Authors: Larry Niven
“What’s wrong with me? You can get out but I can’t. Why?”
“Attitude,” I said.
“You don’t have a conscience,” Sylvia said. “You know right from wrong, but you just don’t care.”
“Maybe that’s right. So what?”
“So it’s God’s universe, and He says you should care,” Sylvia said.
“Sylvia, I’m scared now.”
“You ought to be scared! Stay scared! They do horrible things to those who betray friends!”
“All true,” I told him.
“Worse than out there?”
“Yes.”
“So like what do I got to do?”
“Rescue Father Steve,” Sylvia said.
“I don’t even know how to find him.”
“He’ll be in the Wood of the Suicides. If you look for him, you’ll find him,” Sylvia said.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“And if I find him and — and what? You said he’s a tree! What can I do with a tree?”
“I was a tree,” Sylvia said. “Allen stacked broken branches around me. Then he got fire and burned me.”
“You’re both crazy.” He was awed. “Didn’t that hurt?”
“Worse than anything that ever happened to me in my life,” Sylvia said. “But I burned to smoke and then I wasn’t a tree anymore. And that’s what you have to do for Father Steve.”
“What happens if I don’t?”
“You betrayed a friend,” I said. “And you didn’t make it right afterward. Angelo, I did that. I pushed a friend into the Pit of the Evil Counselors. He may even have belonged there. But it was betrayal! Just before it was too late, I turned back and helped get him out.”
“Listen to him, Angelo,” Sylvia said. “It’s your best chance.” She shook her head. “I don’t know everything. Maybe a saint will rescue you. God wants to love you —”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard all that. Jesus loves me, this I know. So does Ragtime Cowboy Joe.”
“It sounds silly because it’s all wrong,” Sylvia said. “I didn’t say God loves you. Maybe He does, but I sure don’t love you right now. You’re not lovable.”
“You want me back in the fire.” He looked nervously at my pickaxe.
“No, Angelo, I want you to be the kind of person who doesn’t deserve to be in the fire. And right now, you deserve to be in that fire as much as Father Steve. Come with us and that’s what you will get. Or worse. Far worse.”
“You’re scaring me again!”
“I hope to God I am scaring you,” Sylvia said. “Being scared is the only thing that’s going to save you.”
“You’re saying I need to go back in that fire ‘cause there’s worse will happen if I don’t. You ever been in that desert?”
“Yes, we both have.”
“You’re saying I can’t stay with you when you get out of here. You won’t let me?”
“No, that’s not up to us,” I told him. “We won’t decide. You think you can talk your way out of anything, don’t you? Angelo, is any of this getting through to you at all?”
“Sure. You hate me. God hates me.”
“It’s not what we said, but, all right, assume that’s true,” Sylvia told him. “God hates you. Why? Because of what you did. You have to make that right so God will love you.”
“Sylvia —”
“It’s the only way he’s going to understand it, Allen. The beginning of wisdom. Angelo, if you come with us you aren’t going to get to the bottom. You won’t.”
“Which way do I go?”
I pointed. “Run that way for two hours. Count minutes if you have to. Then turn straight left and go until you see the woods. Then search the woods for Father Steve.”
“What if I see Father Danny out there?”
“Maybe you will. If you do, explain all this to him. Maybe he’ll come with you, to help.”
“Oh!” Sylvia put her hand to her mouth. “One more thing. If you see — this is going to sound silly. Just before you get to the woods you’ll see an ice–cream stand. It’s safe in there.”
“Sylvia.”
“He’ll see it, Allen.”
“Because it’s good poetry?”
“Yes, and because it’s right. Go, Angelo, it’s your only chance.”
He was standing near the edge of the dike. I wondered if I should push him off, but I knew I wasn’t going to do that. I remembered how easy it had been for me to get down to the Tenth Circle with the traitors after I pushed Benito into the pit.
God help the kid, I thought. “Go!” I shouted.
He hesitated, then ran uphill along the dike. “You’re going to throw me in there!” he shouted.
“No,” I said. “We won’t do that.”
“I don’t believe you.” He ran farther away from us.
“Come on, Allen. We’ve done all we can,” Sylvia said. She took my hand and led me down the dike. “We tried to put the fear of God in him.”
We walked until we could hear a roaring sound.
“The waterfall,” Sylvia said. She glanced back up the dike. Hell’s eternal twilight kept things dim, and the steam from the stream kept visibility down. “Is he still back there?”
“I think so. Following us. Sylvia, I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
“I don’t, either, Allen, but what can we do? If we take him farther down, he’ll end up with the Seducers. That’s if he’s lucky. Betrayers, more likely.”
“Yeah. I know —”
“You!”
Someone was shouting at us from out in the desert. I looked out to see a big man, muscled, scraggly beard with holes burned in it, long black hair hanging down his back. I thought the hair should have burned away, but it hadn’t. It took me a moment to recognize him.
“Frank,” I said.
“Yeah. Frank. You told us there was a way out of here.”
“And you told us to go to Hell,” I said. “I remember.”
“Well, I been thinking about it. I want out.”
“You know the way,” I told him.
“Allen, who is this?” Sylvia asked.
“Hell’s Angel,” I said. “He was a hitchhiker when I crossed the desert with Benito. Actually more like a highjacker. He was going to throw us off the cliff.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“Billy,” I said. “Billy showed Frank he wasn’t as tough as he thought he was.”
“Hey, man, I’m sorry,” Frank said. “We got off to a bad start, let me make it up to you.” He came to the edge and held out his hand.
“Allen, be careful.”
I didn’t trust Frank one bit. I stood looking down at him.
“Scared of me? You don’t have to. I’m a changed man,” Frank said. “I said I was sorry, didn’t I? Look, I know I did you wrong, I’m asking you to forgive me.”
I leaned over toward him.
“Allen!”
“I don’t think I have a choice,” I told Sylvia. I laid my pickaxe down and took Frank’s hand and shook it. He held on.
“Pull me up,” he said. It wasn’t quite a command, but it wasn’t a request, either.
I thought about it.
“For God’s sake, pull me out of this fire!”
I hauled him up. I’d thought he’d have been heavy, but it didn’t take much effort. He stood on the dike still holding my hand. “Jesus, that feels good,” he said. “Not to be in the fire.”
“You can let go now,” I said.
He kicked my pickaxe over the edge into the desert.
“I’ll let go when I fucking well feel like it, punk.” He looked at Sylvia. “What you staring at, sweetie? Like what you see?”
“Frank, didn’t being in that fire teach you anything at all?” I asked.
“Enough to know I don’t want back in it,” he said. “Who the hell are you people? Last time I saw you, you were driving across the desert, telling people you knew the way out of here. Then you tell me the way out is to jump off the cliff! Doreen believed you, you know. She did it. Jumped off. Never saw her again.”
Before Sylvia could ask, I said, “Another hitchhiker. She was too scared to jump. Guess she found some courage. Let go of me, Frank.”
“Just thinking what I ought to do.”
“You ought to get me my pickaxe,” I said.
“Sure. You going to call Billy?” He looked around. “Don’t see him.” Frank laughed.
Motion uphill caught his eye. Someone was coming down the dike. “Who’s that?” Frank let me go and stepped away from me. “Billy? Hey, I was just kidding,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything.”
Angelo came closer.
“You’re not Billy! You’re that damned kid, I know who you are!” Frank lunged to grab Angelo. “Got you!”
“Put me down!”
“Sure I will.” Frank half carried and half dragged Angelo to the edge of the dike.
I realized what Frank was going to do and started toward them. “Stop —”
“Stop what?” Frank shoved Angelo hard. The boy fell off the edge and down into the fire. “Just wait till I catch you again!” Frank yelled.
Angelo looked terrified. A fat fireflake fell on the back of his neck. He screamed. Then he looked to Sylvia. “Which way?”
She pointed. Frank looked to Sylvia, then back at Angelo, and before I could stop him, he grabbed Sylvia and pushed her off the edge. She fell hard.
“Now you!” Frank said.
“No.” I moved toward Frank. His eyes narrowed, and he looked the way he had when he thought he’d seen Billy coming.
I took Frank by one arm and a leg and lifted him above my head. He didn’t seem heavy at all. He hit me in the face with his free hand. I carried him to the edge and threw him out into the fireflakes. Then I bent down to reach for Sylvia. She took my hand and I lifted her back onto the dike.
Frank was standing there staring at us.
“Who the Hell are you people?” he screamed. He looked around. Angelo had vanished into the falling fireflakes. There was no one else near. Frank looked back up at us. I moved closer to the edge. My pickaxe was down there and I needed it. I jumped off.
“Want to play umbrella?” I called up to Sylvia. “We can look for Angelo, with Frank as the umbrella.”
Frank stared at us for a moment, and then ran off without a word. I reached the pickaxe up to Sylvia, and scrambled up with her lifting, until I was back on the dike.
“Maybe we should look for Angelo,” Sylvia said.
“You don’t really want to.”
“No, I don’t. And I don’t know if we should, either. He’s out there now. Maybe he really will go find Father Steve.”
“We —”
“We’d never find Father Steve,” Sylvia said. “Even if we did, it’s not our forgiveness he needs. Allen, you don’t want to rescue Father Steve.”
“No, I don’t.”
“And we can’t rescue Angelo. He has to do that for himself.”
“It doesn’t seem fair,” I said. “Father Steve is rooted. Who’ll help him?”
“If he deserves it, someone will do it,” Sylvia said.
“Sylvia, you can’t possibly know that! You just want to believe it.”
“Well, yes, Allen, I do, but isn’t it justice? We both want to believe there’s justice here.”
I thought about that as we went downhill.
The dike ended at a sheer drop–off. The stream poured endlessly over the edge into darkness. There were lights out there, far below and distant.
“It’s peaceful here,” Sylvia said.
“Want to wait awhile?”
“No, Allen. We’re on a pilgrimage, and there’s nothing to wait for.”
“A pilgrimage! Sylvia, we’re fugitives.”
“Pilgrims can be fugitives,” Sylvia said.
“Didn’t that boy disturb you?” I asked.
“Of course he did, but Allen, we didn’t do anything to him.”
“Other than scare the Hell out of him.”
“I rather hope we did that, don’t you? It was the only thing that would move him. Allen, you want everyone to be able to leave Hell. But do you really? Do you insist they be able to leave unrepentant?”
I thought about that. Who was unrepentant that I wanted out of Hell? Elena, still in the Winds? I wanted her out, but I didn’t have the courage to go back there. That place scared me. I shook my head. “Sylvia, I just don’t know what I want.”
“Sure you do. You want people to learn,” Sylvia said.
I thought about that.
“If Angelo finds Father Steve and they forgive each other, would that make you happier?”
“That would be good.”
“Maybe that’s how God feels,” Sylvia said. She laughed. “Have you got your fool’s gold? I think we’re ready.”
Chapter 20
Seventh Circle, Third Round
The Violent Against God, Nature, And Art
Part Four
Geryon And The Cliff
Behold the monster with the pointed tail,
Who cleaved the hills, and breaketh walls and weapons.
Behold him who infecteth all the world.
I
went to the edge of the cliff. Thousands of lights twinkled below. Sometimes the thick air would swirl and I could see the great bowl below, and I imagined I could see the shine off the ice in the Circle of Traitors.
“Deceivers,” Sylvia said. She stared down at the twinkling lights. “Not just violent like Billy.” She looked farther down. “Hello?”
“Dammit!” He was fifteen or twenty feet below us, clinging to the rock. “It’s like glass up there! Have you got anything —”
I dropped him one end of the rope. He didn’t move. I saw now that there were others below him, all clinging to the cliff.
“Take your time,” I said. “Who are you? What are you in for?”
“Saving the environment,” he snapped. “Ted Bradley.” He let go with one hand and reached. The other started to slip, and he lunged for the rope, and missed. He screamed, diminuendo, “Where in Hell is Rachel Carson?”
The rock shuddered as he struck.
Sylvia looked her question. I said, “He killed millions of people, mostly children.”
“Saving the environment? And who’s Rachel Carson?”
“She wrote a book.
Silent Spring.
DDT was destroying the Earth, killing off whole species of birds and so forth. Lousy research, but a best seller. I kind of resent
that,
but the rest of it wasn’t her fault. All the real research showed that DDT wasn’t doing most of that, and where it was, the stuff was being used wrong. Bradley and the Fro–mates were pressuring the EPA, and he didn’t read any of the research. He just ran ahead of the crowd. So they banned DDT.”
“DDT kills mosquitoes. And half a million people die every year of malaria, most of them Third World, most of them children. But as for Rachel Carson, maybe she’s not dead yet. Maybe she believed it all and tried to do good in the world. Maybe she’s in Heaven.”
“Did you drop him?”
I laughed. “No. I do wonder where he escaped from.” I coiled up my rope. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
I took out the shiny rock I’d collected at the mining camp and tossed it over the edge.