Inferno (3 page)

Her voice was a husky whisper. “Well?”

“I don’t know where I am. I just got here, and I have to know. Can you help me?”

“Help
you
! I died, and then
this
happened to me!”

“Died?”

“How else do you get to Hell?” Her voice rose to demand attention despite my shocked surprise. The full force of her breath washed over me in waves. “What did I do? I don’t
deserve
this! I don’t belong here
at all
,” she wailed. “I was beautiful. I could eat like a horse and burn it off in an hour. Then I woke up here, like
this
!” Her voice dropped to a low, confidential murmur. “We’re in the hands of infinite power and infinite sadism.”

I shied back. Another one.

“Is there nothing you can do?” Benito asked her.

“Sure. I can chase banners to keep slim. What’s the point of that? They won’t let you do anything meaningful.”

I shuddered. It could have been me. “Why would anyone do this to you?”

“I . . . think it must have been because ten million fat people were cursing me.” Her voice turned venomous. “Fat, fat, fat people with no willpower and no self-respect.”

“Why?”

“For doing my job! For trying to help people, trying to save them from themselves! For banning cyclamates, that’s why! It was for their own good,” she ranted. “You can’t trust people to be moderate about anything. Some people get sick on cyclamates. They have to be helped. And this is what I get for helping them!”

“We’re trying to escape. Want to come with us? Benito thinks we can get out by going down to the center of this crazy place.”

A little spark of interest flared in her eyes, and I held my breath. My open mouth had sent me floating down the side of a building; when would I learn to keep it closed? If she came with us we’d never get away. What good was she?

She struggled to get up, then collapsed against her rock. “No, thank you.”

“Right.” I started to say something else in parting, but what? If anything went all right, I’d never see her again. I just walked away, and she let her head slump back into the mounds of fat that bulged at her neck.

As we walked away, Benito asked, “What are cyclamates?”

I slapped at a gnat. The gnats were everywhere, stinging us both, but Benito didn’t bother to slap at them. “Sugar substitute. For people who want to lose weight.”

He frowned. “If there is too much to eat, surely it would be better to eat less and share with those who have none.”

I looked at his big paunch and said nothing.

“I too am in Hell,” he reminded me.

“Ah. And they can do what they did to her to you . . .” I shuddered. We were lucky.

“I take it you did not agree with her policy?”

“Idiots. If they’d fed as much sugar to the control rats as they gave cyclamates to the experimental group, they’d have killed the controls first. Instead, they doomed a lot of people to fat. There wasn’t a good substitute for cyclamates. I know one guy who bought up cases and cases of a cyclamate diet drink just before the ban hit. He used to give cases of ‘vintage Tab’ as Christmas presents. They were appreciated, too.”

Benito said nothing.

“I know a couple who used to drive up to Canada every so often just to buy cyclamates. It was a
stupid
policy.” I looked back over my shoulder at the shapeless pink mound. “Still, it seems a little extreme, what they did to her.”

“It is not just?”

“How can you call that
just
?” I didn’t say anything else, but I remembered what she’d said. “ ‘We’re in the hands of infinite power and infinite sadism.’ ”

“She is not here for the reason she gave,” Benito said. “Certainly not for that alone.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because, as you say, it would not be just for her to be here. Being cursed would not place her here. If she had been evil in life she would not be in the Vestibule.” Benito shrugged, spreading his hands in a wide gesture. “You did not agree with her decision.”

“I did not.”

“She decided a matter that affected you. You did not agree. Yet you did not know who she was.”

“Yeah. Now that I think of it, I’m not sure anyone took credit for that decision.”

“And so the deed is remembered but not those who did it.” He shrugged again. “Is it not just that she remains with the angels who would not choose sides in that first war in Heaven? With those who will not choose between good and evil? Do you not see justice here?”

I didn’t answer. Just who in Hell was Benito? A paying customer having sport? A damned soul like me? Or one of the paid crew—cast—of Infernoland? He talked like a religious fanatic; he seemed to take everything at face value.

Dare I follow him? But what else could I do? One thing was certain: if he could think that woman had been treated justly, he was not much better than a devil himself.

Hey, Carpentier. Would an artificial Hell have artificial devils?
I looked at Benito more closely. He was partly bald. There were no horns on his forehead.

We seemed to be covering a lot of ground, as if the effect of too much distance to the wall had been played in reverse. Suddenly we were part of a crowd, all streaming toward the river. Nobody was pushing them along, but they didn’t seem friendly and they didn’t talk among themselves. Each one was huddled in toward himself, not looking where he was going. Or she, there were a lot of women.

The ferryboat captain had a long white beard and eyes like burning coals. He screamed in rage when anyone was slow getting aboard. We were pressed together on deck, a mass of us so tightly packed that we couldn’t move.

“You again!” He’d turned his burning eyes on Benito. “You’ve come here before! Well, you won’t escape again!” He swung a long billy club at Benito. It hit with a crack that I thought would break my guide’s skull, but it only staggered him.

More people packed the decks until I couldn’t even see. Finally I felt the boat begin to move. By then I’d have been glad to stay behind, but there was no way off the boat. The water was black and looked cold, and terrifying.

Two voices whispered intensely near my ear:

“Why didn’t you stop when I screamed?”

“Because you
startled
me into taking my
foot
off the brake. At least I’ll never have to listen to your backseat driving again—”

“But we’re in Hell, darling. They’ll probably put us in a car with no brakes. Maybe they’ll give you a horn. You’ll like that.”

“Shut up! Shut up!”

She did, and quiet descended. No crowd is that quiet. It was as if nobody had anything to say to anyone.

We bumped solid ground. “All off,” Charon shouted. “Damned souls! Damned forever! You cursed God, and now you’ll pay for it!”

“Damn God and everyone else!” “Piss on you!” “Up the people!” “You’re mucking bastards, all of you, get off my
foot
!” “But I don’t
belong
here.”

“What’d I do? Just tell me—” “Damn the lot of you, I died a
man
!”

We pushed and shoved and danced to keep our feet in the swarm. At least we were on the other side. The crowd was hurrying downhill, along a road that ran between thick, high walls. I hung back, hoping Benito would go with the rest. No such luck. The road turned and twisted so we couldn’t see what was ahead, but that was good because after a while we were alone.

I tried to climb the wall. It was a tough scramble, and I kept falling back. After the fourth time I sat there below the wall and whimpered.

“Would you like help?” Benito asked.

“Sure. I thought you said the only way out was downhill.”

“It is, but we have time to explore. Try again, I will lift you.”

He practically threw me over the wall. He didn’t look that strong. I sat on top for a second and looked down at him. He seemed to be waiting for me to help him up.

And now what, Carpentier? Fair’s fair, he helped you. Yeah, but why? Leave him behind, he’s trouble
.

But he knows things I don’t. And he got me out of the bottle.

Did he? He says he poured you out of a bottle the size of a fifth of rum! Leave him
.

I didn’t get the chance to decide. While I was thinking it over, Benito began climbing like an alpinist, using tiny cracks and bumps I could hardly see. Pretty soon he got one hand on top of the wall and pulled himself up. He wasn’t breathing hard, and he didn’t say anything about my sitting there and watching him instead of helping.

I turned to look at the countryside. After all, this Infernoland seemed to be modeled on Dante’s. A quarter of a century ago the
Inferno
had been a required course in Comparative World Literature. I’d paid as little attention to the book as I could get away with. I remembered almost nothing, but certainly the place had not been pleasant. God’s own torture chamber, very medieval.

Vague images came back to me now: devils with pitchforks, trees that talked and bled, giants and centaurs, fire, snakes . . . but were those from the authentic
Inferno
, or were they hangovers from Oz books and Disney cartoons?
Never mind, Carpentier. You’re not going any farther
.

4

I

t
was lovely on the other side of the wall. I jumped down onto firm ground, grassy and pleasant. The air was clean, as at the top of a mountain, with that fresh smell you get only after a hard backpack into remote country. The gnats were gone. There was a faint smell of orange blossoms, quite pleasant. We walked toward the villas, lovely things, square-built, the colors of stone by twilight.

There were crowds around us. Men and women and children—a lot of children, far too many, all watching us with big round eyes (or almond eyes, Hell was thoroughly integrated). Adults and children alike were curious, but none of them said anything.

They didn’t want to be near us, either. They shrank away as we approached.

It was embarrassing. I thought we must be carrying the smells of the Vestibule area, the fetid stench of roses and decay. We’d have to find a place to wash.

“I think I’m going to like it here,” I said.

Benito looked at me curiously, but he only said, “Pleasant, isn’t it? Here there is no punishment.”

The word grated.
Punishment
implies authority, someone with more power and a moral position superior to yours. I couldn’t accept that. We were in the hands of the Builders of Infernoland, and I’d learned all about their moral position on the other side of the black river.

But I didn’t flare up at Benito. Lightly I asked, “These, then, are the privileged customers of Hell?”

“Yes.” Benito did not smile. “They never sinned. They would have reached Heaven if they had known the Church.”

“And the children?”

“Unbaptized.”

I’d heard that about Catholic beliefs. Even in Infernoland it seemed a little rough on the kids. “I thought they got Limbo.”

“Call it Limbo if you wish. This is the First Circle of Hell.” He paused, uncertain. “There are legends that say the children will be born again.”

There were as many children here as there were adults! As if the Builders had gotten a discount for quantity. Hmmm. Could these creatures be androids?

It could have come down to a matter of economics. Android infants would be cheaper than android adults: smaller, fewer reflexes. Would it be cheaper to build androids than to find and capture human beings? I couldn’t know, not without knowing the source: who the Builders were or why
I
was here—placed here without my consent or knowledge, by an unknown hand. If me, then why not a thousand others? A billion?

Benito wouldn’t be much help. He didn’t seem to question anything he saw.

Robot or human, child or adult, they didn’t seem unhappy. Except those near us . . . “Benito, what’s the matter with them?”

“They sense that we do not belong here. I come from deeper in Hell, and the smell of the depths is on my soul.”

“But I don’t.”

His smile was grim. “They will not accept you either.”

I wasn’t so sure of that. If I found a way to clean up, and different clothing . . . hmm. Knock someone on the head, steal his toga; why not? Well, partly because there was no privacy here. The villas, maybe. Or—

“What is that?” I pointed at a building downslope in the distance. It might have been a mosque. It certainly looked like a mosque, minaret and all, but it didn’t have a crescent moon on the top. A man in striped robes and turban sat alone at the doorstep.

Benito shrugged. “Probably a Moslem. Dante placed virtuous Moslems in this circle,” Benito said. “I have met few of them and none who would come with me.”

I wondered how many had gone with Benito, and what happened to them, but this wasn’t the time to ask. I turned and pointed upslope toward what might have been a domed planetarium, the nearest building in sight of us. “What’s that?”

He looked. “I have never seen it before.”

“Come on.”

He came, but reluctantly. “We might not be permitted entry. This is a public building, but we are not of the appropriate public.”

“We—” I stopped because a white-bearded patriarch swathed in purple-bordered white bedsheets had grasped me roughly by the arm. He asked me a rude question in gibberish.

“Go peddle your papers,” I informed him.

He frowned. “Recent English? I asked of you why you invade a place not meant for you.”

“I’m taking a survey. Are you happy here? Do the arrangements satisfy you?”

He snorted. “No.”

“Then,” asked Benito, “why not leave? There is a way out.”

The bearded man looked him over, while several passersby stopped to listen. He said, “In what direction does it lie?”

“Downslope. One must travel all the way to the center. To know and hate evil is one path to knowing good.”

It was lousy dialogue. The bearded man thought so too. “I don’t question your knowledge of the depths of Hell,” he said pointedly. “I think you lie.”

“Why would I? We plan to leave Hell—” Benito was interrupted by raucous laughter. A crowd was gathering, and it wasn’t friendly.