Inferno. Part 7

When she was out of sight Benito seemed to wilt. His straight posture was gone, the high angle of the chin vanished, and he slumped.

Then he laughed. "So. Nothing changes. Now we must get out of here before someone tells this story to an internal security agent."

"They think-- what do they think? That were important officials?"

"No. Of course not. They know we are only pretending that."

"Then what--?"

"But they cannot be sure. We might be important officials. But most of them think we are secret police."

"But how do you know there are secret police?"

Benito looked very sad. "Allen, there have to be. You cannot run a bureaucratic state without them. Come."

We found a door to the outside, and Benito surrendered one of the doc.u.ments he'd collected. We pa.s.sed through and were out on the mud flats again. A stinking breeze wrapped itself around me, deliciously cool, and I said, "Ahh..."

Far to our right the old man had just filled his box of mud again. He ran for the gate, writing frantically.

CHAPTER 11

I was smiling as I turned. The robes I held stacked on my head, an ungainly load. "Now what?"

Benito was staring across the swamp. "I don't know."

"Ah?"

"We cannot possibly persuade Phlegyas to take us back. I fear we must swim." He set his own stack of robes down, shook out the top robe and used it to tie the rest together.

Swim? Through that? It wasn't the garbage that turned me off. It was the bubbling of angry people in and under the water. If we met anyone like the guy Benito had thrown back into the water... if we met half a dozen of them while loaded down with heavy wet stacks of robes! "Wait a minute, Benito. Let's try something else."

"Lead on, then, Allen."

I stopped to tie my bundle as Benito had tied his.

Then I turned right along Himuralibima's Bay. The choice was deliberate: here there were windows and doors along the wall.

I was wading thigh-deep and not liking it, but it was the only way to learn what I wanted to know. At worst I was postponing our swim. At best-- "We've got plenty of time. You keep saying so."

"So we do. I wonder what you expect to find."

My foot brushed something soft.

She was clearly visible beneath two feet of water: a long-boned black woman with her hair floating like seaweed around a slack face, I asked a stupid question. "Is she dead?"

"Of course," said Benito.

She was curled in fetal position. She stayed rigid as I rolled her to bring her head above water. There was no sign of decay, and no sign of life. But I felt for a pulse in her neck and found it.

"Catatonic." And I started to get mad. "Another catatonic. Of all the dirty things. We don't persecute crazy people for crimes. What right do the Builders have to put crazy people in h.e.l.l?"

"The Builders?"

"Never mind. Of all the dirty things. Benito, can you handle two bundles for a minute?"

He took my robes on his other shoulder. He waited while I reached into the water to adjust the woman's position.

Catatonia. It's a rare enough disorder, but almost incurable. You can find one or two catatonics in almost any mental hospital. They afford opportunity for endless jokes, all identical, for a catatonic will take any position you put him into and hold the pose indefinitely.

Every intern thinks he is the first to see the possibilities. He will lead the resident catatonic to the hospital cafeteria, place him just outside the door, and leave him there with his thumb to his nose or his middle finger rigidly extended. Hilarious!

Sometimes he gets a surprise...

I had to stand on her knees to straighten her legs, but finally I got them stretched out in front of her. She was still leaning too far back, her eyes staring at infinity through a half-inch of sc.u.mmy water. Still standing on her knees for leverage, I reached beneath the water, took her shoulders and pulled her up to sitting position.

Now she'd be able to breathe.

...sometimes he gets a surprise, your antic intern. He will have just finished adjusting the patient's hand with thumb properly to nose, when the hand becomes a fist and the fist becomes a missile warhead. Catatonics are hideously strong. They have to be, to hold one position forever.

And she was sitting down. She lashed straight out and tried to punch a hole through my groin. She d.a.m.ned near made it. I whooped and doubled over, sucking air. Sucking, as it turned out, filthy water as I rolled helplessly over into the swamp.

I tried to uncurl. My lungs still wanted to suck water. Inch by inch, I fought my mouth to the surface, drew a lungful of sweet stinking air, and screamed.

Benito was sloshing toward me. I gestured him back. If he dropped the robes to help me, they'd quadruple in weight!

He stopped. I waited for the pain to ease a little, then tried to stand up. When I put weight on my legs it felt like she'd hit me again. I moved toward sh.o.r.e, doubled over.

The woman's lower lip was just at the surface of the water. She held her arm straight out, fist clenched. "Don't make waves," I told her sourly as I pa.s.sed. She didn't respond, and she still looked dead. Water streamed from her nose.

I didn't stop for any more catatonics. Gradually I was able to straighten up. Benito followed patiently, carrying both bundles, both of us wading thigh-deep in water. I ignored the floating garbage. It wasn't getting me any dirtier than I already was.

The texture of the bottom had changed. Beneath a film of frictionless mud there were tilted slabs that had sharp corners and tended to slide... I stopped. Benito stopped behind me.

I said, "Feel that?"

Benito didn't get it. "What should I feel?"

"Himuralibima's Ford, that's what! No telling how far it goes, but it should get us a good distance across the swamp. Here, give me that." I took one of the bundles and started into the swamp. The footing was chancy, the slabs tended to slide, but it was better than swimming.

And I, feeling that I had earned the right to brag, bragged. "All along I wondered where the dried mud was going. It'd shrink a little when the water evaporated, but even so, that bay is huge. Where do they dump the slabs after Himuralibima gives up? Maybe I'd find a mountain of them. Or maybe they don't want a pile of ruined clay slabs in their working area. Maybe they're afraid of getting ticked off for sloppiness.

"So, I was right. Someone's been dumping the slabs in the bay. Every hundred years he has to walk a little further. Otherwise they'd show above the surface."

"Very clever, Allen."

"Thank kew." No telling how far it would go, but we were a good distance into the swamp, and the water was only up to our calves. Hold your breath and make a wish, Carpentier. Or just hold your breath; the water could be over your head any second.

We were nearly across before it ended. The slabs dipped, and I followed the dip, walking on eggs, with the stack of robes balanced on my head. I was chin deep where the mud turned squishy soft.

So far, so good. I found an underwater ridge and followed that, going waist deep, then higher. I was wading ash.o.r.e, with Benito behind me, when our luck ran out.

The broad-shouldered man who blocked our path was the same who had blocked our path before. He shied back when he recognized us, and then he saw our situation and grinned.

I turned back to Benito. "Mind if I try this?"

"If you think it will help."

"I wrote science fiction, remember? I ought to be able to explain a complicated idea to a moron."

I hadn't lowered my voice. The broad-shouldered man advanced on us, saying, "Who's a moron?"

"Don't worry about it," I told him. "You've got worse problems than that. Remember the flying lesson?"

His grin was back. "I'd like to see old Benito try that with his arms full of bedsheets!"

"He won't be able to," I said, keeping my speech slow and distinct. "He'll have to put them down. In the swamp." Pause. "They'll get all dirty." Pause. "Imagine what that will do to his temper."

I watched his eyes. It was getting through to him.

I said, "Why don't you step aside while you think it over?"

"Some guys would rather talk than fight," he said contemptuously. He turned and stalked back to his point of high ground.

PART II.

CHAPTER 12

"Things are definitely looking up for Allen Carpentier."

"I beg your pardon?" Benito was looking out at the marsh, at decaying trees embedded in fog.

"We've got a quiet place to work, I've made some flint tools, and there's everything we need for the glider. What more could we want?"

Benito sighed, and I got, back to work. The first job was to find a place to loft the glider. We were on a little area of high ground, no more than thirty yards square and nestled up against the base of the cliff. The bad-tempered character was between us and everyone else. He wouldn't let anyone else past, and he wasn't about to bother us. I could just see his back through the mist.

First things first. I used a log to flatten out an area larger than the glider would be, then cut a long springy sapling for a ruler. After a while I had a whole collection of saplings of various lengths and thicknesses.

You draw the rough outlines, then spring the batten-- in this case one of the saplings-- across the important points. That makes a smooth fair curve. It was the way the Wright Brothers designed airplanes, and it was the way the Douglas Gooney Bird was designed. It wasn't until World War H, long after the age of flight was underway, that airplanes were designed on drafting tables. Before that they were done on the loft floors, the same way that boats were designed for centuries.

I don't know how long it took me to get it right. I wasn't in any hurry, and Benito never tried to rush me. After a while he even developed some enthusiasm.

Did you ever try to set up ribs and make them keep their shape by tying them with vines? When the ribs are whatever you can cut off swamp willows? As a lesson in patience the job has few equals...

Eventually it looked liked a glider. The wings weren't precisely symmetrical, and the control surfaces pivoted on wooden bearings with dowels shaped by flint knives and thrust into holes enlarged by flint drill bits; the fabric was sewn with vine tendrils shoved through holes poked with a thorn; but it looked like a glider.

I remembered the Cargo Cults of the South Seas.

The islanders had been sorry to see the airplanes go after World War II ended. Native magicians had made mockups of airplanes and landing fields. It was sympathetic magic intended to bring back the real airplanes and the great days of cargo and trade. I told Benito about the Cargo Cults, amusing him greatly, and only later realized what had brought them to mind.

What I was building would never look like more than a crude imitation of an airplane. But it would fly!

I spent as much time making tools as I did working on the sailplane. A bow drill: take one bow, as for shooting arrows; get a good curve in it, and instead of an arrow, take a piece of sapling. Wrap the bowstring around the piece of sapling. Attach the drill bit to one end. You need a hard block in which the top of the sapling chunk will rotate freely because you've worn a depression in it. Hold that block in one hand, put the drill point where you want it, and draw the bow back and forth with the other hand. The sapling turns. The point turns. In about a week you can drill a hole.

I'd heard that boatbuilders in Asia preferred their bow drills to American electrics. They must have been crazy.

I worked. There were no distractions. The Builders must have altered my body radically. I didn't get hungry, thirsty, h.o.r.n.y, or sleepy, and I never had to go to the bathroom. I wondered what I had become. What was my power source now? A power source with no food intake and no waste outlet? If it was beamed power, Benito and I would be turning ourselves off when we dropped the glider beyond the wall.

Beyond the wall... I hadn't thought much about that. What would we find outside? Dante had described a dark wood, a wilderness. Why not? A low-gravity world, native vegetation allowed to run wild...

No guarantees, Carpentier. There might be nothing but Infernoland itself, a tremendous cone built in airless s.p.a.ce, with a point ma.s.s, a quantum black hole for instance, mounted at the tip to provide gravity. In that case we were dead.

I kept working.

And eventually, there it was. The Fudgesickle, by Carpentier and Company. "This is a demo, madam. The finished model will have many other desirable features, such as landing gear and seats for the crew, and metal fastenings..."

"Will that hold together?" Benito didn't seem particularly worried. His tone was more one of abstract curiosity.

"I think so. We shouldn't put much strain on it, but I've noticed we don't weigh what we should. Infernoland seems to be built on a lower gravity planet than Earth."

"Yours is the most curious delusion I have yet encountered here. Well, if it will fly, we may as well try it. The sooner you are done with this idiocy, the sooner we can reach the center and escape."

I could have killed him. So the Fudgesickle wasn't a thing of beauty. It would fly! And it was a lot better way out than his.

I didn't try to kill him for three reasons. First, he'd break my neck. Second, he had been useful as a guide; he'd gotten me the fabric. Third, I needed his help getting the Fudgesickle high enough on that cliff above us for a launching.

We pulled the glider up the slope and carried it until the land fell away as a steep cliff. The swamp bubbled like sludge, with sickly lights glowing among the odd-shaped bushes and trees.

"If we crash down there, we'll never get out," I said "Can you fly this thing?"

"I have flown them." Benito laughed, with real humor.

"What?"

"I have done this before. We launched the glider from a much higher cliff. An Austrian soldier came to get me out of a sticky situation." He settled himself at the controls.