The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell

Chapter 6

"What place?" she asked, standing and shielding her eyes with—her hand. I pointed in silence.

"Seen one, you've seen them all," she muttered, frowning. "They must be factory—produced, stamped out like cereal packages. Fold the thing and glue it and plop it down, hook up the electricity and it starts to work. I couldn't even bear to go to school in Hometown—that is really what it was really called, would you believe it? I graduated first place in my kiddy class, got a scholarship, went away to school and never came back. Knocked around a bit, got involved with police work, liked it. Then I was recruited by the Special Corps and the rest is history."

"Do you want to take a look at this hometown?" "No, I do not."

"It might be fun—and there should be food there. Unless you want a pork roast so badly that you want to kill a porcuswine with your bare hands?"

"No jokes, please. We'll take a look."

It was not a large lake and the walk was a short one. Sybil who had started out in good spirits, grew quieter and quieter as we approached the low buildings. She finally stopped.

"No," she said firmly.

"No, what?"

"No it's not a place I really want to visit. They all look exactly alike, I told you, central design, central manufacture. Plug the thing in and watch it go to work. I hated my childhood."

"Didn't we all? But the porcuswine, they were the best part of it. Probably the only part that I remember with any feeling.

Now let's go see if we can find a McSwineys and get a sandwich in this bijou townlet."

There was nothing moving in the streets or the buildings ahead. A single road came out of the hamlet and ended abruptly in the grass. There was a billboard sign of some kind beside it, but it was end on and we couldn't read it until we got closer. We walked at an angle as we approached so we could see what it said. Sybil stopped suddenly and clasped her hands so tightly together that her knuckles turned white. Her eyes were closed.

"Read it," she said.

"I did."

'What does it say?"

"Just a coincidence…"

Her eyes snapped open and she bit out the words. "Do you believe that? What does it say?" "It reads, in serifed uppercase red letters on a white foreground, it reads———

"'Welcome to Hometown. ' Are we mad or is this whole planet mad?" "Neither." I sat down and pulled a blade of grass free, chewed on it. "Something is happening here. Just what we have yet to discover."

"And we are going to discover what by sitting on our chunks and chewing grass."

She was angry now—which was much better than being frightened or depressed. I smiled sweetly and patted the grass beside me. "To action, then. You sit and chew the grass while I scout out the scene. Sit!"

She sat. Because of the force of my personality—Or because she was still tired. I climbed to my feet creakily and wearily and strolled forward into Hometown.

Found out everything I needed to know in a very short time and went back to join her sitting and chewing.

"Strangest thing I have ever seen," I said. "Jim—don't torture me!"

"Sorry. Didn't mean to—just trying to come to grips with this particular reality. Firstly, the town is empty. No people, dogs, ears, kids. Anything. One of the reasons that it is empty is that everything seems to be in one lump. As though it was made that way. The door handles don't turn and the doors themselves appear to be part of the wall. The same with the windows. And you can't look in. Or rather it looks like you're looking in but what is inside is really in the glass of the window. And nothing really seems right or complete. It is more like an idea of Hometown instead of being Hometown itself."

She shook her head. "I have no idea of what you are talking about."

"Don't worry! I'm not so sure myself. I'm just trying to pick my way through a number of very strange occurrences. We arrived here in a sort of a cave. With volcanoes and lava streams and no grass or anything else." I glanced up at the bloated red sun and pointed. "At least the sun is the same. So we went for a walk and found green grass and porcuswine, the porcuswine of my youth."

"And the Hometown of mine. It has to mean something..

"It does!" I jumped to my feet and paced back and forth in a brain—cudgeling pace. "Slakey knew where he was sending us and it wasn't to Heaven he said. So he must have been here before. Not quite Heaven, that's what he said. Maybe he thought he was sending us to Hell. And the spot where we arrived was very Hellish what with the red creature, the volcanoes and lava and everything. Could it have been Hellish because he expected it to be? Because this Hell is his idea of Hell?"

"You lead, Jim—but I just can't follow you."

"I don't blame you, because the idea is too preposterous. We know that someplace named Heaven exists someplace, somewhere. If there is one place there could be others. This is one of the others. With certain unusual properties."

"Like what?"

"Like you see what you expect to see. Let us say this planet or whatever it is was a place that was just a possibility of a place—until Slakey arrived. Then it became the place he was expecting to find. Maybe the red sun got him thinking about Hell. And the more he thought the more Hellish it became. Makes good sense."

"It certainly does not. That's about the most flaky theory I have ever heard."

"You bet it is—and more than that. Absolutely impossible. But we are here, aren't we?"

"Living in another man's Hell?"

"Yes. We did that when we first came here. But we didn't like it and wanted to leave it. I remember thinking that the barvolcanic world was just about the opposite of the one where I grew up.

It was my turn to wonder if this whole thing wasn't just institutionalized madness. But Sybil was more practical.

"All right then—let us say that was what happened. We arrived in this Hellish place because Slakey had come here first and everything…—what can we say—lived up to his devilish expectations. We didn't like it and you wished very strongly we weren't there but in a place with a better climate. You got very angry about that, which may have helped shaped what we wanted to see. Then we walked on and came to it. We drank, but we were still hungry. Rather I was, so much so I must have thought of my earliest gustatory delights. Which just happened to be in Hometown. Given that all this is true—what do we do next?"

"The only thing that we can do. Go back to Hell." "Why?"

"Because that is where we came in—and where we must be if we want to get out. Slakey is the only one that knows how to pass between these places. And another thing. My voice was suddenly grim.

"What, Jim? What is it?"

"Just the sobering thought that Angelina may have been sent to this place before we were dispatched. If so, we won't find her in my youth or your youth. She would have to be in Slakey's particular Hell."

"Right," she said, standing and brushing the grass from her dress. "If we are thirsty we can always find our way back here. If we are hungry—"

"Please save that thought for awhile. One step at a time."

"Of course. Shall we go?"

We retraced our steps back through the field and into the forest. A distant, happy grunting cheered me up a good deal. As long as there were porcuswine in existence this galaxy would not be that bad a place. Out of the trees and across the field of grass. That grew sparser and shorter until it disappeared. Volcanic soil again and more than a whiff of sulfur about. The mounds were getting higher as we walked and we labored to climb an even higher one. When we reached the summit we had a clear view of a smoking volcano. It appeared to be the first of very many. And behind it the red sun, which was hovering just above the horizon.

The dunes ended in foothills of cracked and crumbled stone. Red of course. The cleft of a small canyon cut into them and we went that way. A lot easier than climbing another hill. We both heard the scratching sound at the same time; we stopped.

"Wait here," I whispered. "I'll see what it is."

"I go with you, diGriz. We are in this together—all the Way."

She was right of course. I nodded and touched my finger to my lips. We went on, as slowly and silently as we could. The scratching grew louder—then stopped. We stopped as well. There was a slurping wet sound from close by, then the scratching started again. We crept forward and looked.

A man was standing on tiptoes, reaching above his head with a shard of rock, scratching at something gray on the cliff face. A piece of it came away and he jammed it into his mouth and began chewing noisily. This was most interesting. Even more interesting was the fact that he was bright red. His only garment a pair of ancient faded trousers with most of the legs torn off. There was obviously a hole in the seat of these ragged shorts because his red tail emerged from them. That was when he saw us. Turned in an instant and gaped open a damp mouth with broken black teeth—then hurled the piece of rock in our direction. We ducked as the stone clattered into the stone wall close by. In that instant he was gone, swarming up the sloping cliff face with amazing agility, vanishing over the rim above. "Red," Sybil said.

"Very red. Did you notice the little red horns on his forehead?"—

"Hard to miss. Shall we go see what he was doing?" "Doing—and eating."

I picked up a sharp fragment of stone and went over to the spot where he had been working. There was a gray and rubbery looking growth protruding from a crevice in the canyon wall. I was taller than our rosy friend and could easily reach it; sliced and chopped at it until a piece fell free.

"What is it?" Sybil asked.

"No idea. Vegetable not animal I imagine. And we did see him chewing it. Want a bite?"

"I wouldn't think of depriving you."

It tasted very gray and slimy, and was very, very chewy.

With all the taste and texture of a plastic bag. But it was wet. I swallowed and a piece went down. And stayed down. My stomach rumbled a long complaint.

"Try some," I said. "It's pretty foul but it has water in it and maybe some food value." I tore off a chunk and held it out. Very suspiciously she put it into her mouth. I looked upjumped and grabbed her and pushed her aside.

A boulder thudded into the spot where we had been standing.

"Angry at losing his dinner," I said. "Let's move out away from the rocks, where we can see what's happening."

We had a quick glimpse of him climbing higher still and finally moving out of sight.

"You stay here," I said. "Keep an eye out for Big Red. I'll get more of this gunge."

The sun did not seem to be appreciably higher in the sky when we had finished our meal. Stomachs full enough, and thirst slaked for the moment, we rested in the shade because the day was growing measurably warmer.

"Not good, but filling," Sybil said, working with her fingernail to dislodge a gristly bit that had lodged between her teeth. When it came free she looked at it disparagingly, then dropped it to the ground. "Any idea what we do next?"

"Put our brains into gear for starters. Since we woke up in this place we have been stumbling from one near—disaster—to another. Let's cheek off what we know."

"Firstly," she said, "we've gone to Slakey's version of Hell. We'll call it that until we learn better. We are in another placeon another planet—or we have gone mad."

"I can't accept that last. We are someplace else. We know that machines are involved in this—because they were carefully destroyed in the building on Lussuoso. Angelina was sent someplace from that temple. We were sent someplace from the one on Vulkann. We know that for certain—and we know something even more important. A return trip is possible. You went to Heaven and came back. And we must consider the possibility that Angelina could have come here before us."

"Which means that we need some intelligence—in the military use of the word."

"You bet. Which in turn means we have to find Big Red with the horns and tail and find out all that he knows. About Angelina, about this place, how he—and we—got here. And how we are going to leave.." —

A sound intruded, a soft, shuffling sound that grew slowly louder. Coming up the canyon floor towards us. Then we could hear the susurration of muttered voices.

"People—" I said as our recently departed devilish friend walked intoview. He was followed by a small group of companions, at least twelve of them. Men and women. All bright red. All carrying sharp rocks. I had never seen any of them before—and one glance told me that Angelina was not in this motley crowd. They stopped when they saw us—then started forward when their leader waved them on.

"You can flee, should you wish, but we'll come after you. Run or stay, it makes no difference." He shook the rock at us.

"We are going to kill you. Kill you and eat you.

"Hell is a very hungry place."