Watson, Ian - Novel 08 (16 page)

 
          
“Wear
your nose out?” laughed Denise.

 
          
“Wear
the track out,
dummy.”

 
          
“It’s
odd,” interrupted Sean. “Endless repetitions ought to reinforce a pathway in
the psyche. But here ...” Consider his own reaction to the all-pervading pain—no
longer pain now so much as a state of hyperaesthesia, a dawning of
hyperconsciousness. “Maybe repetition
does
burn out the old tracks! Allow new ones to take their place. That’s a kind of
mental alchemy. Distillation and redistillation a hundred times over of the
same material for years on end, till one day the . . . stone, the transforming
substance appears inside you. Then you pass out of Hell? Preliminaries take
place in the Gardens. Here’s the hard work with the alembics and athanors.
You’re right about minimum energy paths, Muthoni. Either we can slide over
into some mad parking orbit in this distillery—or we can
go
.
On.
”

 
          
“That
way,” repeated Jeremy. “I fancy it.” The ice field looked quite uninviting,
even to people whose feet were burning. It stretched away and away. One would
need to find food. One would need to fish. Muthoni still had her pitch fork.
Now it would be a fish spear.

 
          
They
walked till they felt like dropping,
then
staggered on
some more till they actually did drop: right into sleep. Unless they achieved
sleep at the first attempt, as they found over the next immeasurable stretch of
time, the frozen surface kept them tossing and turning; the more so once it
began to melt—then they were sliding and shivering on a skin of chilled water.
Or else the skin refroze, glueing them in an ice cradle which one volunteer
must tear
himself
free of, to melt the others free.
Their bodies were tough, though; they withstood. Then, to get food to keep
going, they must search for a treacherous patch of thinner ice to smash and
poise over like Eskimos, waiting for their fishy raw breakfast to surface . . .

 
          
They
travelled for twenty or thirty sleep-times in this manner. Knobs of islands
were rare, far from the shore, and all those they came across were defended
either by solitary hermit gladiators or else by lonely brooding machines which
brayed out questions then chased them off with volleys of iceballs. Hell was
hardly overpopulated, however. Loneliness begat crowding; crowding begat
loneliness: a demographic see-saw. How many fertilized human ova had there been
in
Copernicus?
Twenty
thousand?
Plus the original thousand cold-sleepers.
The population of Hell couldn’t be any greater now—especially since no children
were bom. People
couldn't
, thought Sean,
be devolving into animals . . .

 
          
Eventually,
Jeremy was on his feet again,
belly
healed, keeping
pace with them.

 
          
Eventually,
too, they sighted a further shore: a rim of dark red sand and heat haze which
promised paradise to their frozen bodies ... for the first few thawing seconds,
at least.

 
          
There were no
directions in Hell . . .

 
          
A
combo of musicians plucked and blew and banged out discords on the hot desert
shore beyond the ice. One player was crucified on the strings of an enormous
harp. Another lay on top of an organistrum, turning its handle. A third banged
the bass drum with his head . . .

 
          
“Oh no!”
Denise rounded on Jeremy accusingly. But Jeremy
only laughed.

 
          
“No
directions in Hell: isn’t that what you said,
Athlon?”

 
          
“We
walked in a straight line!” protested Muthoni. “I was watching the stars. They
can’t lie! This is a planet. It has a surface, and a north and south. We must
be somewhere else! How can different places be the same place?”

 
          
Sean
stepped forward from ice into fire, feeling a moment’s blessed relief then a
new sort of pain.

 
          
“They
aren’t the same people,” he said slowly. “This isn’t the same place.”

 
          
“Look
at that guy crawling round with the score on his arse. Look at old toad-face,
the conductor! Look at the horse’s bones! We’ve walked round in a bloody great
circle.”

 
          
Sean
shook his head. “It’s the same
scene.
But it isn’t the same place.”

 
          
As
on the other side of the ice, the players achieved temporary integration. Now
they were playing Richard Strauss. The bones of the horse rose and danced.
Organs strung themselves together in the rib cage. Sinews sprouted. Veins and
arteries spread like desert vines in a rainstorm.

 
          
“First
Parsifal
—now
Strauss!
Why don’t they play medieval music?” complained Denise. “Is
that the whole point? They’re playing the wrong music, anyway?”

 
 
          
“Score
one for the away team,” laughed Jeremy, but apparently he didn’t know.

 
          
Then
the music grated, and the horse collapsed into a heap of bones again.

 
          
“See,”
pointed Sean, “that’s a
woman
banging
her head against the drum, and the crucified man isn’t blond—he has black hair.
They’re definitely different people. There must be zones in Hell where the same
scene repeats itself!
Just as
they're
repeating the same events
ad nauseam.
Is Hell so impoverished, Jeremy? Is that an
essential quality of Hell: impoverishment? You can
go,
as far as you want, but you’ll arrive at the same scene some
place else?”

 
          
“Quite
a small painting, really, to wrap around a planet,” shrugged Jeremy. “I told
you there were quite a few Cavalcades here and there in the Gardens.
As well as quite a lot of empty space.”

 
          
Sean
had a piece of fish bone stuck between his teeth. His jaw had been too numb for
him to notice this before. Now, in the heat, his gums felt inflamed. Angrily he
dislodged the sliver of bone and spat it out. His spit sizzled as it hit the
soil.

 
          
“Is
God
constrained
by
Knossos
? Can He only imagine what is in
Knossos
’s mind? Incredible! Is He impoverished,
Himself? He’s supposed to be the Creator of this damn world. But what has He
actually created?”

 
          
“Quite
a lot,” said Jeremy, offended.
“Really, quite a lot!
Soil, air, plants, transmutation towers, bodies.”

 
          
“But
He needs inspiration.” Sean shook his head. “I suppose a superbeing must be a
kind of now-omnipotent God! He didn’t make the universe. He’s only part of it,
the same as we
are,
whatever weird kind of part He
is.”

 
          
“If
we were all divine Gods,” said Jeremy floridly, “and we were to sit together at
table, who should bring us food? We bring Him food—for thought. He digests it.
Oh, but He
is
a God. He is a God whom
we can
know
—rather than some
abstraction, some nowhere-nobody. You’re quite right. He isn’t something
‘outside’ the universe. Why shouldn’t a universe give rise to a God—rather than
the other way about? But He certainly has the power to create, maintain His
creation,
raise
us from the dead. You’d better believe
it.”

 
          
“What
the devil
is
He?”

 
          
“Devil?
Ah, it’s a while since I’ve been here, but . . .
that
I believe I can show you.” Jeremy smirked.
“Not everything’s repeated. Some things are unique.”

 
          
Abandoning
the musicians to their frustrating exercises, the party walked inland, in so
far as away from the ice was ‘inland’ . . .

 
          
Yet
it was. Hell mightn’t have directions, if the same scene could repeat itself in
a number of places, but as they trod the hot soil past burning towers and ruins
where ignorant miniarmies clashed by night—striving to become less ignorant by
wearing their ignorance down to the bare bones?—Sean became aware of ... a
tendency, a slope. It wasn’t in the terrain as such, but in
his
own
steps—in the way he planted one foot in front of the other. It felt
as though he was walking steadily downhill, even though his eyes told him
differently. Something drew them all ‘downhill’ like dust down the gravity well
of an invisible world.

 
          
“Hang
on.” Sean looked back the way they had come. Still plainly visible was the
expanse of red soil, the ruins,
the
random skirmishes.
Nothing sloped uphill; and yet . . .

 
          
He
started to retrace his steps.

 
          
“We’re
heading
this
way,” called Muthoni.

 
          
“This
way, that way: I think there’s only one way now. It’s a new variation on the
theme of no-direction. Can’t you feel it? Wait a bit—I won’t be long.”

 
          
Jeremy
watched brightly. He appeared to be cheered by Sean’s behavior. “He’s right.
Perceptive of him!”

 
          
“What
does he want: a private pee?”

 
          
Sean
found it impossible to walk a straight course. He could see perfectly well
where he was going, but his feet paid no attention to what his eyes told him.
Crab-like, they meandered to one side of his intended line. He re-oriented
himself and marched off again. And found
himself
sidling off-course. Once more he stepped
out,
this
time with his eyes closed, and did not stop until he bumped into Denise, who
stepped aside a moment too late. He had come around full circle.

 
          
He
stumbled, laughing, into her arms. On the impetus of his stumble he kissed her.

 
          
“Try
it yourself,
cherie
.
We’re inside a horizon we can’t see—but our bodies obey it! Or our minds do; I
think it must be a psychic horizon. That means—doesn’t it, Jeremy?—that we’re
on our way out.”

 
          
They
stared at him, Jeremy nodding.

 
          
“We’re
going down the sink hole of Hell. Let’s hope the sink isn’t blocked. Maybe Hell
and the Gardens have the shape of a Klein bottle in the God’s
mind .
.

 
          
“The
sink isn’t blocked. It has a filter, though.” Jeremy winked. “You know who.”

 
          
“The
one and only Devil, right?
God’s extension in Hell?
He
has to be His assistant, doesn’t he? We can provide all the rest of the
deviltries ourselves.”

 
          
“Usually
one can’t find this place for a long time. It’s a hell of a job,” nodded
Jeremy. “Of course everyone, in their own way, finds it eventually. We should
consider ourselves privileged.”

 
          
“Privileged
... to meet the Devil?” cried Denise. “What kind of Devil?
Oh
no!”
For she already knew.

 
          
“Bosch’s
Devil,” said Sean.
“The blue, bird-headed gobbler of souls
squatting on his privy of a throne.
If the God’s true to the painting,
then that’s who.”

 
          
“Like
I said,” agreed Jeremy.

 
          
“Look
over there, against the skyline—do you see it?”

 
          
They
strained their eyes. However, all that Denise and Muthoni could make out as yet
was a vague white hump against the horizon.

 
          
Sean
could see what was there quite clearly. Was Hell dark primarily in order to
force the eyesight—and the inner vision—to evolve? There was an old saying:
Nihil erat in intellectu quod non prius in
sensu
—nothing could exist in the intellect which didn’t first exist in the
senses. Here, the sensory environment—the visible darkness, the burning
unconsuming heat—assaulted one’s senses with paradoxes. Was this so that the
intellect, which did not care for paradoxes, could conceive the paradox of a
God?

 
          
A
shooting star raced down the sky, reminding Sean briefly of space; of the
existence of an alien solar system where, objectively, they were—objects of the
alien God’s manipulations. Yet how familiar (though grotesque) was this
scenery which He had sculpted for them . . .

 
          
Muthoni
rubbed her hands together.
“All downhill from now on, eh?
I guess we’ve almost come through. Just the Devil to deal with ...” She peered
into the darkness.

 
          
“All
I need now is a cheerleader!” groaned Jeremy.

 
          
“Well,
it hasn’t been
too
abominable. Apart
from madness, and cold, and heat ...”

 
          
Jeremy
nursed his belly, and looked as though he was about to fold up again. “That’s
what’s bothering me. Minimum energy pathway—complacency comes before a fall. ”

 
          
“The hell with that!”
Sean snapped out of his reverie. “It
is
downhill—one-way-only. I just proved
that.”

 
          
“Gueule du Diable!”
Denise shivered.
“Downhill into the Devil’s gob.”

 
          
As
they walked on across the empty darkling plain towards the white shape looming
on the horizon, Jeremy cast furtive looks around.

 
          
Even
so, he almost missed the coming of the demons.