The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell (6 page)

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Authors: Harry Harrison

BOOK: The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell
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… doubt shall be taken from you and will be replaced by
reassurance. It is written in the Book of Books that the path to salvation leads through the Land of Good Deeds. Good deeds and love must be your guiding stars, the beckoning fingers of the hereafter. A hereafter that lies ahead of you, restful and satisfying, calm and filled with the effervescence that passeth all understanding.”
Very good. Not really very good, but really very bad. But good for me. For as long as he burbled on I could penetrate his holy of holies. The staircase was behind the door on the left, as Sybil had told me. She had no idea where it led; that was for me to find out. I went through and closed the door silently behind me, bit down gently on the microlight I held between my teeth. Dusty stairs wound upwards. I climbed them, walking with my feet close to the wall to prevent them from creaking. There was another door at the head of the stairs that opened into a large room, dimly illuminated by a single window.
I was over the main hall and could hear the rumble of the sermon dimly through the floor. I walked silently between the boxes and stacked chairs to a door on the far wall. This was to the rear of the building and should be over the mysterious antechamber that might very well be the entrance to Heaven. This was also roughly the same location as that of the electronic equipment that had been destroyed in the Temple of Eternal Truth. As I opened the door the rumble of the voice on the floor below stopped.
So did I. One foot still raised. Then I relaxed and stepped forward when the organ music began and the women began to sing. A spiral stairway led down. I took it, slowly and silently. Stopped before what I hoped was the last door.
It was stuffy and warm and I was beginning to sweat. From the temperature alone. My pulse rate was normal and my morale high. No more waiting—a time for doing. I turned the light off and pocketed it, then opened the door into darkness and stepped through.
Bright lights came oh. Slakey was standing just before me. Smiling.
I had only the briefest of glimpses because at the instant that
the lights flared I had dived to one side. Biting down hard with my back teeth.
At least I tried to bite. But as fast as I had been, something else was much faster. I could see and hear—but that was all. My body was flaccid, my eyes open and staring. At the greasy floor because I had landed heavily facedown. My jaw dropped open; I drooled. I felt the panic rising as I realized I could do nothing, could not control a single muscle. But at least I was breathing and my heart was still beating, pounding loud and strong in my ears. A shoe tip appeared in front of my eyes and my vision swirled, settled, staring up at the bright light. Slakey must have rolled me over; I could not feel a thing. His face blotted out the light.
“You can see me, can't you? And hear me as well? My neural neutralizer allows that. I know all about you Jim diGriz. I know everything for I am all-powerful. I know how you invaded this holy place of worship. I know who you came with.”
His hands reached down, my head turned. Sybil was lying next to me, sprawled and unmoving. My vision swirled again and Slakey was straightening up. Dressed in full regalia, I saw now. Bright robes with strange symbols covering them, with a high collar, a crown of some kind on his head. He raised his arms and shook his fists on high in a triumphant gesture. Both fists. The right one worked very well indeed and there was no sign of any scar on either wrist when his loose sleeves fell back.
“You are a pitiful mortal and shall be destroyed. You seek enlightenment but you shall not have it. You and this female creature you sent to spy. You wish to see Heaven—then you will go to Heaven. You shall, you shall!”
There was motion, my vision rocked. Stopped. My head was raised and I realized that he had dumped me across Sybil's unresistant body.
“Go, both of you, go. Go to Heaven.”
He laughed, choked, laughed even louder.
“Well—not quite Heaven as you shall discover.”
 
Blackouts
SOMETHING HAPPENED.
I couldn't remember it, could not begin to describe it. I did not want to think about it. I had far more important things on my mind. Like the fact that I was still paralyzed and lying facedown in red grit of some kind. I couldn't feel it but I could smell it. A rotten, sulfury smell.
Smell!
Yes, it certainly was there, and growing stronger and stronger. Which meant something important. After I had been zapped I couldn't smeH or feel anything: I could now. Which must mean that the paralysis must be wearing off, because I was vaguely aware of a scratchy pressure on my cheek. I concentrated, struggled hard, harder—then felt my fingertips move ever so slightly.
Recovery did not end quickly, not the way the onset of the paralysis had, but slowly and soon very painfully. Waves of red agony that ran through my reviving body that threatened to block my vision. My eyes were watering, tears ran down my cheeks as I writhed in agony. Slowly, very slowly it died away and I managed to roll over.
Blinking away the tears to stare up at a gray rock ceiling above. There was a low moan and with a great deal of effort I
turned my head to see that Sybil was lying on the ground next to me. Her eyes were closed and her body twisted with pain as she moaned again. I knew what she was experiencing. Slowly and exhaustingly, with a great deal of grunting and gasping, I crawled to her, took her hand.
“The pain,” I managed to say, “it goes away.” I.
“Jim …” Whispered so quietly I could barely hear it.
“None other. You're going to be all right.”
This was a pretty pathetic reassurance but was about all that I could think of at the moment. Where were we? What had happened? If this was Heaven it was pretty different from the place that she had described. Sharp volcanic gravel instead of grass; rock instead of sky. Where was the light coming from? And what was the last thing that Slakey had said? Something about not quite being Heaven.
With some effort I managed to sit up and saw the opening in the rock wall: we were in a cleft or a cave of some sort. And beyond the opening was a red sky.
Red? There was a distant deep rumble and I felt the ground beneath me tremble; a cloud of dark smoke roiled across the sky. Clutching to the rock wall I managed to drag myself to my feet and stumble over to Sybil. I helped her sit up with her back to the wall.
She tried to speak, starting coughing instead. Finally squeezed out the words. “Slakey—he was one step ahead of us all the time.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was playing with us, and must have known that you were in the building. He cut his sermon short, made some kind of excuse about an unexpected meeting, turned the organ on instead, along with a recording of everyone singing. Asked us all to leave. Everyone except me. He took me aside, said that he had something most important to tell me. I was curious of course, besides the fact that I couldn't think of anything else to do except do as he had asked. Then, as soon as the others were gone, he pointed something at me. I had only the quickest look at something like a silver spiderweb, before I fell down. It was horrible!
I couldn't move a muscle, not even my eyes. I was aware of him dragging me into that back room in the darkness—and the worst part was that there wasn't a thing I could do about it. I couldn't move, do anything at all, couldn't warn you that was the worst part. Then the lights were on, and you were there, falling. I remember him talking to you. After that—nothing.
“That's about all that I can remember—until I opened my eyes here.”
I patted my side pocket, felt the lump of the communicator, felt a slight touch of hope at the same time. I put it to my ear, turned it on. Nothing. The same went for every other device on my person. All dead. Batteries and power packs drained. I couldn't even open the blade on my Schweitzy Army Knife; it seemed to be welded into a lump. I looked at the small pile of metallic debris and felt the urge to kick it across the cave. I gave in to the urge and did just that. It clattered nicely.
“Just junk now. All dead. Nothing works.” I turned and stumbled towards the light.
“Jim, don't leave …”
“I'm not going far. I just want to look out, satisfy my curiosity, find out where we are.”
Leaning one hand against the rock so I wouldn't trip, I took step after shuffling step until I was at the entrance and staring out. I felt my jaw fall open with shock as I dropped to my knees. For long moments I could only stare. With an effort I turned away, managed to stand again and went back to Sybil. She was sitting up now and very much more in control.
“What's out there, Jim?”
“Certainly not Heaven. The sky is red, not blue, no white clouds and certainly no grass. A geologically unstable area with an active volcano nearby. Plenty of smoke, but at least no lava. And there is a big and swollen sun like no sun—or star—I have ever seen before. It is light red in hue, not white or blue, which explains the russet coloring of the landscape.”
“Where are we?”
“Well—” I groped for something intelligent to say. “Well
we know now that we're not on Vulkann,” was the best I could come up with. “And …”
She noticed my hesitation. “And?”
“I just had a glimpse.”
“Some glimpse! You should see your face—you've gone all gray.”
I tried to laugh at this, but it came out as a pathetic gurgle. “Yes, I saw someone—or something. For just the shortest instant I could see sort of a figure, going away, fast. Biped, erect.” My voice ran down and she looked very concerned. “Sorry. I'm just being stupid. It really moved too fast for me to see any details. But I think, no I'm sure, that it had a tail. And … it was bright red.”
There was a long silence before she spoke.
“You're right. We're certainly not in Heaven. How is your theology?”
“Not too good—but good enough to know that I should not be thinking what I am thinking. Before you arrived I did a little theological digging in the net about the Heaven concept and all the afterworlds and afterlife, to find out more facts, to get some insight as to what it was all about. I'm afraid that my early religious education was more than neglected. Here is how it goes. There are as many concepts of Heaven as there are dif ferent religions. What I did was outline the Heaven as seen by the attendees at the Temple of Eternal Truth and search for comparisons. I found a really interesting assortment of religions with a great variety of names. I narrowed these down to the ones that featured a dichotomy of Heaven and Hell, which are places that are occupied after you die. There is an object called a soul, which you can't see or find or anything like that. It comes from somewhere unspecified. The description was pretty vague at this point. This soul, in some undescribed manner, is supposed to be you. Or the essence of you. Don't look at me like that I'm not making it up! Anyway, this soul wants to end up in Heaven. There is a mention also of a sort of halfway house called Purgatory. And, I'm sure that you have heard of it, a direct opposite kind of place called Hell.”
She looked shocked. “Then you think that … perhaps we have ended up in this place called Hell?”
“Well, until a better idea comes along—and I hope it wil!—that seems to be the conclusion … .”
There was a distant rumbling roar, the ground shivered beneath my feet. A sudden weight seemed to press down and I dropped to my knees, put my hands out to break my fall. I was heavy, suddenly very heavy; Sybil was sprawling on the ground again.
Then the strange sensation passed, as quickly as it had come, and I stood again, shakily.
“What—was that?”
“I haven't the slightest idea. I never felt anything like it before. It was like, what? A gravity wave passing over us?”
“There is no such thing as a gravity wave.”
“There is now!”
She tried to smile, but shivered instead.
“Don't,” I said. “We're someplace strange, and it might very well be a place called Hell. But we appear to be alive—so let us get out of this cave and find out just where in Hell we are!”
She pulled away and straightened up, running her fingers through her hair. And even managed a small smile. “I bet I even look like Hell,” she said. “Let's go.”
Our little burst of enthusiasm did not last very long. As we walked on, the air grew hotter, uncomfortably hotter. We passed around a spur of rock and found out why. We recoiled from the blast of heat and looked on aghast at the scene before us. Directly ahead ran a wide river of turgid lava. Darkened slag formed on top, cracking and breaking apart as it flowed by to reveal the glowing, turgidly liquid stone below. We retreated. Retracing our steps.
“We'll try the opposite direction,” I said, then coughed. Sybil did not answer, just nodded in agreement. Her throat must have been as dry as mine; she would have been just as thirsty. Was there any water in this parched landscape? The answer did not bear thinking about.
Something else did not bear thinking about. Angelina.
Slakey must have sent her someplace just the way he had sent us. To Heaven I hoped. I hoped even harder that it was not to this terrible planet that she had gone.
We retraced our path past the cave mouth from which we had emerged and stumbled on through a landscape of rolling gravel dunes. It was still hot, but not the ovenlike furnace that we had just left.
“A moment,” Sybil said, stopping and sitting on a wide boulder. “I'm a little tired.” I nodded and sat beside her.
“Not surprising. Whatever that paralysis web was it certainly didn't do us any good. Physically or mentally.”
“I feel beat—and depressed. If I knew how to quit I would.”
Looking at the despair in her face, hearing the echo of exhaustion in her voice—I grew angry. This fine, strong, attractive agent should not be reduced like this by one man.
“I hate you Slakey!” I shouted. Jumping to my feet and shaking my fist at the sky. A rumble of a distant volcano was not much of an answer. I got even angrier. “You will not get away with this. We are going to get out of this place, yes we are. The air on this planet must have come from someplace, from living green plants. We'll find them—and you cannot stop us!”
“You are wonderful, Jim,” Sybil said, standing and smoothing down her wrinkled and filthy dress. “Of course we will go on. And of course we will win.”
I nodded angry agreement. Then pointed down the valley. “That way, away from the lava and the volcanoes. It will be a lot better.”
And it was. As we walked the air became cooler. After a bit, when the valley widened out, I caught a glimpse of green far ahead. I did not want to mention it at first—but then Sybil saw it as well.
“Green,” she said firmly. “Grass or trees or something like that ahead. Or is it just wishful thinking?”
“No way! I can see it as well and it is a very cheering sight indeed. Forward!”
We almost ran as the verdant landscape opened up ahead. It was grass, knee-high, cool and slightly damp as we pushed
our way through it. There were clumps of trees farther ahead, then more and more of them, almost a small forest.
“Good old chlorophyll,” I exulted. “Bottom of the food chain and from whence all life doth spring. Capturing the sun's energy to manufacture food …”
“And water?”
“You better believe it. There has to be water somewhere around here—and we are going to find it—”
“Shhh,” she shhhsed. “Do you hear that? A sort of rustling, like dry leaves.”
I did hear it, a light crackling sound that was coming towards us from the forest. Then something small came out from under the trees and moved hesitantly into the grass.
“Well, Hello,” I said to the tiny reddish-brown form that emerged. It looked up at me with button-black eyes and squealed with fright.
The squeal was echoed by a louder and more angry squeal from the forest. There was a thunder of running hooves and a giant avenging form burst out from under the trees, snorting with massive maternal protectiveness. A good two meters from snuffling nose to twitching tail. Covered all over with protective spines now rigidly erect.
Sybil gasped with horror.
I smiled and cried out, “Sooooy, pig, pig, pig!”
“Jim—what is it?”
“One of the most endearing and lovely creatures in the galaxy, friend of my youth, companion to man. It is a—porcuswine!”
She looked at me as though she thought I was going mad.
“Endearing? Is it going to attack?”
“Not if we don't threaten her swinelet.” The tiny creature had lost its fright when its monster dam had appeared and had nosed aside the protecting quills to find some refreshing milk.
I moved slowly, bending over to pick up a windfall branch. Beady and suspicious eyes followed my every movement.

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