Inferno (16 page)

I said, “Now what?”

Benito scowled in indecision. “It is a risk. The monster Geryon carried Dante and Virgil into lower Hell. But they were on a holy errand. We are not. I have known Geryon. He is not worthy of trust.”

“The password,” I remembered.

“ ‘This has been willed where what is willed must be.’ Yes. Shall we try it?”

“Better’n jumping.” Billy looked at Benito. “It is, ain’t it? What can he do to us? Eat us?”

“Summon Minos.”

“Let’s try it,” said Corbett. “We’ve gotten this far without anyone doing that.”

“Are we agreed, then? Good. Now we must summon Geryon. We need a signal, something to get his attention. Dante flung a rope into the abyss.”

“A signal,” said Corbett. “Does it have to be subtle?”

“I should not think that subtlety would be necessary.”

“We wouldn’t want Geryon to think we’re crude, would we? Some delicate change in the environment, just noticeable enough to attract his attention. Let me see.” Corbett walked back to the car and switched on the ignition. He went around to the back and unscrewed the gas cap.

A fireflake fell past his nose. He blew on it, guiding it into the gas tank. The tank lit with a
whoosh
. Hurriedly Corbett reached into the car and shifted it into first gear. We stood well back and watched it roll over the edge.

“Subtlety is all,” said Corbett.

The car fell like a battlefield flare. It passed and illuminated a compact body already rising through the murk.

“He knew we were here.” Corbett was flat on his belly with his face over the cliff’s edge. “We didn’t need to signal.”

“He will not come without a signal,” said Benito.

The car was a towering flame at the base of the cliff. Lighted from below, Geryon was a compact shadow with a slender, twisting tail. He floated up to us, his features growing clear. He hovered at our height, smiled reassuringly at us with a startlingly human face, then slid forward onto the rock ledge, leaving his tail hanging free in space.

Geryon was as big as a rowboat, and wingless. His hind feet were webbed, built for swimming. His almost human head was hairless, the mouth wide, the chin broad and strong, the nose very wide and flat, with large nostrils. The head sloped back to round shoulders, without benefit of neck.

His arms were human enough, the size of my own. On Geryon they were disproportionately small. Something was funny about the hands: the fingers were short and thick, designed for ripping.

I could see him as an air-breathing aquatic beast that had developed human intelligence. I wondered about his nose. It was big enough to feed him air fast, hooded to keep water out. Reasonable, but different from the cetacean design.

His pelt had the look of medieval tapestry: golden knots and figures on a blue-gray background. Lovely; a trifle flashy. And adequate camouflage if he was used to hovering just beneath sunlit water.

Altogether he was a believable alien, excluding his ability to fly. I didn’t like that. Bad enough if Infernoland had been built by humans. What if it had been built by interstellar conquerors for their own amusement?

Geryon’s voice was deep, with a queer buzzing quality. “Hello, Benito. Three of them? Isn’t that a bit much?”

Benito was brusque. He didn’t like Geryon. “This has been willed where what is willed must be. In any case, you must have noticed how the damned flow in like a river in flood—”

“Haven’t I just. Swamping you, are they? I think the end of the world must be near. Hell is getting full,” said the alien. “Well, we who serve God’s will in Hell have precious little of free will, eh, Benito? Climb aboard, you. I hope you can all hang on.”

He had spoken jovially, with no bitterness and only the merest trace of mockery.

My foot kicked something rigid as I tried to board Geryon’s flat back. I looked down. It wasn’t easy to see, but there was metal belted about Geryon’s belly, machinery covered with material the same color as his gaudy pelt.

Antigravity?

I settled behind the monster’s head. Billy’s arm closed about my waist. Corbett was behind him, and Benito was last, braving the twin stings in the forked tail. Geryon grinned at me over his shoulder and pushed back from the edge.

Billy’s arms tightened convulsively. I saw that his eyes were closed tight, his teeth clenched.

My view of Hell was darkness and firelit smokes, the fires tracing concentric arcs. Geryon tilted to one side and dropped in a slow spiral. The scarlet waterfall dashed itself to foam and spray on the rocks. Billy was squeezing the breath from me, but I didn’t complain. I heard whimpering noises being squeezed from him.

We touched down.

I said, “Your first flight, Billy?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re down. You can let go.”

“Yeah.” He unlocked his arms in stages and climbed down on shaky legs. I followed.

Geryon floated up a few feet and hovered. “Hey, Benito,” he called. His voice was full of artificial camaraderie, more menacing than threats. “Why is it, Benito, that the people you travel with don’t ever come back?” The monster lifted toward the sky, chortling.

Carefully casual, Corbett asked Benito, “You’ve been here before?”

“I have rescued others,” Benito answered.

“How many?”

“Six. One at a time. No matter how many come with me at first, no more than one at a time ever seems to reach the exit point. Perhaps this time we will be more fortunate.”

“What happened to the others?” I asked.

“Why did you come back?” Corbett demanded.

We’d both spoken at once, and Benito chose to answer neither of us.

“Have you ever seen the exit?” Corbett asked.

Benito’s voice was colorlessly grim. “Yes.”

“And gone beyond it?”

“No. But it follows Dante’s route, which leads to Purgatory. I came back to find others in need of guidance. Do
you
object, Allen Carpentier? Should I have left you in the bottle?”

“Hey, hey hey!” Billy was dancing with impatience. “If we’re going, let’s
go
! What’s all the jawing about?”

Benito nodded and led us off downslope. We felt exposed on level ground, and Geryon couldn’t be the only flying thing. He hadn’t reported us (had he?), but that was no guarantee that something else wouldn’t. We moved swiftly across what seemed to be solid rock, always downhill, further into murk and gloom, until we came to a cliff edge.

There was a ditch in front of us, seventy or eighty feet deep and perhaps twice that wide. It was divided in the middle by a low wall of rock. The divider was low enough that we could see over it, lower than the height of a normal man—

—and the ditch was full. Masses of humanity moved in a standard traffic pattern, all hurrying along, not quite running, left-bound on the far side, rightward on the near side. They moved
fast
.

They moved fast because there were beings with whips urging them along. It took a moment for that to register.

Okay, Carpentier, you’re in Hell and there are demons in Hell. There were things on the red-hot wall that might have been demons if you could have seen them clearly through the fog. There’s Geryon, certainly a monster.
Of course
Big Juju can make demons.

But I hadn’t wanted to believe it.

Now I was looking at them. They were black-skinned rather than the red I’d expected, and they were uglier than I could have imagined. They used whips twice as long as themselves. They screamed at the laggards:

“Along with you, Big Morris, there’s no ass to sell here!”

“Git along, little dogie, git along, git along . . .”

Wails and groans rose from the pit, and screams of pain and rage. Snap! Crack! Chunks of flesh flew from the backs of those who slowed down.

“Who . . .” whispered Corbett. He ran out of voice and had to try again. “Who are they?” He was frightened, and why not? I was scared out of my mind. The demons were looking up at us—

—but they went back to their tasks, gleefully lashing the crowd. I recognized one of the runners. He was a famous movie director-producer, idolized by millions when I was younger. He was on the near side, but as he reached the passageway in the dividing wall the demon stationed there lashed him until he went through and joined those scurrying in the other direction.

I’d never met him, but I knew who he was. And I knew who these people must be.

Benito confirmed my suspicions. “Panderers on this side, Seducers on the other side. Come, we must find a bridge.” He turned left, and we followed uncertainly.

“I . . . was a seducer,” Corbett said uncertainly.

I remembered the convention atmosphere and what happened the night before I died. “Me, too.”

Benito snorted. “Did you ever have a woman against her will?”

“No—”

“Or make her drunk, or drug her?”

“Well—” Did pot count? “Nobody who didn’t know what to expect.”

“Never had to,” Corbett said matter-of-factly.

“Or use threats of force?”

“Don’t be silly.” Corbett resented the implication. “I told you, it wasn’t necessary.”

“The Italian does not properly translate as your English
seduce
, which is hardly more than casual fornication,” Benito said seriously. “I think perhaps the better word is
rape
.”

Now we could see the bridge ahead of us: a stone arch. It looked very old.

“Jerry!” A voice called from the pit. “Jerry! Come on down, Jerry. You
belong
here!”

It stopped Corbett cold. He looked down into the pit. “Julia?”

“Come on down, Jerry. Share
everything
with me. You taught me how, Jerry—”

“How can a girl be a rapist?” I demanded. She was, or had been, quite pretty, but now her face was distorted by pain and exhaustion. The demons were watching her stand there as she panted and shouted up to Corbett, and they didn’t interfere.

“Deceit. Fraud,” said Benito. “Those who induce others to what they know is wrong, as well as those who force their will on others.”

I turned to Corbett and
Shut up, Carpentier! None of your business
closed my mouth.

“You taught me everything, Jerry,” she was calling. “I could still love you. Come on down with me. Where else can you go now?”

“Out! Down to the center and out!” Corbett screamed to her.

The demons howled manic laughter. The girl laughed with them. “Oh, Jerry, do you
believe
that? Don’t you know that the deeper you go, the worse it is, and you can’t
ever
go back, and you can’t get out? It’s worse down there, Jerry. Wait till you see who’s below us! Here you have
me
, Jerry. Stay where you belong. There’s no escape down there. Don’t you know what’s carved on the gates of Hell, Jerry? All hope abandon!”

“I’m not afraid of what’s below!” Corbett was getting hysterical. “I never did any of the things they punish you down there for—”

She laughed again. “The only perfect man who ever lived! Are you
sure
, Jerry? Then why do they let you
go
there? And what makes you think you’ll get justice anyway? Come on down with me before it’s too late to—HYEEEE!”

The demons had called time on her. Crack! Snap! The whips sounded like popcorn popping. Julia sprinted, screaming with the rest. The flesh of my back rippled. I wanted to shut my eyes.

“Come.” Benito took Corbett’s arm. “Come. Do not let her seduce you again.”

“Uh?” Corbett looked at Benito as if he’d only just met him. “It did happen that way, now that you mention it. Or did it? Maybe I do belong in that pit.”

“If you do, you will be there. For the moment you are not. Ergo—come along.”

We walked in silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts. What if the girl was right? Were we plunging deeper and deeper, never to return? What was below us? Had I committed any of the appropriate crimes? “Benito, what’s ahead?”

His dry lecture voice couldn’t mask the screaming as we walked the rim. “No more!” “Not again!” “Wait, I’m in the wrong place!” “It was just
one
book, just one.
I needed the money!
” “You big ugly sonofabitch, you—”
Crack!

“Of the ten
bolgias
—canyons—of this circle of Hell, this is the only divided one. Each canyon is crossed by a bridge, except that all of the bridges are down across the sixth canyon. We must descend into it. It will be no problem.”

“Benito, how in God’s name can you ignore those screams?” Corbett demanded.

“They have no more than they deserve,” Benito said simply. Either he hadn’t the empathy of a turtle, or . . . or what? “Now, we will have trouble at the fifth
bolgia
. It is the Pit of Grafters, and the demons are on the rim, not down in the canyon.”

“Ugh.” I’d forgotten that image: a troop, an army of devils, ill-mannered and sadistic, a military organization of ugly hate. They’d almost got Dante despite his safe-conduct. “What’s after this circle?”

We had reached an arching bridge of rough stone. It had no handrails and was about ten feet wide, a slender arch above that pit of screaming runners. It sloped up so steeply that I dropped to all fours to climb.

“Jerry! Come down, Jerry!” It was the girl again. Corbett stiffened.

“What’s next?” I prompted Benito. “After the ten canyons what will we find?”

“Very little,” Benito answered. “The great ice plain, where traitors are punished. Those who betray their blood kin or their benefactors.”

“Not me,” Corbett said. He seemed to feel better. “And then?”

“We cross to the very center. There is a hole. We crawl through it, past the center of the world, and find ourselves climbing up again.”

“And I can believe as much of that as I like?”

“Certainly. Why should you not believe it?” Benito was genuinely puzzled.

“It’s nonsense,” said Corbett. “We’d be in free-fall by the time we got there.”

“
Jerry!
”

Corbett shuddered. The voice floated upward again. “Don’t be a fool, Jerry. It’s bad down there at the center. And they
never
let you out.”