Escape From Hell by Larry Niven Page A

famous.”
    “Oh! I’m sorry, I should remember you —”
    “I’d have been shocked if you had,” Rosemary said. “Allen, you wouldn’t know about Vickie — Anna Nicole. She was Playmate of the Year, then she married a billionaire. Scandals everywhere after that.”
    Vickie glared.
    I said, “Nice rock.” She didn’t answer, so I asked, “Why are you here?”
    “I don’t know!” Vickie wailed. “Everyone said I married Howie for his money, but I didn’t! I mean, well, he knew what he was getting! And he got it! He got everything he thought he would. I made him happy.”
    “J. Howard Marshall was eighty–nine. She was twenty–five,” Rosemary said dryly. “It was her fourth marriage.”
    “Third! And I was twenty–six! And he died happy. I earned everything I got from him.”
    “I just bet you did,” Rosemary said.
    “You’re not being fair,” Vickie–Anna wailed.
    “But why here?” I asked.
    “I don’t know! I didn’t cheat anyone. I wasn’t unfaithful.”
    “We’re getting out of here,” I told her. “Out of Hell. Want to come with us?”
    Rosemary didn’t look happy, but she didn’t say anything.
    “I think I’ll wait,” Vickie–Anna said, her hand in touch with the blue boulder.
    “Good thinking,” Rosemary said. She pulled me down the path. It got steeper, then leveled out.
    This part of the Fourth Circle was empty. We were in a lot the size of the Rose Bowl, surrounded by hedgerows. The ground was hard clay, packed down and baked in the heat.
    “What is this?” Rosemary asked. She pointed to some deep grooves in the hard–baked clay. “What would have made those?”
    “Hoarders and Wasters,” I told her. “They roll big rocks at each other. The rocks are diamonds, big ones with the facets worn off. I’ve seen it.” I realized this wasn’t making much sense. “You’d have to read the poem, I think.”
    “I wonder if rolling rocks would be better than running after banners? There aren’t any wasps here. What makes them keep rolling the rocks if they get tired of doing it?”
    I shrugged. “Whatever it was, it must have stopped. It looks like these have escaped. One of the rocks got left, and Anna’s hoarding it.”
    “Escaped. Could that have been your doing?”
    “I don’t think so. This doesn’t look much like the way I came last time. We sure didn’t see any half–naked old man with a crown. Or Playboy Bunnies, for that matter. I still can’t figure what she’s doing here.”
    “Waster,” Rosemary said. “She got a lot of money when her husband died, and went through it all. Booze, drugs, men. Playboys and princes. Classic Waster.”
    We crossed the field and looked for a way through the hedge. Sure enough, there was an opening, as if someone had rolled an enormous rock at the hedge at high speed and crashed through.
    The ground dropped off on the other side of the opening, but not far enough to mark a new circle. We were standing at the lip of a pit. Far below was smoking waste: twisted steel, smashed concrete and black char, stench of rotted and burned meat and blood. Rising above it, rising up to the level where we stood and then far above that, were ephemeral transparent images of buildings.
    The images changed like dreams. Each one appeared, hung there just long enough that you thought it might stay, then faded into another shape, or vanished leaving nothing but the black pit below. I could make out tiny human figures that persisted longer, wandering through the phantom pictures, changing them with a gesture, sometimes fighting. Sometimes when a structure vanished the people fell, down and down into the pit.
    Tremendous, beautiful buildings replaced each other too fast to be appreciated. Other, smaller cubistic ghosts rose out of the pit. Some were silly. More than one was unbelievably ugly. They flickered on and off, none ever solid. A line of elevators running up a fluted cylinder was suddenly gone, and tiny human shapes drifted