Authors: Larry Niven
“Dante used a rope,” Sylvia said. “Technically the cincture of his robe. A lot of critics have argued about what that was for.”
I said, “We used a burning car. The point is to have a signal. Fool’s gold seems poetically appropriate.”
Nothing happened for a while, then something occluded the twinkling lights and we saw a shape out in the darkness beyond the cliff.
“Geryon,” Sylvia said. “Virgil talked to him in private. Should I go away?”
“I’ve got nothing to hide. But Geryon
is
a liar,” I told Sylvia.
“I remember.”
The face was as the face of a just man,
Its semblance outwardly was so benign,
And of a serpent all the trunk beside.
“Face of a just man but a serpent’s body with a sting in the tail. Duplicity itself.”
“I thought he looked aquatic,” I said. “Like something evolved on a water world. And here he comes.”
Geryon floated up like a curious shark. He turned to show his profile, perhaps posing to show off the long reach of his handsomely body. His pelt was gorgeous, all gold–on–dark knots and figures that might have served as camouflage in sunlit water or the halls of Versailles. Now he slid halfway onto the cliff’s edge, leaving the long tail still waving above the depths. To me he still looked more like an alien than a mythological creature, but I could see subtle changes.
Sylvia gaped. “Just like Dante,” she whispered.
Geryon said, “Ouch. Who threw that rock?”
“This has been willed where what is willed must be,” I said.
Geryon grinned slyly. “Do you think so? Well, get aboard, Carpentier. I see Benito isn’t with you this time. What have you done with Benito?”
“Haven’t you heard that he escaped?”
“I wondered if you’d kicked him back into the pit. Actually, I thought you had. They don’t tell me everything. Well, don’t just stand there.” He eyed my pickaxe and rope. “How much stuff do you expect me to carry? All right, all right, get aboard. ‘The Captain had a cabin boy, my God he was a ripper —’ ” His tail was wobbling idly, and I found myself watching the sting.
His skin was smooth, slippery beneath my palms, as I boosted myself aboard. It would be easy to slip and fall. Sylvia reached up with no sign of fear, and I swung her up in front of me. I could
feel
the sting behind my neck.
Geryon slid backward off the cliff. The murk swirled and we had a momentary view like a battlefield at night — smoky black, with fires burning here and there in arcs — and then Geryon dropped like a stone. My legs convulsed hard around his rubbery torso, as my arms convulsed around Sylvia to hold her down. Geryon laughed wildly. “Ever wanted to try free fall?”
“There are roller coasters, you bottom–feeding bastard!”
“There are rockets for tourists, too! You should have hung around!” He surged hard under us. His stubby arms and legs weren’t even pretending to fly. Antigravity, sure. We were flattened against his back, and with a thud his belly smacked rock. Dust swirled.
I rolled us off quick. Flat on our backs, dizzy, dust in our noses, we looked up at him.
“Now I will teach you fire,” Geryon said, and lifted fast.
My neck hairs thrilled. That was a quote from one of my own stories. Was he making a prophecy, or just a reasonable guess?
We lay on a plain at the base of the cliff. Closer to the cliff there were rock piles, and some had rolled almost to the first ditch — Dante called them “Bolgias” — about a hundred yards away. A dark, thin, smallish man in a dark robe was helping Sylvia to her feet. I gathered myself to protect her, though he looked harmless enough. He reached out his hand to me, and I took it. Soft; no callus. “What are your sins?” he asked.
Sylvia watched. She didn’t understand him.
“Dithering,” I said; pointed at Sylvia and said, “Suicide. You?”
“Hypocrisy. I am Father Ernesto of Florence, taken from Earth in the year of our Lord 1329. Can you help me save a soul?”
I asked, “Who’ve you got in mind?”
“Several folk. I’ve spoken to many people. One cannot be sure of any, but a few may be worthy.”
Sylvia had been listening. She asked, “Do you speak Italian?”
“I do,” he said, changing to the vulgate. “You died many years beyond my death, by your accent. Can you help me understand a strange machine?”
“It is possible. Signor Carpenter will be better for that.”
“Lead us,” I said.
He led us along a broad, rocky plain that dropped off to our left. And as we walked, we talked.
He had known Dante. “The famous poet, he rescued me from a baptismal font, the same in which I was baptized. It was a prank, you understand, and I was six years of age. I crawled into it upside down, foolishly, and wedged myself. I would have drowned. The good Dante Alighieri toppled the font and broke it to let me out. My parents made him my godfather. I chose to be a priest for his sake.”
“How did you come here?” Sylvia asked, perhaps tactlessly.
“Oh, that I did for my own sake, and my father’s, and my woman Maria and our girl. The church was rich. Those who donated, their souls would benefit, yes? After life I came to wear the leaden robes, until a friend rescued me.”
I’d almost ceased to flinch at coincidence. “The Reverend Canon Don Camillus? Died in the tenth century?”
“Yes! Is he well?”
“He is well and happy and serves ice cream.” I told what I remembered of Father Camillus. “And you? You left the Sixth Bolgia, and then?”
“Father Camillus told me that down was the way to Heaven. It seemed strange, though it follows Dante, but he had it from a divine source, he said. Who but an angel would come to a soul in Hell and say, Help me?”
“I could not go downward. There are demons on the rim below the Fifth Bolgia, and they would not let me pass. So I came here, and everywhere I have gone I stopped to talk. I had not talked to anyone new in so long. I talked to the devils and to the souls they tend. Some are monsters. Some monsters are very glib. But a few … I would like to see if they can get out.”
“And you?” Sylvia asked.
“I dare hope that I may earn my own pardon.”
Father Ernesto pointed into the smutty darkness ahead of us. “Here, do you see that? It was black and dull and stank of fire when I found it. Now, black and shiny. A cryptic miracle.”
Sylvia and I began to laugh. “I never doubted you,” she told me.
It looked like a Corvette convertible of the sixties but bigger and meaner, lower and longer. Upright, it had been evil incarnate. It lay upside down with its windshield smashed, but it seemed otherwise intact. As we approached, its wheels spun madly.
Over the shriek Father Ernesto said, “It has done nothing since it fell. Could such a miracle have no purpose? I expect great things of it.” He eyed my pickaxe. “I thought there might be wonderful tools under this hatch” — he slapped the trunk — “but it will not open for me.”
I said, “Let’s get it on its side.”
“Do you think we have the strength?”
We got our fingers under the rim on the left side. The two–seater car wasn’t that heavy. The wheels spun in spurts and we had to avoid those. I stopped when the car rested on the right–side door and fenders.
Ernesto knelt to study the dash. “I never had the courage to touch anything.”
Sylvia and I got our heads in close. The ignition key was turned on, of course. It would open the trunk. What would I find? I reached for the key.
Sylvia had found a knob. She twisted it.
A man bellowed, “Crazy fool damned tourists — oh, my God!”
Father Ernesto yelped and banged his head. Sylvia turned the knob off. “Radio,” she said. “Nice.”
Father Ernesto rubbed the bump. “Miracle?”
I turned the knob. A man’s voice said, “Please, please, please don’t turn me off again. I’ll do anything you like.”
“We took you for a demon,” I said. “You sound like a man.”
“You! You set me on fire!”
“It’s an ugly habit,” I said. “Are you a demon?”
“Not … like that. Oscar T.J. White. Maybe you saw me race. Some other drivers might have thought I was a demon! There was a pileup in the NASCAR run in March 2002, and … I guess I burned up, and some other guys, too.”
“Then things got very strange. Did you meet a kind of a man–bull with a tail that can stretch —”
“Minos made you a race car?”
“Yeah.”
Sylvia said, “Transportation. We’ll need to get past those demons on the Fifth Bolgia.”
I said, “Mmm? Yeah. Oscar, suppose we could get you turned over. What would you do then?”
“Anything you say,” Oscar said. “I’d like to get back to the road. I knew I was damned, see, but that was fun. Every so often —” He stopped.
I said, “Every so often someone would try to cross the road. They weren’t supposed to do that. You’d hit them.”
Nothing.
Sylvia said, “How could we possibly get him up the cliff? Do we want to?”
“No and no. Oscar, Geryon won’t lift you. I don’t think he’s strong enough anyway. We know the way out of Hell, but we don’t know the way back. Want to come with us?”
“Carry you.”
“Right. There are devils in the way, but you may be faster.”
“Bet your ass on that,” Oscar said.
Father Ernesto asked, “Oscar, what was your crime?”
“I had to tell that beef monster, but I don’t have to tell you. No offense.”
Chapter 21
Eighth Circle, First Bolgia
Panderers And Seducers
And everywhere along that hideous track
I saw horned demons with enormous lashes
Move through those souls, scourging them on the back
Ah! How the stragglers of that long rout stirred
Their legs quick–march at the first crack of the lash!
None for the second waited, nor the third!
O
scar took us along the ridge, Sylvia in the passenger seat, Father Ernesto riding the trunk. The car had a silver grid to hold luggage, and it made good handholds. My pickaxe and rope stowed handily just behind Sylvia’s seat.
Downslope to our right was the first of the Bolgias. This one was divided. Last time through I had crossed it on an arched stone bridge, but there was no bridge in sight.
Down in the Bolgia the damned were running. Black demons kept them moving with whips and jeering commands. The demons had seen us; they watched us curiously.
The Bolgia was divided into two concentric tracks. The barrier between the tracks was about as high as my chest. A line of sinners ran counterclockwise on the track nearest us. Across the barrier they ran in the opposite direction. There were gaps in the barrier, and sometimes inmates were driven from one ring to the other. Whips cracked, and the runners screamed as they ran.
They ran in groups. A cluster on the near side wore dazzling gold chains and white fur jackets, the jackets cut to ribbons by the flailing whips. They were followed by men and women in three–piece suits, a regular meeting of the board of directors of any major corporation. I recognized a movie mogul among them.
Sylvia pointed toward one on the near side coming toward us. “Peter Lawford! What’s he doing here?”
“Panderers. Marilyn Monroe,” I said.
“Marilyn Monroe? She was neato! I saw all her movies. When I was a teenager I wanted to look like her. But Allen, she was a suicide,” Sylvia said. “What does Peter Lawford have to do with that?”
“Lawford used to have her over to his house so Kennedy could sleep with her. Both Kennedys. President John and Attorney General Bobby.”
Sylvia shook her head. “Come on. The President of the United States in sexual congress with the best known movie star in Hollywood? And no one knew?”
“Lots of people knew,” I told her.
“Yeah,” Oscar said. “All the reporters knew but they never told the story, not in the regular papers or on TV. Not like with Clinton.”
“Clinton?” I asked.
“Never mind. How far is this bridge we’re looking for?”
“Not far.” I was only half listening to the cursing and crying from the pit below, until a woman’s voice cried, “It’s you! You in the car, help me! You said you’d help. You said you knew the way out!”
“Hold up, Oscar,” I said, and hit the brake and put us in neutral.
“You’re the driver,” the radio said grumpily.
I looked down to see who was calling me. She was on the other side of the barrier strip, with the Seducers. There were a dozen women there, all in filthy robes, and it was hard to tell them apart. None looked in any way attractive with their bruised faces and lacerated breasts. One of the women stopped running and waved. A whip wrapped around her; she slithered out of it, still looking up. “It’s Phyllis! I was in the desert and you sent me here! Allen? You told me to jump and I did! For God’s sake, Allen!”
She was tall, fair–skinned, blond. Recognizing her would have been impossible, given the whip scars, but she might have been the woman who rode Oscar’s fender out of the fiery desert. Other whips quested after her and she ran, through a gap in the barrier and over to the Panderer side. More whips crackled.
I eased into reverse, and backed rapidly until we were ahead of her. We stopped.
“What are you doing?” Sylvia demanded.
“Paying a debt.” I got out. Now we had the attention of the demons. I hurled the miners’ rope down at her.
She snatched it, and kicked at a man who also grabbed. He hung on anyway, and I was reeling two souls out of the First Bolgia. Too slow! She thought to kick again, then desisted.
Two large black demons were coming at a run.
Sylvia rolled out of the car. She tied the loose end of my rope to the luggage framework on the trunk, then got into the driver’s seat. “Go, Oscar!” she shouted, and vaulted back into the passenger seat. I was still reeling Phyllis in when the car started up.
Phyllis and I and the other guy were pulled along the dirt. The demons chasing us wouldn’t or couldn’t leave the pit, but the tips of their whips could. The guy behind Phyllis howled, but he hung on, and he cleared the edge of the pit just after she did. The demons ran after us, but Oscar was right, he was a lot faster than the demons, and they fell far behind. We came to a bridge.
The car stopped. Sylvia got out. I got to my feet, scraped raw. “Move closer to the cliff,” I told Oscar. “Please. I need to heal.”