“Yeah. Let’s go,” I said, “So what was with BA and Justoffal?”
Part V
“It appears they may have a stay of execution.”
We started off walking down the newly paved road this time I was very conscious of the fact that I was treading on human faces—human souls. “How’s that?”
“It’s uncommon but not unheard of.”
We were at the end of the line ramping up to the grinder hopper when a commotion in line caught my eye. “Hang on a sec, Dan,” I said.
We ran over to the line. Somebody in back was doing everything possible to get to the front as quickly as possible.
“’Scuse me! ‘Scuse me! Coming through!” She pushed people, climbed over them and nearly threw a couple of them over the handrail to get to the front.
I got as close as possible to the gangplank. The people’s feet were right at eye level. “Excuse me,” I said, “What the hell are you doing?”
It was LaurieAnnM. “There’s ice cream at the front of the line and I’m getting there before they run out!” She continued her attack on civility to the consternation of those around her. “Get out of the way! Pardon me! Watch it! Coming through!”
Simmons and I looked at each other. “Should we tell her?” I said.
“You think she’d believe you?” asked Simmons.
“Na. Let’s go. Who all are these people in this line?” We resumed our walk down the paved road and headed for a stair landing on the left side. It looked like it led to the next ring.
“Hundreds of people—people you’ve never heard of or read.”
“Like who?”
“Let me see.” He opened up the book with the Ilium dust cover. “This is the Catalog of Condemnations. Everybody who suffers here has an entry.”
It’s a catalog!
“Each entry,” he continued, “has the person’s name, the major sin, and punishment for the crime. It comes in handy since not everyone has their crime laid out in a bold, bronze plaque like Ellen.”
“Gotcha. So who’s in line?”
“Let’s see here. Ring one.” He flipped through the tome as if it were a dictionary. “Here we go. ‘Pavement Pounders.’ Phullashytt, dems rock, California Dreaming, TheGeniusofAynRand, Dreambird, Seasoldier—”
“What if you have one poster with multiple nics?”
“Then they do double time depending on the performance of each nic. There’s not a whole lot of difference between the nics of the same person. It’s an extremely rare writer who can come across like Mark Twain in one nic and then in another appear to be Forrest Gump’s inbred cousin with his hands stuck in his pants. In fact, those writers are usually too good to be here.”
“So not all writers are here?”
“Hell no! You think Mark Twain—“
“Chango!” I said.
We arrived at the landing on the left side of the road at the same time someone ascended from the lower level. He wore combat boots, tight jeans. . .and that’s it. No shirt. I knew immediately who it was.
“Yeah. That’s me. And you are?”
“Well, my nic is Jasper,” We shook hands. “And this is Dan Simmons.”
“Oh, I know Mr. Simmons,” said Chango.
“Really?” I said.
“Well, yeah,” said Simmons, “We both live here and this is not my first tour.”
“So, Chango,” I said, “Um, forgive me for asking but what are you doing here in the first ring? I expected you to be . . .ah, somewhere else.”
“Oh you mean in with the rest of the lusty buggers? You can say it. Go ahead. Well, for a long time I was with the sodomisers but they kicked me out because I was having too much fun.” He threw his head back and laughed. “They put me in with the blasphemers but I was too much of a natural. I started giving orders and they didn’t think it was proper for a damned soul to start acting like a Fallen Angel. And so with this big Hellish make over The Man has ordered they did with me the only thing they could do. They promoted me.”
“They what?” I said.
A huge grin spread across Chango’s face. “Yeah! Check it out! They’re gonna make me a deeeemonnnn!” He was so happy he sang the last word. “Don’t you think I’ll look totally bitchin’ with red skin? I hope they give me a choice of eye color. If they do I’m gonna choose a real cool light blue to contrast with my red skin, you know. I could have kind of a ‘fire and ice’ thing going on.”
“Sounds cool. You gonna shave your head?” I noticed the coolest looking demons were bald.
“Of course I am! I can’t let hair distract from my horns and a mohawk would just be more distractive. Only old men have hair and horns.”
“Well, sounds great. Congrats! Where are you going now?”
“I’m going to Baalzebub’s office to get it finalized. Wish me luck!”
“Hey,” said Simmons, “Did you bring your bug spray?”
“To the office of The Lord of the Flies? No. I kinda figured it would be bad taste.”
“Well, you may need it. Here.” Dan tossed Chango a small can of Raid he had in his jacket. “His minions and his secretary can be a pain in the ass. Use it on them if you have to then ditch it in the potted castor plant just outside his door before your meeting then pick it up again on your way out. Good luck.”
“Good luck,” I said. Chango thanked us and started walking further up the paved road away from the road crew.
Simmons and I started down the incredibly long flight of stairs to the next level. “Here. You may need one too.” He handed me a can of bug spray as well. Okay,” he said, “Now, about BA and Justoffal: They’ve been given a sort of stay of execution. BA will probably be redamned at a lower level but Justoffal is a little more complicated. He may end up back in line. He doesn’t know why he was pulled out of line and neither do I.”
We continued down the straight, long staircase. “So,” Simmons said, “Your nic is ‘Jasper?’”
Shit! I introduced myself to Chango as “Jasper.” Well, it is my nic. But apparently he didn’t know “Dante” was now “Jasper.” Shit! I can’t lie. And here we are now between levels on a dark staircase with no witnesses (in Hell? Would that even matter?). I wanted to ask, “What did you think my nic was?” but decided I might not like the answer. I slid my hand in my pocket and felt the knife.
“Yeah,” I said finally, “Jasper’s my nic.”
“Interesting,” said Simmons.
Interesting. Why is it interesting? What the hell is he thinking?
The rest of the journey to Level 2 was in silence—an extremely awkward silence. I haven’t felt that kind of uncomfortable silence since my wife and I climbed Kilimanjaro. I was chatting with an Irish guy in our group after setting up camp. My wife and I agreed that while traveling on vacation we shouldn’t broadcast the fact that we worked in Iraq. It’s just a bad idea. But Donny seemed okay. We were having a friendly chat and I figured it would be okay just this once to reveal where we worked. And besides he asked where we work and what we do. Donny then revealed he has a girlfriend in Najaf.
Silence.
We reached the bottom of the stairs. A small demon sat in a puddle of filth hugging his knees drawn up to his chest. He was red like all demons I’d seen so far but this one instead of being shaven bald had more like male pattern baldness. He had enormous Yoda-like ears and a huge, down-turned, sea bass mouth. His sad eyes greeted us as we approached. Above his head on the wall in back of him in a large bronze plaque a single word proclaimed:
Tartuffe
