Inferno. Part 5

Benito was staring at me. I stared back.

"Forgive me," he said. "You hold that tool in a way I have seen before."

"Yeah?"

"By monks riddled with self-doubt, and clutching a crucifix to rea.s.sure themselves their religion is true."

"We'll need this. We'll need other things too. Wood, and rope for the glider--"

"Will that do?" He pointed downward.

We were almost at the bottom now. We faced a stinking swamp. Thick fog hid most of it, with only temporary glimpses through. Things thrashed around in the filthy water, but there were also bushes and trees hung with vines. Wood! Vines! Certainly I could build a glider out of those! "Now all we need is fabric. There must be a supply dump in this place. Or a laundry. Something."

Benito sighed. "There is."

"Great! Can we get a lot of those gowns?"

"It will not be easy."

"Easy?" I laughed. "Who cares, as long as we get out of here!"

Benito's determined look was very like a bulldog's. "Very well. I will help you get what you need. I will help you build your glider. I will help you fly it, in whatever direction you choose. In return, you will promise me that if this mad scheme fails, you will come with me to the real exit."

"Yeah, sure, sure." I wasn't really listening. I was too interested in the swamp below us.

The things bubbling around in there were people. Some of them just lay there half submerged, bubbling out filth and talking nonsense. Others fought each other, for what I couldn't make out. They roiled the stinking waters, washing up slimy things. Thick fog hung all around, and I had only glimpses of anything more than a few feet away.

"This way." Benito waded out into the slop. He seemed to know what he was doing, because it wasn't very deep, just to our ankles. The goop squished inside my sandals, slimy and thoroughly unpleasant. Every now and again there was solid ground a few inches above the muck.

We picked our way through low-hanging trees and bushes. I fingered the wood and tried my saw on one of the trees to cut off a branch. It seemed strong enough and quite springy. I hacked off a chunk of vine, and it was too tough to break.

We could! We really could build a glider!

As we got deeper into the swamp there were fewer people, but I could hear curses in every language I'd ever imagined, people screaming at each other and the sounds of blows. Sometimes a filthy shape would try to climb up onto the ground where we walked, but others would grab it and pull it back into the mire. I shuddered. Why did they do that?

"The wrathful," Benito said. "And the sullen. The worst offenders in upper h.e.l.l.' He was about to say something else, but he ran into something lying on the trail and almost fell.

It was a man, filthy with the muck, lying in fetal position. His eyes were open and staring at us. He glared, not at us, but at the universe in general.

"h.e.l.lo," I said.

"Come with us," Benito added. "There is a way." He didn't sound hopeful, and of course there wasn't any response. "Remember there is a way. Downward, accepting everything--"

"Come on, he's catatonic." It bothered me, Benito preaching to a rubber-doll catatonic. Was my loony-bin theory right after all? Psychodrama on the grand scale?

Then why was I here? And Jan Petri, and Pete and Barbara? It was as if the Builders had revived everyone who had ever lived! Then set out to cure the crazy ones. Did they think I was one of those?

There was another one on the trail, and he wasn't catatonic at all. He stood there glaring at us, while others thrashed in the muck at either side of him. To get past we'd have to wade out into that, and from the ripples, we would not only be over our heads but among the fighters. They'd never let us out.

"Excuse us," Benito said pleasantly. "The trail is wide enough for us to pa.s.s if you will step forward two paces.

"b.u.g.g.e.r off."

"Surely you will not stand in our way?" Benito was still very pleasant, but there was an edge to his voice.

"Took me a hundred years to get up here," the figure said. "You never have been in the muck. If it's good enough for me, its good enough for you."

He was a big min with powerful arms, and he seemed to mean it.

"Stand aside," Benito said. He was giving orders now. "You may come with us if you will-- and if you can, which I doubt. But you will not prevent us from going." Benito's voice still had the ring of authority that had cowed Minos, and it shook the guy momentarily.

"Don't I know you?" he said. He stared at Benito. "I'm sure I know you. Well, whoever the h.e.l.l you are, get past me the same way I got up here."

"Friend, you leave us no choice," Benito said.

"Aha! I do know you! You're Ben-- Hey! Let go! Hey!"

Benito grasped him by the shoulders and lifted him as easily as I would a child. I gaped as Benito flung him out into the marsh. He wasn't even breathing hard. "Come, Allen."

Yeah. Sure. I followed numbly, wondering who Benito really was. A professional wrestler? Circus strong man? What he'd done wasn't impossible. I'd seen it done before, but not often, and Benito didn't look that strong.

CHAPTER 9

Eventually we got through the trees and brush to open water. There was a big black tower at the edge. I couldn't see anyone in the tower, but suddenly there was a light in the top window. It flashed, ruby-red, out across the marsh.

Red? Ruby? A laser! Not magic, just a laser signal from an old stone tower. Far out in the murk over the water there was a flash of light, blinking, the same color as the signal.

"Phlegyas will come for us now," Benito said. "You must be careful. Say nothing you don't have to say, and as little of that as possible. Let me handle him."

"Sure. Why?"

"Because we are fugitives and we are approaching the, ah, administrative centers of h.e.l.l. There are demons here. Guards. They can do terrible things to us."

"Can't they just." I'd seen enough atrocities already. Were the Builders the crazy ones? They seemed to like pain.

From somewhere behind us there were screams of rage and agony, and splashing noises. I thought I saw ripples in the open water ahead of us too.

Then something took shape in the gloom ahead, something moving toward us.

It was a boat. A big man, bearded, with a low gold crown on his head, stood in the stern with an oar in a sternlock. He sculled slowly, but that boat moved. I almost laughed. He certainly wasn't putting out enough effort to get that kind of speed. The boat must have a hidden water jet or something.

"I have you again!" the man crackled. "Ah, Benito, caught again. Good work!" He looked at me closely, and his grin faded. "Who are you?"

I didn't answer.

"Were you sentenced to lower h.e.l.l?"

"Phlegyas, mind your own business." Benito said. "Bring the boat to the sh.o.r.e. I do not care to wade in your filthy swamp."

"Don't like cold, eh?" Phlegyas seemed to find that funny. "Well, you won't have cold feet long, where you're going! Get in, Benito, get in. The other one has to stay here, of course. I have orders concerning you, but not him." He looked at me again. "You don't have a pa.s.s from Minos? No papers? You can't come."

"He will come," Benito said. "This has been willed where what is willed must be. Now bring the boat to sh.o.r.e."

Phlegyas shrugged. "All right, all right, you have the formula." His voice was a nasty whine of complaint. "It's sure been h.e.l.l here since Dante published that book. You'd be surprised how many try that on me. Nothing I can do about it, either."

We scrambled onto the boat and sat gingerly. I noticed that the boat didn't sink deeper by an inch. Didn't we weigh anything? In that case we could walk on the swamp! But that was silly, because the swamp rippled and bubbled with people-- and we'd sunk to the ankles in the muck. I could smell the stink on my feet.

Every now and then a nose would appear above the water as someone caught a breath, then vanished again. How many were there in that swamp? I could hear screams of rage and agony and pain, and cursing in all languages, but I couldn't see any details in the halflight and the fog.

Phlegyas sculled rapidly, and the boat shot away from the bank. The fog enclosed us in a circle of dark water rippled with shouting faces and with the chicken guts and other filth that poured down from the land of the h.o.a.rders and the Wasters.

Sometimes a filthy claw would reach from the water to clutch at the gunwales, and then Phlegyas would smash it with a six-foot pole he kept in a socket ready to hand. He sculled easily with one hand.

"You know, that formula doesn't work with the real supervisors," he said. He reached to straighten his crown and gave us a sour look. "They took the power of decision away from me. I made a couple of mistakes, just a couple of lousy mistakes, and now they think they can do better than me. Over two thousand years of service here, and upstarts have more power than me. It isn't fair, you know. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. But they won't let you in without a pa.s.s, you watch and see."

"Old man, be silent," Benito said.

"Humph." Phlegyas sculled more rapidly. The boat shot through the water. Now I could make out dim glowing red. The fog began to lift, and we could feel the heat.

There were walls ahead of us. They had towers, and some of them were cherry red. The radiated heat was already uncomfortable. A low, wide mudbank stretched out from the walls to the swamp, and I could see a landing dead ahead, at the end of a narrow bay.

We headed toward it. A man came out through a doorway in the wall. He was old and bent, and he hobbled. He carried a box about a yard square and an inch deep.

He shuffied to the water's edge and used a shovel to fill his box with mud. Then he turned and ran, his robe flying out behind him as he darted back into the door hed come so slowly out of. It didn't make sense.

I turned to Benito, but he only shrugged. He didn't know either.

We pa.s.sed the entrance to the bay. "You may let us out at this landing," Benito said.

"Nope." Phlegyas continued to scull.

"It would be more convenient."

"Yep."

"Then why don't you do it?" I demanded.

"Because I don't have to," Phlegyas answered. He continued to scull until we reached another landing. "Regulations say ferry terminal to ferry terminal, and that's where I go. Nothing about stops in Himuralibima's Bay."

Benito frowned, but we didn't say anything. The boat reached the dock area. There was no one to meet us, and I wasn't sorry.

"Off, off," Phlegyas shouted. "There's more coming. No rest for an old man, none at all. Off, off." He reached for his cudgel, and we scrambled ash.o.r.e before he could smash us with it. As soon as we were off he was sculling away, headed for the other sh.o.r.e like a motorboat.

The city was maybe a quarter-mile away across hard stinking mud. The walls were hot, although not as hot here as further away. A mile to our left was a tower that glowed cherry red.

Thermals! There'd be thermals here, if a glider could get across the swamp. It would take luck, and we'd have to drag it pretty high up that cliff to make it, but it could be done.

"Be very careful," Benito said. "I will have to deceive the officials. Do not undeceive them."

"You mean you're gonna lie? Oh, Benito, that's sinful. You could go to h.e.l.l for telling lies."

He took it seriously. "I know. It is one reason I am here."

"Um, but this is in a good cause..."

"I thought my deceits were in a good cause." He shrugged. "The Commandment is against false witness, and by extension against malicious deceit, and fraud, and perversions of honesty and honor. We shall not do that, and as you say, it is in a good cause. Or so I hope. We tread dangerous ground, Allen."

"Come on," I said. I started off toward the door I could see ahead of us. Fat chance I'd ever make that joke with him again.

It was getting warmer all the time. Off to our left, near the blazing-hot tower, were the remains of a big gate, torn off its hinges. Things walked guard duty in front of it. They were just far enough away, and there was just enough fog and steam, that I couldn't see them clearly. But the shapes seemed odd, twisted out of true. I didn't want to ask about them.

We came to a Dutch-type door open at the top and with a counter on the lower half. Heat poured out through the opening. A bored-looking man in a high stiff collar, something out of a d.i.c.kens novel, was inside in a little office. His face was narrow and pinched, and the heat couldn't have improved his disposition. He had a desk like a woodcut from the Scrooge story, a tall thing he stood at. There wasn't a chair or a stool in the room. We waited at the counter.

And waited, and waited, getting warmer and warmer, while the clerk fussed with papers on his desk. He seemed to be reading every line on an enormous form a dozen pages thick. Every now and then he used a red pencil to mark something. When he continued to turn the pages and scrawl notes without even looking at us, I pounded on the counter.

"Are we invisible?" I demanded.

"A moment, sir. Just a moment, please. We're very shorthanded here, sir. You'll have to wait, sir." He made each "sir" a curse.

"You would be well advised to attend us." Benito's voice had that edge to it, a note of warning. The clerk looked around uneasily. He obviously didn't recognize either of us. Hardly surprising.

"Your papers, please."

"We have none," Benito answered.

"Oh my, oh my, one of those days," the clerk muttered. "Well, if you haven't any papers, you can't come in. The rules are very strict. You'll have to go back for papers." He turned back to his desk and started looking over the files on it.

"We have an errand inside," Benito said. "You do not help your record by delaying us."

The clerk looked back nervously. He examined us closely again, noting the slime on our gowns and the stench of our sandals. That seemed to cheer him. "What is your station inside?" he asked.

"No fixed post," Benito answered.

"I can't help you, sir. I'm only record-keeper for the Sixth Circle. Next window, please." He turned back to his desk. We waited. Benito whistled something monotonous. Finally the clerk turned back. "You still here, sir? I told you, next window, please."

"It is to the Sixth Circle that we must go now."

"Why didn't you tell me," the clerk complained.

"Very well." He reached into a cabinet and produced what looked like ma.n.u.script books and short stubs of pencil. "If you don't have the proper papers, you'll have to fill out these forms."

They were twenty pages long, covered with small blanks, and there were nine copies. Not only wasn't there any carbon paper, but the blanks were arranged differently on each copy, although they all asked for the same information.