Authors: Larry Niven
Put that way it sounded impossible. I said, “So the question is, how tough are you?”
He laughed. “Well, you can start by trying to get out of the swamp!” He laughed again. “Come on, Else, they’re filthy! We can help them clean up!” He started toward me.
Else was laughing maniacally. “So you had Benito Mussolini as your personal bodyguard. But he is not here now.” She had a thick Germanic accent. “I recognized him, you know. I saw him when you pulled me out of the swamp. You fascists always stick together.”
“Whoa, I’m no fascist!”
“Of course you would protest that. Bart does also. But we know, we know.”
“Now you stop that.” Bart shrugged and gave me a look that invited sympathy. “She’s always doing that. You just come along with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I told him. “But you can get out of here if you come with me.”
“Sure we can. But if I go with you, Else here will be able to leave.”
“You’re staying here just to keep her from getting out?”
“Damn bitch thinks all men are fascists. Why should she be able to leave? She belongs here!”
“You see?” Else said. “Typical authoritarian behavior. He would rate very high on the F scale. He belongs here, indeed he belongs here.” There was a mad light in her eyes.
“Hey, stop!” I shouted. “Don’t you remember? I fished you out of that swamp!”
“Oh, I remember you well,” Else said. “I remember your male dominance, your demonstration of superiority over me. Why should I not remember? And you are proud of it, nein?”
“You were catatonic. Breathing water. I pulled you out. I was trying to help you.”
“Ja, ja, of course.” She looked over at Bart. “Him first, I think, ja?”
“Yeah. Sounds right. Watch out for his woman, though. That Benito was one strong bastard.” The two spread out and came toward me from opposite directions. “In you go,” Bart said.
Before they could get to me, half a dozen mud–covered people charged into the clearing.
Their leader was shouting. “There he is!” He pointed at Bart. “Now we have him!”
“Sieg Heil!” The followers ran toward Bart and Else.
Bart and Else turned as one. They exchanged glances, and then moved quickly. “So, Commander Rockwell,” Else said. She was laughing. Bart and Else moved in, one on either side of the leader, and before the others could interfere they had him in some kind of practiced grip and were frog–marching him down the hill. The followers stood dumbfounded.
“Help!” the leader yelled.
I grabbed Rosemary’s hand. “Time to get out of here!”
“You know it!”
We ran down to the water’s edge and turned left. As we ran off we heard shouts and splashes.
• • •
S
ylvia was chortling.
She stopped abruptly so I broke off a twig. “I still don’t understand what happened,” I told her.
“You don’t remember Commander George Lincoln Rockwell and his American Nazi Party?”
I shook my head. “No, should I?”
“Not really. They seem to be about as effective in Hell as they were in the United States.” Sylvia giggled. “Else, you said her name was.”
“Something like that. It wasn’t Elsie or Elsa, something in between.”
“And she was catatonic when you first saw her?”
“Yeah, lying there in the muck hating everyone. Why, do you know who she was?”
“Yes, I think I do,” Sylvia said. “Very appropriate antagonist for Mr. Rockwell. Else Frenckel. One of Freud’s disciples, from Vienna days. Came to America, married a Berkeley professor. There was a book about how American men are all authoritarian fascists. She was one of the authors, but a man got most of the credit for the book.
Authoritarian Men,
something like that. Required reading in college.”
“I must have missed it.”
“Actually, I wish I had. It set me brooding over how bad the world is. Of course, I brooded about everything else, too.”
“And the others?”
“Allen, you really don’t remember Commander George Lincoln Rockwell? The American Nazi Party?”
“No. I guess I knew something like that existed. But Sylvia, real Nazis? Wouldn’t they be deeper in Hell?”
“Real ones would,” Sylvia said.
• • •
R
osemary and I ran through the swamp until we were sure we’d lost Bart and Else. There was a trail, and it looked like the one I’d taken with Benito, but there weren’t any landmarks.
The trail wasn’t very wide. We came around a bush and found a man lying in the middle of the path. He was breathing hard. I got close but not close enough to let him grab me. “I know the way out. You can come with us if you like.”
“That’s nice of you. What’s the catch?”
“It will be hard going.”
“It’s hard going here. You sure you know the way?”
“Yes.”
“Great. I’ll be right with you, just let me find a stick.”
“You don’t need a stick.”
“Sure I do. With your help and a stick I can give that Arab shmegege what he’s got coming to him.”
“We can’t wait for that,” I told him.
“But he bit me! He and his friend, they held my head in the mud and he bit my ear. It’s only justice! You don’t care about justice?”
He was still looking for a weapon when we left him behind.
“There’s a building ahead,” Rosemary said.
“Yeah.” I recognized it. An old stone signal tower, right where Dante had said. The last time I’d been here, it flashed lights when I got close, signaling for the boatman, but this time there was nothing. I saw why when we got to the water’s edge.
There was a boat pulled up partway on the shore. It was much smaller than Charon’s ferryboat. This one was about twenty feet long, with room for a dozen passengers if they liked each other. A robed man was sitting on the edge of the boat staring out into space. He had a crown in his hand. He put it on when we came around the tower. I’d met him on my last trip through this circle.
“You again. Where’s Benito?” Then he saw my companion and stood. “Ms. Bennett? Welcome, welcome.”
“How do you know me?” She stared at him. An elderly but still fit bearded man with clean robes, elaborately stitched, and a polished gold crown. He was quite handsome now that he wasn’t scowling. “We have never met.”
“No, madam, we have not, but I know you. I am Phlegyas, king of this circle. I was once a king of men. Now I am the boatman. I was told to watch for you. They are expecting you in the City.”
“How can they possibly be expecting me in the City?” she demanded. “And what city?”
“Dis,” Phlegyas said. “The capital city of Hell. As to how they know, I suppose Minos sent word.” He turned to me. “You’re wanting passage, too?”
“Yes. This has been willed —”
“I know where it was willed. I don’t have to like it, I don’t even have to believe it, I just have to do it. You learned the formula from Benito. Where is he?” Phlegyas looked thoughtful. “Decided he’d had enough, I expect, and left you to carry on his work.”
“Something like that,” I told him. “How do you know this?”
“It has happened before. So get in, get in,” Phlegyas said. “No rest for an old man.”
“The boat looks new,” I said.
“It is new. Not the first new one, either.”
“What?”
He shrugged. “Madam, if you please. Carpentier, get in if you are going. I can’t wait all day.”
We got into the boat, and Rosemary sat down. “Majesty, why do you have a new boat?” she asked.
He spoke to her as if I weren’t there.
“Madam, for millennia I would not get a new boat in three centuries. I have had three in the last decade. This is the Kingdom of the Wrathful. When the authorities allowed inmates to explode, it is natural that many who can do that come here.”
“Exploding inmates? You mean the fanatics who blow themselves up?”
He ignored me.
“Majesty, who are these people? How can they explode?” Rosemary asked.
“I don’t know. Some shout about the greatness of God, then they explode. Others speak of centuries of oppression and demand isolation.”
“Isolation?”
“Something like that. To be left to themselves alone. It was in no language I have learned.”
“Gift of tongues,” I said. “It works in strange ways. Have you always had that gift?”
“Since I arrived,” Phlegyas said.
“So they disturb your peaceful kingdom,” I said.
“It has never been peaceful here,” Phlegyas said. “Nor is that the purpose of my domain. Hah!” He used his oar to smack some poor subject trying to climb into the boat. Others nearby roiled the waters. Phlegyas put his back into sculling, and the boat sped through the Styx. I think I could have water–skied behind it.
“They ever get you?” I asked. “If they blow up your boat it must blow you up, too.”
He didn’t answer.
“So where do you come back together?” I asked him.
He laughed. “At my boathouse.” He laughed again. “Are you wondering what will happen to you if one of them gets you? Good question. I don’t know. Were you alone I might find it amusing to learn.”
Rosemary shifted warily.
“Sit in the middle, my lady,” Phlegyas warned her. “And be careful. Some of my subjects resent people getting across the Styx without getting wet.” He slowed, then swung his oar to beat back an arm that had come over the side of the boat. A wave of attackers followed, and Phlegyas swung his oar vigorously to drive them back into the swamp. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
“Well done!” Rosemary said.
“Thank you. Of course there’s not much I can do if one of the new ones gets to us.”
“You’ll think of something,” she said. “How did you get this position?”
“You never heard of me?”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t have a very good education,” she said.
“I find that astonishing, given the official interest in you.”
“Should I be concerned?” Rosemary asked anxiously.
“Madam, I do not know.”
“Tell me of the rulers here.”
“The overlord is Lucifer, once an angel of God. His commands are given through the dark angels, and those humans who have been given domains of their own.”
“Such as yourself, Majesty?”
“Yes.”
“But if you are human, you can leave,” I said. “You can escape this place!”
“So I have been told.”
“Who told you?” I asked.
Phlegyas laughed. “Benito was but one of a great many who have tempted me to leave my assigned place.”
“And you always refuse. Why?”
“Escape to where?” he demanded. “Will it be to a place where I have worth? Where I will be respected? Where I have power? Here I reign as king.” He paused to kick a dark bearded face that appeared over the gunwale. “Will I reign where you would lead me?”
“I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” I said.
“How came you here, Majesty?” Rosemary prompted.
“I was a king,” Phlegyas said. “The priest of Apollo raped my daughter. I invaded Delphi and burned his temple down.”
“Okay.” It seemed a plausible reaction, if he couldn’t get to the priest. “But how can they blame you for that?” I demanded.
“Indeed, I thought so, too.” He used his oar to beat back a woman trying to climb into the boat. “My grandson was born of that union. He was a great physician, so great that many said Apollo himself must have been his father. I have been told that the rape was necessary to produce him, and I had no right to interfere with the will of Zeus and the gods by taking revenge for my daughter’s rape.”
“Don’t tempt the gods,” Rosemary said.
“Be watchful and don’t tempt the gods,” Phlegyas said. “I recall saying that. Where did you hear that?”
“A story we read in college mentioned you,” Rosemary said. “By the Danish woman who wrote
Out of Africa.
This was a really scary story.”
I asked, “So Minos put you here?”
“He did.”
“As king?”
He didn’t answer. The boat was slowing now. The fog was clearing, and I could see we were coming to a landing.
Chapter 11
Fifth Circle
The City Of Dis
And my good Master said: “Even now, my son,
The city draweth near whose name is Dis,
With the grave citizens, with the great throng.”
And I: “Its mosques already, Master, clearly
Within there in the valley I discern
Vermillion, as if issuing from the fire
They were.” And he to me: “The fire eternal.
”
T
hey were waiting for us at the docks. Three humans and two — others. For a moment I thought of diving overboard, but that would be silly. I’d be a thousand years getting out of that swamp. I remembered how clear it had all seemed in the grotto. I was free, the demons couldn’t hold me against my will. They couldn’t hold anyone who really wanted God’s help. I had been certain of that. Now I wasn’t so sure.
Was it time to pray? I didn’t think so. I didn’t know God well enough to pray.
The docks were more a landing than docks. Stone steps led down into the water. The water was murky. If there were any condemned souls lurking near the landing, they were staying well hidden.
The landing was marble, polished stone, about a hundred feet wide, and fifty feet between the water and the wall. The wall beyond the landing was a hundred feet high, higher in places. It went on out of sight in either direction. All along the wall there were battlements, towers, balconies that jutted out over the swamp, all at least fifty feet up, haphazardly placed. This wasn’t designed for defense, although it sure looked to be proof against any assault that didn’t involve cannon.
I would have to get through that wall. Dante got through when Virgil summoned an angel to break in the gates. I didn’t know how to do that. Either they’d rebuilt the gates or more likely we were at a different part of the wall, because the gates I could see were solidly closed.
Benito had got us inside the wall by duping a clerk. I didn’t think that was going to work this time.
The three humans in the greeting party were all men in gray robes, and they looked to be middle–aged. They smiled in greeting. “Welcome, Ms. Bennett. We’ve been expecting you.”
They ignored me entirely.
I hoped the other two in the welcoming party would ignore me, as well. They were demons. Black skin, horns, tail, like the species that swarmed the Fifth Bolgia. On my last trip through I’d almost laughed the first time I saw them. Clichés! But of course Dante’s description had been working its way through the culture: copycat poems and books, newspaper cartoons, Walt Disney …