“Don’t tempt the gods,” Rosemary said.
“Be watchful and don’t tempt the gods,” Phlegyas said. “I recall saying that. Where did you hear that?”
“A story we read in college mentioned you,” Rosemary said. “By the Danish woman who wrote Out of Africa. This was a really scary story.”
I asked, “So Minos put you here?”
“He did.”
“As king?”
He didn’t answer. The boat was slowing now. The fog was clearing, and I could see we were coming to a landing.
Chapter 11
Fifth Circle
The City Of Dis
* * *
And my good Master said: “Even now, my son,
The city draweth near whose name is Dis,
With the grave citizens, with the great throng.”
And I: “Its mosques already, Master, clearly
Within there in the valley I discern
Vermillion, as if issuing from the fire
They were.” And he to me: “The fire eternal.”
They were waiting for us at the docks. Three humans and two — others. For a moment I thought of diving overboard, but that would be silly. I’d be a thousand years getting out of that swamp. I remembered how clear it had all seemed in the grotto. I was free, the demons couldn’t hold me against my will. They couldn’t hold anyone who really wanted God’s help. I had been certain of that. Now I wasn’t so sure.
Was it time to pray? I didn’t think so. I didn’t know God well enough to pray.
The docks were more a landing than docks. Stone steps led down into the water. The water was murky. If there were any condemned souls lurking near the landing, they were staying well hidden.
The landing was marble, polished stone, about a hundred feet wide, and fifty feet between the water and the wall. The wall beyond the landing was a hundred feet high, higher in places. It went on out of sight in either direction. All along the wall there were battlements, towers, balconies that jutted out over the swamp, all at least fifty feet up, haphazardly placed. This wasn’t designed for defense, although it sure looked to be proof against any assault that didn’t involve cannon.
I would have to get through that wall. Dante got through when Virgil summoned an angel to break in the gates. I didn’t know how to do that. Either they’d rebuilt the gates or more likely we were at a different part of the wall, because the gates I could see were solidly closed.
Benito had got us inside the wall by duping a clerk. I didn’t think that was going to work this time.
The three humans in the greeting party were all men in gray robes, and they looked to be middle–aged. They smiled in greeting. “Welcome, Ms. Bennett. We’ve been expecting you.”
They ignored me entirely.
I hoped the other two in the welcoming party would ignore me, as well. They were demons. Black skin, horns, tail, like the species that swarmed the Fifth Bolgia. On my last trip through I’d almost laughed the first time I saw them. Clichés! But of course Dante’s description had been working its way through the culture: copycat poems and books, newspaper cartoons, Walt Disney …
The demons were looking at me, but they didn’t say anything. Evidently they were leaving us to the humans.
One of the men stepped forward and bowed. He was tall and silver–haired, quite distinguished, and he had an air of authority.
“James Girard,” Rosemary said. “And Professor Lebeau. I never expected to see y’all here!”
“Nor I you,” James said. “But here we are, and there is work for you.”
“Work? For me?”
“Indeed, we need you badly.”
“Y’all want me to do what?”
“Come and see.” He turned toward a large ornate double doorway in the wall. Seven wide marble steps led up to the closed doors. He bowed slightly, and gestured toward the steps. “This way.”
He ushered her ahead of him. The other two men fell in alongside me and the demons brought up the rear, so that I was drawn into Rosemary’s entourage. As we approached the doors they opened. Smaller demons — imps? — held them open as we went in.
Inside was a grand reception room, huge, fifty–foot–high ceiling with murals. When the doors closed behind us the stench of Hell faded until it was nearly gone, and the big room was almost pleasant.
The floor was marble inlaid with mosaics of sea scenes. There were musicians’ balconies and grand stairways. Ornate tapestries showed red–coated huntsmen jumping horses over rail fences … chasing caricatures of naked people in wide variety. Between tapestries there were red velvet curtains. There was a dais with a throne at one end of the room, but no one was in it.
“James, it looks like a Mardi Gras ballroom,” Rosemary said.
“It’s supposed to,” James said. “I hoped it would make you feel at home.” He led us through the ballroom to a smaller door on the other side. There were stairs and when we climbed those we were in a maze. There were corridors everywhere, corridors crossing corridors, with offices off each corridor. People scurried through. Everyone was carrying something. Papers bound in red tape, boxes of mud, slate tablets, scrolls, banker’s boxes of file folders …
“As you can see,” James Girard said, “we have just about every kind of filing system ever used. We did get rid of the poet bards who memorized things.” Rosemary laughed. James didn’t. “Unreliable, we made them write it all down. And I’ve got a team translating all the string knot quipus into something more permanent while we still can. But it’s a mess!”
“I can see that,” Rosemary said. She sounded thoughtful.
He led us on to a grand stairway, up that, and through more corridors. These were broader and more ornate, decorated with niches containing statues, and they connected larger offices. They reminded me of the Uffizi in Florence, except these were working offices, not just rooms of paintings and museum objects. Many of the offices were crammed with desks and people. At the end of a long ornate corridor was an open archway. Beyond that was a huge room divided into little cubicles. Each cubicle had two people staring at what looked like a little television screen. There was writing on the screens, and sometimes pictures. Each screen had a keyboard.
I’d seen things like that in banks. Computers. But these were a lot more elaborate than anything I’d seen, with pictures and bright colors. It looked like something out of a science fiction novel. In many cubicles one person was reading off a wax tablet, or out of a file folder, or from a box of baked clay, and the other was typing on the keyboard.
We didn’t go into the big room with the cubicles. Just before we got to the door we turned right. There was an anteroom that led to a big office with a high ceiling and windows. The windows looked out on Hell; the scene below was ornate tombs, and in the distance a great mausoleum.
All of that was well below us, far lower than the stairs we’d climbed. I remembered that Dis was at the edge of the Fifth Circle. We were looking out on the Sixth, and it looked like the area we’d crashed into with the glider, but I didn’t really recognize anything except the Great Mausoleum. That looked like the Great Mausoleum in Forest Lawn in Glendale, and the first time I saw it here I wondered who had copied what.
The office had high ceilings, and cornices decorated with abstract designs. There was a big desk at one end, and a conference table in the middle of the room. All the furniture was solid, worn teak and mahogany, good–quality stuff well cared for. The room didn’t seem crowded even with seven of us in it. The two demons and two of the men stood over by the wall. James gestured for Rosemary to sit at the conference table.
She hesitated, then sat down. He sat with her. No one paid any attention to me at all, so I took another chair at the table.
“Your office, Rosemary,” James Girard said.
“My office. My office for what, James? What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to be my chief assistant. I am one of twelve Chief Deputy Prosecutors in the Trials Division, Rosemary.
You will be my Lead Deputy Prosecutor.”
“This is a job interview?” she asked.
“I suppose you could call it that. But I already know I want you to work for me.”
Rosemary looked thoughtful. “And this is my office.”
“Yes.”
“James, would this office have some facility where I could wash up?”
Girard laughed. “Yes, Rosemary, it does. Through that door.” He pointed.
She hurried toward the door he’d indicated. “Thank you. I’ll be right back.”
We waited. No one paid me the slightest heed.
The office was large, with bookcases and file cabinets, very much a working office.
After what seemed a long time, Rosemary came out. She looked well groomed, very professional. She’d obviously found a comb and clean water but no makeup. Her hair was brushed straight back and down, giving her a rather severe look. She’d also washed all the stains out of her robe. Rosemary sat at the table. “Thank you, James.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You want me to be your Lead Deputy Prosecutor. With how large a staff?”
“As many as you like. You may recruit from anywhere within the Ten Circles. Anywhere in Hell.”
“But what’s the job?”
“It’s one you’ve done before. You supervised the transition to computer files in the New Orleans office,” James Girard said. “You did a brilliant job of it! Getting the programmers and the lawyers and the office staff to work together, you were great! And we need you. We’re a support group, Rosemary. We don’t do direct prosecutions.”
“But why is this so important?”
“Everything is changing,” Girard said. “Not just the file systems. Not just this sudden spike in the number of wandering souls. The whole basis of operations is changing. Hell has to change, too. We have to modernize! All these files have to be got in order. We need trial strategies.”
I knew I should keep my mouth shut, but I couldn’t. “Trial strategies? Who’s being tried?”
Girard looked annoyed. “Everyone in Hell, of course. It’s the new policy; everyone will have a new trial.”
“With Minos as judge?”
“Of course not. Rosemary, where did you find this man?”
“He found me. In the Vestibule. James, this is my friend Allen Carpenter.”
“Oh.” He looked at me. “There was a communication about you,” he said.
“Do I want to know what it said?”
“It said we should leave you alone for now. You’re still unjudged, so we won’t have a file on you.”
Rosemary glanced anxiously toward the demons standing over against the wall. “Will I have to work with them?”
“Not unless you want to, but they can be helpful. They’re here to — well, to look after the boss’s interests. They don’t entirely trust us.”
“Boss.”
“His Satanic Majesty. Prince of Darkness. Lucifer.” James Girard glanced around nervously. “He likes his titles, Rosemary.”
“I remember a governor like that,” Rosemary said.
“And a mayor. Exactly.”
Girard’s grin looked genuine but I had my suspicions. That nervous glance seemed real enough. He was scared stiff. If Rosemary noticed, she wasn’t showing it. Mostly, Rosemary asked questions. Some were technical.
“We’re preparing prosecutions on appeal,” she said. “Common Law or Code?”
“More like Code Napoléon than Common Law, but we don’t have all the Code, and we don’t know the precise makeup of the Court.”
“That doesn’t sound fair.”
“No, it doesn’t. We’re at a considerable disadvantage,” Girard said. “The opposition —”
“You mean God?”
One of the demons growled. Girard shook his head. “We just speak of ‘the opposition.’ Maybe it’s a Them. They set the rules, and it’s not always clear what rules He will like. Nothing we can do about that.”
“Like the Supreme Court,” Rosemary said. “Makes it very difficult for the prosecution to protect society.”
“Exactly like that,” Girard said. “It’s an adversary process —”
“Well, of course it is,” Rosemary said. “How else could it work? Well, I’m sure I’ll learn the rules.”
Girard’s grin was broad. “I’m sure you will, too. We’ve got some things going for us. Everyone we’re concerned with confessed and they’ve all been found guilty. We just have to document all that, and deal with mitigating circumstances.”
“Mitigating circumstances?”
“Yes. Like repentance after coming here. Claims of rehabilitation. Everyone claims something of that sort. You can see how we will have problems dealing with it.”
Rosemary smiled thinly. “And everyone here gets an appeal?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Vatican Two,” Girard said. “You remember that.”
“Well, not really! Pope John the Twenty–third called that Council about the time I was born! But I know my parents didn’t like it. It changed everything, they said. No more Latin masses.” She paused. “It changed things in Hell?”
“Yes, quite a lot. Many doctrines changed. They came close to abolishing the idea of heresy. Ecumenism everywhere. That’s why we have to organize for new trials. The whole notion of sin and heresy was changed.” Girard waved to indicate a shelf of books. They were mostly identical in binding and looked like law books. “I have taken the liberty of providing you with the principal works. I think you will find Bishop Pavarunas’s commentaries on Dignitatis Humanae of particular interest. Then there is the doctrine of reason. I have provided you with Plato’s Euthyphro, and Pope Benedict’s Regensburg speech, and several works on the doctrine of cocreation.”
“Cocreation?” Rosemary asked.
“Yes. The others have delegated much of the power of creation to His church. As usual, He has left us to work out the details.” He smiled wryly. “As you can see, we have a great deal of work for you.”
“What’s this ‘we’ stuff?” I demanded. “Rosemary’s not part of your team!”
“Aren’t you?” Girard asked.
“Why — why not?” Rosemary said. “Allen, they need me!”
“You’ll be keeping people in Hell!”
“Only the ones who deserve to be here. James, I suppose you’re asking me rather than telling me because I haven’t been sentenced. You need my consent?”
“Yes, of course, I knew you’d get that,” he said.
“You said I can recruit anywhere, all Ten Circles, but what you really mean is that I can co–opt people from Two to Ten, but I’ll really have to recruit in the First and the Vestibule.”
“Yes, of course. And you can co–opt anyone who isn’t senior to us.”
“Not Phlegyas, for instance.”
“No, although I can’t imagine you would want him.”
“I don’t, I’m just getting things clear. What about Armand and his friends? And Roger Hastings.”
James Girard laughed. A hearty laugh. “Just wait and you’ll have all the New Orleans people you could want!”
“Yes, but what about the ones I asked for?”
“Of course you can have them. Do you want them?”
“Well, I have a use for Armand and Leroy, and I do owe them a bit.”
Girard chuckled. “And you’ll make life interesting for Roger. He’ll probably wish himself back in the Winds.”
“He may,” Rosemary said.
“Rosemary — I —”
“No, Allen, don’t say anything you’ll regret. I do thank you for leading me here. James, I will count it a great favor if Allen is sent on his way free and unharmed.”
“Yes, of course,” Girard said. “He would have been anyway, you know. You don’t owe me much for that. He’s been rather profitable.”
“Profitable?”
“Sure. We lost Benito, but we gained at least two dozen from the Ves
tibule. They went down and confessed to Minos.” He turned to me. “And of course you brought us Ms. Bennett. I should have thanked you before.”
“Gained at least two dozen,” I said.
• • •
“Sylvia, it galls me!” I broke off one of her branches. “The worst of it was, I was sure he was right. I’d got two dozen people out of the Vestibule and down into Hell proper. I made a profit for Hell! I felt — I felt like putting my head in an oven.”
“I can understand that.” There was no trace of irony in her voice, but I hadn’t expected any. “Allen, you don’t know that all of those you brought in have stayed here, or that they will all stay here. Allen, if there’s one thing we can be sure of, the Devil lies.”
“You’re just trying to cheer me up.”
“Why, yes, of course I am. Shouldn’t I be?” She chuckled. “But Allen, you wanted to understand Hell! How better than eavesdropping on the people who run the place!”
I thought about that.
“And don’t tell me you weren’t meant to hear it!”
“I didn’t hear a lot more. And I don’t know what it means.”
“No? Well, tell me the rest of it. Don’t leave anything out. We already know a lot more than we did when you started.”
• • •
Rosemary was negotiating her terms of service. She wasn’t to be punished for anything she’d done in life, and she wasn’t submitting to Minos for judgment. She’d be allowed to travel in search of recruits, or to send others to recruit for her.
“You’ll have to go yourself if you want people from the First Circle or the Vestibule,” Girard told her. “Most of us can’t get up that high.”
“Or I can send Allen,” Rosemary said. “Allen, do you want a job?”
“Not that one.”
“Why not? It isn’t much different from what you’ve been doing. Actually, this will be easier because you can make promises you know will be kept. You don’t know what God has in store for your followers. You’ll know exactly what we intend. We’ll give them contracts.” Rosemary smiled thinly. “I’ll give you considerable discretion to negotiate those. I’m going to need help, Allen, and I’m willing to go a long way to get it. Some of the best people will be up there.”