Inferno. Part 15

Benito confirmed my suspicions. "Panderers on this side, seducers on the other. Come, we must find a bridge." He turned left, and we followed uncertainly.

"I was a seducer," Corbett said uncertainly.

I remembered the convention atmosphere and what happened the night before I died. "Me too."

Benito snorted. "Did you ever have a woman against her will?"

"No."

"Or make her drunk, or drug her?"

"Well--" Did pot count? "n.o.body who didn't know what to expect."

"Never had to," Corbett said matter-of-factly.

"Or use threats of force?"

"Don't be silly." Corbett resented the implication. "I told you, it wasn't necessary."

"The Italian does not properly translate as your English seducer, which is hardly more than casual fornication," Benito said seriously. "I think perhaps the better word is 'rape.'"

Now we could see the bridge ahead of us: a stone arch. it looked very old.

"Jerry!" A voice called from the pit. "Jerry! Come on down, Jerry. You belong here!"

It stopped Corbett cold. He looked down into the pit. "Julia?"

"Come on down, Jerry. Share everything with me. You taught me how, Jerry--"

"How can a girl be a rapist?" I demanded. She was, or had been, quite pretty, but now her face was distorted by pain and exhaustion. The demons were watching her stand there as she panted and shouted up to Corbett, and they didn't interfere.

"Deceit. Fraud," said Benito. "Those who induce others to what they know is wrong, as well as those who force their will on others."

I turned to Corbett and-- Shut up, Carpentier! None of your business-- closed my mouth.

"'You taught me everything, Jerry," she was calling. "I could still love you. Come down with me. Where else can you go now?"

"Out! Down to the center and out!" Corbett screamed to her.

The demons howled maniac laughter. The girl laughed with them. "Oh, Jerry, do you believe that? Don't you know that the deeper you go, the worse it is, and you can't ever go back, and you can't get out? It's worse down there, Jerry. Wait till you see who's below us! Here you have me, Jerry. Stay where you belong. There's no escape down there. Don't you know what's carved on the gates of h.e.l.l, Jerry? All hope abandon!"

"I'm not afraid of what's below!" Corbett was getting hysterical. "I never did any of the things they punish you down there for--"

She laughed again. "The only perfect man who ever lived! Are you sure, Jerry? Then why do they let you go there? And what makes you think you'll get justice anyway? Come down with me before its too late to-- HYEEEE!"

The demons had called time on her. Crack! Snap! The whips sounded like popcorn popping. Julia sprinted, screaming with the rest. The flesh of my back rippled. I wanted to shut my ears.

"Come." Benito took Corbett's arm. "Come. Do not let her seduce you again."

"Uh?" Corbett looked at Benito as if he'd only just met him. "It did happen that way, now you mention it. Or did it? Maybe I do belong in that pit."

"If you do, you will be there. For the moment you are not. Ergo-- come along."

We walked in silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts. What if the girl was right? Were we plunging deeper and deeper, never to return? What was below us? Had I committed any of the appropriate cnmes? "Benito, what's ahead?"

His dry lecture voice couldn't mask the screaming as we walked the rim. "No more!" "Not again!" "Wait, I'm in the wrong place!" "It was just one book, just one. I needed the money!" "You big ugly sonofab.i.t.c.h, you--" Crack!

"Of the ten bolgias-- canyons-- of this circle of h.e.l.l, this is the only divided one. Each canyon is crossed by a bridge, except that all the bridges are down across the sixth canyon. We must descend into it. It will be no problem."

"Benito, how in G.o.d's name can you ignore those screams?" Corbett demanded.

"They have no more than they deserve," Benito said simply. Either he hadn't the empathy of a turtle, or... or what? "Now, we will have trouble at the fifth bolgia. It is the pit of grafters, and the demons are on the rim, not down in the canyon."

"Ugh." I'd forgotten most of the Inferno, but I could never have forgotten that image: a troop, an army of devils, ill-mannered and s.a.d.i.s.tic, a military organization of ugly hate. They'd almost got Dante despite his safe-conduct. "What's after this circle?"

We had reached an arching bridge of rough stone. It had no handrails and was about ten feet wide, a slender arch above that pit of screaming runners. It sloped up so steeply that I dropped to all fours to climb.

"Jerry! Come down, Jerry!" It was the girl again. Corbett stiffened.

"What's next?" I prompted Benito. "After the ten canyons what will we find?"

"Very little," Benito answered. "The great ice plain, where traitors are punished. Those who betrayed their blood kin or their benefactors."

"Not me," Corbett said. He seemed to feel better. "And then?"

"We cross to the very center. There is a hole. We crawl through it, past the center of the world, and find ourselves climbing up again."

"And I can believe as much of that as I like?"

"Certainly. Why should you not believe it?" Benito was genuinely puzzled.

"It's nonsense," said Corbett. "We'd be in free-fall by the time we got there."

"Jerry!"

Corbett shuddered. The voice floated upward again. "Don't be a fool, Jerry. It's bad down there at the center. And they never let you out."

"Did I really put her there?" Corbett wondered. "Maybe I have betrayed a benefactor. She was kind to me and--"

"Come on, no woman's worth what they're gettin'," Billy said. "We stick together. I never let a buddy down in my life, and I'm goin' down to the center. Now come on."

Corbett lost some of his tension. "If you're really Billy the Kid, that's right. At least, that's what the movies showed." He began moving again, over the arch of the bridge and downward. "Benito, your deseription is still nonsense. Not only would there be free-fall at the center of the Earth, but this isn't Earth to begin with. A cavity this size, under the Earth? Can you imagine the pressures? And we'd get seismograph readings on it with every earthquake. No, we have to be somewhere else."

"Sure," I said. "Infernoland. Somebody built it, following Dante. But the geography's been the same as the Inferno all the way so far, so what do we care if it's an artifact?"

"It is an artifact," Benito said, "in the sense that G.o.d designed and built it."

"Okay," said Corbett. "I was never a good atheist. Not a churchman either. Still, Benito, I've seen designs for bigger structures than this. Bigger than Earth, for that matter. Our real problem is, did Dante really see this place himself? And can we trust his reports?"

That was a good question, but I had a better one. How far could we trust Benito? He had never mentioned earlier trips.

Just how did Benito get back uphill after those trips? How did he earn this privilege of running free through h.e.l.l? Geryon had said "we" when speaking of both himself and Benito. "We who serve G.o.d's will in h.e.l.l."

Benito was an unlikely angel... and Geryon an untrustworthy witness, I reminded myself. But this was the Devil's realm, and Benito wandered at whim.

All right, Carpentier: just what is the punishment for a soul who defies G.o.d's final command? G.o.d or Big Juju, I had plenty of evidence that He was vindictive. He put me in the Vestibule, and I violated my sentence. Minos warned me. Is this the final retribution against Carpentier? To go even deeper into h.e.l.l, with no way back, to find my own level and have it worse than He condemned me to?

Or. Suppose this really is Infernoland, a bigger and more powerful Builder's playground. Why would the Geryon-type engineers have built anything but the Inferno? They clearly enjoyed seeing humans suffer. Would they get a similar kick from human pleasure? All the professors told me the Inferno was by far the most interesting of the three books of The Divine Comedy.

Benito was talking again. "I have always a.s.sumed that Dante made his trek in a vision. When he woke he had forgotten many of the details. He filled them in with research in theology and dogma and philosophy and natural history and with his own whims and prejudices and special hatreds. But the basic vision was sound and true. Be careful here."

The bridge dropped steeply at the end. The inner rim of the trench was twenty feet lower than the outer. We went down backward. The lip of another pit was a hundred yards away. A cacaphony of sound rose from it. We stopped for a moment.

"For instance," Benito said, "Dante's work gives the impression that he met large numbers of Italians--"

"Sounds perfectly reasonable to me," said Corbett. We tried to laugh, but this wasn't a place for laughing.

Benito merely continued as if he hadn't heard. "Improbable numbers of Italians. Large numbers of famous ancients. He met writers, poets, politicians, but no Hottentots, Eskimos, Askaris, or American Indians. This seems unlikely."

"Then you don't trust Dante after all?"

"Jerry, that was not my point."

I said, "Benito, we've met an embarra.s.sing sufficiency of Americans."

Billy laughed. "Plenty on the island, too."

Benito was startled. "It's true. And Hilda Kroft and I met Germans. And--"

"Man tends to notice his own folks," said Billy. "Let's get moving."

We angled toward a bridge spanning the next ditch. Benito still looked disturbed. Why? That disturbed me.

The smell stopped us joltingly at the second pit. It was like being dropped into a sewer. We didn't even try to look over the edge.

"Who's down there?" Billy asked.

"Flatterers," Benito said shortly, and turned toward the bridge.

We followed. "I don't get it," Corbett said.

"In every place of power, throughout all time, the rulers have been surrounded by flatterers. In many places flattery has been the path to power and wealth. In others it is only a good living. Yet everywhere the flatterers tend to push aside the men of real wisdom. Flattery is so much safer than telling unpleasant truths."

"Not in America," said Corbett.

"This I doubt," said Benito. "But you should know best."

"Never b.u.t.tered up the boss? I sure have," said Billy.

I felt uncomfortable. What was I doing at the moment I died but flattering the fans? I glanced over At Corbett, and he looked no better. Flattery? We'd all tried it. What did they do to flatterers?

We cl.u.s.tered at the bridge approach and stood looking at it. The smell was thick as putty. I could feel it clinging to me, and I squirmed. Corbett said, "How are we going to cross that?"

"Fast," I said. "Don't breathe." I didn't move. I hadn't worked up the nerve.

"Come on, pals!" Billy hit the bridge at a dead run. As he went over the arch and disappeared from view, we heard him yell. The other side of the bridge would be steep. I hoped he'd rolled to the end and not over the edge. I wasn't ready to dive in after him, and I didn't hear anyone else volunteer.

"Billy?" I shouted. There was no answer.

"He's all right," Corbett said. His voice was hollowly rea.s.suring. "Sure he is."

We looked at each other. We took deep breaths.

We scrambled up the arch, and when we could stand, we ran.

Was Billy down there? I made the mistake of looking from the top of the arch.

Down into a river of s.h.i.t, chest-deep. A respectable crowd waded through it.

Disgust can freeze you as solid as fear. At my side, Corbett stopped to look where I was looking. He made a retching sound, took my arm and tried to pull me on. I couldn't move. I'd recognized someone I knew.

I called down. "George!"

Heads turned up. They were disguised by what was smeared across their faces, but that was George, all right. I tried to remember his last name and couldn't.

But he knew me. He shrank away with his sticky arms hiding his sticky head.

Benito had come back up the bridge. "Billy is safe." He spoke with the pinched voice of a man holding his breath. "Who was that?"

"An old friend. An advertising man, wrote fiction in his spare time. Not very good stories, but he wasn't a bad guy. How did he get here?"

"Immoderate flattery. There is no other way to reach this pit. Allen, Jerome, there is no profit in standing here. You cannot enjoy the view."

Immoderate flattery? It fit, in a way. Big Juju's way. Most advertising is immoderate praise of a product or its users. But like every other torture I'd seen in h.e.l.l, it was just too d.a.m.ned much! I wanted to tell George... what? That he'd been wronged? That I'd get justice for him no matter what it took? That I couldn't save him and I couldn't save myself and everything was useless because we were in the hands either of a cruel G.o.d or heartless aliens? I don't know. But I'd remembered one of his own ads, and I shouted it down to him. It was not to mock him! Only to get his attention!

"You deserve to belong to the Xanadu Country Club!"

The response was an explosion of voices. Smeared stinking heads rose, mocking voices called. "The wethead is dead!" "Aren't you glad you use Dial? Don't you wish everybody did?" "I'm Glenda! Fly me!" "Hazel, it turned blue!" "Always have... always will."

And we three who peered into the moat, we saw where the s.h.i.t came from.

Another macabre joke. Every one of them had been fitted with a second a.n.u.s. It became apparent only when they tried to speak.

Corbett bent double, heaving, a ghost trying to expel emptiness from the ghost of his belly. I tried to help him, but he backed away fast. He didn't want to be touched. The convulsions went on and on.

I tried to turn away from the edge, but it was too late. George screamed up at me, in agony. "Allen! Why?"

"I'm sorry!" I should have left him alone.