I?”
“Would you believe Hell?”
More faint laughter, as if from a great distance. “Certainly not. I don’t even believe in ghosts.” And then there was nothing but the wall.
I jumped when Corbett spoke behind me. “It’s a risk, but are you game to try a cross-corridor? I think if we turn left and keep going straight we’ll be headed up again.”
T
he scenery changed. Now there were niches with urns in them, much closer together. We came to a T intersection and turned and returned to the right direction when we could. Then another T and a Y and a big round empty space with corridors off in all directions and a big monument in the very center . . .
. . . and we were in the good section of town. The sarcophagi were no longer buried in the walls. At the ends of short alcoves were huge marble oblongs, ornately carved, guarded by traditional statuary. Knights and vague sexless winged beings that were supposed to be angels and might have been faggots; reproductions of famous religious statuary; original creations, all done with enormous competence, all in monstrous bad taste. Sculpted Bibles open to John 3:16. Replicas of European cathedrals, done in perfect scale, bronze toys.
One alcove was blocked off by a gate and enormous lock. All the nameplates were of the same family, ornately carved with relief pictures and bronze replicas of their life’s signatures. We looked in, grinned at each other, and went on.
Pride. Unbelievably ornate monuments purchased at an unbelievable price: expensive tombs turned prisons. I wondered if they matched monuments left behind on Earth. Sure, I decided. Big Juju has a sense of fitness.
Fitness?
In this one case, yes, fitness.
The corridors twisted again and again. The dead were high walls on all sides of us. Our footsteps were dull intrusions on music for the proud dead. The dead walked among the dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead! Word and reality echoed with each step. Word and reality hammered at my soul. Dead. Dead. Dead. Presently I sat down against cool marble.
“Allen? What is the trouble?” Benito’s anxious voice was far away.
“Come on, let’s get moving. This place gives me the creeps.” Corbett shoved at me with his toe. “C’mon.”
I tried to speak. It wasn’t worth the effort, but finally I heard my own voice saying, “We’re dead. Dead. It’s all over. We tried to make lives for ourselves, and we didn’t make it, and we’re dead. Oh, Corbett, I wish I’d died like you.”
The gay sweet music mocked me. Dead. Dead. Dead.
Green light blinked on and off in the corner of my eye. It was annoying, a disturbance, an irritant in the thick cotton closing about me. I could see the source without turning my head, but it was an effort to move my eyes. Why bother? But the light winked on and off, and eventually I looked at the source, a neon sign blinking far down at the dead end of a corridor of the dead. It echoed my thought:
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
—off and on, endlessly, in green neon.
Unreachably far away, on another world, in another time, Allen Carpentier had been buried like a potato in a closed coffin ceremony. The fans had come to the funeral, some of them, and a few writers had come, and afterward they’d gone off to have a drink and talk about new writers. Carpentier was dead, and that was all there was to it. I could speculate forever about Big Juju’s moral superiority, I could wander forever through Hell, and so what?
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
Corbett’s voice came dimly. “We may have to leave him. I saw this happen to a guy, once, in the war. He’s going autistic.”
“I have seen it also. Many times. Would you leave him here?”
I thought Benito was shaking my shoulder.
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
—what was the blinking neon sign doing in this place?
A horrible suspicion filtered through the blankets and around my brain. I pushed Benito away and surged to my feet. I walked, wobbling, toward the blinking
“Would you believe Hell?”
More faint laughter, as if from a great distance. “Certainly not. I don’t even believe in ghosts.” And then there was nothing but the wall.
I jumped when Corbett spoke behind me. “It’s a risk, but are you game to try a cross-corridor? I think if we turn left and keep going straight we’ll be headed up again.”
T
he scenery changed. Now there were niches with urns in them, much closer together. We came to a T intersection and turned and returned to the right direction when we could. Then another T and a Y and a big round empty space with corridors off in all directions and a big monument in the very center . . .
. . . and we were in the good section of town. The sarcophagi were no longer buried in the walls. At the ends of short alcoves were huge marble oblongs, ornately carved, guarded by traditional statuary. Knights and vague sexless winged beings that were supposed to be angels and might have been faggots; reproductions of famous religious statuary; original creations, all done with enormous competence, all in monstrous bad taste. Sculpted Bibles open to John 3:16. Replicas of European cathedrals, done in perfect scale, bronze toys.
One alcove was blocked off by a gate and enormous lock. All the nameplates were of the same family, ornately carved with relief pictures and bronze replicas of their life’s signatures. We looked in, grinned at each other, and went on.
Pride. Unbelievably ornate monuments purchased at an unbelievable price: expensive tombs turned prisons. I wondered if they matched monuments left behind on Earth. Sure, I decided. Big Juju has a sense of fitness.
Fitness?
In this one case, yes, fitness.
The corridors twisted again and again. The dead were high walls on all sides of us. Our footsteps were dull intrusions on music for the proud dead. The dead walked among the dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead! Word and reality echoed with each step. Word and reality hammered at my soul. Dead. Dead. Dead. Presently I sat down against cool marble.
“Allen? What is the trouble?” Benito’s anxious voice was far away.
“Come on, let’s get moving. This place gives me the creeps.” Corbett shoved at me with his toe. “C’mon.”
I tried to speak. It wasn’t worth the effort, but finally I heard my own voice saying, “We’re dead. Dead. It’s all over. We tried to make lives for ourselves, and we didn’t make it, and we’re dead. Oh, Corbett, I wish I’d died like you.”
The gay sweet music mocked me. Dead. Dead. Dead.
Green light blinked on and off in the corner of my eye. It was annoying, a disturbance, an irritant in the thick cotton closing about me. I could see the source without turning my head, but it was an effort to move my eyes. Why bother? But the light winked on and off, and eventually I looked at the source, a neon sign blinking far down at the dead end of a corridor of the dead. It echoed my thought:
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
—off and on, endlessly, in green neon.
Unreachably far away, on another world, in another time, Allen Carpentier had been buried like a potato in a closed coffin ceremony. The fans had come to the funeral, some of them, and a few writers had come, and afterward they’d gone off to have a drink and talk about new writers. Carpentier was dead, and that was all there was to it. I could speculate forever about Big Juju’s moral superiority, I could wander forever through Hell, and so what?
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
Corbett’s voice came dimly. “We may have to leave him. I saw this happen to a guy, once, in the war. He’s going autistic.”
“I have seen it also. Many times. Would you leave him here?”
I thought Benito was shaking my shoulder.
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
SO IT GOES
—what was the blinking neon sign doing in this place?
A horrible suspicion filtered through the blankets and around my brain. I pushed Benito away and surged to my feet. I walked, wobbling, toward the blinking
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