by Larry Niven
Sylvia rolled out of the car. She tied the loose end of my rope to the luggage framework on the trunk, then got into the driver’s seat. “Go, Oscar!” she shouted, and vaulted back into the passenger seat. I was still reeling Phyllis in when the car started up.
Phyllis and I and the other guy were pulled along the dirt. The demons chasing us wouldn’t or couldn’t leave the pit, but the tips of their whips could. The guy behind Phyllis howled, but he hung on, and he cleared the edge of the pit just after she did. The demons ran after us, but Oscar was right, he was a lot faster than the demons, and they fell far behind. We came to a bridge.
The car stopped. Sylvia got out. I got to my feet, scraped raw. “Move closer to the cliff,” I told Oscar. “Please. I need to heal.”
He moved well away from the edge of the pit, and we limped along to catch up. No demons came up after us. Dante’s Virgil had said they were confined to the Bolgias, and I was glad to see that was true.
Phyllis and the new guy came up. She said, “I never thought I’d see you again. Where are the rest? Jerry, and Billy, and Benito?”
“Various places,” I said. “Benito got out. I thought your name was Doreen Lancer.”
She looked back toward the pit. She said, “Thanks. That was my stage name. I don’t do that anymore. What’s next?” We’d reached the car. “Here we go again?”
Father Ernesto slid off his perch on the trunk. “I suppose I need not ask what your sins were,” he said dolorously.
Sylvia was studying her, judging her, I thought. She asked, “So how did you get into the Pit of the Panderers and Seducers?”
“I — Hi, I’m Phyllis Welsh.”
“Sylvia Plath.”
“I was in the desert of fire. Allen told us there was a way out, we had to go down, but I was too scared to go with him. But I got to thinking, how much worse could it get, I was in a firestorm already, so I got up the nerve to jump off that cliff. It hurt, it really hurt, but I healed, like Allen said. I was looking for a way to go farther down, but I got too near that, and a whip pulled me in. Man, they’ve had me on both sides of the trench! It runs both ways, you know —”
“I know.”
“You were both a Panderer and a Seducer?” Ernesto asked.
“And who are you?”
“Phyllis, meet Father Ernesto.”
“Father. You’re like a priest?”
“Indeed.”
“Oh.” She thought about that for a moment. “All right, here it is. I was an exotic dancer. Teased men for their money. Went with them sometimes if they had enough.”
“That has earned you a place in this Bolgia,” Father Ernesto said. “It does not explain why you were in the desert of fire.”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I was a sheep for an outlaw motorcycle club.”
Ernesto looked blank.
“Think of hoodlums,” I said. “Ghibeline militia. Rowdies.”
“And what were the duties of a sheep?”
“Anything.”
“Intercourse? Perversions?”
“All that and then some, everyone knows all that,” Phyllis said. “Either do the guys or bring in chumps to take care of everybody. Me, I did both. Take them all, and bring in friends to share the fun.”
“Why would you want to do that?” Sylvia asked.
Phyllis smiled. “Look, it was fun. But that was another time.” Phyllis and Sylvia went off a few steps and talked quietly. I wondered what they had to talk about.
Then I realized something. “Father Ernesto, you speak English.”
“I do. I learned from a heretic priest who walked with me for a hundred years.”
Sylvia wasn’t so far off that she couldn’t hear us. “Heretic?” she asked.
“He was of the Church of England. I presume he was a heretic, because he claimed that the King of England is the head of the Church. I met others with similar delusions about the Church, some very strange indeed. But this one’s doctrines seemed mostly sound. He claimed not to believe in transubstantiation, but in something he called ‘Real Presence.’ Perhaps I am not wise enough, but I see no difference.”
He shrugged. “I was never a heretic, yet I was in Hell. And this vicar was in the same place I was, not among the heretics. If God condemns him for hypocrisy, how can I say his doctrines are not acceptable to God?”
It took me a moment to digest that logic.
“Ahem.”
I turned to the newcomer. He was a darkly handsome man, Clark Gable mustache, probably in his twenties, and like Phyllis he was healing, the crisscross of scars and open wounds fading slowly even as we watched. “Hello,” I said.
“Hello. Uh — I’m grateful to you for getting me out of there, but who are you? And what happens now? What will they do to us when they catch us?”
“We’re fugitives who know the way out of here,” I told him. “I’m Allen Carpenter. I wrote science fiction. That’s Sylvia Plath, the poet. Phyllis was an exotic dancer. Father Ernesto was Dante Alighieri’s godson. And Oscar here” — I patted Oscar’s fender — “was a NASCAR driver.”
“Champion,” the radio said. “So who’re you, and where do you think you’ll sit?”
“Sammy Mendoza. Assistant producer at MGM. It was my job to see that the movie stars had everything they wanted. Everything, if you know what I mean. And that the public didn’t find out.”
“When did you die?” I asked.
“I was killed at Kasserine Pass. February of forty–three.”
“And you’ve been in that pit ever since?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you belong there?” Father Ernesto asked.
“Look, it was just a job for the studios, I needed the money — okay. Yeah. I belonged there. Not so much as some of them in there with me, but I belonged. Just before Pearl Harbor we had a big studio party. I brought in a bunch of young girls as party favors for the studio salespeople. Told the girls it was their chance to meet producers. I knew the girls were young, and I was sure some of them would put out for the guys, but jeez! I never thought those guys would rape the kids! I didn’t! But it got pretty wild, and then I had to help cover it up, keep it out of the papers, bribe the gossip columnists with some juicy stuff that didn’t hurt my clients. Say bad things about the kids and their mothers. I felt so bad about it that I joined the army to get away from Hollywood.”
“So you regret your deed?” Father Ernesto asked.
“Yeah, not that it’s your business.”
Ernesto shrugged. “Perhaps not. Allen, I think we should find room for him.” He turned to Phyllis. Much of her had healed, and she’d become a pretty girl, flashy but more beautiful than Sylvia. I wondered if that mattered to either one of them. “Do you repent?” Father Ernesto asked.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because I want out of here,” Phyllis said. “Look, I’m not stupid!”
Ernesto sighed. “Because you dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell. It is not enough, but it is a start.”
“What’s next?” Oscar demanded.
“All aboard,” I said. I owed Phyllis, and Father Ernesto was the closest thing we had to an expert on repentance. I wondered if I believed in repentance. It seemed important but I wasn’t sure why it should be. Did being sorry make up for being beastly? I remembered a silly novel with the theme that “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” The movie version got so famous that they talked about it in other movies. When Ryan O’Neal told Barbra Streisand that was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard, I cheered. But why would God want people to be sorry?
Phyllis climbed gingerly onto the trunk next to Father Ernesto. Sammy Mendoza sprawled across the right fender.
Sylvia got in the passenger seat. “Ready. So, Allen?”
“We have to get over that bridge.”
Oscar’s radio voice asked, “You think I can climb that? This is a race car, not a damn Hummer.”
The ramp arched up
and up over the First Bolgia. It was not quite as extreme as a Japanese moon bridge, which would have been vertical at the bottom, but it was excessively steep. I’d climbed that bridge or one like it the last time we’d been here. We’d had to crawl on all fours for the first few yards. The surface was paving stones and concrete, twenty yards wide.
I said, “Oscar, I’ve been wondering how to get you back to human form.”
Silence. I said, “I haven’t thought of anything. Maybe there’s something lower down, but I don’t know it. If you can’t get up that slope, we’ll have to leave you.”
Oscar laughed suddenly. “I’m not sure I want to be human again. And, Al, I don’t think whips can hurt me. Sure, let’s try it.”
“How much control have you got?”
“Anything the driver doesn’t do. You want me to take over?”
“Yeah.”
Oscar backed up against the cliff to give himself a run at it. He charged, then braked fiercely. “I’d just smash myself up. Let me try it in first gear.”
So we eased the front wheels up against the stone arch and crawled. There was some slipping. Phyllis kept yeeping. The long whips quested after us, and at one point Sylvia had to unwrap one from her neck, fast. Then we were too high for them.
Oscar paused at the top of the bridge. Headlights blared, blinked, brightened. “Can’t see ahead much,” the radio said. The lights aimed down. “Steep.”
Sylvia said, “I hope you’ve got good brakes.”
“Pretty good.” The car eased forward and down, steeper, steeper.
Chapter 22
Eighth Circle, Second Bolgia
Flatterers
* * *
Steaming from that pit, a vapour rose
Over the banks, crusting them with a slime
That sickened my eyes and hammered at my nose.
That chasm sinks so deep that we could not sight
Its bottom anywhere until we had climbed
Along the rock arch to its greatest height.
Once there, I peered down; and I saw long lines
Of people in a river of excrement
That seemed the overflow of the world’s latrines.
Sylvia said, “Immoderate Flatterers ahead. That sin was pretty common when kings ruled the world, don’t you think, Allen?”
Phyllis laughed hysterically. “Sylvia, you’re a scream!”
Sammy looked wildly back at me, but I didn’t pay any attention. “You’re in for a shock,” I told Sylvia. My foot jammed against the brake. Harder. We were sliding.
Oscar said, “Dammit, Al, ease up! We’re skidding!”
I lifted my foot. That gave him some control, but at a price: we were accelerating. “Just let me drive,” Oscar said, and he let gravity have its way. He was just able to keep the hood pointed forward, and now the stench hit me.
We were dropping toward a sewer bigger than the world. I retched.
We hit the end of the bridge at a forty–degree slope, hard enough to shake Ernesto and Phyllis off onto rough ground. I peeled myself off the steering wheel and crawled out.
There wasn’t a lot of distance from the end of the First Bolgia to the beginning of the Second, and we’d bounced almost to the edge of the Second Bolgia. I looked over the edge, but it was too dark and too deep to see anything. The stench rose in a solid wave from the darkness.
Oscar asked, “You ready to go on?”
Ernesto and Phyllis were on their feet. Father Ernesto looked back toward the First Bolgia. “There was a man on the other path. A panderer, he said. His repentance seemed sincere.”
“Do you see him?”
“No.” He desisted. They took their places on the trunk.
I’d considered trading places, but I just didn’t want to lose my place as driver. I didn’t fully trust Oscar yet, and I wanted to be there to shift gears or brake or snatch the ignition key.
Oscar turned and drove along the ridge at a brisk, bouncy run. Here was another bridge, looking much like the first. Oscar treated it much the same, crawling up the slope in first gear, stopping at the top. There was room to turn sideways, and he did that, then flashed his headlights down.
The crowd below us snorted and snuffled, or didn’t breathe at all, as they walked or stood in a sea of sewage. You couldn’t make out faces under what covered them. I didn’t want to deal with this, and I tried to turn away, but a small demon caught my eye.
Sinners saw him and ran, but he was faster. He was a foot and a half tall. He was carrying a claw hammer half his size. He splashed through the offal and ran up a running man’s leg and back and onto his shoulder. The man wailed and thrashed. The little demon screamed, “Head On! Apply directly to the forehead!” and swung. “Head On! Apply directly to the forehead!” and he swung again. The man’s head was a ruin.
Sylvia said, “Oh.”
Phyllis said, “Fuck, fuck. They’ve got the whole advertising industry.” She looked over to Father Ernesto. “Sorry, Father.”
Ernesto shrugged. “Blasphemy offends God, but obscenity is merely rude,” he said. “If you feel you must apologize, do so to all. I am no more offended than anyone else.”
“Yeah, well, whatever.”
We were hearing other slogans.
“The thinking man’s candidate!”
“Elect the President you deserve!”
The little demon ran up another sinner and screamed, “Or your mattress is freeee!” and swung.
There were other small demons. One screamed “Call 868–412–EXAM! Only the first twenty–three callers will get the free exam! It’s a race!” Wham. Wham. “Call 868–412–EXAM! Call 868–412–EXAM!”
Another seemed to be urging dental health. “Is your mouth disgusting? Full of puss? Any sudden surges?” The small demons ran from client to client, and there seemed an endless supply of them.
Father Ernesto was staring down in disgust. He turned to me with a despairing look. “Allen, I despise flatterers. Because of them my godfather Dante Alighieri was banished from Florence.”
“I can see why you don’t care for them.”
“It is more than personal. I am tempted to enjoy their misery. For those truly and rightly condemned it is no sin to be satisfied to see them meet their fate, but what of those who have repented? Yet I find it difficult to preach, to aid them. I despise them so. Flattery can win fame and power, but what then? Having spent their lives learning how to gain power, they have had no time to learn what to do with it. They win offices, then have no idea of how to perform those offices.”
“Sounds like Los Angeles government,” Sammy said. He was cowering on the fender of the car.
“You look frightened,” Father Ernesto said.
“Damn right I’m scared. How do you think I got my job in the studio? And then I got a commission as an officer in the army, and like you said, I knew how to get the job but I sure didn’t know how to do it! My whole platoon was wiped out first battle we got into.”
“You sound ashamed.”
“I am ashamed.”
“Damn well should be,” Oscar said. “Had an officer like that in Iraq. Maybe you ought to spend some time down there.” A sudden blast of the horn startled everyone, and Sammy jumped off the fender to look around wildly. Oscar laughed. “Allen, what are we waiting for here?”
“Great question,” Sylvia said. “Allen, I suppose you have noticed the smell?”
“With wit like that it’s a wonder Ted left you,” I snapped.
She turned away.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re here because this is the last place I saw Jerry Corbett. I keep hoping I can find out what happened to him.”
“Jerry Corbett? Flew in space?” Sammy asked.
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“Sure, I met him, but do we have to discuss it in this stink? I have to breathe if I’m gonna talk!” He climbed back on the fender and glared at Oscar.
“Ernesto?” I asked.
“I spoke to one do
wn there. He sold breath mints. He may be worth saving, but I do not know how to find him. I confess to having little sympathy for flatterers who die in their sins, so perhaps I should not be the one to decide. But if it is left to me, I say let us continue our journey. Surely there are others more worthy of immediate attention.”
“Good enough!” Oscar blared at full volume.
The car turned and started down the steep slope of the bridge, gaining speed, slipping, turning. Somehow we hit hood first. I banged my head on the windshield. The passengers on the trunk were on the ground now, doggedly picking themselves up.
“I broke a wheelbase,” the radio said. “I can’t move. Am I supposed to heal from that?”
“I do not know what a wheelbase is, but if you healed from falling off that cliff, surely you will heal from this,” Father Ernesto said.
Oscar honked his horn. “Well, that works. Okay, I wait to heal. What’s next?”
Sylvia looked back uphill. “Thais,” she said.
“Thais? Like in the opera?” I asked. “Way down in Alexandria, in wicked Alexandria …”
“This Thais was historical,” Sylvia said. “She was Alexander the Great’s consort the night they burned down Persepolis. I never could figure out why she’s in Hell. What Dante describes is trivial.”
That is the harlot Thais. “To what degree,”
Her leman asked, “have I earned thanks, my love?”
“O, to a very miracle,” said she.
“I would not call her flattery trivial,” Ernesto said.
Phyllis looked puzzled. “She told her boyfriend he’d really made her feel good, and she’s in there? For faking an orgasm? Jeez, every married woman must be in there! Father, you wouldn’t know, I guess, but sometimes women just have to fake it. It’s kindness. They don’t belong in Hell for that! Do they?” She looked thoughtful. “I did it sometimes, and Sylvia, you, too, I betcha.”
“And we’re not there,” Sylvia said. “The harlot with the heart of gold has been a literary theme for a long time. Why does Dante put her in Hell?”
“Sylvia, the real Thais married Alexander’s general Ptolemy after Alexander died. I remember now, she became queen of Egypt,” I said. “And I wonder if Dante knew much about her at all?”
