Authors: Larry Niven
“I hope so.” He groaned and kept rubbing his neck as he got to his feet. His head flopped forward. After a while he was able to raise it a bit. “It still hurts.”
Aimee said, “Part of repentance.”
“Give thanks. Your recovery was easier than mine,” Father Ernesto said.
“Or mine,” Phyllis added.
“Give thanks! Praise Jesus!” Aimee shouted.
Carl turned his head experimentally, then shook it in doubt. “But I’m Jewish.”
“So was Jesus and all his followers,” Aimee said. “Don’t worry about it. Jesus loves you.”
“Does he?”
“Sure! I bring the Good News. Salvation in the Name of Jesus!”
Carl rubbed his neck and looked around in wonder. “Thank you. Sincerely, I thank you.” He looked up and down the pit. “It might be smart to get out of here. There are demons.”
I looked around nervously. “I’m for it.”
“Sure,” Aimee said. “Just wanted to show you how it’s done. Come on.” She led the way upward.
It was easier going up the narrow trail than it had been coming down. Carl was just ahead of me. Every now and then he’d pause two–stepping up the trail to look back at me. “How long have you been here?” he asked me.
“I died in the early seventies,” I said. “And you?”
“I didn’t quite make it to the millennium.”
“So why were you in with the fortune tellers and diviners?” I asked.
We shuffled up the narrow trail. He said, “I did make predictions.”
“All scientists make predictions.”
“Yes, but there’s a difference between making the best scientific prediction you can come up with, and pronouncing with the Voice of God that you know the future,” he said. “I did some of that. It’s the curse of fame for a scientist. People believe you. Even if you aren’t sure. The newspeople want you to tell them the future. If you say you don’t really know, they go find someone who does know, and then you aren’t famous anymore.” He stopped for a moment. “Have to get used to having my head on straight,” he said.
“That’s funny.”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s true, too. I didn’t always have my head on straight even on Earth.” He stopped to look back at me. “I remember you. I thought you wrote fiction.”
“Mostly did, but I wrote enough popular science to get press credentials to AAAS meetings,” I said. “I always thought you had your head on straight.”
“Well, sometimes I did. I taught my students to think critically, to be careful. Wrote books about critical thinking. But I didn’t always follow my own rules.”
I thought about that. “I suppose that’s why you didn’t go into the First Circle. Virtuous Pagans,” I said.
“Probably. Hmm. Do you think I could get there now? That might be a good place.”
“You’d like it, but it’s a long way uphill,” I told him. “Easier to go down.”
“And then what? Do I have to get baptized? Join a church? Sing hymns?”
“Beats me. I haven’t. Not yet, anyway.”
“Yet.”
“Sylvia says that when we have to choose, we’ll know what choice to make.”
“Hmm. Sylvia Plath. I read some of her poetry. Didn’t much care for it, but my wife liked it a lot. How did you find her?”
“Come on, come on!” Aimee was shouting. “You’re almost here, don’t dawdle. Carl, God loves you. If you accept His love, and you love Him, then you’ll want to do what He wants you to do. Just remember, Carl, He loves you.”
We reached the top. Oscar rolled over to us. Aimee hopped into the passenger seat and they drove off. When they came back she was riding her motorcycle.
From up here we could see downhill to other Bolgias, and up to the great cliff behind us. Carl seemed overwhelmed by it all. “I read a translation of Dante in college. Pure fantasy, I assumed. But it’s real!”
“Seems to be,” I said.
“All of it, or just the
Inferno?
”
I shook my head. “Don’t know.”
“What’s your working hypothesis?”
“It’s just what it seems to be,” I told him. “I started with a different theory. At first I thought this was a big construct, a science fiction Infernoland built by alien engineers, but Carl, it can’t be that. I’ve met too many people I know. Not clones, not constructs. The people themselves. Carl, this is way beyond science.”
“Any sufficiently advanced technology —”
“Is indistinguishable from magic. Sure, but this place goes beyond magic, too! For one thing, the scale is a problem. Dante was trying to describe a cone, or a bowl. But it seems to get bigger as you go down. Dante’s descriptions fit that, too.”
“As if space were expanding downhill?”
“Right. Ballooning out.”
Carl said, “I haven’t seen this myself, but … would it work if souls were getting smaller?”
Sylvia had come up behind me. “Carl, that’s … Allen, did souls seem to get heavier as you went down?”
“Yeah. Denser. Until you’re crawling around Satan and it feels like you weigh tons. Funny, but it fits Dante.”
“High–tech amusement park,” Carl said. “But how would you prove it? Suppose you found a ticket taker —”
“Geryon could appear as a ticket taker. Hah!” Sylvia barked. “You still wouldn’t know! Because he’s a liar, Carl.”
“So. Barring that … we’re in Dante’s
Inferno,
and it’s run by God. The real one. An old man you can pray to, who counts falling sparrows. Not just the laws of the universe.”
“That’s my theory,” I said. “It sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”
“No.” Sylvia was emphatic. “Mysterious, yes, but not stupid. It fits the evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof! And we have extraordinary proof.”
“Hey, that’s my line,” Carl protested.
“Descartes, surely?” Sylvia said.
“Well, yeah, okay, he said it first. But it was my trademark line!”
Sylvia giggled.
Oscar’s horn sounded. “We ready? Load up.”
Aimee looked to Sammy and patted the seat behind her. He happily climbed onto her bike. Carl took his place on the right fender as Sylvia and I got into the car, and Ernesto and Phyllis perched on the trunk.
“All set,” Phyllis said.
Aimee led the way around until we came to a bridge. “Don’t go more than halfway across,” she warned.
“How will we get past the demons?” I asked.
“Just watch,” Aimee said. “There’s ways if you’re fast.”
Oscar drove up to the base of the bridge. It was as steep as the last two. “Fast is fine,” he said, “but I don’t want to break anything coming down. Not with demons chasing us.”
“Don’t worry,” Aimee said. “Just be ready to turn around and come back down to this side. Then follow me.”
“Sure.” Oscar sounded puzzled.
“Good. Now wait for me while I go scouting.” Aimee and Sammy roared off. We moved over to the edge to look down into the pit.
We’d drawn considerable attention from the inhabitants of the Fourth Bolgia. Some stopped.
“There is one I have spoken with,” Ernesto said. He pointed. A man with a powerful back and a handsome face waved and shuffled backward. Ernesto said, “Jacques Casanova, a man of business, from Venice and the Veneto. He has persuaded me that we might break him loose, as there are other places he might have fallen.”
Sylvia said, “Very persuasive fellow, Casanova.”
I saw a familiar face, turned around though it was, and I remembered the name. “Eloise?”
She was already looking up. I’d last seen her in Minos’s palace. She said, “You, who wouldn’t be judged. Your path lies down.”
I took it she meant me. “I kind of knew that. You were a prophet?”
“Medium. My mother trained me. I couldn’t see spirits clear until I died. Now I get glimpses. Flashes of past and future. You, the car, you don’t belong here. You must find your place.” Her eyes shifted. “Woman of the desert, follow the angels, if you can. You, priest, you already know the proper truths. Scientist, use your science, be truthful about truth, be honest to yourself. You, poet, your instincts are good. Follow them.”
I hadn’t decided how seriously to take Eloise. “I’m a ghost, too. I
wrote
about the future,” I said. “Why can’t I see it?”
“You and your kind see futures, Carpenter,” the seer said. “They spread before you, fanning out. You choose. But a great light will answer your one great question.”
“A fortune teller,” Carl said. His voice held disgust.
“Just like you,” Sylvia reminded him.
I thought for a moment, then called down, “Have you tried climbing?”
“Climbing?”
“I have a rope.”
She moved her back up against the rocky slope, then rolled over. “I can’t see,” she said, but, her eyes uselessly watching Hell’s murky, smoky roof, she began feeling her way up the slope.
“Get high enough, I’ll throw you the rope,” I said. I went down the slope, walking, then crawling. The others stayed on the arch.
I watched her progress. The slope grew steeper. She couldn’t see handholds or loose rocks. She groped, and climbed. She wasn’t moving fast, but she did manage to get higher. I dropped the rope over the side. She took it and Sylvia and I hauled her up. She didn’t seem heavy at all.
She stood facing us, her body turned away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had hoped —”
“There’s a cure,” Sylvia said. “Lie down. Allen, I’ll hold her, but you’re the only one here strong enough to do it.”
“Do what?” Eloise said. “Do what? My God, you’re not going to just twist my head around!”
“We have to,” Sylvia said. “Allen?”
I didn’t want to do this.
“Allen, why did you pull her out if you weren’t going to go through with it?” Sylvia demanded.
Father Ernesto came over. “I am strong enough,” he said. “Madam, have I your permission?”
“You’ll kill me!”
“You will heal,” Father Ernesto said. “Behold Carl. He was in the same condition as you not an hour ago. You will heal. And it is the only way, so far as I know.”
She whimpered.
“I did not hear,” Father Ernesto said.
“Do it!” Eloise screamed. She threw herself to the ground. Sylvia grabbed her legs.
“At least hold her arms,” Sylvia said.
I finished coiling the rope and sat on her chest. I held her arms down while Sylvia held her feet. Father Ernesto seized her head and twisted.
He wasn’t as skillful as Aimee had been. He strained, and Eloise screamed in pain and horror. “Stop! Please, please stop —”
Ernesto twisted even harder. Nothing happened for a moment, then he threw himself onto the ground, still holding the head, the way Aimee had done. There was a terrible snap. Eloise screamed once more, then she was silent.
Carl had stood watching. Now he came over to help me up, then gently lifted Eloise into a sitting position. He held her head up when it flopped. “It will be all right,” he said. “I know how it hurts.”
She whimpered.
Aimee roared up. “Hah! Saved another one! God bless you, Sister! Rejoice, God loves you!”
With Carl’s help Eloise looked up at her. “Do you think so?”
“I know He does! Rejoice!”
“Thanks. Thanks be to God!”
Carl stood and helped Eloise to her feet. Her head stayed upright as she stared at him. “Thanks! I remember you,” she said. “Global warming. Glaciers melting, icecaps melting, seas rising, we’ll all burn to death!”
I was puzzled. “Global cooling, surely?”
“Never heard about no cooling,” Oscar said. “Sure remember the warming. All my fault, wasn’t it? Race cars, carbon dioxide, burning fuel. We were cooking the Earth, doom, doom, doom! Whole damn Earth will be a burning ball of fire!”
“Carl?” I said. “I remember your lectures. Ice Age coming. Genesis strategy. Store food for the coming bad years. Too many people, and the ice is coming. Carl, I believed you. I put it in my books!”
“Naw, you must be thinking about someone else,” Oscar said.
Eloise smiled. “Remember where he was,” she said. “The same as me. The money’s in being taken for a prophet. Make them believe and they’ll pay you. Right, Carl? You said that. Of course you were talking about people like me.”
Carl looked helpless.
“I forgive you,” Eloise said. She hugged him.
“I recall a fable,” Father Ernesto said. “Of the man who could blow both hot and cold. Was this you, my son?”
Carl shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. It was the science. You have to go where the data take you.”
“Is that your honest opinion?” Father Ernesto said. “You were condemned for honest mistakes?”
“Yes. Well, yes and no — all right. No. I did let the popularity influence me. It was a good thing to be the public face of science. I don’t even know how it happened! I was a leader, then I wasn’t, and it was hard, and — Look, can I think about this some more?”
“You did not have time while you were in the Bolgia?” Father Ernesto asked. “I do not understand any of these matters. You were clearly a brilliant man. Did you use your talents properly?”
“Come on, come on,” Aimee said. “There’s all eternity for this. The demons are coming. We can’t keep them waiting!”
Chapter 25
Eighth Circle, Fifth Bolgia
Barrators And Grafters
Then I turned round, as one who is impatient
To see what it behooves him to escape
And whom a sudden terror doth unman,
Who, while he looks, delays not his departure;
And I beheld behind us a black devil,
Running along upon the crag approach.
Ah, how ferocious was he in his aspect!
And how he seemed to me in action ruthless,
With open wings and light upon his feet!
His shoulders, which sharp–pointed were and high,
A sinner did encumber with both haunches,
And he held clutched the sinews of his feet.
W
e reached the center of the bridge and stopped. An array of demons waited for us at the bottom. Beyond them was a river of pitch. Pine tar smells, not entirely unpleasant, rose from it.
The demons stood in ranks, a dozen lining the steep bank, then, uphill from them, two more ranks. The demons in each rank were slightly shorter than those in front of them, but in front of them all stood another group, and in its center was the tallest of them all.
They didn’t all look alike. Nearly all were glossy black and had horns and tail, but again there were variations. The rightmost in the front group was pink. Next to him was one so black that it was almost impossible to see him.