"It is one of the chief cities of Hell," replied Lucifer.
As we passed, the people knelt immediately to the ground and made obeisance to their Lord.
"They recognise you," I said.
"Oh, indeed."
The city seemed rich and the people seemed healthy.
"Hell is a punishment, surely?" I said. "Yet these people are not evidently suffering."
"They are suffering," said Lucifer. "It is their specific fate. You saw how swiftly they knelt to me."
"Aye."
"They are all my slaves. They are none of them free."
"Doubtless they were not free on Earth."
"True. But they know that they would be free in Heaven. Their chief misery is simply that they know they are in Hell for all Eternity. It is that knowledge, in itself, which is their punishment."
"What is freedom in Heaven?" I asked.
"In Hell you become what you fear yourself to be. In Heaven you may become what you hope yourself to be," said Lucifer.
I had expected a more profound reply, or at least a more complicated one.
"A mild enough punishment, compared to what Luther threatened," I observed.
"Apparently. And far less interesting than Luther's torments, as he would tell you himself. There is nothing very interesting in Hell."
I found that I was amused. "Would that be an epigram to sum Hell up?" I asked.
"I doubt if such an epigram exists. Perhaps Luther would believe that it was. Do you wish to ask him?"
"He is here?"
"In this very city. It is called the City of Humbled Princes. It might have been built for him."
I had no wish to encounter Martin Luther, either in Hell, in Heaven or on Earth. I must admit to a certain satisfaction at the knowledge that he had not gained his expected reward but doubtless shared territory in Hell with those churchmen he had most roundly condemned.
"I believe I understand what you mean," I said.
"Oh, I think we both understand Pride, Captain von Bek," said Lucifer almost cheerfully. "Shall I call Luther? He is very docile now."
I shook my head.
Lucifer drew me on through the black streets. I looked at the faces of the citizens, and I knew that I would do almost anything to avoid becoming one of them. This damnation was surely a subtle one. It was their eyes which chiefly impressed me: hard and hopeless. Then it was their whispering voices: cold and without dignity. And then it was the city itself: without any saving humanity.
"This visit to Hell will be brief," Lucifer reassured me. "But I believe it will convince you."
We entered a huge, square building and passed into deeper blackness.
"Are there no flames here?" I asked Him. "No demons? No screaming sinners?"
"Few sinners receive that sort of satisfaction here," said Lucifer.
We stood on the shores of a wide and shallow lake. The water was flat and livid. The light was grey and milky and there seemed no direct source for it. The sky was the same colour as the water.
Standing at intervals in the lake, for as far as I could see, naked men and women, waist-deep, were washing themselves.
The noise of the water was muffled and indistinct. The movements of the men and women were mechanical, as if they had been making the same gestures for aeons. All were of similar height. All had the same dull flesh, the same lack of expression upon their faces. Their lips were silent. They gathered the water in their hands and poured it over their heads and bodies, moving like clockwork figures. But again it was their eyes which displayed their agony. They moved, it appeared to me, against their will, and yet could do nothing to stop themselves.
"Is this guilt?" I asked Lucifer. "Do they know themselves to be guilty of something?"
He smiled. He seemed particularly satisfied with this particular torment. "I think it is an imitation of guilt, captain. This is called the Lake of the False Penitents."
"God is not tolerant," I said. "Or so it would seem."
"God is God," said Lucifer. He shrugged. "It is for me to interpret His Will and to devise a variety of punishments for those who are refused Heaven."
"So you continue to serve Him?"
"It could be." Lucifer again seemed uncertain. "Yet of late I have begun to wonder if I have not misinterpreted Him. It is left to me, after all, to discover appropriate cruelties. But what if I am not supposed to punish them? What if I am supposed to show mercy?" I noted something very nearly pathetic in His voice.
"Are you given no instructions?" I asked somewhat weakly. "Tens of millions of souls might have suffered for nothing because of your failure!" I was incredulous.
"I am denied any communion with God, captain." His tone sharpened. "Is that not obvious to you?"
"So you never know whether you please or displease Him? He sends you no sign?"
"For most of my time in Hell I never looked for one, captain. I am, as I have pointed out, forced to use human agents."
"And you receive no word through such agents?"
"How can I trust them? I am excommunicate, Captain von Bek. The souls sent to me are at my mercy. I do with them as I wish, largely to relieve my own dreadful boredom." He became gloomy. "And to take revenge on those who had the opportunity to seek God's grace and rejected it or were too stupid or greedy to recognise what they had lost." He gestured.
I saw a sweep of broad, pleasant fields, with green trees in them. An idyllic rural scene. Even the light was warmer and brighter here, although again there was no sense of that light emanating from any particular direction.
It could have been spring. Seated or standing in the fields, like small herds of cattle, dressed in shreds of fabric, were groups of people. Their skins were rough, scabrous, unclean. Their motion through the fields was sluggish, bovine. Yet these poor souls were by no means contented.
I realised that, although the shape of the bodies varied, every face was absolutely identical.
Every face was lined by the same inturned madness and greed, the same pouched expression of utter selfishness. The creatures mumbled at one another, each monologue the same, as they wandered round and round the fields.
The whined complaints began very quickly to fill me with immense irritation. I could feel no charity for them.
"Every single one of those souls is a universe of self-involvement," said Lucifer.
"And yet they are identical," I said.
"Just so. They are alike in the smallest detail. Yet not one of those men or women there can allow himself to recognise the fact. The closer they get to the core of the self, the more they become like the others." He turned to look sardonically down at me. "Is this more what you expected of Hell, captain?"
"Yes. I think so."
"Every one of these when on Earth spoke of Free Will, of loyalty to one's own needs. Of the importance of controlling one's own destiny. Every one believed himself to be master of his fate. And they had only one yardstick, of course: material well-being. It is all that is possible when one discounts one's involvement with the rest of humanity."
I looked hard at those identical faces. "Is this a specific warning to me?" I asked Lucifer. "I should have thought you would be attempting to make Hell seem more attractive to me."
"And why is that?"
I did not reply. I was too afraid to answer.
"Would you enjoy the prospect of being in my charge, Captain von Bek?" Lucifer asked me.
"I would not," I told him, "for on Earth, at least, one can pretend to Free Will. Here, of course, all choice is denied you,"
"And in Heaven one can actually possess Free Will," said Lucifer.
"In spite of Heaven's ruler?" I said. "It would seem to me that He demands a great deal of His creatures."
"I am no priestly interpreter," said Lucifer, "but it has been argued God demands only that men and women should demand much of themselves."
The fields were behind us now. "I, on the other hand," continued the Prince of Darkness, "expect nothing of humanity, save confirmation that it is worthless. I am disposed to despise it, to use it, to exploit its weakness. Or so it was in the beginning of my reign."