Inferno (7 page)

Benito grasped him by the shoulders and lifted him as easily as I would a child. I gaped as Benito flung him out into the marsh. He wasn’t even breathing hard. “Come, Allen.”

“Yeah. Sure.” I followed numbly, wondering who Benito really was. A professional wrestler? Circus strong man? Benito didn’t look that strong.

9

E

ventually
we got through the trees and brush to open water. There was a big black tower at the edge. I couldn’t see anyone in the tower, but suddenly there was a light in the top window. It flashed, ruby-red, out across the marsh.

Red? Ruby? A laser! Not magic, just a laser signal from an old stone tower. Far out in the murk over the water there was a flash of light, blinking, the same color as the signal.

“Phlegyas will come for us now,” Benito said. “You must be careful. Say nothing you don’t have to say, and as little of that as possible. Let me handle him.”

“Sure. Why?”

“Because we are fugitives and we are approaching the, ah, administrative centers of Hell. There are demons here. Guards. They can do terrible things to us.”

“Can’t they just.” I’d seen enough atrocities already. Were the Builders the crazy ones? They seemed to like pain.

From somewhere behind us there were screams of rage and agony, and splashing noises. I thought I saw ripples in the open water ahead of us too.

Then something took shape in the gloom ahead, something moving toward us.

It was a boat. A big man, in purple robes, with a low gold crown on his head, stood in the stern with an oar in a sternlock. He sculled slowly, but that boat
moved
. I almost laughed. He certainly wasn’t putting out enough effort to get that kind of speed. The boat must have a hidden water jet or something.

“I have you again!” the man cackled. “Ah, Benito, caught again. Good work!” He looked at me closely, and his grin faded. “Who are you?”

I didn’t answer.

“Were you sentenced to lower Hell?”

“Phlegyas, mind your own business,” Benito said. “Bring the boat to the shore. I do not care to wade in your filthy swamp.”

“Don’t like cold, eh?” Phlegyas seemed to find that funny. “Well, you won’t have cold feet long, where you’re going! Get in, Benito, get in. The other one has to stay here, of course. I have orders concerning you, but not him.” He looked at me again. “You don’t have a pass from Minos? No papers? You can’t come.”

“He will come,” Benito said. “This has been willed where what is willed must be. Now bring the boat to shore.”

Phlegyas shrugged. “All right, all right, you have the formula.” His voice was a nasty whine of complaint. “It’s sure been hell here since Dante published that book. You’d be surprised how many try that on me. Nothing I can do about it, either.”

We scrambled onto the boat and sat gingerly. I noticed that the boat didn’t sink deeper by an inch. Didn’t we weigh anything? In that case we could walk on the swamp! But that was silly, because the swamp rippled and bubbled with people—and we’d sunk to the ankles in the muck. I could smell the stink on my feet.

Every now and then a nose would appear above the water as someone caught a breath, then vanished again. How many were there in that swamp? I could hear screams of rage and agony and pain, and cursings in all languages, but I couldn’t see any details in the half-light and the fog.

Phlegyas sculled rapidly, and the boat shot away from the bank. The fog enclosed us in a circle of dark water rippled with shouting faces and with the chicken guts and other filth that poured down from the land of the Hoarders and Wasters.

Sometimes a filthy claw would reach from the water to clutch at the gunwales, and then Phlegyas would smash it with a six-foot pole he kept in a socket ready to hand. He sculled easily with one hand.

“You know, that formula doesn’t work with the real supervisors,” he said. He reached to straighten his crown and gave us a sour look. “They took the power of decision away from me. I made a couple of lousy mistakes, and now they think they can do better than me. Over two thousand years of service here, and upstarts have more power than me. It isn’t fair, you know. Bastards. Stupid bastards. But they won’t let you in without a pass, you watch and see.”

“Old man, be silent,” Benito said.

“Humph.” Phlegyas sculled more rapidly. The boat shot through the water. Now I could make out dim glowing red. The fog began to lift, and we could feel the heat.

There were walls ahead of us. They had towers, and some of them were cherry red. The radiated heat was already uncomfortable. A low, wide mudbank stretched out from the walls to the swamp, and I could see a landing dead ahead, at the end of a narrow bay.

We headed toward it. A man came out through a doorway in the wall. He was old and bent, and he hobbled. He carried a box about a yard square and an inch deep.

I turned to Benito, but he only shrugged. He didn’t know either.

We passed the entrance to the bay. “You may let us out at this landing,” Benito said.

“Nope.” Phlegyas continued to scull.

“It would be more convenient.”

“Yep.”

“Then why don’t you do it?” I demanded.

“Because I don’t have to,” Phlegyas answered. He continued to scull until we reached another landing. “Regulations say ferry terminal to ferry terminal, and that’s where I go. Nothing about stops in Himuralibima’s Bay.”

Benito frowned, but we didn’t say anything. The boat reached the dock area. There was no one to meet us and I wasn’t sorry.

“Off, off,” Phlegyas shouted. “There’s more coming. No rest for an old man, none at all. Off, off.” He reached for his cudgel, and we scrambled ashore before he could smash us with it. As soon as we were off he was sculling away, headed for the other shore like a motorboat.

The city was maybe a quarter-mile away across hard stinking mud. The walls were hot, although not as hot here as farther away. A mile to our left was a tower that glowed cherry red.

Thermals! There’d be thermals here, if a glider could get across the swamp. It would take luck, and we’d have to drag it pretty high up that cliff to make it, but it could be done.

“Be very careful,” Benito said. “I will have to deceive the officials. Do not undeceive them.”

“You mean you’re gonna lie? Oh, Benito, that’s sinful. You could go to Hell for telling lies.”

He took it seriously. “I know. It is one reason I am here.”

“Um, but this
is
in a good cause . . .”

“I thought my deceits were in a good cause.” He shrugged. “The Commandment is against false witness, and by extension against malicious deceit, and fraud, and perversions of honesty and honor. We shall not do that, and as you say, it is in a good cause. Or so I hope. We tread dangerous ground, Allen.”

“Come on,” I said. I started off toward the door I could see ahead of us. Fat chance I’d ever make that joke with
him
again.

It was getting warmer all the time. Off to our left, near the blazing-hot tower, were the remains of a
big
gate, torn off its hinges. Things walked guard duty in front of it. They were just far enough away, and there was just enough fog and steam, that I couldn’t see them clearly. But the shapes seemed off, twisted out of true. I didn’t want to ask about them.

Farther along, came to a Dutch-type door open at the top and with a counter on the lower half. Heat poured out through the opening. A bored-looking man in a high stiff collar, something out of a Dickens novel, was inside in a little office. His face was narrowed and pinched, and the heat couldn’t have improved his disposition. He had a desk like a woodcut from the Scrooge story, a tall thing he stood at. There wasn’t a chair or a stool in the room. We waited at the counter.

And waited, and waited, getting warmer and warmer, while the clerk fussed with papers on his desk. He seemed to be reading every line on an enormous form a dozen pages thick. Every now and then he used a red pencil to mark something. When he continued to turn the pages and scrawl notes without even looking at us, I pounded on the counter.

“Are we invisible?” I demanded.

“A moment, sir. Just a moment, please. We’re very shorthanded here, sir. You’ll have to wait, sir.” He made each “sir” a curse.

“You would be well advised to attend us.” Benito’s voice had that edge to it, a note of warning. The clerk looked around uneasily. He obviously didn’t recognize either of us. Hardly surprising.

“Your papers, please.”

“We have none,” Benito answered.

“Oh my, oh my, one of these days,” the clerk muttered. “Well, if you haven’t any papers, you can’t come in. The rules are very strict. You’ll have to go back for papers.” He turned back to his desk and started looking over the files on it.

“We have an errand inside,” Benito said. “You do not help your records by delaying us.”

The clerk looked back nervously. He examined us closely again, noting the slime on our gowns and the stench of our sandals. That seemed to cheer him. “What is your station inside?” he asked.

“No fixed post,” Benito answered.

“I can’t help you, sir. I’m only record-keeper for the Sixth Circle. Next window, please.” He turned back to his desk. We waited. Benito whistled something monotonous. Finally the clerk turned back. “You still here, sir? I
told
you, next window, please.”

“It is to the Sixth Circle that we must go now.”

“Why didn’t you
tell
me,” the clerk complained. “Very well.” He reached into a cabinet and produced what looked like manuscript books and short stubs of pencil. “If you don’t have the proper papers, you’ll have to fill out these forms.”

They were twenty pages long, covered with small blanks, and there were nine copies. Not only wasn’t there any carbon paper, but the blanks were arranged differently on each copy, although they all asked for the same information.

“I think we will not bother,” Benito said.

I flared up. “What the hell do you want all this for? Great-grandmother’s blood type! Why should I fill this out?”

“You
have
to.” The clerk was getting more and more irritated. “You can see they’re all blank. You can see they have to be filled out. Right at the top, see, it says, ‘Replacement for lost papers, application for, D-345t-839y-4583, to be submitted in nine copies.’ I can’t do anything for you without that information.”

“Aren’t there exceptions?”

“Of
course
there are exceptions,
sir
. One was made over two thousand years ago. Before my time, but they still talk about it.” He shuddered. “But you are obviously not Him. Is either of you a living man? Can either of you summon angels? Those are in the book too.” He glanced at the shelf of loose-leaf folios above his desk. “Volume sixty-one, page eight ninety-four, paragraph seventy-seven, point eighty-two—I’m
glad
we changed to the decimal system, but most of us didn’t like it—it says very plainly, anyone who can summon angels may pass. But if you’re applying under that ruling you’ll have to go to the main gate.
Don’t
prove you can do it. Just go to the main gate, and they’ll take care of you.”

“But you will not let us pass,” Benito said. “Not even if I tell you that if you do not you will be in grave trouble?”

“I know my duty. You will not come through.”

“Very good. You have done well,” Benito said. “If you had let us in, we would have reported it. Now you have a favorable report coming. Who is your supervisor?”

The clerk stared at Benito. “Mrs. Playfair, formally a postmistress. But—”

“Oh, my,” said Benito. “I won’t be able to help you after all. It would do no good to give the report to
her
.”

The clerk was unsettled. “Why not, sir?” The “sir” wasn’t a curse any longer.

“I am not permitted to say.”

“Ah. You mean—” He gulped. Whatever he imagined was going to happen to Mrs. Playfair worried him excessively. “But what will happen to her people? What will become of
me
?”

Benito looked crestfallen. “You know the rules—”

“But I’ve done everything
properly
! My files are in perfect order—oh dear, oh dear, I
told
her she shouldn’t have let that man in the records room, I
told
her he wasn’t properly credentialed, I
told
her! It was all her fault, I
told
her . . . my files are in perfect order. And they won’t even look at them, they’ll just—” He was actually wringing his hands as he looked around his office at his desk and files.

Benito frowned. “It would be a waste to have you in the boiling pitch—”

“IN THE PITCH!” the clerk screamed.

“Are you certain your files are in perfect order?” Benito demanded.

“Of
course
they are! Here, you can see for yourself.” He did something that opened the gate.

Benito and I crowded in. Benito took down a volume of the rule book and leafed through it. “Keep this up to date, do you? All revisions in place as they come in? Where are your unfiled revision sheets?”

“There are none,” the clerk said primly.

“Hmmm.” Benito lifted the forms on the clerk’s desk. “
This
is not in order!” He leafed through quickly.

“But I hadn’t checked the seventh copy yet!” the clerk moaned. “I was doing that when you interrupted me! You can’t report me for that, I was trying to give you service, and—”

Benito handed the forms back. The clerk looked through and extracted a bulky set. There was pencil all over the first six pages, then the writing medium changed to something darker. Benito looked at it curiously. “This is hardly legible.”

“He used up his pencil,” the clerk said. “Volume four, page ninety-eight, paragraph six, states that no one applicant can have more than one pencil. So I made him fill it out with something else. He used blood.”

“His own?” I asked.

“Where else would he get blood?” The clerk turned to Benito. “Who
is
this man?”

“In my custody. Witness. Not your case, don’t worry about it.” He handed back the forms. “This seems to be in order.”