The last thing Jim wanted was a confrontation with Doc, particularly over a matter that was so plainly dear to his heart. He quickly backed down. “I was only wondering what I was going to do. I’ve never had the single-mindedness to win at games of chance.”
Doc nodded as though acknowledging Jim’s retreat. “Don’t worry about it, my boy. Our goal is a place of many wonders and temptations. I’m confident you’ll find something to your liking.”
“You’re telling me I should wait and see?”
“At least this time you can be assured that the wait won’t be long.”
“There is just one point, though.”
Doc, who was walking ahead, looked back at Jim. “And what might that be?”
“Don’t you think a casino might be the first place that Dr. Hypodermic might look for the both of us?”
Doc’s eyes turned bleak. “If the Doctor is looking for both or either of us, sport, he already knows where we are and where we’re going. I thought the Virgil made that clear to you back at the elevators.”
Since leaving the elevator concourse, the Virgil had led them down a series of dark and winding medieval stairways into what appeared to be one of the older parts of Hell. Some of these tunnels were so ancient that hanging stalactites had overgrown much of the arching masonry of the roof. The walls were covered by such a thick patina of limestone that it concealed most of the bas relief carvings with which they were decorated, but since these were of human faces twisted into the distortions of unimaginable torment, Jim felt that time’s overlay was a distinct improvement. He looked questioningly at the Virgil. “So what was this place used for when Hell was really Hell, altissimo poeta?”
“It was the sector reserved for suicides.”
Jim laughed. “And they turned it into a casino?”
“It seems somehow appropriate, don’t you think?”
***
From the outside, the mysterious dome looked to have been constructed with more than a modicum of good taste. For Semple, this was at least an initial encouragement. She had followed the three tiny women away from the bridge and along a white stone path that curved between carefully manicured banks of flowering shrubs. After about a hundred paces, it crossed a small fast-flowing stream where rainbow trout and huge antique carp ran in the shallows, and kingfishers and dragonflies hovered in wait for their prey. Every detail seemed calculated to invoke a mood of harmony and peace, but Semple couldn’t help but wonder. Should she take everything at face value, or was she was being suckered into some kind of trap? Surprisingly, she found herself leaning to the former, something she put down to her new set of cartoon emotional responses and their constant drift to a state of naive wonderment. As she crossed the stream, she had to restrain herself from remarking how groovy it all was.
“What the hell is happening to me?”
The only jarring note was the box privet maze that had been planted at a distance from the path on the far bank of the stream. Something about it awoke the old mistrustful Semple. The leaves were too damned green, the interior too dark and forbidding, and she didn’t like the look of the hard-eyed gulls that circled the spiral of hedges, as though those who couldn’t find their way out might be left in there to die. Even this wasn’t enough, though, for her to build a full head of belligerent trepidation. She found herself blithely dismissing the maze. None of her concern. It was the dome she was going to, wasn’t it?
The dome itself was in no way threatening. It nestled, as unobtrusively as a seventy-foot brilliant white hemisphere could nestle, in a low depression between decorative outcroppings of yellow-veined rocks. To further ensure that it didn’t muscle out the rest of the landscape with its geometric perfection, it was partially hidden by exotic conifers, shaped on the large scale but with the elegant contortions of bonsai.
The three tiny women, in a single singsong voice, directed Semple’s attention to the path’s end at a low entranceway like a giant mail slot in the base of the dome. “You go in there.”
“You don’t come in with me?”
“We never enter the dome except when invited.”
“And this time you weren’t invited?”
“We were only instructed to meet you at the bridge.”
“And you only do as you’re instructed?”
“Of course.”
“Instructed by him?
“Who else?”
Semple nodded. “Right.” Even in her dumbed-down condition, she had the distinct feeling that she might be walking into another Anubian harem horror. Unfortunately, she lacked any other real alternative.
Now that she was closer, Semple could see that the wide, low entrance sported triple doors of cartoon black glass with dramatically drawn highlights. She left the three tiny women standing on the path and moved briskly toward the doors. She hardly expected them to be locked against her after he had gone to so much trouble to get her there, but she wouldn’t have been surprised at some kind of entry ritual, if only as a show of strength. To her mild surprise, the doors simply slid open at her approach as though controlled by some concealed sensor. She stepped through and immediately found herself in an airlock or antechamber, with a second set of doors preventing her from going any farther. As the outer doors closed behind her, bright ultraviolet light streamed down from overhead luminous panels. This took Semple somewhat by surprise. Was this supposed to be some kind of sterilization process? If it was, it didn’t augur well for her first meeting with him. To maintain a Howard Hughes phobia of germs after one’s death required an incredibly enduring paranoia.
Semple had no sooner reached this conclusion than something happened that forced her to radically revise her thinking. Her entire body started to rearrange itself under the UV light. The cartoon physicality began to morph and fill out, returning herself to her natural form. The sudden transformation wasn’t in any way painful, but it left her with a queasy, light-headed feeling, and rapidly fading double vision. The skin-tight comic book clothing proved less than comfortable, now that her human flesh was squeezed into it. Before she had any chance to take stock of this unexpected state, however, an inner door opened and she knew she was expected to go on through. She noted as she stepped through the door that the ray gun was still strapped to her thigh. She wasn’t sure if it would be of any practical use, but it had a comfortable heft to it; she wished she’d had something similar during her first encounters with Anubis and Moses. She also observed, glancing at her reflection in the glass of one sliding door, that she had retained the beauty spot from her cartoon face.
The great circular interior of the dome was so sparsely furnished that its occupier, the mysterious “he,” appeared to be doing little more than squatting in the manner of the most squalid of young single males. Half-unpacked boxes littered the floor, and the large leather couch, the apparent focal point of the space, was surrounded by drifts of papers, beer cans, and discarded Japanese food containers. Only one side was free of debris, and that was where a monolith of black electronic components squatted with LEDs blinking, flanked by a black refrigerator and a microwave oven. The couch looked directly at a large seventy-millimeter projection TV screen, some twelve feet across and letterbox in format, mounted above a powerful complex of speakers. The screen so dominated the space that it looked to Semple as though the entire dome must have been devised for snacking and TV watching. A movie was playing as Semple entered; Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, and Sophia Loren in The Pride and the Passion. The only other permanent feature, apart from the small sun-sphere that floated high in the apex, supplying an approximation of outdoor light, was a small cross-shaped swimming pool off to one side of the screen. A cross-shaped pool was a little weird by most standards, but by far the most startling object among the dome’s assorted contents was the goat, who stood amid a scattered pile of hay just inside the door to the UV chamber, contentedly chewing. Semple instantly recognized it as the gnarled old ram with china eyes and curling yellow misshapen horns who had led Moses’ tribe through the wilderness, and perhaps, since he was now here and seemingly at home, to Gojiro and their destruction.