You try to picture that in your mind. Women . . . sixty-six times HOTTER than Pam Anderson . . .
Wow.
But still . . . the proposition is folly and you know it. “Doesn’t matter if they’re sixty-six thousand times hotter, Howard. This place is still Hell, and Hell sucks. Not to mention, I’m celibate. Next week I’m going to the seminary to become a priest.”
“Then what could possibly explain your recent intent with those slatternettes?”
“Slattern—what?”
“The prostitutes the other night. You fully intended to proposition them, for a sex act. You trumpeting the piety of celibacy and the pursuit of the priesthood seems . . . hypocritical.”
If you had a finger, you would point in his face. “Hey, I almost propositioned them. Part of me . . . wanted to know what sex was like before I officially gave it up for a life of godly servitude.”
Did Howard frown as if unconvinced?
“Sex out of wedlock is a sin, and priests—as well as priests-to-be—regard sin as an enemy of the soul. I don’t consider agreeing to take this tour to be a sin, and I don’t think God does either. It will strengthen me in my purpose; it will verify my faith and make me a better priest.”
“Oh, please extrapolate, Mr. Hudson! How can one being temporarily in the midst of Hell make one a better priest?”
“Simple,” you explain. “It’s an opportunity that no other priest but Christ himself has received. By seeing Hell firsthand? I’ll be able to prepare Christians more effectively. This will make me work even harder to save souls, and the more souls I save, the fewer Lucifer will get his hands on. It’s a victory for God.” You grin at Howard. “Glory be to God.”
Howard seems disappointedly quelled. “Your mind appears to be made up in quite an intractable fashion.”
“It is.”
“Then explain your seeming turn toward profanity. Is it not true that to profane is to offend God?”
“Oh, God doesn’t give a shit about that,” you feel sure. “I never cuss on Earth. The only reason I’ve started to here is just due to the environment, I guess.”
“Hmmm . . .”
“And my mind is made up,” you reiterate without hesitation. “So get me out of this fucked-up pumpkin so I can go back to my life like you promised.”
“As you wish, if you’re sure.”
“Sure I’m sure, and this little tour of yours is the reason I’m sure. It proved to me that Lucifer’s a grade-A moron. He’s a nitwit. All that power and all these resources and technologies, and look what he does with it. He could turn Hell into a great place, and you want to know why he doesn’t?”
“I know why, Mr. Hudson,” Howard admits. “Because of his pride.”
“Right. He’s obsessed with being evil and disgusting and cruel because God’s the opposite of that, and Lucifer’s pissed off at God for throwing him out of Heaven. He’s like a little kid having a tantrum because mommy spanked him. I don’t want anything to do with this place, or him. Lucifer’s a dick.”
Howard’s brow rises in a defeated surprise. “Why not let me at least encourage you to take the final leg of the tour.”
“No reason to. My mind’s made up.”
“Then what harm can there be?”
You huff. “Well, what’s the final leg? Believe me, I don’t need to see any more piss pumps, baby factories, or Decapitant Camps.”
“The final leg is the Privilato Chateau that you would occupy if you accept the Senary. At least go and behold all the pleasures you’ll be missing.”
You pause. Well . . . Suddenly it begins to sound interesting again. But, “No. Why tempt myself to do the wrong thing when I’ve already decided to do the right thing?”
“Right and wrong are relative, Mr. Hudson, and in Hell they’re interchangeable. Consider the obvious imperative: in Hell there is no sin. You find trepidation in the prospect of temptation? So did Jesus during his forty days in the wilderness. Why not test your resolve as he did? You may think that you’re doing that now, but isn’t your faith only proven after you’ve witnessed the entire tour? Need I remind you that Christ took a similar tour after he died on Calvary?”
“I know that,” you say.
“Lucifer offered Jesus Privilato status, by the way, and he obviously turned it down. See all that Christ saw; face the same temptations he faced, in which case, if you still decide to turn the Senary down, you will have done what Christ did as well.”
“My thoughts exactly,” you tell him. I’ll become an even better Christian by seeing every temptation and STILL turning them all down . . .
You think a moment more, then say, “All right.”
Howard stands up. He seems relieved.
“Still think you can get me to change my mind?” you ask, a bit prideful yourself now.
“Irrelative time will tell,” Howard says. He pats sweat off his brow with a handkerchief embroidered, HPL. This guy’s really sweating bullets, you think.
Howard picks up your head-stick and approaches the circle of geometric etchings in the black wall. “And the tour goes on,” he murmurs.
For a reason you can’t define—and just before the Turnstile powers up—you look behind you and see the Golemess lying back on the floor, her knees pulled back to her sleek shoulders. Her back arches. Evil water breaks and gushes; then the enormous belly tremors, hitches, and collapses as it disgorges a slick Mongrel fetus with an accordioned face and arms where its legs should be. Puff-eyed, the demonic thing bawls as nublike horns appear on its bald head. It’s almost cute.
Almost.
The Golemess labors to her feet. Her elegant clay hands scoop the fetus up. The last thing you see before the Turnstile’s black static shifts you into another phase is the new mother calmly sliding her newborn into the fuel hatch of the steam-car’s boiler housing. Just as calmly she pushes the hatch shut . . .
. . . and you fall through that now-familiar combustion of morbid energy amid the crackling vertigo of scintillescent black static, and just as the Mongrel baby was pushed forth from the Golemess’s womb, you and Howard are pushed through space and some wicked substitute for time until . . .
CHAPTER SEVEN
(I)
The pallid censer smoke thinned from a rising, abyssal breeze, but even this far out in the Quarter Favius thought he could hear drifts of screams from the immeasurable city too far away to see. It brought delight to his horrid heart: the relief of the visual monotony, because for decades or centuries, the Great Emptiness Quarter and the Reservoir pit itself existed only in foul, glittery blackness.
But now?
So beautiful . . .
A new color to the terrain had been introduced: bloodred.
The bottom of the Reservoir was almost covered—not very deep yet—but covered all the same by the great scarlet gush from the sixty-six-foot-wide Main Sub-Inlets. Favius crudely thought the inflow into the Reservoir could be likened to a toilet slowly filling, only the toilet was the Reservoir itself and its tank was the Gulf of Cagliostro untold miles away. The Pipeway was running at full capacity now, the enormous pumping stations back in the Mephistopolis—at the harbor of Rot-Port—running at full tilt. Favius looked out across the impossible red vista, which churned and foamed from the force of the inflow. This close to the southern Main Sub-Inlet, the violent gush was almost deafening.