Inferno by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle Read Free Book Online Page B

away to put a beam in place, and another would be sawing it in half—while they screamed insults at each other, they did nothing else. The rules of Infernoland were more complicated than I’d have thought.
    Or the robots were programmed funny.
    But that sure looked like Pete and Barbara.
    I waited until a progressive type laid down his saw, then started for it. Too late. A thin-faced woman grabbed it and had it at the trestle-piece he’d been trimming to fit.
    The next time I was quicker. When she set the saw aside for an ax, I grabbed it. There was a drill bit on the ground next to it, just a twisted chunk of steel more valuable than its equivalent in diamonds, and I got that too.
    You’d have thought they were diamonds. Madam Hawkface started for me with the ax, and her builder companion was right behind. He didn’t need an ax. He could have made three of us.
    “Run!” I shouted.
    Benito heard. We dashed for the trail leading down into the gorge. It was narrow and twisted, but it looked safer than what we were leaving.
    I’d done one thing. I’d got those two crews to cooperate for the first time since Infernoland was opened to the public.
    Unfortunately, what they wanted to cooperate on was tearing me to pieces. The trail turned a corner, then swooped down the cliff. We followed it.

8
    T
    here was a ledge ten feet below the lip of the cliff, and we stopped for a moment to catch our breath. I thought I felt the cliff tremble and asked Benito about it.
    “It is not any place to stay,” he warned. “Allen, you will find that there is no safe place in Hell. Wherever you stop—well, you won’t like it.”
    “I can believe that.” The thing to do was get out of here, and the more I thought about it, the better the glider looked. Now I had a saw that I could use to cut frames and ribs and stringers, if I could find anything to cut.
    I still wondered what we’d use for fabric, but somewhere there had to be a storehouse for the costumes. The gowns Benito and I wore would do. It was a close-woven fabric, very tough, and it shed most of the dirt and muck we’d crawled through. I lifted the hem and tested the weave by blowing through it. It didn’t let much through. It would do fine.
    The ledge heaved again. I wondered if this was something for our benefit, then laughed at myself. Earthquakes on call? The Builders were powerful, but that powerful?
    We scrambled along the ledge until we were stopped by a waterfall pouring out in front of us. The water was black and dirty, and it stank like a sewer outfall, but the water rushed downward, and it had carved a bed in the cliffside. There were handholds in the sides of the notch the stream had carved.
    How long would it take a stream to carve that? It would depend on what the rock was made of. And of course the Builders would have carved the notch themselves, though it looked natural enough.
    After a while we reached the bottom of the cliff. The ground fell away at a steep angle. We found a path down it, along the stinking stream, twisting and turning along lower and lower, with steep cliff edges in places.
    It would be an ideal place to launch a glider if we could get one up the slope. Drag it up here and over to one of the drop-offs, and push. Yeah. It looked better all the time, but we first had to build the glider, and what was I going to build it out of? I wanted to see those trees. I clutched the saw closer to me.
    Benito was staring at me. I stared back.
    “Forgive me,” he said. “You hold that tool in a way I have seen before.”
    “Yeah?”
    “By monks riddled with self-doubt, and clutching a crucifix to reassure themselves their religion is true.”
    “We’ll need this. We’ll need others too. Wood, and rope for the glider—”
    “Will that do?” He pointed downward.
    We were almost at the bottom now. We faced a stinking swamp. Thick fog hid most of it, with only temporary glimpses through. Things thrashed around in the filthy water, but there were