by Mick Farren
At the bottom of the gorge, a foaming cartoon river rushed down to an unknown destination in a series of mist-shrouded cataracts. In the air above the plunging water, free-floating and irregular structures, complex motherships of metal and plastic, floated in defiance of gravity, huge projection video screens circling their undersides like giant TV billboards. On them, doll-like oriental models and slogans in Japanese characters promoted unguessable consumer products and unfathomable political philosophies. In order to see this world at any closer proximity, Semple had first to cross the bridge. The bridge was a single, elegantly arching span, plainly intended for a pedestrian like herself and yet without guardrails or balustrade, lacking protection of any kind. It appeared to be a challenge she had to take before she could go on. Normally Semple was less than enthusiastic about heights. On Earth she and Aimee had never been inclined to look down, and much of the fear had irrationally continued into their afterlives. Under different circumstances Semple would have thought long and hard about crossing such a bridge, and probably refused to do it, citing her unaccustomed platform boots as the reason. In what she was coming to think of as the cartoon haze in her mind, though, she hardly thought of the drop, wondering only if, should she fall, it would be strictly according to Isaac Newton at thirty-two feet per second squared or more in the survivable cartoon manner of Wile E. Coyote, who could always stagger away from the worst of falls.
As she stepped out onto the bridge with only the slightest wobble of her ankles, the Hokusai waves and decorative groves of cypress and pine looked to be more than a mile below her; and, in her animation tranquillity, she found that, by the time she was halfway across the span, the sheer quantity of naked air below her was becoming a trifle daunting. By the time she reached the far side of the span, it was with a definite sense of relief.
All the while she’d been crossing the bridge, Semple had somewhat naively assumed, although for no good or logical reason, that she was the only inhabitant of the place. Her half-formed and barely explored idea had been that this odd graphic world inside the brain of the King of the Monsters had been expressly created for her sole amusement. Thus she was taken somewhat by surprise when the three tiny women greeted her.
“Welcome, Semple McPherson. He awaits you in the dome.”
The little women were eighteen inches tall and totally identical. Their doll-geisha faces were exactly the same, as were their pinkand-blue-flowered kimonos. Semple could only think they had to be cousins to the tiny girls who sang to Mothra in the monster movies. “How did you know my name?”
“He told us to expect you and to give you directions.”
“He?”
“He knows everyone’s name. He even marks the fall of sparrows.”
That there appeared to be yet another all-powerful “he” in this place triggered alarms even in her dulled cartoon condition. “He told you to give me directions to where?”
The little women looked at her as though they were too polite to show just how obtuse they thought her. “To the dome, of course.”
“The dome?”
“Where he waits.”
“Of course.”
“You will go to the dome?”
“I don’t know. I mean, who the hell is he?”
“He said to tell you that you would know him when you saw him.”
The little women were so humorlessly earnest that Semple could only counter with sarcasm. “And that I’d love him when I knew him?”
“He said nothing to that effect. Just that you would know him.”
Semple was liking this less and less. “In other words, he told you not to tell me his name?”
“We only repeat what he tells us.”
Semple had already decided she didn’t really want to go to this dome. The fact that the mysterious “he” didn’t want to reveal his identity up front and the distinct suggestion that they may have met before hardened her resistance. “Actually, I don’t think so.”
The little women looked distressed and confused. “We beg your pardon?”
“I said I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ll be going to your dome.”
The little women looked at her as though what she said was making absolutely no sense. “But you have to go to the dome. He desires it. Besides, there is really no other place to go.”
From the get-go Semple had suspected that she might have very little choice in the matter. “What you’re telling me is that it’s the dome or nothing?”
The little women smiled sweetly. “We would never do anything to infringe on your free will, but . . . ”
“But the answer is yes?”
The little women at least had the decency to cast their eyes downward. “Yes.”
“I’ve recently been through a couple of singularly unpleasant experiences.”
“We’re sorry.”
“So if this turns out to be another one, I promise I will come back and beat the three of you to miniature bloody pulp.”
The little women beamed. “We understand perfectly.”
Semple nodded grimly. “Okay, so are you going to point the way?”
“We’ll do better than that. We will take you there. Please follow us.”
Semple had wondered if, when they moved, the tiny girls would move in unison, and found it oddly satisfying when they did.
“Are you still thinking about that McPherson woman?”
Jim shook his head. “No, I was actually wondering where we might be going. Where the hell are we going, Doc?”
Doc pointed ahead, and Jim noticed for the first time a reflection of red and blue neon at the far end of the broad stone passageway down which they were walking.
“The altissimo poeta here is taking us to this joint I know where they just might make us welcome and I can find myself a poker game worthy of my talents.”
He hadn’t given the matter much thought, but Jim was a little surprised that Doc was headed for something as mundane as a card game. He had somehow thought the goal of his first entry into Hell would have had some more lofty objective. Doc, on the other hand, seemed convinced no loftier objective existed. “We’re in Hell, boy. What better and more challenging place to ply the noble trade? Did you think that, just because we’d become traveling companions, I was going to renounce my vocation? You’re starting to sound like a wife.”
The last thing Jim wanted was a confrontation with Doc, particularly over a matter that was so plainly dear to his heart. He quickly backed down. “I was only wondering what I was going to do. I’ve never had the single-mindedness to win at games of chance.”
Doc nodded as though acknowledging Jim’s retreat. “Don’t worry about it, my boy. Our goal is a place of many wonders and temptations. I’m confident you’ll find something to your liking.”
“You’re telling me I should wait and see?”
“At least this time you can be assured that the wait won’t be long.”
“There is just one point, though.”
Doc, who was walking ahead, looked back at Jim. “And what might that be?”
“Don’t you think a casino might be the first place that Dr. Hypodermic might look for the both of us?”
Doc’s eyes turned bleak. “If the Doctor is looking for both or either of us, sport, he already knows where we are and where we’re going. I thought the Virgil made that clear to you back at the elevators.”
Since leaving the elevator concourse, the Virgil had led them down a series of dark and winding medieval stairways into what appeared to be one of the older parts of Hell. Some of these tunnels were so ancient that hanging stalactites had overgrown much of the arching masonry of the roof. The walls were covered by such a thick patina of limestone that it concealed most of the bas relief carvings with which they were decorated, but since these were of human faces twisted into the distortions of unimaginable torment, Jim felt that time’s overlay was a distinct improvement. He looked questioningly at the Virgil. “So what was this place used for when Hell was reall
y Hell, altissimo poeta?”
“It was the sector reserved for suicides.”
Jim laughed. “And they turned it into a casino?”
“It seems somehow appropriate, don’t you think?”
From the outside, the mysterious dome looked to have been constructed with more than a modicum of good taste. For Semple, this was at least an initial encouragement. She had followed the three tiny women away from the bridge and along a white stone path that curved between carefully manicured banks of flowering shrubs. After about a hundred paces, it crossed a small fast-flowing stream where rainbow trout and huge antique carp ran in the shallows, and kingfishers and dragonflies hovered in wait for their prey. Every detail seemed calculated to invoke a mood of harmony and peace, but Semple couldn’t help but wonder. Should she take everything at face value, or was she was being suckered into some kind of trap? Surprisingly, she found herself leaning to the former, something she put down to her new set of cartoon emotional responses and their constant drift to a state of naive wonderment. As she crossed the stream, she had to restrain herself from remarking how groovy it all was.
“What the hell is happening to me?”
The only jarring note was the box privet maze that had been planted at a distance from the path on the far bank of the stream. Something about it awoke the old mistrustful Semple. The leaves were too damned green, the interior too dark and forbidding, and she didn’t like the look of the hard-eyed gulls that circled the spiral of hedges, as though those who couldn’t find their way out might be left in there to die. Even this wasn’t enough, though, for her to build a full head of belligerent trepidation. She found herself blithely dismissing the maze. None of her concern. It was the dome she was going to, wasn’t it?
The dome itself was in no way threatening. It nestled, as unobtrusively as a seventy-foot brilliant white hemisphere could nestle, in a low depression between decorative outcroppings of yellow-veined rocks. To further ensure that it didn’t muscle out the rest of the landscape with its geometric perfection, it was partially hidden by exotic conifers, shaped on the large scale but with the elegant contortions of bonsai.
The three tiny women, in a single singsong voice, directed Semple’s attention to the path’s end at a low entranceway like a giant mail slot in the base of the dome. “You go in there.”
“You don’t come in with me?”
“We never enter the dome except when invited.”
“And this time you weren’t invited?”
“We were only instructed to meet you at the bridge.”
“And you only do as you’re instructed?”
“Of course.”
“Instructed by him?
“Who else?”
Semple nodded. “Right.” Even in her dumbed-down condition, she had the distinct feeling that she might be walking into another Anubian harem horror. Unfortunately, she lacked any other real alternative.
Now that she was closer, Semple could see that the wide, low entrance sported triple doors of cartoon black glass with dramatically drawn highlights. She left the three tiny women standing on the path and moved briskly toward the doors. She hardly expected them to be locked against her after he had gone to so much trouble to get her there, but she wouldn’t have been surprised at some kind of entry ritual, if only as a show of strength. To her mild surprise, the doors simply slid open at her approach as though controlled by some concealed sensor. She stepped through and immediately found herself in an airlock or antechamber, with a second set of doors preventing her from going any farther. As the outer doors closed behind her, bright ultraviolet light streamed down from overhead luminous panels. This took Semple somewhat by surprise. Was this supposed to be some kind of sterilization process? If it was, it didn’t augur well for her first meeting with him. To maintain a Howard Hughes phobia of germs after one’s death required an incredibly enduring paranoia.
Semple had no sooner reached this conclusion than something happened that forced her to radically revise her thinking. Her entire body started to rearrange itself under the UV light. The cartoon physicality began to morph and fill out, returning herself to her natural form. The sudden transformation wasn’t in any way painful, but it left her with a queasy, light-headed feeling, and rapidly fading double vision. The skin-tight comic book clothing proved less than comfortable, now that her human flesh was squeezed into it. Before she had any chance to take stock of this unexpected state, however, an inner door opened and she knew she was expected to go on through. She noted as she stepped through the door that the ray gun was still strapped to her thigh. She wasn’t sure if it would be of any practical use, but it had a comfortable heft to it; she wished she’d had something similar during her first encounters with Anubis and Moses. She also observed, glancing at her reflection in the glass of one sliding door, that she had retained the beauty spot from her cartoon face.
The great circular interior of the dome was so sparsely furnished that its occupier, the mysterious “he,” appeared to be doing little more than squatting in the manner of the most squalid of young single males. Half-unpacked boxes littered the floor, and the large leather couch, the apparent focal point of the space, was surrounded by drifts of papers, beer cans, and discarded Japanese food containers. Only one side was free of debris, and that was where a monolith of black electronic components squatted with LEDs blinking, flanked by a black refrigerator and a microwave oven. The couch looked directly at a large seventy-millimeter projection TV screen, some twelve feet across and letterbox in format, mounted above a powerful complex of speakers. The screen so dominated the space that it looked to Semple as though the entire dome must have been devised for snacking and TV watching. A movie was playing as Semple entered; Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, and Sophia Loren in The Pride and the Passion. The only other permanent feature, apart from the small sun-sphere that floated high in the apex, supplying an approximation of outdoor light, was a small cross-shaped swimming pool off to one side of the screen. A cross-shaped pool was a little weird by most standards, but by far the most startling object among the dome’s assorted contents was the goat, who stood amid a scattered pile of hay just inside the door to the UV chamber, contentedly chewing. Semple instantly recognized it as the gnarled old ram with china eyes and curling yellow misshapen horns who had led Moses’ tribe through the wilderness, and perhaps, since he was now here and seemingly at home, to Gojiro and their destruction.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
The goat looked up, but didn’t stop chewing. “I’ve taken up residence here, haven’t I?”
Semple had never heard the goat speak before and was surprised by its lilting Welsh accent. “I didn’t know you could speak.”
“I never spoke around Moses and his bunch. In fact, look you, the only time I said anything was when Moses took it into his head that I’d be a handsome item on the sacrificial altar, and then I had to put him straight. I never did approve of going willingly into that dark night, you know?”
Semple cut him off, suspecting that once he got started, he might go on chatting ad infinitum. “So Gojiro didn’t get you?”
The goat regarded her with its mismatched eyes. “Gojiro? No, he didn’t ‘get’ me, as you put it. The Big Green and I are chums.”
“So you’re the him the tiny women were talking about?”
The goat look surprised. “What on earth makes you think I’m him?”
“You’re the only one here.”
The goat nodded in the direction of the pool. “He’s there. It’s his meditation time.”
Semple found herself at something of a loss. “He’s in the pool?”
“Lying on the bottom, contemplating the infinite cosmos. You can take a look if you like. He won’t mind.”
Semple moved toward the pool. On the screen, hundreds of Spanish extras costumed for the Napoleonic Wars were hauling the huge siege cannon up a mountain while Sinatra and Grant watched with worried expressions. She reached the edge and peered down. A
young man lay on the white-tiled bottom of the geometric pool, eyes closed, arms outstretched, mirroring the shape of the cross. He was white and handsome, with a soft blond beard that had never felt a razor. His long and equally blond hair waved slightly with the motion of the water. Semple glanced back at the goat. “This is him?”
“That’s him.”
“Does he know I’m here?”
“Who knows what he knows?”
Semple tried tentatively to get his attention. “Excuse me, but the three tiny women told me I should—”
The goat interrupted. “There isn’t much point in talking to him when he’s like that.”
“How long does he stay like that?”
“It’s hard to say. Usually not that long. He has a lot of movies to watch.”
No sooner had the goat spoken than the figure in the pool opened its eyes and rose rapidly to the surface. Semple took a surprised step back. “Jesus Christ!”
His face broke the surface and he spoke. “You have it in one.”
Semple couldn’t bring herself to believe that this was the onetime Messiah. Although his eyes were deep-set and he did work them in a way that seemed to lend him a certain mystic significance, he lacked the aura she’d expect in anyone claiming to be God’s own offspring. For the moment, however, she thought it best to go along with the charade. “Does that mean I have to revise ‘he’ to ‘He’ with a capital ‘H’?”
