Rosemary chuckled. “Indeed.” She looked back at me. “Allen, do you believe in coincidences?”
“I used to, but no. Not here.”
“Nor do I. Allen, we meet again. Improbably. Please reconsider my offer.”
“Given a long enough time, nothing is improbable,” Carl said. “Coincidence is just a time trick.”
Rosemary started to frown, then smiled. “I remember you, Carl. You were very persuasive. You could be of great use in recruiting intelligent staff among the Virtuous Pagans. Are you committed to following Allen to the end?”
Carl shook his head. “Madam, I have made no commitment to anyone. Other than the usual implied obligations of gratitude. Allen and Aimee did rescue me from the Third Bolgia, and I am grateful.”
A frown crossed Rosemary’s face. “Aimee has been somewhat of a problem,” she said. She smiled again. “As to gratitude, such bonds have no legal force, and in any event I am certain Allen will release you from any obligations to him. Won’t you, Allen?”
Her voice and smile were pleasant, but there was an edge to the question. When I hesitated, Rosemary said, “It would be impolite of me to remind you that your companions do not have your status, Allen. They have been judged.”
The two guard demons had been scowling. Now they grinned.
“You want Carl and Oscar,” I said. “I keep Sylvia and Eloise.”
“Be civil to Madam Bennett,” Roger said.
Rosemary smiled. “Thank you, Roger, but in future please do not rebuke my friends unless you are asked.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Very well, Allen. If you insist. But are you certain you will not consider keeping your team together? I can make a place for you all.”
I shook my head.
“Allen, what is it you want?”
“What we both wanted when we left the Vestibule.”
“I embody justice, Allen,” Rosemary said. “There is justice here, and you have seen that. Clearly you want something more. Heaven, perhaps?”
I realized I had never really thought that far ahead. I told her that.
“But you are in Heaven, are you not?” she asked. “Allen, I have read your books, and those of some of your contemporaries. Allen, look where you are!”
“You cannot die. You don’t get old. You heal from all misadventures. And what you do is important and has meaning! You are needed! Allen, what more could you want, from life or from death?”
I said, “Oh.” It felt like a blow to the head. She was describing the idealized future from stories I’d read as a kid, the stories I’d imitated. Flawed utopia. “Rosemary, are you really trying to turn Hell into Heaven? Why not start by taking out the torture?”
“Allen, you have said the purpose of Hell is both punishment and training ground. How can it be either without what you call torture? But I didn’t design this place.”
“Neither did I.”
“No, but we are being allowed to change it,” Rosemary said. “You can be part of that if you like. But we must be careful. We are allowed to make mistakes. Allen, you want Hell to be a training ground. Assume that it is. Without some form of shock treatment, how will we get the sinner’s attention? And you demand justice. Surely there are crimes in life that deserve punishment? They were warned, after all. It is not our fault that they did not believe the warnings.”
When I didn’t say anything, Rosemary smiled faintly. “I suggest you think about such things. I see that Carl has. Will you work with me, Carl?”
Carl bowed. “Is there a length to this service?”
“I remind you, Carl. You have already been judged. I offer you an alternative to being returned to the circle you came from.”
“What happens if he wants to come with me?” I asked.
Rosemary’s smile tightened. “Do you both want to test that?” she asked. “Think on it. I want justice no less than you.” She pointed to the demons. “And they want justice. Indeed, they insist on justice, and theirs is not tempered with mercy. Or with the need for willing employees and colleagues. Their task is to enforce the torments one earned in life! That is their justice.”
Eloise shuddered. “You are one scary lady,” she said.
“If I stay with you, Allen and Eloise and Sylvia go free,” Carl said. “That is agreed?”
“Yes.”
“And if I prove unsatisfactory?” Carl asked.
Rosemary gave her thin smile. “You will be no worse off than you are now.”
I wanted to say something, to beg Carl to come with us, but Rosemary’s smile was terrifying. She might be bluffing. She might not be. One thing was certain. She could simply go off with her escorts and leave us stranded here.
Carl had thought of that. “How will Allen and his friends get out of this pit?”
“I’ll take them,” Oscar said. “Ma’am? I mean fair’s fair, I got them into here, it’s up to me to get them out. I’ll take them, and then you tell me where to meet you.”
“My. I seem to be making job offers to loyalists,” Rosemary said. “Very well. Carl?”
“Okay,” Carl said. “I’ll work for you.”
“Thank you. Oscar, I suggest you take them back the way you came. Wait for me on the uphill rim of this Bolgia. I won’t be long. Roger, go with them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Roger said. He came over to sit on the hood.
“Allen, I think we will meet again,” Rosemary said. “My offer remains open.”
And my accounts still balance, I thought, but I didn’t say it. She got Carl and Oscar. I got Eloise and Sylvia, and I hadn’t got either one of them out of here yet. For that matter, I wasn’t out myself. I did seem to have some special status, but it wasn’t clear what that was. Black Talon wanted me to swim in his pitch. Rosemary was willing to bargain.
I got back into the driver’s seat. After a moment, Sylvia got in and Eloise climbed into her lap.
Rosemary spoke briefly to her demon guards. They roared with laughter.
“Make way!” Jezebeth shouted. The demon circle opened. Jezebeth took the mallet from one who stepped inward, and ran ahead of us. The mallet swung back and forth scattering lizards and snakes in both directions. Jezebeth’s laugh echoed across the Seventh Bolgia.
I looked back to see Sybacca following us with another mallet.
Chapter 29
Eighth Circle, Eighth Bolgia
Evil Counselors
Part One
Escape
* * *
Now, thickly clustered, as the peasant at rest
On some hill–side, when he whose rays illume
The world conceals his burning countenance least,
What time the flies go and the mosquitoes come.
Looks down the vale and sees the fire–flies sprinkling
Fields where he tills or brings the vintage home —
So thick and bright I say the eighth most twinkling
With wandering fires, soon as the arching road
Laid bare the bottom of the deep rock–wrinkling.
Such as the chariot of Elijah showed
When he the bears avenged beheld it rise,
And straight to Heaven the rearing steeds upstrode.
The demons preceded us up the ramp we’d come down. Oscar followed, not too close. Transformed thieves took cover in cracks and burrows. Devils got the slowest, sent them flying, laughing when a hissing python passed close above our heads.
At the top Sylvia and Eloise got out of the car. I hesitated. I wanted my pickaxe and rope, but I wasn’t sure what Jezebeth and Sybacca would do when they saw me carrying tools. And Roger would fink on us for certain.
“Been good knowing you, Allen,” Oscar said. “Well, this time, anyway. Not so much fun the first time we met.”
“I guess that made me a car thief,” I said.
“Say it softly here,” Oscar said.
Grab the tools and run for the footbridge? But I didn’t want to fight demons. Clearly these two weren’t confined to any Bol
gia, the way Black Talon and his troops were. I waited another awkward moment and got out.
Sylvia looked at me, then at the car. I looked at the demons and shrugged. She nodded and took my arm. “Time to go. Thanks, Oscar. Good to have met you.”
“You, too, Sylvia.”
We walked toward the footbridge. We hadn’t quite reached it when Oscar rolled up alongside us. “You forgot something,” he said.
The demons were fifty feet away. Roger was standing with them.
“Don’t worry about them,” Oscar said. “They’re just making sure I don’t make a run for it.”
“Just how stupid can they get?” Eloise asked.
“Not stupid,” Oscar said.
“More like single–minded,” Sylvia said. “They focus hard on what they’re concerned with, and they don’t get distracted.”
Oscar turned so that the passenger door was on his other side from the demons. Sylvia opened it and took out the pickaxe and rope. “If you like your work herding sinners, why are you helping us?” she asked.
Oscar gave a tinny laugh from the radio speaker. “Didn’t have any orders not to, and you’ve been square with me. One thing, once I have orders it might be different.”
Sylvia patted his fender. “Okay, Oscar, we’re warned. Thanks. You’re sweet.”
Cars can’t blush, but I think he wanted to.
Sylvia used the pick as a walking stick as she went up the narrow footbridge. I waved goodbye to Oscar and followed.
It was a long walk. The arch wasn’t following classical physics. Pre–stressed steel would have sagged or broken, but this was boulders fitted together without visible cement. Down below reptiles chased humans in an eternal dance, but we didn’t stop to watch. As we descended toward the foot I said, “Be careful here.”
“What are we watching for?” Eloise asked.
“A lizard had got loose, last time I was here. He bit me.”
The base was clear. We turned clockwise, as had become our habit, and made for the next arch. On our right was a humming sound and a flicker of light. Eloise edged closer, to see down.
And on our left, too far to be dangerous, was a block of stone taller than my head.
From the top a rattlesnake lashed out. From the rattlesnake’s head, a salamander leaped. Great Zot, the thieves had invented the two–stage rocket! It fell straight at my eyes.
Eloise screamed, Sylvia hurled herself away, and I leaped for my — not life — shape.
The salamander dropped past me as I fell toward a pit full of huge candles. I saw it burst into flame, and then flames were around me, too, and I hit rock.
The heat — well, it was like your first experience of a sauna, when it feels like you’re going to die. I could still see through rippling yellow flame.
I heard a shout. “It’s Benito’s rescuer! He has companions topside. Implement Plan C immediately!”
A humming flame stood above me and said, “So God’s justice rears its ugly head yet again —”
“Shut it,” I told the stranger. “I gave a lot of advice, and some of it was just for fun, but some of it was for saving a reader’s sanity and some was for saving civilization.”
He kicked me, not hard, but he kicked a broken rib. He said, “If they’d followed my advice they’d have been fine. They went halfway, then they turned on me. Stupid swine.”
I’d fallen pretty hard. I didn’t feel like moving. I said, “I hear that a lot. Don’t you?”
He kicked me again in the same spot. Then he was silent for a bit. Then he asked, “Do we all think that?”
“I’m sure Benito did, for a while. And, yeah, so did I. If NASA had — hadn’t —”
“I know little of your NASA. You helped Benito escape.”
“How do you know that?”
“We all know that. Do you think that because many of us were on opposite sides in life, we cannot trade information? That we cannot cooperate?” He kicked me again, looked at me with what seemed to be a pensive expression, then whanged my broken rib once more.
I tried to get up. It wasn’t easy, and I got another kick for my troubles.
There seemed to be activity around me. Some of the flames were working together to drive others away. Two stood watching us, occasionally turning to shout orders to others.
“See there?” he said. “Reinhardt and Lord Cherwell are willing to work together. That should be sufficient demonstration.” He indicated two flames standing together. The others had cleared an area around us, and now stood watching, apparently content to allow my tormentor to deal with the situation.
“Who are they?”
“Come now, Carpenter, you were an educated man. Think for a moment.”
It took a moment. Lord Cherwell was the title Churchill gave to Frederick Lindemann, the boffin who urged night area bombing of Germany and firebombing cities. One raid wiped out the Baroque city of Dresden and killed more people than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. All told city firebombing killed a million civilians. I’d probably met him before when I came down here with Benito. But who was Reinhardt? Clearly German. “I don’t care. What do you want with me?”
“Information, of course. Once we leave this pit, what hazards do we face? How can we escape?”
“I don’t know.”
He kicked me again. This was beginning to be tiresome. I stood. It hurt a lot.
The group around me began talking excitedly. I heard half a dozen accents among them. A mixed group indeed.
“You can do better,” my tormentor said.
This time I listened to him. I still couldn’t place the accent. The gift of tongues isn’t an unmixed blessing if you’re trying to figure out what language you’re hearing.
“I’ll tell you the way out,” I told him.
He turned to his companions with a smirk.
“I told you he would break. It only requires persuasion,” Reinhardt said. The accent was German.
“Not because you’re stupid enough to try to torture me. I’ll tell anyone how to get out of here.”
His grin was cruel. “So tell us, then.”
“Down. You’re in the Eighth Bolgia of the Eighth Circle. There are two more. The Bolgia for Discord and the Schismatics, and then the Counterfeiters.”
“Heh. So they’re worse than we are,” one of the flames said.
“Worse, better, it is all the same,” Reinhardt said. “We all knew that the way out is down. What is beyond those places?”
“A plain. Nothing in it I know of. Then a wall. You have to get over that. There are giants guarding that wall. It’s easy enough to get one to lift you over it, or you can climb the chains. After that is the Ninth Circle. It’s a lake of ice. Traitors are frozen in the ice.”
“Allen!” I could hear someone up on the rim calling. A woman’s voice. “Are you all right?”
“Your friends call,” Reinhardt said. “They will help you. But first they must help us.”
“Stay to the point,” Lindemann said. “Once on the ice where do we go?”
“To Satan. You have to climb down his leg. It’s easier than it sounds. Go down to the grotto, and climb all the way out of Hell.”
“And beyond that?”
“I have no idea. Back to Earth? Dante said Purgatory. I don’t know, but you’re not in Hell any longer.”
“Why do you tell us all this?” my inquisitor demanded. I couldn’t quite place his accent. I wondered if it mattered.
“It’s my mission,” I said. “I want to show everyone how to get out of this awful place. No one deserves to be in here forever.” I said that, but I wasn’t sure I meant it. “Let me put it another way. Maybe there are some who deserve to be here. It’s not up to me to choose which ones!”
“Noble of you,” Lindemann said. Definitely an English accent. “Tell me, American, if Benito Mussolini does not deserve this pit, who does? You helped him escape. We saw you.”
“The man I helped didn’t deserve to be in Hell. And I never said I wo
uldn’t help you. I do warn you, not everyone gets all the way out.”
“We will take our chances. It is our understanding that the flames extinguish once we leave this pit. Is this correct?”
“That’s what happened with Benito,” I said. “I have no idea if that’s always true.”
“We will assume it is true,” Lindemann said. “Because we must. Very well. Call to your friends. We will tell you what to do.”
They had the pitchfork I’d used to help Benito get out of the pit. A total of eight flaming candles, evil counselors, stood around it. “Are we ready, then?” Lindemann asked.
They all answered at once. “Yes. Ja. Da. Ne. Yeah.”
“Then let us get to it.” Lindemann got down on all fours near the wall. Three others crouched alongside him. Two got atop those four, then one climbed to the top of the stack. “Joachim will go first. Carpenter, call your friends. Tell them to expect an escapee and to be ready to assist him.”
“And if I don’t?”
Lindemann’s voice sounded strained. “It is not comfortable here. If you expect to get out, you will do as we say. You will not be the last of us to leave.”
“How do I know that?”
“You must trust us that far.”
I didn’t like it much, but I didn’t see what else to do. I’d said often enough that everyone deserved a chance to get out of Hell. “Time to show I mean it,” I said to no one in particular. I called, “Sylvia, some–one’s coming up. Help him if he needs it.”
“All right!” she called.
“Go,” Lindemann said.
My tormentor climbed the human pyramid. When he stood atop the stack his head was above the ledge. He began to pull himself up. I could see Sylvia trying to help him. That couldn’t have been easy, and she was already afraid of fire. When Joachim’s feet were clear of the pit the brightness diminished.
“Did his fire go out?” I called up.
“Yes.” Sylvia’s voice held pain, and that hurt me.
“Hang on —”