“Allen, that’s my point,” Sylvia said. “Father Ernesto, you knew Dante. Was his poem a real vision or did he make it up?”
Ernesto shrugged. “Both, surely,” he said. “I am convinced he had a real and true vision, and that he remembered much of it correctly, but certainly he added details from his imagination.” He paused with a look of horror. “I was not always chaste,” he said. “My Maria was always satisfied. Or so I thought.” He ran over to peer down into the horror below. “Maria! But she cannot be there!”
“Relax, Father,” Sylvia said. “Phyllis is right, you know. If that’s all it took to be thrown in that Bolgia, it would be full up. Which proves my point.”
“So?” I asked.
“Allen, I’ve been trying to get an idea of how far we can trust Dante’s account. And it’s clear he made some of it up.”
“Oh. All right, but we don’t have anything better to go with.”
“Well, there’s your experience going through the first time,” Sylvia said.
“Yeah, there’s that. So what’s next?”
Sylvia said, “Simoniacs.”
“What’s that?” Oscar demanded. “Are they dangerous?”
“Probably not to any of us,” I said.
“Almost certainly not to you, and by experience no longer to me,” Father Ernesto said. “Come, I will show you.”
“Wait a moment,” I said. “Sammy. Jerry Corbett?”
“If he was a pilot who flew Buck Rogers spaceships, yeah, I saw him.”
“Tell me.”
“There was a girl a few places ahead of me,” Sammy told us. “I heard her call to a guy up on the rim. She talked about being in the hundred–mile–high club with him. That didn’t make sense to some of us so we got her to explain. It sounded like fun! Did you know there’s no gravity a hundred miles up? They kept talking, and after a while he climbed down to run with her. Real friendly guy. Funny thing, the demons acted like he wasn’t there. They kept her running, but they never hit him.”
“What happened to him?”
“They ran together a long time. She was trying to talk him into something, but I wasn’t close enough to hear what it was. Then all of a sudden he gave up, peeled off from her and started climbing up the wall of the pit, and damned if the demons didn’t go on ignoring him! Last I saw of him he went over the edge.”
“Uphill or downhill side?”
“Uphill. Toward that big cliff. Never saw him again.”
“I keep thinking I ought to find him,” I said.
Sylvia looked stern. “Why? He’s not your obligation, Allen. Certainly not as much so as we are.”
I thought about that. She was right. “Okay, Father Ernesto, let’s go.”
He led us downhill. The next pit was about fifty yards away. I could barely make out what looked like a bridge off to our left. We left Oscar behind and walked cautiously over to look down into the Third Bolgia.
Chapter 23
Eighth Circle, Third Bolgia
Simoniacs
* * *
I saw along the walls and on the ground
Long rows of holes cut in the living stone;
All were cut to a size, and all were round.
They seemed to be exactly the same size
As those in the font of my beautiful San Giovanni,
Built to protect the priests who come to baptize:
(One of which, not so long since, I broke open
To rescue a boy who was wedged and drowning in it.
Be this enough to undeceive all men.)
My view into the next pit was a field of small, flickering fires. A shadow danced in the light, man–shaped, gesticulating and shouting.
Ernesto said, “I’d like to talk to that one. I have spoken with the one in the hole. His story is very strange, but I couldn’t pull him out alone.”
I knew about simoniacs — and judged that nothing here would hurt me — but I wondered about the one who was loose. I followed Ernesto downslope. Behind me Sylvia was explaining simoniacs to Oscar.
“They sold what was God’s,” she said. “Dante found priests who sold indulgences. You know what those are? For a fat fee you could get directly into Heaven.”
The valley floor was lined with pits cut into the stone, about four feet across. Sinners’ legs poked out of the pits. Their feet were on fire. Most of the noise down here was screaming; some was cursing; some —
“But you still have no reason to believe there’s a God!” the tall man was saying. He leaned on both arms as he peered into the pit.
The man within, wedged upside down and hidden from me, said, “Look around you, moron! It’s precisely described in the Bible!”
“You never opened a Bible, Jackson! You never even read Dante. You’ve been quoting Disney cartoons!” At that moment he saw Ernesto. He flinched violently.
Ernesto asked, “Sir, how came you loose?”
“Oh, I just got here. I take it you’re not one of the, um, staff?”
“No. I am Father Ernesto.”
“I’m Hal Bertham.” He was keeping the well between him and us, in case we were demons after all. “This is Jackson, Prophet Herbert Jackson Hendrix. Say hello, Jackson!” Burning feet waved. “We were both on the radio. Jackson was a really annoying radio preacher.”
“Really successful, though,” came a voice from the well. “And this fool told the public that there isn’t a God, never was, and shouldn’t be, either. Blasphemer! I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t do anything but preach.”
“Hellfire. Jackson sold hellfire, and if you sent in lots of money you could stay out of it. He was always about to go off the air —”
“But Hal shouldn’t be here, either,” came the muffled voice. “He swore that all religion was a farce, and he did it for forty years. Every few years he’d have totally different reasoning. He was a scientist or a health nut or — I never figured out who’d pay him a salary to do all that. Hal?”
“Why should I tell you that?”
Ernesto said earnestly, “The Devil?”
Jackson laughed hollowly. “Where would he get the funding? I wondered if it was the ACLU. Or oil money. Muslims.”
“You son of a bitch,” Hal said. His head and torso disappeared as he reached deep into the well.
I saw a flash that might have been a camera flashbulb, but grade–school training knew different. I threw myself on Ernesto and flung us at the ground. The shock hit us and blew us away. By the time we stopped spinning I was blind, deaf, totally disoriented, and laughing like a maniac.
Ernesto must have recovered first. I felt him pulling me uphill. My hearing was a roar, my sight was all floating fireballs. Gradually it began to clear. I heard Oscar bellow in a staticky scream. “What’s so damn funny?”
“Simoniacs,” I gasped. “Radio talking heads. The one sells God. The other has absolute faith that there is no God. He sells that. Get it? He’s an antisimoniac.”
My sight was clearing. I could see a real fireball still rising over the shattered well that had held Jackson. Neither soul was in evidence. I asked, “What happens when a simoniac touches an antisimoniac?”
Sylvia, Phyllis, and Ernesto watched me, waiting for a punch line. Oscar said, “Gamma rays?”
“Yeah. They annihilate.”
“But where have their souls gone?” Ernesto asked.
“I can move,” Oscar said. “Allen, does it get weirder than this?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Allen,” Sylvia said. “We have to talk. All of us.”
“Sure. Oscar, you all right?”
“I’m healing. Look, my windshield is fine now!”
“I don’t worry about your windshield. How’s your wheelbase or whatever it is?”
“Feeling better, Allen. I’ll be all right in a while. Sylvia, what’s the problem?”
“Demons,” she said. “According to Dante, the demons are confined to the Bolgias everywhere except at the Fifth. They’re out on the rim the
re, and they’re mean. They almost got Dante and Virgil.”
“But they’re only on the far side,” I said.
“No, they’re on both sides,” Sylvia said. “Dante’s first sight of the demons was when one was carrying a barrator to be tortured. We have to be careful as soon as we get onto the fourth bridge.”
“What’s a barrator?” Phyllis asked.
“Lawyers,” Sylvia said. “Stir up unnecessary litigation so they can have jobs to do.”
“Also, one who buys or sells political favors,” Father Ernesto said. “Both kinds are thrown into the pitch with the graft givers and takers and others whose work is done in secret.”
“Then the demons fish them out to play with them,” Sylvia said. “It’s one of the scariest scenes in Dante’s poem. I often wondered if Dante was afraid of them because he’d done some political bargaining.”
“Perhaps so,” Ernesto said. “He was exiled on charges of barratry. I never believed any of it. But if he did so, it was much less than others of our city. Need any of us worry about the pit of the grafters and barrators?”
“Not me,” Phyllis said. “The boss had to pay off the pols to keep the place open, but — Oh!”
“What troubles you?” Ernesto asked.
“Well, I was the payoff a couple of times. Man, I really had to fake it with that city council guy. Father, does that make me a — what did you call them? Barrator?”
“I would not think so.” He paused. “I have spoken with these demons,” he added.
“What were they like?”
“Zealous, like all the servants of God in Hell,” Ernesto said. “They did not threaten me directly, but they would not let me pass, even when I protested that my proper place was in the Sixth Bolgia. They let none pass, upward or downward, without orders from their superiors.”
“Who are their superiors?” Sylvia asked.
“I never met them. I do not know,” Ernesto said.
“I met some of them,” I said. “In the City of Dis.”
“What were they like?” Oscar asked.
I shook my head. “Like bureaucrats, I guess.”
No one was listening to me. They had all turned to look counterclockwise around the rim. There was a motorcycle coming. As it got closer we heard the roar of the motor.
It came on fast, and did a sharp turn that stopped it just short of where we were standing. The rider was a woman. She wore riding breeches, tight at the ankles and baggy at the thighs, and a dark blue tunic. She had goggles but no helmet. When she stopped she popped the goggles up so that they sat at the top of her medium–length brown hair. She looked to be middle–aged, still attractive. I thought she must have been really pretty when she was younger.
Sylvia and Phyllis stared at her.
“Hello!” she shouted. “God bless you!” The voice was Middle Western, loud, and demanded attention.
Father Ernesto bowed acknowledgment. “Greetings. So we meet again.”
“You know her?” I asked.
“No. I know only that she stopped to speak with me shortly after I escaped from the Sixth Bolgia. She offered me a ride which I declined.”
“You look familiar,” Sylvia said.
“Sure she does!” I said. “Angelus Temple, right?”
“Right indeed,” she said. “Sister Aimee Semple McPherson, Lighthouse Mission, Salvation Navy. God bless you all.” She laughed heartily. “Which He must have done, since you’re standing here!”
“You call us blessed?” Phyllis demanded. “We’re in Hell! I spent years in that desert, and then I was whipped around that damned racetrack! Blessed? You got to be crazy!”
“Your scars have healed, and I see no demons behind you,” Aimee said. “Your sins were great, and so your punishment, but you have repented. Rejoice! Bask in God’s love.” She shrugged. “Or don’t, God will love you anyway. He loves all of you. God rejoices that you are no longer punished. Rejoice with him!” She waited expectantly.
I couldn’t tell if she wanted introductions or an argument. “Allen Carpenter,” I said. “I wrote science fiction.”
“Oh! For Amazing?”
“You read Amazing?”
“Sure. Astounding, too.”
Sammy had been staring at her. “You really are Mrs. McPherson!” he said.
“Sister Aimee. Yes, did we meet?”
“We sure did. In 1938, I guess it was.” He gestured to include all of us. “She really packed them in! Huge house, five, six thousand, she filled it three times a day! Sometimes people stood in lines for hours to get in. And she had this radio show, and soup kitchens, and a big rescue mission where people could stay during the Depression. The Fire Department made her honorary chief, and she had the uniform, too. The studio sent me down to check her out, they thought they could do a movie about her. I mean a real movie about her, Capra’s Stanwyck movie bombed.”
“That wasn’t about me!” Aimee said. “That woman didn’t believe in anything!”
“Yeah, the studio execs thought that was why it bombed. People didn’t want to think you were a fake. So we were looking to do a real picture about you, only the writers couldn’t figure out what to do about the scandal. They had scripts with it going both ways.”
Sylvia said, “I suppose you think we know what you are talking about?”
“Oh! Sorry. Everybody knew. Sister Aimee disappeared for a few weeks during the twenties. Said she’d been kidnapped but another story was she’d run off to shack up with a married man. Excuse the expression.” He shrugged. “Didn’t matter which one was true, it’d make a good movie either way. I thought it would be a good film, but nothing came of it.”
“No one told me the studios were thinking about a movie,” Aimee said.
“No, I’m sorry, ma’am, I was told not to say anything to you until we were ready to buy some rights. But it never got that far. Anyway, that’s how I met you, I went to some of your temple services, and talked to you about publicity.” He shook his head. “The services seemed kind of tame, compared to the stories they told about services when you first opened that temple! But you could still pack them in.”
She grinned. “I could, couldn’t I? And I still had my radio station, too. Yeah, it was a little tamer in the thirties. Depression. Harder to raise money, more to do, what with the soup kitchen and all. And I was getting older and tired. But tired or not, I did the Lord’s work!”
“So how came you to Hell?” Father Ernesto asked.
She looked crestfallen. “Look, I was on stage all the time, I couldn’t do anything without it being front–page news.”
“Sure was,” Sammy said. “Front page of the L.A. Times two, three times a week, like clockwork. And everyone listened to her! You could walk down the street in Los Angeles on a Sunday morning and never miss a word, she was on every radio in the city!”
“Yes! I made myself famous, because it helped me do God’s work. I was the first woman to have a radio broadcasting license! First woman radio preacher! Owned my radio station, and I learned how to do that, too! Built my temple, and paid for it, over a million dollars with no debts, it was paid for the day we opened! Biggest temple in the West, and it was all because I was famous! I couldn’t have done all that without the publicity.
“So I couldn’t just be a sinner and repent like anyone else,” she said. “Other people can sin and repent and it’s all right, but if I do it a thousand blessed souls leave the Lord’s grace! I had to hide my sins.”
Sylvia nodded. “Sure. But you were still a woman. All that talent, all that influence, but still a lonely woman.”
“Yes! You do understand! And I fell into temptation. I sinned. But I never gave up serving the Lord. I sinned often, but each time I came back and worked harder, right up to the day I died. I died serving the Lord. I was so tired from all those trips and rallies that I needed sleeping pills, and I took too many trying to get to sleep. In Oakland! Not home where I belonged. On a road trip, for the Lord. Oakland! Horrible place.?
??
“There’s no there, there,” Sylvia said absently. She smiled. “Gertrude Stein said that about Oakland.”
“She sure was right. So I died in Oakland. I thought I’d see the Lord, and I was frightened of judgment, but it wasn’t the Lord, it was Minos. Ugly. But he was the judge. Minos offered to pass me on to Purgatory. I was ready to accept, but then I realized I wasn’t feeling tired anymore! I felt young again, lots of energy again. So I asked him if there were any sinners in Hell. He laughed, but he knew what I meant, were there any people I could save.”
“What did he tell you?” I asked.
“He wouldn’t answer straight–out. He said there had been people saved from Hell. I said, but you put them there, and they were saved anyway, so you were wrong about them, and he admitted that was true, but he wouldn’t say there were any others. Wouldn’t say there weren’t, either. I asked him straight–out if I’d be wasting time trying to save sinners in Hell. He said something like ‘Good works never go to waste.’ So I made a deal with him. I’d stay in Hell and try to do the Lord’s work saving sinners, if he’d tell me how I could get out if that wasn’t working.”
“People, he thought that was funny! He said there was only one way out, for me or anyone else, just go down and down to the center and crawl out down Satan’s leg. So we made a deal. I’d stay here, but I was on my own.”
“What about the motorcycle?” Phyllis asked. “That’s a nice bike.”
“It was next to me where Minos put me at the bottom of that big cliff. Runs good, too. Even on the ice.”
“You used a motorcycle in your services,” Sammy said. “You were famous for doing that.”
“I only did it a couple of times.” Aimee laughed. “I got a speeding ticket from a motorcycle cop. That got me thinking and I dressed up like a cop to pull over sinners and put them on the right path. Got headlines for that. Anyway, I have this Harley here, and it works good.”
“Have you saved any souls?” Father Ernesto asked.
“You betcha! Dozens!”
“From where?”
“All over! I pulled out a flatterer. My goodness, he stunk! Had to wash my motorcycle afterward he stunk it up so bad. But I got him out! Couple of thieves, and one of those simoniacs, a pope, one of yours, Reverend Ernesto. But mostly I’ve saved fallen women from that first pit. Poor things.” She shuddered. “I guess I could have ended up in there myself.”