Escape From Hell by Larry Niven Read Free Book Online Page A

us.
    The next patch didn’t look a lot different from where I’d landed the last time I climbed a wall. Lots of open ground. Grassy fields. Classical buildings, like Greek or Roman villas and temples, colonnaded porches around a central atrium. Far off on top of a hill was a colossal building I recognized.
    “The planetarium,” I told Rosemary. “With every planet and star and galaxy in the universe, as far as I know. I’d still be there looking if they hadn’t thrown me out.”
    “Why did they throw you out?”
    “I don’t belong here.”
    “I feel — Allen, it feels right.”
    “Sure. No wasps. It’s quiet, it doesn’t stink, and the ground’s not covered with worms. Why wouldn’t it feel right?”
    “Is that why you’ve come here?” she demanded.
    “No, I’ve come here to talk them into leaving.”
    The bridge reached a fair distance beyond the wall. There were steps at the end. When we got to it, a growing crowd was looking up at me from below the stairs. I said, “Allen Carpenter. How’re you doing?” Recognized a face and called, “Lester!”
    One of the nearer souls, toga with purple border, said, “You’ve been here before. We threw you out.”
    “Yes, you did. I have stories to tell. Hey, Lester!”
    Lester was hanging back in the fringes, grinning, short enough to be half–hidden. He looked younger than he had when I’d known him, but the bearded grin was Lester, all right. Writer, editor, raconteur. His business cards said “Expert.” He was still alive when I died.
    “Stories,” a green–robed woman said. “Tell us a story.”
    “There is a way out of Hell,” I said. “You can take it.”
    “Then why are you here?” the purple–robed man demanded.
    “I came back to tell you,” I said. “I have been all the way to the bottom. There’s a grotto there. Quiet. Peaceful. And beyond it is the way out.”
    “And you know this? You have seen what is beyond?”
    “Up to a point,” I admitted. “Benito climbed out, and never came back. I saw him leave.”
    “And you have come back,” someone said. “Just to tell us. Admirable.”
    “Well, yes, it is,” Lester said. He sounded thoughtful, and I knew why. The Allen Carpentier he’d known wouldn’t have come back.
    “And of course it’s an easy journey.” This one wore a toga with no border. Stoic, I assumed, mostly because he looked like the pictures of Stoics in my high school history book.
    I said, “Hah. No, it’s grueling, but it’s never dull!”
    “Grueling? How?”
    “There’s the desert. Flakes of fire fall from the skies. There were four of us, and we had to cross it.”
    “Four?” This was a woman, attractive, in a wraparound rose–colored robe.
    “At the time, four. After we left here, Benito and I built a glider.” I could see Lester grinning when I said that, but most had blank looks. “Glider. A flying machine. Like a big bird.”
    “With what can you build such a machine?”
    “We used robes. Robes, trees, and vines, and some stolen tools. But we flew into the winds and picked up a hitchhiker. He’d been a pilot. He was good, too, but we still crashed. That’s how we got Corbett. He decided to follow us out. We found Billy lower down. So that was four of us, and now we had to cross this desert of fire.”
    It took me a while to tell the story, because the audience was so mixed. There were old Greek philosophers, and modern pagans like Lester. They were all Europeans or Americans, though. Rosemary and I had crossed above Aussie Abos, and Muslims. Dante showed a Muslim in with the Virtuous Pagans. He couldn’t have been the only Muslim not in deeper Hell! If I followed the bridges I’d find someone else. Chinese, maybe; African tribesmen; Inuit; East Indians. All the breeds of mankind, and all the religions.
    So I told them how we crossed the desert in a demon car that tried to kill us, and how we drove it over a cliff and watched it burn.
    Lester listened to every word. I haven’t