Escape From Hell by Larry Niven Page B

down.
    “Allen, what is that?” Rosemary demanded.
    “I have no idea.”
    “It looks like — Allen, it’s the World Trade Center! Ground Zero!”
    I remembered the World Trade Center. My publisher had taken me for dinner to the Windows on the World restaurant at the top. It looked out on New York Harbor. Far away and far below was the Statue of Liberty. I’d been up in the lady’s crown once, and that was high enough to give anyone acrophobia. Now I was looking down on the torch!
    “This doesn’t look anything like the World Trade Center,” I told her.
    “Oh! You died before September eleventh. Before the Millennium.”
    “Well, yes —”
    “Allen, the World Trade Center is gone. Both towers.”
    “Gone? They decided to tear down the tallest buildings in the world? Now there’s waste!”
    “No, no, they were destroyed by terrorists. Muslim fanatics. They hijacked airplanes and flew them into the towers, crashed in about two–thirds of the way up. The fuel burned and burned, and then the towers collapsed, just fell straight down into a pile of rubble. There were people trapped on the upper floors, above the fires. Some jumped. Allen, it was a long nightmare.”
    “Both towers?”
    “Yes. Two planes for the World Trade Center towers. The third plane hit the Pentagon. No one knows where they meant to crash the fourth airplane, probably the White House, or the Capitol, but the passengers took the plane back and crashed it in an empty field.”
    It sounded like the kind of story I might have written, but Rosemary was dead serious. “Flew them into the towers. You mean deliberately?”
    “Yes. Some of them took flying lessons from American flight schools. One told the instructors he didn’t need to learn how to take off and land. Just how to navigate and fly the plane.”
    “Why would Muslims want to harm the United States?”
    Rosemary sighed. “Allen, there’s so much you don’t know! During the Cold War the United States supported Muslim fanatic insurgents against the Soviet Union. We gave them weapons and money, and they built organizations. When the Soviet Union collapsed —”
    “The Soviet Union collapsed. The Cold War is over?”
    “Yes, it came apart after the Gulf War, our first invasion of Iraq, and —”
    “The
first
invasion of Iraq. You’re right, it’s too much. I’m still trying to get my head around the airplanes. They intended to crash? To die with the planes?”
    “Yes, of course. A suicide mission. There have been a lot of suicide bombings. I guess most of them happened after you died. They started in Palestine, bombers going into cafés in Israel and blowing themselves up.”
    I remembered the bearded fanatic I met on the ice. “Were there a lot of those?”
    •    •    •
    “S uicide bombers!” Sylvia was excited. “We could use them, if you can find some! But I bet you won’t find any in this grove. This is too peaceful for them. Allen, do you think they get to wander around blowing themselves up?”
    “Sure seems like it.”
    “What would happen if you could get one to come here? What would happen to me if I got blown into — well, into sawdust and splinters?”
    “I don’t know —”
    “Allen, it’s worth trying!”
    “You really want out of here, don’t you?”
    “Yes. Yes, Allen, I do.” She sighed. “Oh, well. Tell me the rest of it.”
    •    •    •
    T here was only one way around the pit, a winding ledge just wide enough for both of us. The last time I’d been in this circle I could hear the Hoarders and the Wasters smashing their boulders and yelling at each other, but there was none of that here. There was a cacophony of sounds, sirens, people yelling, screams. They got louder as we went around the lip of the pit.
    The trail led us to a building. It looked like a construction shack, only a lot bigger. Clapboard and plywood, it looked very temporary. The trail led to the door, and there wasn’t any way around it.
    “What