Escape From Hell

by Larry Niven

  “What’s your price for safe passage down?” I shouted.

  “Come and watch. See my justice.” There was a pause. “I let you go through with Benito.”

  That was true enough. At least I hadn’t seen him after I rescued Benito and we went back across.

  “Can we trust him?” Sylvia asked. She looked at Trotsky and shuddered.

  “Yes,” Eloise said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Allen, I am never sure. But I think yes.”

  “You ladies stay where it’s safe. I’ll go talk to him.”

  “No,” Sylvia said firmly. She took my arm. “We stay together.” She came forward with me. Eloise held back a few steps. She seemed preoccupied.

  The demon stood like a black tower beneath the bridge, with a sword sprouting from the middle finger of his right hand.

  I looked back to Eloise. “Premonitions?” I asked.

  “Not about him.” She pointed at the demon. “I fear a man with no future, but I don’t know where he is.”

  “A man with no future? In this place?” Sylvia asked.

  “I see two men. One has no future. The other may have a future, but does not now.”

  “What does that mean?” I demanded. “Sounds like fortune teller babble.”

  “I know,” Eloise said. “But I can’t say it any better.”

  “She’s trying,” Sylvia said. “Haven’t you ever had that kind of problem?”

  “I guess so.” Poets had word problems. I was a storyteller. But this wasn’t the time for literary criticism.

  “It doesn’t make any more sense to me,” Eloise said. “Just that I am afraid of a man with no future, and you will find a man who has no future now, but may have after you find him.”

  Sylvia, Eloise, and I walked to the rim of the pit.

  It was definitely the same demon I’d seen before.

  He stood in a pool of blood, and the bright copper odor of blood filled the air. A long line of sinners waited to be mutilated. They stood with understandable patience as he spoke to me. I recognized some of them. Henry the Eighth seemed calmer and less arrogant than the last time I’d seen him.

  “Welcome back, Carpenter! And welcome to you, ladies. I do not think you belong to me, but you may learn something here.”

  Eloise asked, “You’re an educator?” He nodded enthusiastically.

  “You can’t be the only staff in this Bolgia,” I said.

  His laugh was deep. “Hardly. But I do get many of the more interesting cases. Take this next group for example. Lawyers. Most lawyers never make it this far down, but these were specialists in divisiveness. Anything that caused civic cohesion, anything that made people feel a sense of worth, or of mutual identity, they wanted closed down. Menorah in the public square? Never! No menorah, no manger, and after people started converting to paganism, no Kris Kringle and reindeer, either! Isn’t that right, Horace?”

  “The constitution built that wall between church and state! Not me, I was just enforcing it!”

  “Sure you were. That’s why the constitution allowed the original states to have established churches. Come here, Horace.”

  The lawyer cringed his way forward. The sword swung, and Horace staggered away, cleft from his crown to his chin. “See you later, Horace!” the demon shouted cheerfully.

  “That must hurt,” I said.

  “I hope so. Stick around, Madelyn will be coming around soon. I get artistic with Madelyn.”

  “Madelyn O’Hair?” I asked. “But she was the worst enemy atheism ever had!”

  The demon chuckled. “Divisive, no? She never met a movement she couldn’t bring some discord to. One of my pets, she is.”

  “Will Trotsky heal without his legs?” Sylvia asked.

  “Wait and see. I think I saw them go walking off widdershins! And thank you, Carpenter, for sending him to me! Trotsky and those Nazis you sent me. I’ve wanted them for decades!”

  “Nazis, Communists — I see. Sowers of religious discord,” Sylvia said. “Appropriate. We used to argue over whether those were religions. But don’t you have anyone who should be rescued?”

  “And if I did, would I tell you?”

  “What’s your name?” I demanded.

  “My name?” For an instant that huge creature was flustered. “Why would such as I need a name? Call me Sword.”

  I said, “If someone is here unjustly then it is not justice to keep him! Justice without mercy still demands justice, not mere possessive cruelty!”

  “Sword, you’re here as a servant of God. You know some of us must leave Hell. Show us the ones,” Sylvia said.

  “That’s not my duty,” said Sword. “I am to teach.”

  “If you teach, then there must be a point to the education,” Sylvia said. “Those who learn. What happens to them?”

  “They have new duties.”

  I asked, “What’s mine? What’s my duty, do you know that?”

  “I would be guessing. Perhaps … randomness. A wandering singularity, where the rules don’t work. Carpenter,” the demon said, “cases do get reviewed. It takes time. We have a lot of time.”

  We heard the distant buzz of a motorcycle. It got louder. The demon turned to face downhill.

  It was Aimee with a rider. It took me a moment to recognize Phyllis. Her scars were gone, and her robes were clean. A phrase came to mind. Whiter than snow. And her face shone.

  The demon raised his sword. “You won’t escape me this time!” he shouted. He seemed to be laughing.

  “I call upon the name of the Lord!” Aimee shouted. “Back, Ormias! You shall not prevent my passage.”

  The demon chuckled. “You have my name wrong,” he said. “But never mind. What is your errand this time?”

  “To rescue more of the saved!”

  “If you can find them. But I thought your last mission was to deliver this one to salvation.”

  “She did,” Phyllis said. “I am saved, alleluia!”

  The demon pretended to cringe. “Yet here you are.”

  “I came back to assist in Aimee’s great work. And yes, before you say it, that was truly a miracle. More than you can know!”

  “One of these days we must have a full trial on this matter,” the demon said. “But just now my work is not done. Others need my attention more than you. The divorce lawyers are coming! Thousands of them. Pass freely.” He turned back to us. “Don’t count on that as a precedent, Carpenter.”

  Aimee came across the bridge and stopped. She was laughing. “I have made this journey many times,” she said. “Ormias there attempts to prevent me. I wait for him to perform his work and dash across. It amuses both of us.”

  “He ever hit you?” I asked.

  “Once, but I healed. But this time I have a passenger and did not wish to risk it. In the name of the Lord, Ormias!”

  “That is not my name.” The demon seemed preoccupied. We heard chopping noises and screams, and tried to ignore them.

  “So where will you go now?” I asked Aimee.

  “Up. It is time for me to rescue Ken.”

  “Ken?” Sylvia asked.

  “My radio engineer,” Aimee said. “He was a skeptic and an adulterer, but he was my friend. It is time to see if he can be saved.”

  “Adulterer,” Eloise said. “Your lover?”

  “No. He had many lovers, but I was never one of them. At first I needed him for his ability. He made my radio station work. But over time we became friends, despite his — his attitudes toward God’s love and sin.”

  “And what makes you believe you can save him?” Sylvia asked.

  “Faith,” Aimee said. “God will not punish a good man forever. Ormias! Do you not teach? Do not sinners learn, even in this place?”

  The chopping sounds stopped for a moment. “There is teaching, and there is learning,” the demon said. There was a scream of pain as the gruesome sounds resumed.

  “And Sister Phyllis will come with me,” Aimee said.

 
“You’re going up to the Winds?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a long and hard journey.”

  “I know.”

  I thought for a moment. “You’ll need this.” I handed Aimee the rope.

  “Thank you.”

  “And if you see Elena Robinson —”

  “Yes?”

  I shrugged. “I’d like to help her, if that’s possible.”

  “Do you want me to pray for her repentance?” Aimee asked.

  “Something like that. Yes.”

  “I will. I will ask Father Ernesto to pray for her as well,” Aimee said. “And you?”

  “Out, I think.”

  Aimee nodded. “Peace and joy, then. To all three of you.”

  “What’s ahead?” Eloise asked.

  “Falsifiers, counterfeiters. Liars,” Sylvia answered.

  “And they’re worse than murderers?”

  “Dante thought so,” Sylvia said. “These aren’t just any liars. They falsify evidence. Make fake money. They make trust impossible. They kill the very idea of trust and good faith. Dante thought that was more than enough to destroy his civilization.”

  “It is worse than that,” Aimee said. “They have corrupted truth, and forfeited friendship. I have never rescued anyone from that pit. I do not know how anyone can help such as those.”

  “Liars are unforgivable?” I asked. But I saw her point. They might be repentant, reformed, changed; but how would anyone know?

  “Scientists who fake data destroy faith in science,” I said. “You can prove anything if you make up your data.”

  “Yes!” Aimee looked sad. “I do not care to give up on anyone, but how can you help those who no longer believe in truth? I’ve met a preacher who read from his own writings claiming they were in the Bible! He told his followers they were hearing the Word of God!”

  “It goes on today,” Eloise said. “Sheiks who pretend to tell illiterate followers what is in the Koran. Governments make up documents.”

  “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” Sylvia said.

  “That’s one of them,” Eloise said.

  “So, how might we help those people?” Sylvia asked.

  Aimee looked sad. “I haven’t thought of a way. I think they’re on their own. They may earn a way out, but how can anyone trust them?”

  “That’s hard,” I said.

  “It is. But Carpenter, we do the Lord’s work even so. God bless you! I will pray for you and your friends.” She waved as her motorcycle roared off.

  “Still here, Carpenter?” the demon asked. “Go before I change my mind. I have work to do. They learn, but slowly.”

  Chapter 31

  Eighth Circle, Tenth Bolgia

  Falsifiers And Counterfeiters

  * * *

  There, from the crossing span’s high altitude,

  Malbolgias’ final cloister all appears

  Thrown open, with its sad lay–brotherhood.

  And there, such arrowy shrieks, such lancing spears

  Of anguish, barbed with pity, pierced me through

  I had to clap my hands upon my ears.

  Could all disease, all dog–day plagues that stew

  In Valdichiana’s spitals, all fever–drench

  Drained from Maremma and Sardinia spew

  Their horrors all together in one trench —

  Like that, so this: suffering and running sore

  Of gangrened limbs, and putrefying stench

  Down that last bank of the long cliff we bore

  Still turning left; and now as I drew near

  I saw more vividly to the very core

  That pit wherein the High Lord’s minister

  Infallible Justice, dooms to pains condign

  The falsifiers she registers down here.

  We crossed the bridge and went clockwise between the Bolgias. “ ‘They learn, but slowly,’ ” Sylvia said. “Allen, think! Sword is a teacher, among the sowers of discord.”

  I thought about that as we walked toward the next bridge. It wasn’t far. We could see it ahead, but we walked slowly. Descending into Hell.

  To our right were more horrors. Halt, lame, and blind mixed with lepers. “Are they learning?” I asked Sylvia.

  “You were there before. Did you learn anything?”

  “Yes —”

  “And the others?”

  I thought about the Tenth Bolgia. I’d fallen in by accident when escaping the sword demon. It had been a horrible place, filled with disease. I let the memory return.

  They were all deathly ill, and they were all in pain —

  — except one, and he was startling by contrast. He sat against the slope of the gully, a few feet from the girl and across from me. A middle–aged cherub, comfortably overweight, his blue eyes twinkling above a mad and happy smile.

  Certainly he was mad. Was it a sickness of the mind, or had some vile bacterium reached his brain?

  I had to get out of here. The most ferocious contagious diseases ever to rack mankind were all around me. I tried to move, and stopped at once. My legs wouldn’t obey, and it felt as if my spine were being twisted in a vise. Had I caught something already? Spinal meningitis, maybe?

  The madman’s wandering blue eyes found me. He said, “I was a psychiatrist.”

  “I didn’t ask.” In fact, I’d already learned more of Hell than I really wanted to know. I only wanted out. Don’t tell me anymore! I closed my eyes.

  “They trusted me,” the mad voice said happily. “They thought we knew what we were doing. For fifty bucks an hour I listened to their life stories. Wouldn’t you?”

  The mad psychiatrist noticed me again. “We were just playing,” he said dreamily. “Tinkering with something we didn’t understand. I knew. Oh, I knew. Let me tell you.”

  “Don’t tell me.” They kept hurting at me, all of them!

  “He was a catatonic. He was like a rubber doll. You could put him in any position, and he’d stay there for hours. We tried all sorts of things in those days. Shock therapy, insulin shock, lobotomy. Punish the patient for not noticing the outside world.”

  “Or for not noticing you.”

  I meant it to hurt, but he nodded happily. “So we put him in a hotbox and started raising the temperature. We watched him through a window. First he just sweated. Then he started to move around. At a hundred and thirty he said his first words in sixteen years. ‘Get me the fuck out of here!’ ”

  The mad eyes found me, and his face seemed to cave in. The cherubic smile vanished. Urgently he said, “Get me the fuck out of here!”

  “I can’t. I’ll be lucky to get out myself.” I tried moving again. There was pain, but not enough to keep me in that place. I stood gingerly and started up the slope.

  I left him there, but he’d seen me escape. So had others. Had they learned? The sword demon said they learned. Slowly, but they have all of eternity …

  There was a man in our path to the next bridge. As we came closer I said, “Let me go first.”

  Sylvia asked, “Why?”

  “I don’t like his looks. Eloise, what —”

  Her grip on my arm was fierce. “I can’t see him!”

  “You! Dog! Blasphemer!”

  He was twenty yards away now, and rushing toward me. He was crisscrossed with scars, as if he had been cut into pieces and reassembled often. Ninth Bolgia, I thought. Must have escaped from the sword demon. I said, “Behind me!”

  He was bearded, and his eyes glowed madly. He screamed in a language that no one but I understood. “You wrote the lies about the Prophet! I have seen them on the tomb! I come for you!”

  The knight’s tomb? He was supposed to blow it open. Dammit.

  “It’s him!” Eloise shouted. “The man with no future!” She dodged out from behind me. Before I could do anything she had grappled with the bearded man. They fell into the Tenth Bolgia. Sylvia and I ran forward into a thunderclap and a roiling puff of black smoke.

  “Eloise!” S
ylvia shouted. We leaned over the edge of the pit. There were maimed bodies scattered below, but no sign of either Eloise or the bearded madman.

  “Gone,” Sylvia said. “Allen, she could see the future. She knew this would happen.”

  “This?”

  “She didn’t know the details. She talked about her fate, that her journey would be interrupted by a man without a future. She didn’t know what that meant, either, but I think I do. If they explode themselves — well, you were put back together but you never saw the one who exploded you, did you?”

  “No. I see it. Man without a future. A soul who was going to disappear.”

  “Real, actual suicide,” Sylvia said.

  I wondered. “Can they all do that? Can we?”

  “Allen, I’m glad I met you before someone offered that choice to me.”

  “But what about Eloise?”

  “She didn’t say that she had no future,” Sylvia said. “Just that a man with no future would interrupt her journey. You got blown all the way back to the Vestibule. Maybe that’s where Eloise went, maybe somewhere else, but I’m sure she’s all right.”

  “You’re sure. Faith?”

  “Of course, Allen. Sometimes you have to have faith. Or do you want to go back uphill until we find her?”

  Or find Rosemary and ask. No, I didn’t want that. “Benito always said he only managed to save one at a time. He didn’t know if that was a rule or just coincidence.”

  “Nor do we,” Sylvia said. We walked on a ways. “Eloise had another vision.”

  “I remember. A man who has no future now but who might acquire one. Something like that. Did she tell you what it meant?”

  “I don’t think she knew.” We were getting close to the bridge. Sylvia stopped and gestured down into the pit. “Know anyone down there you want to save?”

  I remembered the people of the Tenth Bolgia. Perjurers and liars, false doctors, a prostitute who didn’t deliver, all of them afflicted with terrible diseases. If they healed they caught something else, and mad counterfeiters with rabies ran through biting everyone who tried to escape.

  “There was one, but I don’t see him. It’s a bad place. You?”