons?” I asked.
“Just watch,” Aimee said. “There’s ways if you’re fast.”
Oscar drove up to the base of the bridge. It was as steep as the last two. “Fast is fine,” he said, “but I don’t want to break anything coming down. Not with demons chasing us.”
“Don’t worry,” Aimee said. “Just be ready to turn around and come back down to this side. Then follow me.”
“Sure.” Oscar sounded puzzled.
“Good. Now wait for me while I go scouting.” Aimee and Sammy roared off. We moved over to the edge to look down into the pit.
We’d drawn considerable attention from the inhabitants of the Fourth Bolgia. Some stopped.
“There is one I have spoken with,” Ernesto said. He pointed. A man with a powerful back and a handsome face waved and shuffled backward. Ernesto said, “Jacques Casanova, a man of business, from Venice and the Veneto. He has persuaded me that we might break him loose, as there are other places he might have fallen.”
Sylvia said, “Very persu
asive fellow, Casanova.”
I saw a familiar face, turned around though it was, and I remembered the name. “Eloise?”
She was already looking up. I’d last seen her in Minos’s palace. She said, “You, who wouldn’t be judged. Your path lies down.”
I took it she meant me. “I kind of knew that. You were a prophet?”
“Medium. My mother trained me. I couldn’t see spirits clear until I died. Now I get glimpses. Flashes of past and future. You, the car, you don’t belong here. You must find your place.” Her eyes shifted. “Woman of the desert, follow the angels, if you can. You, priest, you already know the proper truths. Scientist, use your science, be truthful about truth, be honest to yourself. You, poet, your instincts are good. Follow them.”
I hadn’t decided how seriously to take Eloise. “I’m a ghost, too. I wrote about the future,” I said. “Why can’t I see it?”
“You and your kind see futures, Carpenter,” the seer said. “They spread before you, fanning out. You choose. But a great light will answer your one great question.”
“A fortune teller,” Carl said. His voice held disgust.
“Just like you,” Sylvia reminded him.
I thought for a moment, then called down, “Have you tried climbing?”
“Climbing?”
“I have a rope.”
She moved her back up against the rocky slope, then rolled over. “I can’t see,” she said, but, her eyes uselessly watching Hell’s murky, smoky roof, she began feeling her way up the slope.
“Get high enough, I’ll throw you the rope,” I said. I went down the slope, walking, then crawling. The others stayed on the arch.
I watched her progress. The slope grew steeper. She couldn’t see handholds or loose rocks. She groped, and climbed. She wasn’t moving fast, but she did manage to get higher. I dropped the rope over the side. She took it and Sylvia and I hauled her up. She didn’t seem heavy at all.
She stood facing us, her body turned away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had hoped —”