Inferno. Part 23

"You've changed since you reached h.e.l.l. You've given me no evil counsel, I guess that's the point. If you haven't changed in h.e.l.l, if you haven't earned the right to leave, then I haven't and won't. If you can't go, I can't."

"I, I think I can go. I choose not to."

"If you can leave h.e.l.l, you'll have to prove it."

He studied my face... and then he smiled a joyful, luminous smile. He turned and stepped across the gap and had two fistfuls of coa.r.s.e hair. And a sound beat down at our heads, a wind with an almost subsonic voice in it.

"Carpenter."

I looked straight up. Lucifer's middle face was looking down the curve of Lucifer's chest. Two fluttering human legs protruded like a ghastly cigarette from the corner of the mouth. It spoke, and the deep ba.s.s voice blew down to me.

"What will you tell G.o.d when you see Him?"

I didn't answer.

"Will you tell Him that He could learn morality from Vlad the Impaler?"

Benito was far below, clinging like a tick in the billowing hair, waiting for me. I stepped across, and worked my way down. As I did my weight seemed to increase, against all the laws of physics. It scared me. I was back in Infernoland, climbing down into the quantum black hole Big Juju had used for artificial gravity...

Benito looked up at me curiously. "What did he say to you?"

I shook my head.

We descended, getting heavier. There was a point where I must have weighed tons, and all of it pushing inward toward my navel. No quantum black hole crushed and swallowed me. I hadn't really expected one.

Benito worked his way around until his feet pointed at me, and kept climbing. I followed his example.

Now we climbed up. Once I found breath to laugh at the picture we would have made: two men climbing at least half a mile of hairy leg, like ticks in the Devil's hair. I half-expected to pa.s.s a dong the size of the Empire State Building, t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es like twin Astrodomes. There was nothing but hair.

The climb seemed endless, but it ended, not in ice but in an echoing grotto of gray rock, dimly lit.

The Devil's hooves still loomed over us, big enough to stamp a city flat.

We lay on our backs on the smooth rock, panting. Somewhere a running stream made a bright, happy gurgling sound. The dim light came from a single bright pinpoint source overhead. The rock curved inward over our heads, but it never closed. It stretched away like the neck of an inverted funnel, straight up for an unguessable distance.

Presently I got up and found the stream and drank from it. The water was clear and sweet. There is the peace of deep sleep, and once I had thought there would be peace in death. I drank again, then lay with my fingers trailing in the water. Peace in death: I'd found it.

But Benito was on his feet. "Onward!" he cried, and began to climb. The handholds were not difficult, and he moved like a spider monkey, or like a fat man who no longer weighs anything at all.

He looked down from the inward-tilting gray slope of grotto roof. "A four-thousand-mile climb, if Dante was half right!" he bellowed cheerfully. "Are you coming?"

"I'm afraid not."

"What did you say?"

"No."

I sighed in exasperation when I saw him climbing back down, but I'd half-expected it. He dropped the last few feet, and it did seem he fell like a settling balloon, too slowly. "What was it Satan said to you?"

"He asked me what I would say to G.o.d."

"Well?"

"I have to know something before I can speak to G.o.d at all."

Benito waited.

"I have to know the purpose of h.e.l.l."

"Come and ask Him!"

"You don't get it. Every torture in h.e.l.l was too much, too late. Punishment? But it's infinite punishment for things that are little in comparison. Dracula caused a lot of people a lot of pain and death, but it ended. George only lied to people to make them buy things! And what about the fat lady in the Vestibule area?

"What's the point? To teach us a lesson? But we're dead. Revenge, punishment? Completely out of proportion. Balance? Does the universe need as much pain in it as pleasure? I couldn't take Heaven if that was the case."

"There is a reason, and the reason is good. I know."

"Yeah? I don't. There's only one possible excuse for h.e.l.l, and I almost missed it in the ravings of a crazy psychiatrist. It has to be the final training ground. If nothing can get a soul into Heaven in its life, there's still h.e.l.l, G.o.d's last attempt to get his attention. Like a catatonic in a hotbox, like me in that bottle, if h.e.l.l won't make a man yell for help, then it was still worth a try."

Benito was nodding. "You may be right. You may have found the purpose of h.e.l.l."

"Yeah. Yeah, but do you see where it leaves me? Everyone in h.e.l.l has to be able to leave once he's learned enough about himself. Everyone, even the trees in the Wood of the Suicides, even the poor devils in the boiling pitch and the sullen types anch.o.r.ed under the lake. Even the ones who think they're satisfied, the ones in the First Circle. And I can't leave h.e.l.l until I'm sure they can do it."

Benito nodded. "We go back."

"No, no, you idiot!" I was furious. "How can I tell anyone he can leave unless I know you did it? You're going up! And I'm going to watch you do it!"

He thundered, "Carpenter, you must still learn humility!"

"Granted. And you?"

"But they need me. They... ah. They have you."

"They have me." I put out my hand. "Goodbye, Benito. Good luck. I hope you find--"

He stepped past my hand and wrapped his arms around me and squeezed all the air out of me. I said something like "Huff!" and hugged him back. We held the embrace for a long moment. Then Benito released me and turned away fast-- I couldn't see his face-- and started climbing.

I lay flat on the rock and looked up. At the end of the vertical tube, the pinpoint light source had all but vanished, leaving Benito nearly invisible. Many hours later the light brightened again, and I knew I was seeing the sun. Benito was a dark fleck that moved if I watched it long enough.

He had made good progress before the light dimmed and went out.

The water sounds burbled back from the rock walls.

I lay with my arms folded behind my head, taking joy in laziness. The peace of this place was almost tangible. Worrying seemed inappropriate here: a breach of good manners.

What did they do to Billy? Did the priest get out all right? How could any thinking being do such a thing to Mrs. Herrnstein? I've got to get back.

But I felt no sense of urgency. The d.a.m.ned had all the time there was, and so did I. h.e.l.l was the violent ward of a hospital for the theologically insane. Some could be cured.

I would have to return to h.e.l.l. I was afraid of that; not afraid of the pains, or that the demons would catch me, because the pains would heal, and pain in the right cause is a badge of honor. As to the demons, there'd be no chance they could hold me. Not now. I knew.

No. My fear was of the doubts that would return.

They would come, and I'd just have to live with them, and fight them with my memory of these few moments of peace. There were no doubts here. None at all. The light was back, and there was a tiny mote in it that moved even as I watched. My eyes were better than human now; else I'd never have seen him at all.

The light was dimming with sunset when the mote moved out of it and left it clear.