Inferno

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INFERNO

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

v1.0 (12-31-1998)

If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version

number by 0.1 and redistribute.

CHAPTER 1

I thought about being dead.

I could remember every silly detail of that silly last

performance. I was dead at the end of it. But how could I think

about being dead if I had died?

I thought about that, too, after I stopped having hysterics.

There was plenty of time to think.

Call me Allen Carpentier. It's the name I wrote under, and

someone will remember it. I was one of the best-known science-

fiction writers in the world, and I had a lot of fans. My stories

weren't the kind that win awards, but they entertained, and I had

written a lot of them. The fans all knew me. Someone ought to

remember me.

It was the fans who killed me. At least, they let me do it. It's

an old game. At science-fiction conventions the fans try to get their

favorite author washed-out stinking drunk. Then they can go home

and tell stories about how Allen Carpentier really tied one on and

they were right there to see it. They add to the stories until

legends are built around what writers do at conventions. It's all in

fun. They really like me, and I like them.

I think I do. But the fans vote the Hugo awards, and you have

to be popular to win. I'd been nominated five times for awards and

never won one, and I was out to make friends that year. Instead of

hiding in a back booth with other writers I was at a fan party,

drinking with a roomful of short ugly kids with pimples, tall serious

Harvard types, girls with long stringy hair, half-pretty girls half-

dressed to show it, and damn few people with good manners.

Remember the drinking party in War and Peace? Where one of

the characters bets he can sit on a window ledge and drink a whole

bottle of rum without touching the sides? I made the same bet...

The convention hotel was a big one, and the room was eight

stories up. I climbed out and sat with my feet dangling against the

smooth stone building. The smog had blown away, and Los Angeles

was beautiful. Even with the energy shortage there were lights

everywhere, moving rivers of lights on the freeways, blue glows

from swimming pools near the hotel, a grid of light stretching out

as far as I could see. Somewhere out there were fireworks, but I

don't know what they were celebrating.

They handed me the rum. "You're a real sport, Allen," said a

middle-aged adolescent. He had acne and halitosis, but he

published one of the biggest science-fiction newsletters around. He

wouldn't have known a literary reference if it bit him on the nose.

"Hey, that's a long way down."

"Right. Beautiful night, isn't it? Arcturus up there, see it? Star

with the largest proper motion. Moved a couple of degrees in the

last three thousand years. Almost races along."

Carpentier's trivial last words: a meaningless lecture to people

who not only knew it already, but had read it in my own work. I

took the rum and tilted my head back to drink.

It was like drinking flaming battery acid. There was no pleasure

in it-- I'd regret this tomorrow. But the fans began to shout behind

me, and that made me feel good until I saw why. Asimov had come

in. Asimov wrote science articles and histories and straight novels

and commentaries on the Bible and Byron and Shakespeare, and he

turned out more material in a year than anyone else writes in a

lifetime. I used to steal data and ideas from his columns. The fans

were shouting for him, while I risked my neck to give them the

biggest performance of all the drunken conventions of Allen

Carpentier.

With nobody watching.

The bottle was half empty when my gag reflex cut in and

spilled used rum into my nose and sinuses. I jackknifed forward to

cough it out of my lungs and pitched right on over.

I don't think anyone saw me fall.

It was an accident, a stupid accident caused by stupid

drunkenness, and it was all the fans' fault anyway. They had no

business letting me do it! And it was an accident, I know it was. I

wasn't feeling that sorry for myself.

The city was still alive with lights. A big Roman candle burst

with brilliant pinpoints of yellows and greens against the starry

skies. The view was pleasant as I floated down the side of the

hotel.

It seemed to take a long time to get to the bottom.

CHAPTER 2

The big surprise was that I could be surprised.

That I could be anything. That I could be.

I was, but I wasn't. I thought I could see, but there was only a

bright uniform metallic color of bronze. Sometimes there were faint

sounds, but they didn't mean anything. And when I looked down, I

couldn't see myself.

When I tried to move, nothing happened. It felt as if I had

moved. My muscles sent the right position signals. But nothing

happened, nothing at all.

I couldn't touch anything, not even myself. I couldn't feel

anything, or see anything, or sense anything except my own

posture. I knew when I was sitting, or standing, or walking, or

running, or doubled up like a contortionist, but I felt nothing at all.

I screamed. I could hear the scream, and I shouted for help.

Nothing answered.

Dead. I had to be dead. But dead men don't think about

death. What do dead men think about? Dead men don't think. I

was thinking, but I was dead. That struck me as funny and set off

hysterics, and then I'd get myself under control and go round and

round with it again.

Dead. This was like nothing any religion had ever taught. Not

that I'd ever caught any of the religions going around, but none

had warned of this. I certainly wasn't in Heaven, and it was too

lonely to be Hell.

It's like this, Carpentier: this is Heaven, but you're the only

one who ever made it. Hah!

I couldn't be dead. What, then? Frozen? Frozen! That's it,

they've made me a corpsicle! The convention was in Los Angeles,

where the frozen-dead movement started and where it has the

most supporters. They must have frozen me, put me in a double-

walled coffin with liquid nitrogen all around me, and when they tried

to revive me the revival didn't work. What am I now? A brain in a

bottle, fed by color-coded tubes? Why don't they try to talk to me?

Why don't they kill me?

Maybe they still have hopes of waking me. Hope. Maybe there's

hope after all.

It was flattering, at first, to think of teams of specialists

working to make me human again. The fans! They'd realized it was

their fault, and they'd paid for this! How far in the future would I

wake up? What would it be like? Even the definition of human might

have changed.

Would they have immortality? Stimulation of psychic power

centers in the brain? Empires of thousands of worlds? I'd written

about all of these, and my books would still be around! I'd be

famous. I'd written about--

I'd written stories about future cultures raiding corpsicles for

spare parts, transplants. Had that happened to me? My body

broken up for spares? Then why was I still alive?

Because they couldn't use my brain.

Then let them throw it out!

Maybe they just couldn't use it yet.

I couldn't tell how long I was there. There was no sense of

time passing. I screamed a lot. I ran nowhere forever, to no

purpose: I couldn't ran out of breath, I never reached a wall. I

wrote novels, dozens of them, in my head, with no way to write

them down. I relived that last convention party a thousand times. I

played games with myself. I remembered every detail of my life, with

a brutal honesty I'd never had before; what else could I do? All

through it, I was terrified of going mad, and then I'd fight the

terror, because that could drive me mad--

I think I did not go mad. But it went on, and on, and on, until

I was screaming again.

Get me out of here! Please, anyone, someone, get me out of

here!Nothing happened, of course.

Pull the plug and let me die! Make it stop! Get me out of here!

Nothing.

Hey, Carpentier. Remember "The Chill"? Your hero was a

corpsicle, and they'd let his temperature drop too low. His nervous

system had become a superconductor. Nobody knew he way alive in

there, frozen solid but thinking, screaming in his head, feeling the

awful cold--

No! For the love of God, get me out of here!

***

I was lying on my left side in a field, with dirt under me and warm

light all around me. I was staring at my navel, and I could see it! It

was the most beautiful sight I'd ever imagined. I was afraid to

move; my navel and I might pop like a soap bubble. It took a long

time to get the nerve to lift my head.

I could see my hands and feet and the rest of me. When I

moved my fingers I could see them wriggle.

There wasn't a thing wrong with me. It was as if I had never

fallen eight stories to be smashed into jelly.

I was clothed in a loose white gown partly open down the

front. Not very surprising, but where was the hospital? Surely they

didn't waken Sleepers in the middle of a field?

They? I couldn't see anyone else. There was a field of dirt,

trampled here and there, sloping downhill to become a shiny mud

flat. I raised my head, and he was standing behind me. A fat man,

tall but dumpy and chunky enough that at first I didn't notice his

height. His jaw was massively square and jutted out, the first thing

I noticed about his face. He had wide lips and a high forehead, and

short, blunt, powerful fingers. He wore a hospital gown something

like mine.

He was beautiful. Everything was beautiful. But my navel?

Magnifique!

"You are well?" he asked.

He spoke with an accent: Mediterranean; Spanish, perhaps, or

Italian. He was looking closely at me, and he asked again, "You are

well?"

"Yes. I think so. Where am I?"

He shrugged. "Always they ask that question first. Where do

you think you are?"

I shook my head and grinned for the pleasure of it. It was

pleasure to move, to see myself move, to feel my buttocks press

against the dirt and know something would oppose my movements.

It was ecstasy to see myself in the bright light around me. I looked

up at the sky.

There wasn't any sky.

Okay, there has to be a sky. I know that. But I saw nothing.

Thick clouds? But there was no detail to the clouds, just a uniform

gray above me. Even in my sensation-starved condition it was ugly.

I was in the middle of a field of dirt that stretched a couple of

miles to some low brown hills. There were people on the hills, a lot

of them, running after something I couldn't make out. I sat up to

scan the horizon.

The hills ran up against a high wall that stretched in both

directions as far as I could see. It seemed straight as a

mathematician's line, but I sensed the slightest of inward curves

just before it vanished into deep gloom. There, was something

wrong with the perspective. but I can't describe precisely what, just

that it didn't seem right.

The hills and the mud flats formed a wide strip between the

wall and a fast-moving river of water black as ink. The river was a

mile away and didn't seem very wide at that distance. I could see it

perfectly, another perceptual distortion because it was too far away

for the details I could make out.

Beyond the river were green fields and white Mediterranean

villas, walled complexes with the squat classical look to them, some

quite large. They weren't arranged in any order, and the effect was

very pleasing. I turned back to the wall.

Not very high, I thought. High enough to be trouble climbing,

perhaps two or three times my six-foot height. I was hampered by

the perspective problem. The nearest point of the wall might have

been a mile away or ten, though ten seemed ridiculous.

I took a deep breath and didn't like the smells. Fetid, with an

acrid tinge, decay and sickly sweet perfume to cover the smells of

death, orange blossoms mingled with hospital smells. All subtle

enough that I hadn't noticed them before, but sickening all the

same. I won't mention the smells often, but they were always

there. Most stinks you get used to and soon don't notice, but this

had too much in the blend and the blend changed too often. You'd

just get used to one and there'd be another.

Beside me on the ground was a small bronze bottle with a

classical beaker shape. I figured it would hold maybe a quart.

Except for the man standing above me there wasn't another

blessed thing.

"Never mind where I am," I said. "Where have I been? I don't

remember passing out. I was screaming, and here I am. Where was

I?"

"First you ask where you are. Then where you were. Do you

think of nothing else you should say?" He was frowning

disapproval, as if he didn't like me at all. So what the hell was he

doing here?

Breaking me out of wherever I'd been, of course. "Yeah.

Thanks."

"You should thank the One who sent me to you."

"Who was that?"

"You asked Him for help--"

"I don't remember asking anyone for help." But this time I'd

heard him pronounce the capital letter. "Yeah. 'For the love of God,'

I said. Well?"

The fat meaty lips twitched, and his eyes filled with concern.

When he looked at me it wasn't in distaste, but in sympathy. "Very

well. You will have a great deal to learn. First, I answer your

questions. Where are you? You are dead, and you lie on the

ground of the Vestibule to Hell. Where were you?" He kicked the

bronze bottle with a sandaled foot. "In there."

Hot diggity damn, I'm in the nut hatch and the head loony's

come to talk to me.

Carpentier wakes up a thousand years after his last flight and

sloppy landing, and already he's in trouble. Spoons and forks and

chopsticks, traffic lights, the way a man puts his pants on, all may

have to be relearned.

Law and customs change in a thousand years. Society may

not even recognize Carpentier as sane.

But wake him in a thirtieth-century loony bin among thirtieth-

century twitchies, and now what? How can he adjust to anything?

There were other bottles sitting unattended on the dirt, some

larger than mine, some smaller. I don't know why I hadn't noticed

them before. I picked one up and dropped it quick. It burned my

fingers, and there were faint sounds coming from inside it.

It sounded like human speech in a foreign language, a voice

screaming curses. That tone couldn't be anything else. Endless

curses screamed--

Why would they put radios in old bronze bottles and scatter

them through the loony bin? My hypothesis needed more work.

The people up on the hills were still running. They'd looped

back to about where I'd first seen them, and whatever it was they

chased, they hadn't caught it yet. Do they let the nuts run in circles

in futuristic loony bins?

Where had I been? Where? There wasn't any hospital around

here, no facilities for keeping all at part of a corpsicle, nothing but

this crazy man and a lot of bronze bottles and people running in

circles, and-- and insects of some kind. Something whined and did

a kamikaze into my ear. Something else stung me on the back of

the neck. I slapped frantically, but there wasn't anything to see.

It felt good even to hurt myself slapping.

My "rescuer" was patiently waiting for me to make some

response. It wouldn't hurt to humor him until I had more

information.

"Okay, I'm in the Vestibule of Hell and I was in a bottle. A djinn

bottle. How long?" I told him the date on which I'd fallen from the

window.

He shrugged. "You will find that time has not the same

meaning here as you are accustomed to. We have all the time we

will ever need. Eternity lies before us. I am unable to tell you how

long you were in that beaker, but I can assure you it is not

important."

Not important? I almost went mad in there! The realization

made me start to shiver, and he dropped to his knees beside me,

all concern, to put a hand on my shoulder.

"It is over now. God will not allow you back into the bottle. I

cannot assure you that there will be nothing worse before you leave

Hell. There will be much worse. But with faith and hope you will

endure it, and you will be able to leave."

"That's a lot of comfort."

"It is infinite comfort. Did you not understand? I know a way

out at here!"

"Yeah? So do I. Right over that wall."

He laughed. I listened for a while, and it got irritating. Finally he

choked it down to a chuckle. "I'm sorry, but they all say that, too. I

suppose there is nothing for it but to let you try. After all-- we

have plenty of time." He laughed again.

Now what? Would he turn me in if I tried to climb the wall? I

got up, surprised at how good I felt except for the gnats and the

smell. My imaginary exercises in the bottle--

Look-- wherever I really spent all that time, effectively I was in

a bottle, right? It's a convenient figure of speech. Anyway, my

exercises in the bottle had paid off. I started briskly toward the

wall. Wherever the ground dipped low it became squishy mud,

ankle-deep, with small live things in it. I tried to stick to the high

ground. The fat man kept right alongside me. There was no

chucking him. After a while I said, "If we're going to walk together I

might as well know your name."

"Benito. Call me Benny if you like."

"Okay. Benito." Benny sounded much too friendly. "Look,

Benito, don't you want out of here?"

I hit a nerve. He stopped short, his wide face a gamut of

emotions unlike anything I'd even seen. After a long time he said,

"Yes."

"Then come over the wall with me."

"I can't. You can't. You'll see." He wouldn't say anything else,

just kept pace with me as I walked on.

And on.

And on, and on, and on. The wall was a long way off. I was

right about the perspective. We'd been walking for over an hour as

far as I could tell, and the wall looked no closer.

We walked until we were exhausted, and it was still a long way

off. I sat down in the mud to slap gnats. "Didn't seem that far. How

high is that thing, anyway? Must be colossal."

"It is no more than three meters high."

"Don't be silly."

"Look behind you."

That was the shock of my life. The river was now maybe three

miles away instead of one. And we'd walked for hours. But--

Benito nodded. "We could walk for eternity and never reach

the wall. And we have eternity. No, you don't believe me. Very well,

convince yourself. Continue toward the wall. Continue until even

you, are certain it can never be reached, and then I will tell you how

you can escape."

It took me several hours, but I finally believed him.

The wall was like light speed. We could get arbitrarily close, but

we couldn't ever reach it. Like light speed, or the bottom of a black

hole, but like nothing else in the universe I knew.

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INFERNOLarryNivenandJerryPournelle(c)1976byLarryNivenandJerryPournellev1.0(12-31-1998)Ifyoufindandcorrecterrorsinthetext,pleaseupdatetheversionnumberby0.1andredistribute.CHAPTER1Ithoughtaboutbeingdead.Icouldremembereverysillydetailofthatsillylastperformance.Iwasdeadattheendofit.ButhowcouldIthinkabou...

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