Inferno. Part 21

"Never mind. I belong here. I should not have tried to leave."

All the flames looked alike, but I thought I had him placed now. I reached down with the pitchfork. "b.u.g.g.e.r that! Grab the end!"

The other flames were wandering off. Benito said, "It is not long enough in any case."

It wasn't. I looked along the rim. There was a rough place where I might climb down partway.

Benito tried to stop me. "You are being stupid. If you fall, you will burn like the rest of us!"

"Can you reach the end?"

"Go away, Allen. This is my proper place."

I was ten feet below the rim and almost out of footholds. The pitchfork was heavy and awkward. I tried to go further, setting my feet very carefully.

"All right," Benito said suddenly. The huge flame moved to engulf the. tines. I felt a feather touch on the haft, and the flame began to rise from the pit.

He called, "Can you hold me?"

I laughed wih relief. "You don't weigh as much as an ounce! I could lift a thousand of you!" After all I'd been through, suddenly it was going to be easy.

The flame rose higher along the haft... and I felt the first warming of the metal.

I waited until I was sure I could filter the panic from my voice. Some of it may have got through anyway. "Benito? Hurry."

"Is something wrong?"

"No, never mind. Just hurry." I was afraid he'd let go.

The metal was uncomfortably warm.

It grew hot.

Down there where a huge flame was rising in dreamy sloth, the metal began to glow dull red. He wouldn't notice; his own bright flame would blind him to it. Up here it was too hot to hold, but I held on, my teeth clenched against the scream.

The scream grew bulky in my throat. I stopped breathing to hold it in. If Benito gave up now to save me pain, I'd never, never find the courage to do this twice.

The metal was cherry red around the flame. My hands began to sizzle. I wasn't breathing, but the smell of cooked meat worked its way into my nose. I couldn't imagine how my hands still held. I was clenching them with everything I had, but the muscles and nerves must be cooked through. Charred through. I knew that smell too: dinner ruined. My head was thrown back, my eyes clenched tight. There was no sensation but the fire.

"You can let go," said Benito. He was beside me, clinging to the cliff, his body no longer hidden by the flame.

I tried to let go.

My hands were charred fast to the haft. I tried to knock the pitchfork loose. It came loose, all right, and slid b.u.mping into the eighth bolgia with my charred hands still attached.

Benito had to virtually lift me up the cliff.

CHAPTER 26

We went inward. I followed Benito, nursing my charred wrists. He had to haul me up the last bridges by the slagk of my robe. The pain never stopped. The nerves gave no sign of having been cauterized by the red-hot iron. The charred bone broke away; the black flesh split to expose red flesh.

It'll heal, Carpentier.

Oh, shut up. And call me Carpenter. Carpentier the Famous Author is dead.

In the empty borderland between the tenth pit and the giants, we sat down. Presently Benito spoke. "Thank you."

"Yeah. I'm sorry I pushed you in."

He didn't say anything. I said, "I thought I had to do it. I thought it was right."

Still nothing. "Look," I said, "I was raised to believe that Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were identical monsters."

Benito sighed. "Sometimes, toward the end, perhaps we were. I didn't start that way. I meant well." He laughed bitterly. "I had good intentions. We know what is said to be paved with those."

"Tell me about it."

He spoke musingly, without looking at me. "After the war I saw my country humiliated. No one believed in anything. Corruption everywhere, laboring people working against wealthy people, middle cla.s.s working against the government, everyone fighting each other and everyone ruining each other. If they'd only work together-- we were Romans, once. We ruled the world. We could be great again, instead of a joke for Clemenceau and Lloyd George to swat aside."

"So you made people work together?"

"I gave Italy hope. For years I even stopped Hitler from taking Austria. Allen, if I'd chosen the side of the Allies in the second war, would I have as great a place in history as Stalin?"

I couldn't say anything to that.

"Yet he killed ten million peasants. Adolf never equaled that record. As for me, in the early days we used castor oil, not clubs." He sighed. "But you can never stop, once you begin seeing what is better for people than they know themselves. The opposition will make a thorough mess of everything you've done, and you know they will destroy the country. What do you do? Destroy the opposition. Now they really have grievances. Bigger opposition, more police needed to suppress them. But I meant well. I loved my people to the day they killed me."

"'The purpose of power is power.'"

"What?" Benito was badly shocked.

"Never mind. Quote from a novel, Nineteen Eighty-four. So then you tried to set up a government here?"

"For my sins, I did." Benito's sudden laugh was like my own howling in the sixth bolgia: there was an agonized laugh in him, and it clawed its way through his throat. "Oh, Allen! And you think you've seen h.e.l.l! A government among the Evil Counselors-- When I tried to get out they stopped me; they needed me as figurehead. Never mind, I got out anyway. I had to."

"But you never did anything but good for me. Or anyone else you met, down here."

"How are your hands?"

We looked. Two tiny infant's fists were forming at the lumpy bones of my wrists. "We must wait until they heal. You will never climb with those!" He laughed.

We sat and talked. Hours went by.

"I think the worst was when they shot my cabinet people. Italians shooting men whose only crime was to love Italy and trust me--" He shuddered. "Those are strange scars on your chest."

"I had to play games with the demon in the tenth bolgia." Funny, we didn't see him, coming back.

"Games?"

Reluctantly I told him. It could have been embarra.s.sing, but it wasn't. He didn't thank me again. Instead he smiled and said, "Do you still believe that h.e.l.l is a place of entertainment?"

"No. I didn't even then. I think Geryon convinced me."

"Geryon?"

"Yeah. You may not have noticed, but Geryon is the only nonhuman in h.e.l.l who really looks like an ET, an extraterrestrial, something from another world. He's consistent. Not like those patchwork demons, animal traits grafted on a human frame. And when I climbed aboard him I kicked machinery around his waist."

"So?"

I had to laugh. "Oh, really, Benito! An antigravity belt? When they've already proved they can take thema.s.s and weight out of anything they like? Geryon was lying. Lying without saying a word."

"And it was Geryon that convinced you? You have seen no proper miracles?"

"I saw one."

I told him where the pitchfork had come from. "That priest climbed the broken bridge in half a ton of gold. He hung from the demon's pitchfork until the demon had to let go, and he knew what would happen then."

Benito smiled. "Yes, that was a miracle."

"Too right. I know a miracle when I see one."

"Then you are more fortunate than most of us." He looked thoughtful. "Geryon has looked a little different each time I have seen him."

"That worried me too. Just how often have you made this trip?"

"Six times. Each has been easier for me, although not for the one who accompanied me to the exit. As I told you, it does not matter how many start. Only one leaves."

"And there really is a way out... There was a time when I thought you were just leading me into something more horrible. I'm still scared, but not of that."

"Now there remains only the lake of ice. You have nothing to fear."

"I'm afraid to relax. Too often I've thought I was through the worst part."

His look probed my soul. "When the iron began to grow warm in your hands--"

"Tell me all about it."

"I think not. But now there is only the ice. It will be colder than anything you can imagine, but we can endure it. Nothing can bar us now! Soon we reach the center, and then--" He stopped.

"And then?"

"You will see." He looked me in the face. "I think you have enough courage."

"Even now I feel it leaking away. Spit it out, Benito."

"We will meet Lucifer and pa.s.s him. Ignore anything he says. When we have pa.s.sed that, go uphill to Purgatory." He paused. "Without me."

"But you've traveled this route? You know where it leads?"

"No, and yes. I have not traveled it, but I know where it leads."

"How?"

"By faith, and by Dante's description."

"Dante's been wrong a couple of times. Admit it, Benito: you don't know what happened to those six you rescued."

"I know. But I have not seen."

"Do you want to leave h.e.l.l? Or are you afraid of what's tihere?"

"How are your hands?"

They were a child's hands now, still too small to support my weight.

"You didn't answer my question."

"I would leave h.e.l.l if I could. I belong here, so long as there are lost souls to oe rescued."

"You sent six men and women into the unknown, but you were afraid to go yourself."

He didn't answer, only looked at me.

I stood up. "Come on. My hands'll heal before we need them."

They healed.

We climbed the torso of a chained giant. It was easier than mountain climbing, and harder: mountains don't shake, mountains don't snap at you with teeth the size of medieval s.h.i.+elds. We stepped across s.p.a.ce from the giant's shoulder to the flat top of, a wall. From the wall I watched Benito slide down on the seat of his pants-- if he'd been wearing pants. A pity he hadn't found a better way down in six previous trips.

I slid after him.

Imagine one of the Great Lakes frozen over, seen on a moonless night. Maybe it looked like that. I'd never seen any of the Great Lakes. To me it was an ice-skating rink for a society of teleports: big enough to hold, say, one percent of a population of five billion. The wall behind me seemed arrow-straight; the dark ice, infinite.

A breath of a breeze whispered around us and leeched all the warmth from our ma.s.sless souls. I stiffened with the shock, then crouched down and tried to shelter in my own arms.

Benito was standing. "That will not help. Nothing helps," he said patiently. "You must bear the cold."

If he could do it... I stood up and closed my eyes tight against the soft, unreasonably cold breeze. Surely it was below freezing, way below freezing. How cold was it? If it could kill a man in minutes, or seconds, I'd never know it. I couldn't die.

"Benito? Burst into flame again for your good friend."