It finally dawned on me that he was talking about the Murderers Sect, armed demon guards who functioned like mercenary soldiers. In the more built-up areas they were pretty much Hell’s police.
“No. Not me,” I said. “Not Murder Sect, just . . . ordinary.”
He tried something new. “Let me loose. Gotcher rock back, yeah? And I bite.” He showed me his grin, which was indeed made up of surprisingly clean, even, pointy little teeth, like you might see in a fish or a frog.
But I wasn’t letting him off that easily. “I need someone to help me find my way out of here.” It was a risk to trust anyone, even a child, but I’d run out of other ideas. “I’m lost.”
The little monkey-boy considered. Although I could see he was genuinely thinking about it, I could tell he wasn’t ready to give up on just running for it, either.
If you learn to hide your tells better, I decided, you’re going to be good, kid. But then I thought Here? and Compared to what? and the whole idea suddenly just made me really sad.
“Three spits,” he said at last.
Once he started to bargain I knew I had him. We settled on a deal where I’d feed him while he was with me and give him an iron spit at the end, when I found my way out of this level of Abaddon. I didn’t have a spit, of course, but I’d find a way to change that somehow.
“This way,” he said, and headed off without looking to see whether I was following.
I stayed alert as the kid began to lead me out of Abaddon, in case he was actually leading me to his big friend Bilgebark, who would then beat me to death and relieve me of my prized rock. That was if you could get beaten to death in Hell, which didn’t fit in with what I knew about the place. Of course, children in Hell didn’t really make sense, either. I was depressingly sure I had all kinds of disturbing new experiences in front of me.
The kid and I didn’t talk any more. He seemed to like it that way. But Monkey-boy kept sneaking glances in my direction as we walked, as if still trying to make up his mind about me. Dogs don’t like direct eye contact, and lots of other mammals (including some humans) don’t like it either, so I just kept looking forward at where we were going, at the endless passing parade of distorted bodies and unbearably various faces.
“Got one,” my companion said at last. He was no longer looking at me, but staring resolutely ahead just like I was.
“One? One what?”
“Name.”
I considered this for a moment. “And what is it?”
“Gob.”
I nodded. I almost said, “Nice to meet you,” out of sheer habit, but realized that probably didn’t get said a lot around here. Although the street around us was as disgustingly, stenchfully crowded as before, and just as noisy, there was a different quality now to the silence between the kid and me. Something was settled, at least for the time being.
I had made my first friend in Hell. Sort of.
fourteen:
sinners for sale
MY EYES were burning and I was spitting out foul dust. We had been climbing through termite-nest dwellings on Abaddon’s outskirts for a few hours, miles of piled mud, filth, and broken stone, but still hadn’t found a way to the next level.
“How far until we get out of here?” I asked.
“Baddon? Dunno.” Gob contorted his small face into a mask of thoughtfulness. “Never been to the very uppest of it. Long. Far.”
I cursed. Swearing in Hell seemed a bit like coals to Newcastle, but it was an old habit. “And what’s beyond?”
“Highwards?”
I decided he meant “upward.” “Both ways, if you know.”
Gob seemed to have decided I was some variety of harmless crazy. It didn’t make for loyalty, but like most children, even immortal ones, he was game to hang around as long as things interested him. “Down below Baddon, that’s Airbus. Black all the time. Don’t go there.”
Erebus. The highest of the Shadow Levels. Lameh had given me enough information to know I definitely wanted to steer clear. Erebus was where the serious mayhem began, the levels of torment and despair. “Above?”
“Above Baddon? Dunno. Think next is Asdull Medders, where the Sinner Market is.”
I perked up a little. Archangel Temuel’s errand was to someone named Riprash who worked at the Sinners’ Market, which meant that Gob must be talking about Asphodel Meadows (a place which, even though it was in the middle levels of Hell, was probably going to be much grimmer than its charming little name). For the first time I felt a little hope that I might actually accomplish something useful. Caz would almost certainly be with Eligor in the uppermost levels far, far above us, in Hell’s equivalent of Park Avenue. But if I found Riprash I could discharge my obligation to my boss and maybe even get some help. “Gob, could you help me find my way to the Sinners’ Market?”
The kid looked me up and down. With his straggly hair, scrawny limbs, and massive eyes, he looked like an anorexic PowerPuff Girl. “Maybe. Cost you another spit.”
“Sure.” Since I didn’t have a single spit to give him at the moment, I had no problem promising a bonus.
“Thinking ’bout it,” he said as I got wearily to my feet.
He was a hard, cold little thing, my guide. I’d been poking bits of information out of him as we traveled through the narrow, crowded byways of Abaddon. As it turned out, unlike most of Hell’s inhabitants, Gob really had been born here. Hell’s citizens broke down into three basic types: the Neverborn, who were angels and other high beings condemned here by God; the Damned (which kind of speaks for itself as a category); and the small leftovers called Ballast. Gob was one of these, a child whose mother had been sent to Hell while he was still in her belly. She had, by some unpleasant linkage of their souls, given “birth” to him here, surrounded by screams and horror-mask faces, then later wandered off to explore her own damnation. Ballast—the extra weight in the hold of a ship, something nobody bothers to save when the vessel is sinking. That was Gob. He’d grown up motherless in the anarchy of Abaddon’s filth, with no family but the overseer who bossed him and his little fellow thieves and murderers. As I was coming to understand, though, Gob had something the others didn’t. Not kindness, or even concern for anyone else—that doesn’t really grow in Hell—but I think maybe curiosity.
He was a strange kid, by any standard. Each night, whenever we determined it was night, he made a bed for himself in the same animal way, lying down in dirt or weeds or even prickling nettles, which he scarcely seemed to notice. First he would sniff (he could never explain why, except the spot had to smell “right”) then he would lie on his side, knees to his chin, and slide and roll around until he had made a little hollow of whatever was underneath him. Then he’d arrange himself back into the original chin-to-knees position, close his eyes, and fall asleep as quickly as it takes me to say it. Sometimes when Gob slept he made little animal sounds, wordless whimpers and choked squeals that in his dreams or memories might have been full-throated screams. I tried not to imagine what kind of things chased him in his sleep.
When he was awake he was pretty entertaining too, in a sad sort of way. He jumped at any noise as if he had heard a gunshot. When we stopped to rest during daylight hours (if you could dignify the sullen red light with that name) Gob didn’t really sit down or relax, but just perched on something or stood and waited impatiently for me to get moving again. He didn’t try to convince me not to rest, but he didn’t like pausing during the day. Always aware, always shifting his body in small ways to watch his surroundings, constantly ready to run away or fight, he reminded me of some of the things I’ve seen about African child soldiers, little boys who had gone pretty much from their mother’s breasts to committing random homicides.