When, by whatever means, the vision winked out, the portal closed, and the glimpse was terminated, Semple was more than a little disappointed. The blue ballroom had seemed considerably more lively and interesting than the environment that now confronted her, the young man more interesting still. She knew she could do nothing to recall the glimpse, though, and in a short time she began to doubt that it had ever happened. The new world awaited her and she knew that she had no choice but to leave through the doorway to the soft room and press on. The opening of the door had hardly presented her with any multitude of choices. In front of her, a seamless white bridge of an indeterminate cartoon material arched over an impossibly wide mountain gorge, the sides of which seemed to be composed of massive hexagonal rock crystals drawn in the same style as herself. The artist behind this creation must have been a painstaking obsessive, always combining three or maybe four interlocking concepts, layer imposed on layer, where one might have sufficed. Not content with the creation of the towering crystal mountains, he or she had then embarked on the monumental task of integrating them with a form of organic honeycomb architecture that infiltrated large expanses of translucent cliff face with structures that Semple could only think of as a futuristic pueblo.
At the bottom of the gorge, a foaming cartoon river rushed down to an unknown destination in a series of mist-shrouded cataracts. In the air above the plunging water, free-floating and irregular structures, complex motherships of metal and plastic, floated in defiance of gravity, huge projection video screens circling their undersides like giant TV billboards. On them, doll-like oriental models and slogans in Japanese characters promoted unguessable consumer products and unfathomable political philosophies. In order to see this world at any closer proximity, Semple had first to cross the bridge. The bridge was a single, elegantly arching span, plainly intended for a pedestrian like herself and yet without guardrails or balustrade, lacking protection of any kind. It appeared to be a challenge she had to take before she could go on. Normally Semple was less than enthusiastic about heights. On Earth she and Aimee had never been inclined to look down, and much of the fear had irrationally continued into their afterlives. Under different circumstances Semple would have thought long and hard about crossing such a bridge, and probably refused to do it, citing her unaccustomed platform boots as the reason. In what she was coming to think of as the cartoon haze in her mind, though, she hardly thought of the drop, wondering only if, should she fall, it would be strictly according to Isaac Newton at thirty-two feet per second squared or more in the survivable cartoon manner of Wile E. Coyote, who could always stagger away from the worst of falls.
As she stepped out onto the bridge with only the slightest wobble of her ankles, the Hokusai waves and decorative groves of cypress and pine looked to be more than a mile below her; and, in her animation tranquillity, she found that, by the time she was halfway across the span, the sheer quantity of naked air below her was becoming a trifle daunting. By the time she reached the far side of the span, it was with a definite sense of relief.
All the while she’d been crossing the bridge, Semple had somewhat naively assumed, although for no good or logical reason, that she was the only inhabitant of the place. Her half-formed and barely explored idea had been that this odd graphic world inside the brain of the King of the Monsters had been expressly created for her sole amusement. Thus she was taken somewhat by surprise when the three tiny women greeted her.
“Welcome, Semple McPherson. He awaits you in the dome.”
The little women were eighteen inches tall and totally identical. Their doll-geisha faces were exactly the same, as were their pinkand-blue-flowered kimonos. Semple could only think they had to be cousins to the tiny girls who sang to Mothra in the monster movies. “How did you know my name?”
“He told us to expect you and to give you directions.”
“He?”
“He knows everyone’s name. He even marks the fall of sparrows.”
That there appeared to be yet another all-powerful “he” in this place triggered alarms even in her dulled cartoon condition. “He told you to give me directions to where?”
The little women looked at her as though they were too polite to show just how obtuse they thought her. “To the dome, of course.”
“The dome?”
“Where he waits.”
“Of course.”
“You will go to the dome?”
“I don’t know. I mean, who the hell is he?”
“He said to tell you that you would know him when you saw him.”
The little women were so humorlessly earnest that Semple could only counter with sarcasm. “And that I’d love him when I knew him?”
“He said nothing to that effect. Just that you would know him.”
Semple was liking this less and less. “In other words, he told you not to tell me his name?”
“We only repeat what he tells us.”
Semple had already decided she didn’t really want to go to this dome. The fact that the mysterious “he” didn’t want to reveal his identity up front and the distinct suggestion that they may have met before hardened her resistance. “Actually, I don’t think so.”
The little women looked distressed and confused. “We beg your pardon?”
“I said I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ll be going to your dome.”
The little women looked at her as though what she said was making absolutely no sense. “But you have to go to the dome. He desires it. Besides, there is really no other place to go.”
From the get-go Semple had suspected that she might have very little choice in the matter. “What you’re telling me is that it’s the dome or nothing?”
The little women smiled sweetly. “We would never do anything to infringe on your free will, but . . . ”
“But the answer is yes?”
The little women at least had the decency to cast their eyes downward. “Yes.”
“I’ve recently been through a couple of singularly unpleasant experiences.”
“We’re sorry.”
“So if this turns out to be another one, I promise I will come back and beat the three of you to miniature bloody pulp.”
The little women beamed. “We understand perfectly.”
Semple nodded grimly. “Okay, so are you going to point the way?”
“We’ll do better than that. We will take you there. Please follow us.”
Semple had wondered if, when they moved, the tiny girls would move in unison, and found it oddly satisfying when they did.
***
“Are you still thinking about that McPherson woman?”
Jim shook his head. “No, I was actually wondering where we might be going. Where the hell are we going, Doc?”
Doc pointed ahead, and Jim noticed for the first time a reflection of red and blue neon at the far end of the broad stone passageway down which they were walking.
“The altissimo poeta here is taking us to this joint I know where they just might make us welcome and I can find myself a poker game worthy of my talents.”
He hadn’t given the matter much thought, but Jim was a little surprised that Doc was headed for something as mundane as a card game. He had somehow thought the goal of his first entry into Hell would have had some more lofty objective. Doc, on the other hand, seemed convinced no loftier objective existed. “We’re in Hell, boy. What better and more challenging place to ply the noble trade? Did you think that, just because we’d become traveling companions, I was going to renounce my vocation? You’re starting to sound like a wife.”