Inferno (24 page)

Presently I got up and found the stream and drank from it. The water was clear and sweet. There is the peace of deep sleep, and once I had thought there would be peace in death. I drank again, then lay with my fingers trailing in the water. Peace in death: I’d found it.

But Benito was on his feet. “Onward!” he cried, and began to climb. The handholds were not difficult, and he moved like a spider monkey, or like a fat man who no longer weighs anything at all.

He looked down from the inward-tilting gray slope of grotto roof. “A four-thousand-mile climb, if Dante was half right!” he bellowed cheerfully. “Are you coming?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“What did you say?”

“No!”

I sighed in exasperation when I saw him climbing back down, but I’d half-expected it. He dropped the last few feet, and it did seem he fell like a settling balloon, too slowly. “What was it Satan said to you?”

“He asked me what I would say to God.”

“Well?”

“I have to know something before I can speak to God at all.”

Benito waited.

“I have to know the purpose of Hell.”

“Come and ask Him.”

“You don’t get it. Every torture in Hell was too much too late. Punishment? But it’s
infinite
punishment for things that are
little
in comparison. Dracula caused a lot of people a lot of pain and death, but it
ended
. George only lied to people to make them buy things! And what about the fat lady in the Vestibule?

“What’s the
point
? To teach us a lesson? But we’re
dead
. Revenge, punishment? Completely out of proportion. Balance? Does the universe need as much pain in it as pleasure? I couldn’t
take
Heaven if that was the case.”

“There is a reason, and the reason is good. I
know
.”

“Yeah? I don’t. There’s only one
possible
excuse for Hell, and I almost missed it in the ravings of a crazy psychiatrist. It has to be the final training ground. If nothing can get a soul into Heaven in its
life
, there’s still Hell, God’s last attempt to get his attention. Like a catatonic in a hotbox, like me in that bottle, if Hell won’t make a man yell for help, then it was still worth a try.”

Benito was nodding. “You may be right. You may have found the purpose of Hell.”

“Yeah. Yeah, but do you see where it leaves me?
Everyone
in Hell has to be able to leave once he’s learned enough about himself.
Everyone
, even the trees in the Wood of Suicides, even the poor devils in the boiling pitch and the sullen types anchored under the lake. Even the ones who think they’re satisfied, the ones in the First Circle. And I can’t leave Hell until I’m sure they can do it.”

Benito nodded. “We go back.”

“No, no, you idiot!” I was furious. “How can I tell anyone he can leave unless I know you did it? You’re going up! And I’m going to watch you do it!”

He thundered, “Carpenter, you must still learn humility!”

“Granted. And you?”

“But they need me. They . . . ah. They have you.”

“They have me.” I put out my hand. “Good-bye, Benito. Good luck. I hope you find—”

He stepped past my hand and wrapped his arms around me and squeezed all the air out of me. I said something like “Huff!” and hugged him back. We held the embrace for a long moment. Then Benito released me and turned away fast—I couldn’t see his face—and started climbing.

I

lay flat on the rock and looked up. At the end of the vertical tube, the pinpoint light source had all but vanished, leaving Benito nearly invisible. Many hours later the light brightened again, and I knew I was seeing the sun. Benito was a dark fleck that moved if I watched it long enough.

He had made good progress before the light dimmed and went out.

The water sounds burbled back from the rock walls. I lay with my arms folded behind my head, taking joy in laziness. The peace of this place was almost tangible. Worrying seemed inappropriate here: a breach of good manners.

What did they do to Billy? Did the priest get out all right? How could any thinking being do such a thing to Mrs. Herrnstein? I’ve got to get back
—

But I felt no sense of urgency. The damned had all the time there was, and so did I. Hell was the violent ward of a hospital for the theologically insane. Some could be cured.

I would have to return to Hell. I was afraid of that; not afraid of the pains, or that the demons would catch me, because the pains would heal, and pain in the right cause is a badge of honor. As to the demons, there’d be no chance they could hold me. Not now. I knew.

No. My fear was the doubts that would return. They would come, and I’d just have to live with them, and fight them with my memory of these few moments of peace. There were no doubts here. None at all.

The light was back, and there was a tiny mote in it that moved even as I watched. My eyes were better than human now; else I’d never have seen him at all.

The light was dimming with sunset when the mote moved out of it and left it clear.

INFERNO NOTES

Our first work in collaboration was
The Mote in God’s Eye
. It was enormously successful, and has since become something of a science-fiction classic.

We are often asked to comment on successful collaborations, since most don’t work. We have talked about this so often that we have devised some working rules that cover our situation; others may have different methods. In our case we begin with mutual appreciation: if one of us thinks something is wrong, then there’s something wrong, and it’s time to fix it. Although there is always a “senior” author whose decision is final for each of our works, that has never been invoked: we have settled all our differences through discussion, often discovering in the process that we were both wrong.

Having established a successful collaborative team, we planned a second work,
Oath of Fealty
, a book about modern urban technology and unrest. It eventually became a bestseller, but we had hardly begun it when Larry Niven said, one night over coffee, that he had wanted to do a modern sequel to the first book of Dante’s
Divine Comedy
since he first read it. Niven had been fascinated by Dante’s
Inferno
, but had always been concerned about the theological/philosophical underpinnings of the book. The naïve Roman Catholicism of Dante Alighieri would hardly do for a twentieth-century readership.

Jerry Pournelle immediately said, “Suppose we look at Dante as C. S. Lewis might have? Lewis’s
The Great Divorce
looks at an entirely different geography of Hell, but it certainly provides a consistent philosophy.” We continued the discussion, and before the night was over we had the beginnings of a novel, including the main character, Allen Carpenter, a somewhat pretentious but successful science-fiction writer modeled on a composite of several people we knew. We had also determined the theme of the book: Carpenter is dead, and in the Inferno, but he does not believe in Heaven and Hell. The book is about his efforts to discover where he is, and why. Our Inferno would employ Lewis’s theology and Dante’s geography.

Despite taking high school Latin, neither of us reads Italian well enough to work from the original. We chose the Dante translation by John Ciardi, and it is from that translation that the quotations from Dante are drawn. We can recommend it.

The book was written quickly. The reader can move through quickly as a tourist, but Carpenter—and therefore the authors—was actually there, and it was not an enjoyable experience for him. We tried to keep that experience short.

Inferno
was far more successful than anyone had predicted. Although it was never on the bestseller list, it went through more than twenty printings, and has never been out of print for more than a few years since it was first published in 1976. We are told that our version of
Inferno
inspired a new wave of interest in Dante among college students, and was responsible for the release of a new printing of the Ciardi translation. There are worse movements to inspire.

The book’s success demanded a sequel, and over the years we were urged to write one. The inevitable temptation was to call that sequel “Purgatorio” and use the geography of the second of Dante’s books of the
Divine Comedy
, but that was never very tempting.
Inferno
is certainly the most interesting of Dante’s books; besides, those in
Purgatorio
are already saved and know they are. Carpenter had no such surety.

Shortly after the millennium we agreed that we had not exhausted the potential of the
Inferno
. Allen Carpenter had not entirely discovered the nature of Hell and why he was in it. We also realized that we had not entirely dealt with the theological revisions accepted by the Vatican II Council, although it was clear that Vatican II required doctrinal changes that didn’t entirely fit Dante’s notions. Our working title for the second work was “Dante Meets Vatican II.” Those matters and more appear in
Inferno II
(forthcoming).

Larry Niven, Chatsworth, December 2007

Jerry Pournelle, Studio City, December 2007