Inferno. Part 22

"I would if I could. My apologies, Allen." Benito took my arm. We walked.

It had certainly been worth asking.

Was it water ice we walked on? For all of me, it could have been dry ice, or frozen nitrogen, or something even colder.

I kicked something that cursed me without emotion. I tried to open my eyes. The wind's tears had frozen them shut. I pulled them open, painfully, with my fingers.

"Leave them open," Benito said without pity, "and they will freeze open."

When the urge came to blink I fought it. Then there was no need, for my eyes would not close. I looked back at what I'd kicked. I said, "Sorry."

The face was handsome, photogenic, dignified in middle age, undignified in the way it grimaced and bent to the ice for shelter. Had I seen that face sometime, on television? Maybe. The man was buried to his chin in the ice. At the sound of my voice he cried, "Wait! Are you American?"

"Aren't we all? I can't seem to find anything but."

The head called to another head sitting like a cabbage on the ice. "George! Maybe we can settle this now." It turned back to me. "Late American? Do you know anything about the ABM controversy?"

"Sure. Antiballistic missiles to knock down incoming missiles. The controversy was over whether to build the ABM system."

"Wonderful! All right, sir. George was a Democrat, and I was a Republican. The Democrats were against building the system. The Republicans were in favor of it. But which of us was right?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," I said. "Do you really have nothing better to talk about than that?"

"No!" the man I'd kicked said sharply. "We do not! One of us had to be right! So why are we both here?"

The cold wasn't just getting to me; it had gotten me. I wanted out, not conversation. I said, "Other crimes, maybe."

"One of us was wrong," George said. "Senator Gates here thought the system was a waste of money, but he went along with his party. He--"

"It was more than a waste of money! It used up efforts we could have spent on a laser system! Sir, I've seen how accurate a laser defense system could be against incoming missiles. But politics dictated that I must support the ABM system. I went along."

"I don't know anything about the darned lasers," George said, "except they were highly experimental. Experimental weapons did a lot for the n.a.z.is, didn't they?" He snorted contempt, then sneezed on the freezing air. "I was convinced that the ABM system was needed to defend the country against an atomic attack. But our party platform was in favor of military cutbacks. Officially, so was I."

"Now, sir," Senator Gates said to me, "we can't both have been wrong."

"I think rm getting the picture. You both thought you were wrong."

"...Yes."

"And a mistake could wipe out the United States of America."

Neither answered.

"For what it's worth," I said, "we're still getting Americans in h.e.l.l. Corbett died much later than you."

"Thank you," said ex-Senator Gates, "and they both turned their faces to the ice again.

"But you were both traitors in your minds."

"Thank you for your help," said ex-Senator George. it was a dismissal.

We walked with care, to avoid kicking heads. There were certainly enough of them. But now it was worse; here the dead had been buried supine, and we would have been stepping on faces.

Once I missed my step and came down hard on a human face. The ice across its eyes crackled under my feet, and I leapt back fast. "Sorry!"

"Thanks," I heard.

"Mistake."

"Thanks, oh, thanks," it said, weeping. "I haven't cried in years. The d.a.m.ned ice froze across my eyes, and I couldn't cry. Thanks."

I felt awful. This was an awful place. "That's okay," I said. I bent and picked the remaining shards of ice from her eyes. "What'd you do?"

"I don't want to say."

Okay.

I tore the ice visors from a couple of dozen pairs of eyes. Always they froze over again almost immediately. Only one ever said "Thanks." Finally I gave it up. There were just too many.

And the next head I pa.s.sed screamed, "The ice! Stupid! Tear off the ice! You did it for the others!"

I stopped. "Who're you?"

"None of your business!"

I turned away.

"The ice! Wait! Al Capone, I'm Al Capone! You want names? That's Vito Genovese, trying to turn his face! Wait, I'll show you Lepke! Wait!" He was shouting against a chorus of voices trying to drown him out. I kept walking.

When the noise was behind us Benito said, "I knew Vito Genovese."

"Was he worth talking to?"

"No. Were you thinking of going back? It's cold, Allen."

Sound whispered all around us. Partly it was the breeze, which had stiffened. Partly it was the chattermg of teeth. I'd suppressed that reflex in myself; it wasn't warming me at all.

But in all that expanse of ice, there was only one point of motion. I caught it in the corner of my eye, way off to one side. Doubted my senses. Kept looking. Saw it again.

"Benito?" I pointed.

He found it. "I had no idea. I thought I was the only one."

"You may be. It seems to be one man. And a dog."

They had noticed us, and they angled to meet us. As they came closer I saw my mistake. The dog was a lizard, its scarlet color leeched from it by the cold. And the man was the black-bearded thief who had stolen my shape at the seventh pit.

We studied each other. No greeting seemed appropriate. Finally I gestured and said, "Benito Mussolini. I'm Allen Carpenter."

"Jesse James. This lizard is Bob Ford."

"What was that all about that business there at the bridge?"

"A bunch of us got together," said Jesse. "We thought maybe we could cooperate in getting one of us out. It turned out a man couldn't throw a lizard far enough. But we could stand a human pyramid against one of the walls, and the top man could throw a lizard at the bridge. I was the lizard."

"Funny n.o.body thought of it before."

He sighed. "It's getting those animals to work together, that's the problem. All the time we were trying to make the pyramid, some of us in the lizard form kept biting the ones in human form. We didn't get anything done till we had a dozen big lizards to guard us while we made the pyramid."

"Figures. Why'd you jump back?"

"I had to tell them which way was out."

"You might not have got out again. They might not even have let you take human form again."

He nodded.

I remembered something. A line from a song. "It was little Robert Ford, that dirty little coward, I wonder how does he feel, for he ate of Jesse's bread, and he slept in Jesse's bed, and he laid Jesse James in his grave-- "Bob Ford. Didn't he kill you? Shot you while you were taking a bath?"

"Hanging a picture. Yeah, he shot me, all right. I was following your advice-- for which I thank you, stranger." He laughed. "And there was Bob Ford's head sitting on the ice. I thought it over for a while. I wandered around and around him, wondering what I could do to him, and wondering if I still hated him." The lizard was rubbing affectionately against his leg. "I finally bit him, on the nose."

It hit me like a stiff shot of good whiskey. "You can get out of the ice!"

"Sure, friend. I just reached into that man-shaped bubble and picked up a lizard. Well, which way now?"

"Inward," Benito said. "Let us go. It is cold here."

That had to be the most unnecessary statement of all time. We moved inward, and the wind came up. It was blowing right in our faces. Pretty soon it was a real howler, as bad as the circle of the winds. I wondered if Corbett had ever got back there...

The wind whistled past us and lifted Jesse off the ice. The lizard squealed and leaped after him, and the wind caught it too. Man and lizard were bowled end over end across the ice, then lifted and flung high and outward. I watched them dwindle.

"So close," I said. "They were so close!"

"They were not ready," Benito said. "Perhaps they must see what is done to others. Theft and treachery may not have been all they did. It is even possible that they will be blown all the way back to the Vestibule and must make their way back. Come."

"But--"

"They know the way, Allen. Come!"

"All right." We bowed our heads against the wind and staggered on. The wind had been entirely too selective for coincidence. It had thrown Jesse and Ford an unguessable distance without knocking me or Benito off our feet. I thought it was a good omen... for us.

CHAPTER 27

Suddenly there were no more heads. There was only the ice, and the wind that had blown the others away. We leaned into it and kept moving.

I said, "h.e.l.l has run out of sins?"

"Look down."

h.e.l.l had not run out of sinners. They were buried beneath the ice in weird positions. Once I looked down, and then no more.

We walked crouched, wrapped in our own arms, to no purpose. The wind had early sucked every erg of heat out of us.

I saw motion ahead, high up.

As we drew near a shadowy ma.s.s loomed around the suggestion of motion. Pterodactyls on a mountain? Restless, rhythmic motion, like the wings of enormous birds. And gradually it all came clear.

There was a humanoid form, a hairy torso more than a mile tall. We stood at the bottom, at waist level, and looked up at three vast faces whose features were almost lost in distance. Bat wings flapped on either side of each face, and the wind was now beating down at our heads.

This was a very different picture from the dapper gentleman who offers to buy your soul. Or from Milton's epic hero, proud and unrepentant. One could not imagine playing riddles or chess games with this hideous, miserable, helpless mountain. I studied it almost without fear.

All three pairs of jaws were moving in the same rhythm as the wings. Something fluttered around the lips...

"Benito, what's he chewing on?"

"Are you sure you want to know?"

"Skip it. Which way is out? Hey--" I reached to stop him, not fast enough. Benito was striding straight toward Lucifer.

He stopped at the edge of the ice.

The ice ended short of Lucifer himself. There was three feet of empty s.p.a.ce all around the enormous waist.

And no navel. I couldn't have missed it. It would have been big enough to hide a battles.h.i.+p.

"You must climb down," said Benito.

I looked into the gap. "After you."

He shook his head. "I cannot leave. There are others to rescue."

"I don't go without you."

"You have not shown such fear before."

"It's not all fear. You've rescued seven of us, now rescue yourself. You've earned it. If this doesn't lead to where you think it does, we can help each other get back."

"What if I turn back now, leaving you here?"

I'd wondered about that myself. "I don't know, and that's the truth. But there's a moral problem. You're a better man than I am--"

He smiled sardonically. "I? The murderous dictator you pushed into the eighth pit?"