Janet Morris - Crusaders In Hell.pdf - Janet Morris - margozap

WELCOME TO HELL...

Zeno peeked, spreading his fingers. Through them he saw Satan, not a don now

in human robes, but a gigantic fiery-eyed thing with horn and tail, beset by a

great serpent and by winged docks with spear-like arms. He saw chariots with

wheels of flame and mushroom clouds on which they rode. He saw creation and

dissolution. He saw the sun swallow up me sky. He saw the earth charred to a

cinder, deep within the corona of that sun. And he saw a cloud of gas in which

angels darted-hundreds, thousands, wing brushing wing as they worked. He saw a

huge ball forming in me midst of pregnant gasses. And around all of this wound

the serpent, and in the serpent's coil die Devil toiled.

And in the Devil's arms Michael was cradled, fangs bared at a hungry sky as me

serpent's wide-spread jaws came closer-jaws mat contained an entire universe

within the maw they circumscribed.

Zeno's fingers dosed of their own accord, shutting out the awful sight.

Janet Morris

CRUSADERS IN HELL

Distributed in Canada by PaperJacks Ltd. A Licensee of the trademarks of Simon

& Schuster, Inc.

CRUSADERS IN HELL

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this

book are fictional, and any resemblance to red people or incidents is purely

coincidental.

thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

First printing. May 1987

ISBN: 0-W1-65639-2

Cover art by David Mattingly

Distributed by

SIMON & SCHUSTER

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10020

CONTENTS

The Nature of Hell, Janet and Chris Morris

Gilgamesh Redux, Janet Morris

Crusaders to Love, Bill Berby

Between the Devil and The Deep Blue Sea, Michael Armstrong

Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth, C.J Cherryh

By Invitation Only. Nancy Asire

The Gods of the Gaps, Gregory Benford

Springs Eternal, David Drake

Snowballs to Hell, Chris Morris

THE NATURE OF HELL

Janet and Chris Morris

Sinday, Moanday, Duesday, Weptsday, Tearsday, Frightday, Sadderday ... the

weeks rolled on, tune without end, and the Devil rolled with the punches.

Usually.

Time in Hell is an endless series of infinitely divided instants, as Zeno of

Elea would have put it. Did put it, as a possible solution to the paradox of

Achilles and the .tortoise. Infinitely divisible or singularly indivisible;

either any moment, no matter how small, could be divided into an infinite

number of smaller moments, and so on ad infinitum, or not: these were the.

Original Choices in the quandary of time.

Now that Zeno had all the time in Hell to work out the solution to his

problem, it seemed not to matter. At least, not until the Devil came to call.

"Hello, Zeno," said the Devil who looked, that Sadderday, rather like an

Oxford don. Zeno hadn't been familiar with Oxford dons or atomic clocks before

he came to Hell. Now, he worked at the Infernal Observatory, in the department

of Apparent Time. Here he was in charge of the Diabolical Dialing Department,

which dispensed, by phone, the exact Satanic Mean Time to all callers.

When the phones were working, anyway. If the tape-machines were running

properly. And assuming that the Demonic Day and Dating Service wasn't screwing

around with the intervals between Paradise-rise and Paradise-set.

Which they were today. Or someone was, today. If the term 'day' had any

meaning-beyond that of a mathematical standard 24 + hours-when your hours were

on the fritz.

Zeno had known that something was amiss with the hourly rate of time's passage

in Hell for some ... time ... now. He hadn't known, however, that the Fault

finding Forum would decide that he was to blame which it must have. Otherwise,

why would His Infernal Majesty be visiting up here, on Mount Sinat-coming to

Zeno's monastic little cell in the observatory?

"Ah, s-s-sir," stammered the philosopher to the donnish Devil, a man in black

robes and a powdered wig. "D-d-do sit d-d-d-down." Zeno gestured to the sole

wooden chair that, with the single writing desk and feather pallet on the

floor, made up his cell's furnishings.

When the Devil crossed the cell to take his seat, a black, scaled and furred

creature with wings folded against its back scampered in after him. The door,

closing on its own, nearly caught the thing's tail. It hissed, its back arched

like a cat's, its tail fluffed to twice-normal size, and it looked Zeno

straight in the eye.

Then it opened its jaws (the size of a big cat's) and hissed again, showing

ivory fangs. Next, it pronked in mock-threat and bounded into the Devil's lap

with a rip of his robe.

The Devil winced and, from beneath his seated person, smoke began to rise from

the wooden chair in which he sat. Grabbing the familiar by its ruff, he

settled it roughly into his lap and said, "Greetings, Zeo of Elea. It seems we

have some sort of problem,"

"Yes sir. Your Satanic Majesty, we have."

"'Nick' will do, Zeno, at least until this crisis is over."

Zeno of Elea, whose sins had been the inventions of dialectic and the

technique of finding paired, contradictory conclusions in other men's

premises, had never imagined himself on first-name terms with the Devil.

He could only mutter, "Yessir, Nick, sir."

At the mention of the Devil's name, the furred and winged beast in his lap

fixed Zeno with a baleful stare, then growled on an ascending note.

"Michael," chided the Devil, offering a finger to the beast who immediately

took the appendage in his jaws and began contentedly to munch on it.

"Michael's my eternal companion. Pet. Friend. You get the picture. Have you

some milk around?" As he spoke, the Devil grimaced intermittently as the beast

gnawed.

Zeno could hear the sound of fang scraping bone.

"Yes, sir-Nick. Around here someplace." And went to fetch the pot of newts

milk cooling outside his single window in the snow of Sinai's peak.

When he returned with it and a bowl to pour it in, the beast deserted the

Devil's lap with a bound. And its master said, "Now, then, Zeno, I'm here

because you're the man who argued that every magnitude is divisible into an

infinite number of magnitudes, and yet self-same and indivisible. Do I have it

right: 'both like and unlike, at rest and in motion, ease and many'?"

"Ah, well, that's a good paraphrase. Sir Nick."

"Just a paraphrase, then? You don't consider yourself responsible for the

human concepts of infinity, continuity, and unity?" said the Devil with

deceptive casualness.

But Zeno was not fooled. This might be the beginning of infinite punishment;

so far, he'd avoided the worst that Hell had to offer. He said carefully,

drawing on all his philosophical skill, "Surely no human is responsible for

the concepts of infinity, continuity, or unity. Unity is a precondition for

all existence ... something must be, indivisibly and wholly, to differentiate

itself from nothingness. Once 'being' is established, one has two states,

being and non-being. As-"

"I'm not saying you created the concepts - just that you re guilty of first

explicating them," Nick interrupted impatiently. Now cut to the chase, you

long-winded pedant"

"Yes, s-s-sir" Zeno quavered, trying to stifle a pained look. The 'chase' had

been his life's work; was his eternal vocation; he could not 'cut' to it, he

was eternally and entirely engaged in it. And continued: "As soon as there are

two states, there is also duration, from which follow all relations of space

and time: forward and back, up and down, to and fro, before and after.

Thus the assumption of being and non-being' create a primary divisibility

which, in and of itself; generates the concepts of infinity, continuity, and

unity, since none of the aforementioned can exist without its opposite.

Therefore, differentiation is the Initial State, First Moment, the Root

Casuality ... and the culprit you seek." Zeno smiled, having gotten himself

irrefutably off the hook.

The Devil did not smile. The Devil stared at Zeno unblinkingly and then leaned

forward, elbows on his knees, his white, curly wig swaying gently against

powerful shoulders. Regardless of your pettifogging, you, you alone, first

rubbed Mankind's nose in this particular brand of philosophical bullshit...

What would you say if I told you that something is disturbing the very fabric

of your assumptions, here in Hell? That forward and back, to and fro, before

and after are threatened at their very center? That the forward-moving arrow

of time and the backward-moving arrow have collided in mid-air?"

I would say, Zeno replied very softly, "That you are better at creating

paradoxes than even I am. But since my clocks are not reading the time in

concert - not simultaneously, if I may add a loaded term to this discussion -

I will admit that there does - seem to be some disturbance in the procession

of time. In the length of what had previously and conveniently been uniform

instants. In the ... fabric of time itself."

The Devil nodded morosely. He looked at his hands between his knees and then

at his familiar, Michael, lapping from a bowl of milk which was still as full

as when the two men had started their conversation, or the creature had first

begun to lap. "I'm told that Hell is in danger of becoming temporally unstable

- of having no duration and all duration simultaneously, I ask you, Zeno of

Elea, is this a syllogism, or a real threat?"

Zeno had a sneaking suspicion that the Devil was trying to trap him into

speaking some blasphemy so terrible that it demanded infinite punishment of

indeterminate duration. He said slowly, "Sir Nick, if that were so then it

would always have been so - at least once it starts or started, or will start

So we wouldn't know the difference, since there would only be a single moment

in which to realize, cogitate, remember and predict Therefore, also, because

danger, is a transient condition which leads to a result, there could be no

peril in the true sense, because there would be insufficient duration to lead

to any denouement. , . no result no crisis or shift or event to which what the

New Dead call catastrophe math could apply. There could be no catastrophe

whatsoever, since there could not be, in an indivisible instant, any shift of

states - no events, if you like. There would be simply stasis, in which

everything poised to occur simultaneously, but nothing whatsoever did occur.

And stasis, of all states, demands the single condition consciousness cannot

meet peace. Thus, my answer is no, such a threat is not real, because such a

threat, if it became reality, would be imperceptible and so unreal. Unreal for

as long as there exists consciousness. And if consciousness does not exist,

then nothing--"

"Stop!" howled the Devil, his fists balled over his ears, his wig's flaps

pressed against them like earmuffs. "You know, you smartass word-monger, you

really do belong here! Some of them don't, Ill admit ... bureaucratic muck-ups

and the nature of big systems to malfunction. But you're as bad as Aristotle,

who told me that his precious geometry proved the threat false in as

masturbatory language as you're using."

"Sorry, Sir Nick, but you asked..."

"Asked!" This time, the yowl was so loud that Michael flattened himself before

the bowl of milk and began to choke. As Zeno watched, the cat/bat/familiar

seemed to bloat to twice its size as every hair stood on end. Its whole body

convulsed from back to front. Then, its neck stretched to double its former

length and its tongue sticking an inch out of its mouth, it vomited all the

milk it had drunk back into the bowl.

And this was a very interesting phenomenon, because the bowl was still full

before Michael began to vomit. And yet, as he vomited and after he vomited the

milk he'd drunk back into the bowl did not overflow. When the animal lay

exhausted and panting beside the bowl with its eyes glazed, having vomited

into the bowl the entire contents of its prodigious stomach, the bowl was

exactly, as full as it had been before the beast had begun vomiting. As, fall

as it had while Michael had been drinking. As full as it had been when Zeno

first brought the bowl, sloshing milk against its rim, to place it on the

floor before Michael in the first place.

Zeno had stopped listening to the Devil, who was yelling. He said quietly,

"Sir Nick, do you realize what this means? The bowl... the quantity of milk in

the bowl was unchanging throughout the entire interval of not-drinking,

drinking, and regurgitating. And after."

When Zeno again looked up at the Devil, the face he saw was as red as the sky

above New Hell when Paradise was trying to set.

"No. Tell me. What does it mean?" said the Devil, spittle riding his words as

he expelled them from purpling lips.

"It means that your informant was correct ... at least partially correct; In

some places - for example, where Michael and the bowl are, but not here, only

a few feet away on either Side, where you and I are - space-time is becoming

anomalously subject to different laws."

"No shit," said the Devil as he rose from his chair in disgust "Michael!" The

call shook the very rafters of Zeno's cell.

And the familiar rallied to it - or tried to. It twitched its ears, it got up

on its hind legs, it sought to back away from the bowl. But for every moment

away from its bowl, it exhibited an equal and opposite movement toward the

bowl. To Zeno, the cat seemed trapped in a tape loop. First it went forward,

then it went back, but it never managed to execute more than a circumscribed

set of motions.

And the Devil, watching the familiar, began to rage. "Michael! Michael!" he

screamed as if the beast were his only child. And strode forward, toward the

bowl.

"No! Don't! Sir! Nick" Zeno called, and lunged for the Prince of Darkness,

hoping to stop the Devil from becoming stuck like a fly on flypaper, as the

familiar was now, in some temporal glitch.

The familiar was yowling, intermittently, whenever it reached a forward

instant in its forward/backward/forward/backward minuet...

Now the Devil was cursing so horribly that demons started appearing-coming out

of the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the very air. These were horrid

creatures and Zeno (seeing acid spittle drip on floorboards and begin to

smoke, spittle that dripped from gaping jaws which could chomp him in two),

covered his head with his hands and sank down to curl himself into as small a

ball as possible.

He heard noises his ears couldn't sort into sensible sounds. He heard the

ripping of the firmament and the fundament.

And then he peeked, spreading his fingers. Through them he saw Satan, not a

don now in human robes, but a gigantic fiery-eyed thing with horn and tail,

beset by a great serpent and by winged clocks with spear-like arms.

He saw chariots with wheels of flame and mushroom clouds on which they rode.

He saw creation and dissolution. He saw the sun swallow up the sky. He saw the

earth charred to a cinder, deep within the corona of that sun. And he saw a

cloud of gas in which angels darted - hundreds, thousands, wing brushing wing

as they worked. He saw a huge ball forming in the midst of pregnant gasses.

And around all of this wound the serpent, and in the serpent's coil the Devil

toiled.

And in the Devils arms Michael was cradled, fangs bared at a hungry sky as the

serpent's wide-spread jaws came closer - jaws that contained an entire

universe within the maw they circumscribed.

Zeno's fingers closed of their own accord, shutting out the awful sight. His

head bowed down until it touched his knees. He curled up, hiding from the

chaos he had seen. And though he could no longer see a struggle that his mind

could not comprehend, he could still hear it.

He heard the Devil snarling that Michael was his and no Power had the right to

take Michael from him. He heard a chorus of demons singing songs to sear the

inner ear.

Then he heard nothing. Silence. Utter peace.

Unutterable peace. He couldn't even hear himself breathing. He couldn't hear

the pulse in his ears. He couldn't hear the wind whipping Sinai.

Then he did hear something. He heard the squishy sound of a terrified man

losing control of his bowels. Himself And he smelled his fear in its most base

form.

And he heard a clearing of someone's throat. Then: "Zeno?"

He raised his head and the Devil was there. Alone but his familiar, riding now

upon his shoulder, wings unfurled the Devil had wings now, also, great

leathery wings and deep-burning yellow, slitted eyes.

This horror made Zeno raise his hands before his face.

But out of the gaping, sharp-toothed jaws of the Devil's new aspect came the

same cultured voice of an Oxford don: "Now that we've determined that there is

a threat, I'd like you to work on some solution. Now that the physics are

clear to you." And the Devil began to laugh.

Squinting, Zeno saw why he laughed: the familiar had sunk its teeth into his

neck and was gnashing them there. Blood began to drip from the wound, down

over Satan's shoulder.

"A solution?" Zeno gasped. "Me?"

"You. A way to keep the clocks right. I'll deal with what's throwing the

larger temporality out of balance ... it's, ah, certain mischievous souls

among the dissidents and elsewhere who're to blame." From a pouch at his

stomach, of the sort nature gives a marsupial, the Devil brought forth an

object and held it out to Zeno.

Zeno scrambled to his feet to take the artifact. "But ... it's just an

hourglass. A mere hourglass, big, but not the sort of thing I need to keep-"

"Just an hourglass?" boomed the Devil, his wings moving restlessly. "This is

the hourglass. The primal standard. If you lose it, you'll find yourself with

first-hand experience of a multi-temporal hard time. For now, your job is to

keep the observatory running like..." White teeth gleamed. "...Clockwork."

"But...."

"But what, mortal?" thundered the Father of Lies. "Its the nature of Hell to

give every man a problem he can't solve. I'll leave a few demons here to make

sure you've got the proper motivation."

And in a puff of black smoke that smelled hideously charnal, the Devil was

gone.

But the demons weren't. They were outside Zeno's cell in the hall. They were

outside his window, making obscene snowmen from the white caps of Sinai. And

they were waiting, Zeno knew, for the hourly chimes to toll.

He didn't need to hear that first ragged, imprecise and tardy announcement of

the approaching hour to know what the demons were going to do to him, every

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