Free Escape From Hell by Larry Niven Page A

remembered the neatness of her appearance when I’d found her in the Vestibule.
    “There’s worse to come.” I got up easily enough, and when I bent to help Rosemary she was heavier than she’d been back under the trestle, but pulling her up was easier. I heard a faint barking far away. “We have to keep moving.”
    We picked our way past a crowd who looked like they’d been thrown away with the garbage. They lay there in the stinking filth half covered by hail and sleet. A hand closed on my ankle and a voice said, “I was a glutton.”
    “Yeah,” I said. I shouted, “Get up and come with us! There’s a way out of here.”
    “The dog!” someone shouted. “He’ll get us!”
    “I don’t see any dog,” I said. But I remembered. Dante described the three–headed dog, Cerberus, watching over the gluttons and tearing them apart if they tried to get out of the slush. Virgil had dealt with him by throwing slush into his mouths. I remembered wondering at the time I read the poem why no one else had tried that, and why he hadn’t needed three handfuls.
    The guy clutching my ankle was too deep in slush to show features. He said, “Then I got diabetes.”
    “Uh–huh.” Gluttony seemed a good way to get diabetes.
    “I changed my diet. I lived my diet. My friends couldn’t stand me. Neither could my family. My wife left me. I couldn’t make myself go out, but by God I was a demon cook.”
    “Maybe we better hurry,” I told Rosemary. The diabetic was still clinging. I told him, “It doesn’t have to end like that. I know the way.”
    “There’s a monster dog.”
    “The dog isn’t here. Come on, there’s time!”
    “There are devils down there.” The diabetic let go. “I need to think about it.”
    Someone shouted, “And we have memories here. Remember Morton’s of Chicago?”
    “Perino’s before they closed it! Now there was a place to eat.”
    “A little pricey.”
    “Santa Maria Barbecue!”
    “The Juneau Moose Club Buffet! Best seafood buffet in the world. In the world, I tell you!”
    “Stop thinking about your bellies and come with me! I bring you hope! There’s a way out of here. Down! You go down, all the way to the bottom! I’ve done it, you can do it!”
    “You!” A woman’s voice, accusing. She was running through the slush, avoiding the inhabitants, and moving at a good clip. “You!” She stopped in front of me. She didn’t seem angry, but she was insistent. Her finger wagged just below my chin.
    “Do I know you?” She didn’t look familiar. She was built like a runner, beautifully articulated muscles that would have been more attractive on a man, but they looked pretty good on her.
    “I’m here because of you,” she said. “Catherine Woznak. Don’t you remember me?”
    “No …”
    “I told you, ‘We’re in the hands of infinite power and infinite sadism.’ ”
    “Good God! It’s you. I looked for you up there. Rosemary, this is the fat lady from the Vestibule!”
    “Yes, and it’s all your fault,” she said, but it didn’t sound like an accusation. She was almost friendly.
    “Allen?” Rosemary asked. “She doesn’t look fat to me!”
    “She was then! She looked too fat to move. The woman who banned cyclamate sweeteners.” The absurdity of the situation hit me and I almost started giggling. “Ms. Woznak —”
    “Dr. Woznak,” she corrected me.
    “Dr. Woznak, may I present Ms. Rosemary Bennett, Esquire, formerly of New Orleans. Rosemary, this is Dr. Catherine Woznak, formerly of the FDA.”
    “Department of Agriculture,” Dr. Woznak said firmly.
    “All right, Department of Agriculture. The last time I saw you, you were in the Vestibule but you looked like you belonged in here. Fat as a circus exhibit. Immobile. So how is it my fault you’re here?”
    “After you left I thought about what you said. That you were escaping this horrible place. You invited me to come with you! But you didn’t wait.”
    “You didn’t want to come.”
    “You