Lawyers in Hell

by Morris, Janet

  Roger jerked upright. He’d been napping against the wall, and now had a crick in his neck.

  McCarthy glowered at him and moved on.

  “Yes, sir,” Roger said to his back.

  Next to him, mashed-up Henry said, “Get ready.”

  Roger knew what Henry meant. He turned away, trying not to look at Henry’s twisted face. Poor bastard.

  Get ready – to work. Hell might have too many lawyers, but none were in residence here. The locals wanted their grievances heard. And CLAP would hear every one, rendering injustice as best they could.

  Crooked-legged Horace started a roster, so the locals could lodge their complaints and seek resolution.

  The good part was that the shooting had stopped. The bad part was the cases ranged from sad to bizarre to disquieting.

  McCarthy grabbed the first dozen and read them off. Then…

  “Next we have a classless action lawsuit by the remaining eight lives of a hell-kitten for attempted genocide of mice; suit brought by said tabby hell-kitten (striped-winged variety) called Lucky, who wanted to grow up. Countersuit by one ‘Sneaky,’ the desert hell-fox, who determined that Lucky’s life number three will be the tastiest and he, Sneaky, has been unfairly deprived of it. Howard, can you handle this?”

  “Yes, sir. I can.” You knew you were in hell when you were a lawyer defending litigious animals badmouthing one another.

  McCarthy read on: “A Mohammed (… why is every third male in hell named Mohammed? …) alleges that a prostitute did not give him, and I quote, ‘a poetically succulent release,’ and did give him several nasty diseases. She says because, in hell, orgasm …” McCarthy hesitated over the word, “… is commonly unattainable, and the diseases were the weekly special, she’s innocent: she only provides a service. Summers?”

  “I can do that, sir,” Summers mumbled through smashed lips.

  “A certain ... former … presidential candidate, Democratic (presumably a Communist), insists an election wasn’t run fairly. Regulatory Statutes of Unfairness say that elections in hell are supposed to be rigged. I’ll take that one.”

  Roger felt sorry for everyone in that case. McCarthy would rant.

  Benet said, “In here are our primary mission orders.”

  You could hear a feather drop as he ripped open the package. These were never good. A flash and a nauseating whiff of sulfur attested to its authenticity.

  Benet scanned them, sighed in relief and read aloud: “We are to bring back the head of the most honest man in hell for deposition.”

  “It’s a trap!” McCarthy scoffed. “An honest man in hell?”

  Roger muttered, “Certainly neither of you.” Nor himself, but he was honest enough to admit it.

  Horace said, “Evil and dishonesty don’t have to go together. The only hurt I caused was some fractional percentage of shortage to the IRS. It benefited my clients. Not evil, but dishonest.”

  “Who are we going to find here who’s evil but honest? Peter the Great? Julius Caesar? Those Greeks from that famous battle?”

  Horace said, “I can get on the infernalnet and see who’s around here.”

  “Do that. You young kids know how that stuff works.”

  “Yes, sir; we do,” Horace agreed, though he’d been fifty at the time of his death. “Young” in this case meant “more current.”

  *

  The next morning, in a red-painted mud-brick hall, domed and spired, Roger conducted his trial as barrister for the tabby hell-kitten named Lucky, using the legal code of the UK, 1923, complete to powdered wig. Standard procedure, most days but, today, the minor demon serving as judge was glorying in his role.

  “Your Dishonor, we –” Zap! Lightning singed Roger’s butt. “Your Dishonor, we object –” Zap! Zap! “My Lord Judge, we propose –”

  Zap! Zap! Zap!

  At noon, the code switched to that of King Kamehameha of Hawaii. Roger steeled himself for horrors to come. The Hawaiian death penalty was even more terrifying when you knew you couldn’t die from it.

  Mercifully, he was able to argue the stripe-winged hell-kitten’s case well enough for the case to be dismissed before the Kamehameha rules kicked in. He doubted that poor little Lucky would really enjoy his victory, since after his eight more legally-mandated lives came and went, the hell-kitten would face innumerable lives with no legal protections: the restraining order against the fox would lapse.

  And the smiling desert hell-fox would be waiting.

  *

  That evening, back in CLAP’s compound, now wired and sandbagged, they chewed their jerky and discussed their mission.

  Benet said, “Satan wants the head of the most honest man in hell. By specifying head, should I assume he wants this head sans body?”

  “I believe we must, son,” Sergeant Thurmond drawled in his scratchy voice; ancient skin wrinkled around his beady eyes. “I always take His Satanic Majesty at His word.”

  “The next question is: who’s the most honest man in hell? Accepting that ‘good,’ ‘honest’ and even ‘kind’ don’t necessarily overlap, who would meet the criterion of ‘honest’?”

  Roger thought about that. Nearly every damned soul in hell thought he was doomed unjustly to eternal torment; they sinned and died and sinned more and died again; the damned dead never learned; new sinners arrived constantly. Everybody in hell lied constantly, if only to himself. So could there even be a soul in this backwater of New Hell who was honest?

  Crooked-legged Horace said, “I have it: Gandhi.”

  Roger tried to smile but smirked instead. “Gandhi. Of course.”

  McCarthy muttered, “That skinny little Communist bastard.”

  Roger didn’t think Gandhi qualified as a communist. The father of ahimsa (nonviolence) as a political strategy, yes. Liberal, certainly. Pacifist, mostly. Of course, McCarthy accused everyone of being a communist.

  Benet said, “I have only once heard that name. Who was he; what’s he about now?”

  Roger said, “In India, Gandhi pioneered satyagraha, which means resisting tyranny with passive disobedience. He led his people to civil independence from the British. Nonviolent. Persuasive. Unassailably consistent in his beliefs.”

  Benet snorted, but said, “He certainly sounds promising. Where do we find him?”

  Horace answered: “I believe he’s right downtown, protesting something.”

  Hardly surprising.

  The day turned cold; its chill bit Roger’s lungs. They met no resistance on their way ‘downtown.’ Factions abounded in Kabum; after their landing the day before, they were just one more clutch of damned souls among the doomed from everywhere. Distant battles raged, as residents of hell fought over metaphors or territory or eye-color or infernal affiliation: men made hell familiar, and war was familiar to every soul from every era.

  They walked downtown. Roger preferred the blisters from his boots to yesterday’s parachuting and pogo-sticking. Streets here were convoluted and narrow and, as usual, their maps were wrong. So they walked in the general direction of downtown, among mud-brick facades and teetering high rises with blown-out glass, guided by eye and ear and instinct to where the damned were congregating.

  They found an open plaza surrounding a parliament building: in it was a flagpole; on the pole flapped a tattered flag showing a black devil dancing on a red mountaintop: the symbol of Ashcanistan.

  Only the flag was familiar. Roger had never before served in Kabum. They’d not been briefed for this foray. On the whole, the town felt ancient, but then there were the gutted high-rises … stupidity from every age, chockablock on the streets.

  A protest was ongoing, involving thousands upon thousands, old and new, in the costumes of human history. CLAP went unremarked and unchallenged, despite weapons, as they patrolled the perimeter looking for their witness: nonviolent demonstration or not, sarrisophori and demons and bedawi and ifrits and kaffirs and modern soldiers prowled among the throng: helmets with horsehair crests and metal wings and slitted
visors and horns and feathers and spikes and chinstraps and faceshields and MOP re-breathers turned to them and away again. Kindred souls.

  “I see him,” McCarthy said. “At the base of the steps. A scrawny little weasel, sanctimonious in his cowardice.”

  Gandhi was wearing homespun, despite the day’s chill. From old photographs, Roger recognized some of Gandhi’s dedicated disciples. Ahead, people squeezed toward demon guards. Closer to Gandhi, his followers were organized in ranks, climbing low stairs in formation.

  “Very much like communists,” McCarthy commented.

  “Or soldiers,” Roger threw out. McCarthy’s paranoia and obsession was really irritating to him.

  As marchers reached the top, demons on risers flanking the podium held up pokers that flashed orange-hot and stabbed the leading wave of demonstrators. Screaming, the damned protesters thrashed and rolled down the steps. Some got to their feet and stumbled toward the rear of the line, to repeat the process. Others crawled away.

  “What the hell is this?” Benet asked.

  “It’s called ‘passive resistance.’ They seek to overwhelm the demons without fighting.”

  “Does that work?”

  “Only against a civilized enemy worried about public opinion.”

  “Isn’t it rather ridiculous? You’d think he’d learn.”

  So are single-shot rifles against repeaters, you jackass. “It did work against the British in India. His proposal to use satyagraha against the Nazis in World War Two was never tested.”

  Benet said, “So I’d suspect. Well, let’s see if he’s our man.”

  Sobs from the non-violent seared by pokers sounded, strangely disturbing.

  McCarthy said, “Roger, you seem to know something about this man. Introduce us, on the double.”

  “Yes, sir.” Probably a good idea. Benet knew virtually nothing about Gandhi or his time. McCarthy had the manners of a pig. Even a simple, reasonable request came out of McCarthy’s mouth sounding pompous.

  Surprised by his own calm, Roger led the way. He hadn’t yet died in hell, though he’d suffered numerous indignities. He sighed. There was going to be a first time. Maybe today.

  Roger stolidly led the party from CLAP forward, edging through the throng.

  Gandhi noted them approaching, faced them, and inclined his bald head.

  “Mister Gandhi,” Roger said, “or do you prefer Bapu?” ‘Bapu’ was Indian for ‘father,’ and the whole nation had once called Gandhi that. But Gandhi was complex, and also demonstrably racist. Nor was Gandhi a pussy. ‘I do believe,’ he once wrote, ‘that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.’ So Roger figured that between the racism and the exhortation to violence, canny old Bapu had earned his way here, just like everybody else.

  Little Gandhi was all beatific smiles. His cohorts stood nearby but made no move to interfere. “I answer to either. How may I help you?”

  In the midst of this mayhem, Gandhi tried to be reassuring: Roger could smell roasted flesh, hear the wails, and yet the leader seemed undisturbed.

  Benet asked, “Mister Gandhi, sir, is the mob going to be a problem?” CLAP moved in, creating a wall between their target and the danse noir on the steps.

  “The ‘mob’?” Gandhi asked, still beaming. “Right must battle might, or lose all legitimacy. They are but supplicants for decency, presenting a rational request to the demons. This ‘mob’ is not a problem, though certainly the demons may decide to make them such, for their own purposes.”

  “Well then, sir, we were sent to bring you.”

  “‘Sent’? Ordered? You do not yourselves choose to come for me?” He tsk’d knowingly, and Roger understood it was an attempt at debate. Among doomed screams and demonic violence, this tableau was bizarre, even for the netherworlds.

  Benet looked confused and annoyed. McCarthy looked apoplectic.

  Roger stifled a grin. That sight was worth enjoying. Pleasure in hell was hard to find.

  Benet faced the little Indian and said, “Come with us, or face unimaginable pain and suffering. I personally try to avoid pain and suffering.” Benet must think Gandhi didn’t understand.

  Gandhi said, “You could choose to endure it, however. You could choose not to participate in hell’s charade. New Hell, they call this place, but nothing is new here. If people refuse to take part in Satan’s games – that would be new. If all souls do that, the devil, by any name, becomes powerless.”

  Incorrect, but inspiring. Torment didn’t require assent on the part of the tormented: you like it, you don’t; you run, or you fight. Didn’t matter: this wasn’t a world to win by intimidation and press manipulation, by inspiration or steadfastness. Right and wrong didn’t matter here: Erra and the terrifying Seven were ripping their way through all the hells, sent from Above, meting out injustice to innocent and guilty alike.

  So Gandhi didn’t get it. He was doing in afterlife what had worked for him in life, like so many others. Kabum was a part of the greater underworld, in all its manifest complexity. No debater’s trick or fillip of law could change that. Roger admired Gandhi, the way you’d admire a diorama. It took exceptional strength of character to behave this way in hell. Or sheer insanity. Impressive, either way.

  McCarthy muttered, “Damn commie.”

  Gandhi heard McCarthy and responded: “Indeed not. I am no communist, nor a capitalist, a monarchist, nor any other type of statist. I am myself, and only myself. You serve another, by choice. I serve myself, by choice.”

  Realizing that Benet was confused and McCarthy about to burst a blood vessel, which in hell meant literally and messily, Roger stepped in: “Bapu Gandhi, we have been asked to find the most honest man in hell. Your name was mentioned, and I took the liberty of presuming you might be he.”

  Gandhi laughed in delight, in a low resonant tenor.

  “Oh, young man, I can make no such claim.”

  Modesty, but perhaps false. All men lie. “No?”

  The wizened elf sighed and smiled and said, “I was once a lawyer. I lusted and lied to protect my sordid dalliance.” Ghandi shrugged. “I manipulated truth for effect, for my nation. I made statements deemed racist. I do not regret any of it, even now, but I am here because I was not as honest as I was effective. And I am in New Hell, subject to Satan’s will, when Naraka is the place of torment, or proper hell, for Islamists and Hindus and Sikhs and Jaines and Buddhists – Yama should be my judge, not this Father of Lies who rules in New Hell. The underworld’s mistake, or my own? No matter. Here I am, among the other New Dead, liar that I am, opportunist that I am, with the flock that died believing my lies all around me.”

  McCarthy asked, “Who, then?”

  Little Gandhi shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Only the press thinks it knows who is honest. Walter Cronkite is somewhere in New Hell. He is a most trusted judge of honesty and keeper of opinion. He haunts the battlefields, beyond the minefields. He would be a good bet. If one wanted to bet in New Hell. What is there to lose, in afterlife?”

  “Very well. However, we must bring you along as well, just in case.”

  “With respect, I refuse to comply.”

  McCarthy motioned to Benet. Benet drew his saber and swung smoothly; he’d had much time to practice his technique here.

  The anti-communist crusader looked down at the head of Gandhi, rolling on the ground, and said, “I should think it was obvious, and now demonstrated, what one could lose.” He wore a shit-eating grin. “Yama, Kali, Satan – whoever you wanted to invoke – What an asshole.”

  Gandhi’s head came to rest, face up. Gandhi’s face smiled wanly at them as his body, vomiting blood, collapsed next to his head. His eyes tracked his corpse, calm and resigned, as his head was stuffed into the sack Thurmond had in his hand.

  Roger felt nauseous. McCarthy had enjoyed the beheading.

  Then they looked around them. They stared hard at Gandhi’s followers, who stared back, silent and ominously unmoving. CLAP wasn’t s
upposed to use violence, except in self-defense. Self-defense might be needed any second. Roger had only his slung, single-shot rifle, no long bayonet at his side like That Fucking Benet.

  Another Indian moved through the crowd as if he were parting the waters of the Red Sea: Gandhi’s assistant or his successor: Roger couldn’t tell which.

  This Indian guy took a deep breath and said in a booming voice, “Bapu will come back to us in time. Meanwhile, we shall continue our sagratyha.” He turned and walked up the steps, heedless of the writhing wounded around him or even the final twitches of Gandhi’s body in its pool of gore. The devotees followed.

  So they weren’t even going to bury their beloved leader, just leave his body on the steps. Roger was shocked; he didn’t understand it.

  Benet said, “So we proceed to the battlefield beyond the minefields.”

  Roger understood that.

  *

  The minefields were easy to find. South of town was a large, vacant area, pocked with craters.

  They dismounted, stacked arms – well, sticks – and approached carefully, stepping from existing crater to existing crater. They stepped over a Bactrian’s corpse, newly dead; the corpse squished and slid, its skin loose from the meat beneath. Roger nearly retched.

  Behind and to the right, a muffled blast threw a shifting shadow. Roger wheeled in time to see somebody flail in midair, then fall, and explode as the damned soul landed on a live mine. Pieces blew skyward and fell to the minefield again, and some hit more live mines and were cast heavenward again, only to crash back to earth....

  Seeing someone fall from the sky and smash on the minefield brought Roger a moment of clarity. The human body was intelligently designed, if the purpose of the design all along had been to easily inflict maximum pain and damage. So maybe life was just hell’s kindergarten.

  Benet interrupted Roger’s epiphany: “Howard, get on that gadget of yours and find where this Bronchitis fellow is.”

  “Walter Cronkite. Famous reporter, and actually very well respected. I do think he’s a good bet, sir.”

  “Well, get on with it.”

  This being New Hell, at the critical moment Roger had trouble manipulating his phone, with its intermittent connection, the shifting sunlight and a sack with a wiggling head in it nearby, as well as a staring, belligerent McCarthy and a confused, frustrated Benet cleaning his saber.