omniscient.
And what about your leg, Carpentier? What about your leg?
Biological engineering. Rapid regeneration. That, to add to their powers. They can warp space and possibly time. They can take the mass from a human body and leave the weight. They can put Minos’s tail into—where? Hyperspace? They’ve got fine-tuned weather control and infinitely adaptable robots.
And they can engineer your body, Carpentier, your body, in such a way that it heals in minutes, and do it without your knowing they gave you that ability.
Getting a little thin, isn’t it Carpentier? A neat set of rationalizations, but it won’t work. How are these Builders different from God Himself? What can God do that they can’t?
And back at the edge of my mind I couldn’t help remembering the last thing I’d screamed in the bottle.
Corbett had gotten up and was peeling saucer like flakes of charred skin from his chest and shoulders. “Hot here,” he said.
I nodded and abandoned my reverie. It was hot. Even the tombs that weren’t glowing were just below red heat. Here and there flames shot up from open pits. It must have been painful for Corbett with his new skin.
I remembered where we were. Inside the walls of Dis. How were we to get out again? We were surrounded by hot glowing tombs, flames, fire, heat everywhere, except in one direction where darkness showed through the red glow.
“We have to get out of here,” I said to Benito. “We’ll roast to—We’ll roast.” To death? We couldn’t die. Can’t die twice, Carpentier.
“Of course we must leave,” Benito said. “Recall your promise. I helped you with the glider, and it did not work. Now you have no choice. We go downward.”
“Which way?” For that moment I didn’t care.
“I am not sure. We may as well go where it is more comfortable.” He led us off toward the dark. It drew us onward, promising relief from the heat and the choking air. We threaded our way between heated tombs and great vatlike pits with fire dancing from them. Huge lids that would just cover them lay beside each one.
The edge of the hot region was the beginning of a white marble maze. The heat stopped as if we’d gone through an insulated doorway, but there was no door. I wasn’t even surprised. It would take more than invisible heat barriers to surprise me now.
Corbett staggered into a corridor and sank down with a happy sigh, his back against cool marble. He wriggled to get his head clear of the brass fixtures.
We were in an endlessly sprawling building. The corridors were about fifteen feet wide and nearly that high. Every wall was covered with square-cut marble slabs and rows of brass plates and slender brass . . . what? Vases? I read some of the plates. Name, birth date, date of death . Sometimes an insipid poem. These were burial vaults, and those brass things were vases, and of course there were no flowers in them. The corridor stretched on endlessly, and there seemed to be branches at frequent intervals. Millions of tombs . . .
“More unbelievers,” I said.
“Yes,” Benito answered.
“But I was an unbeliever. An agnostic.”
“Of course.”
“Why of course?”
“I found you in the Vestibule,” said Benito. “But now you know the truth.”
A two-syllable response stuck in my throat. The truth was an elusive thing, here in Infernoland. I could talk about advanced technologies until Hell froze over, and Benito would still call them miracles.
I’d watched a miracle. A compound fracture had healed before my eyes. And I was no robot!
But this place had to be artificial. It was a construct, a design. I knew that.
All right, Carpentier. An artifact implies an artificer. There has to be a designer. Pick a Chief Engineer for the Builders, and call him . . . what? Good fannish names, like Ghod, Ghu, Roscoe, the Ceiling? No. Call him Big Juju.
Questions, Carpentier. In what way do Big Juju’s abilities differ from God Almighty’s?
Size? This place is the size of a small
And what about your leg, Carpentier? What about your leg?
Biological engineering. Rapid regeneration. That, to add to their powers. They can warp space and possibly time. They can take the mass from a human body and leave the weight. They can put Minos’s tail into—where? Hyperspace? They’ve got fine-tuned weather control and infinitely adaptable robots.
And they can engineer your body, Carpentier, your body, in such a way that it heals in minutes, and do it without your knowing they gave you that ability.
Getting a little thin, isn’t it Carpentier? A neat set of rationalizations, but it won’t work. How are these Builders different from God Himself? What can God do that they can’t?
And back at the edge of my mind I couldn’t help remembering the last thing I’d screamed in the bottle.
Corbett had gotten up and was peeling saucer like flakes of charred skin from his chest and shoulders. “Hot here,” he said.
I nodded and abandoned my reverie. It was hot. Even the tombs that weren’t glowing were just below red heat. Here and there flames shot up from open pits. It must have been painful for Corbett with his new skin.
I remembered where we were. Inside the walls of Dis. How were we to get out again? We were surrounded by hot glowing tombs, flames, fire, heat everywhere, except in one direction where darkness showed through the red glow.
“We have to get out of here,” I said to Benito. “We’ll roast to—We’ll roast.” To death? We couldn’t die. Can’t die twice, Carpentier.
“Of course we must leave,” Benito said. “Recall your promise. I helped you with the glider, and it did not work. Now you have no choice. We go downward.”
“Which way?” For that moment I didn’t care.
“I am not sure. We may as well go where it is more comfortable.” He led us off toward the dark. It drew us onward, promising relief from the heat and the choking air. We threaded our way between heated tombs and great vatlike pits with fire dancing from them. Huge lids that would just cover them lay beside each one.
The edge of the hot region was the beginning of a white marble maze. The heat stopped as if we’d gone through an insulated doorway, but there was no door. I wasn’t even surprised. It would take more than invisible heat barriers to surprise me now.
Corbett staggered into a corridor and sank down with a happy sigh, his back against cool marble. He wriggled to get his head clear of the brass fixtures.
We were in an endlessly sprawling building. The corridors were about fifteen feet wide and nearly that high. Every wall was covered with square-cut marble slabs and rows of brass plates and slender brass . . . what? Vases? I read some of the plates. Name, birth date, date of death . Sometimes an insipid poem. These were burial vaults, and those brass things were vases, and of course there were no flowers in them. The corridor stretched on endlessly, and there seemed to be branches at frequent intervals. Millions of tombs . . .
“More unbelievers,” I said.
“Yes,” Benito answered.
“But I was an unbeliever. An agnostic.”
“Of course.”
“Why of course?”
“I found you in the Vestibule,” said Benito. “But now you know the truth.”
A two-syllable response stuck in my throat. The truth was an elusive thing, here in Infernoland. I could talk about advanced technologies until Hell froze over, and Benito would still call them miracles.
I’d watched a miracle. A compound fracture had healed before my eyes. And I was no robot!
But this place had to be artificial. It was a construct, a design. I knew that.
All right, Carpentier. An artifact implies an artificer. There has to be a designer. Pick a Chief Engineer for the Builders, and call him . . . what? Good fannish names, like Ghod, Ghu, Roscoe, the Ceiling? No. Call him Big Juju.
Questions, Carpentier. In what way do Big Juju’s abilities differ from God Almighty’s?
Size? This place is the size of a small
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