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believe in something. Tell me what.”
    “I believe in justice.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know. Doesn’t everyone want justice?”
    “Some of us want mercy.”
    “All right. Justice and mercy. I want to believe that everyone in here can get out.”
    “Do you really? Everyone? Doesn’t anyone deserve to be here?”
    “Benito Mussolini got out!” I was shouting now. “If he didn’t deserve to be here forever, who does?”
    “Allen, you know him. I didn’t. Did he deserve to be here?”
    “The man I knew didn’t deserve to be here.”
    “And he got out. Don’t you have your answer, then? Allen, why are you so — well, fervent, about justice?”
    I laughed. “I always was. My mother would have said it was because I was the youngest in a big family. I needed to know there were rules and fair play.”
    “That makes sense, but I didn’t have a big family, and I believe in justice. Jack Lewis said everyone, deep down, believes in justice even if they don’t want it. We know what fair play is.”
    “What about you?” I asked. I looked up into the bare–branched tree. “I don’t think you deserve to be here, but there’s no way to get you out.”
    “It’s only unfair if I can never leave. Maybe there is a way out for me,” Sylvia said.
    “What?”
    “Just don’t leave me.”
    “I didn’t think Rosemary belonged in here,” I said.
    “She wasn’t in here,” Sylvia reminded me. “She was in the Vestibule. Where you started. Where did you lose her?”
    •    •    •
    W e were debating the issue, we seven. Why would we have to pray if God knew everything? I had six followers, and they all had opinions.
    “Free will. If you really accept God you pray. The one follows the other.”
    “And you’re telling me God needs us to praise him?”
    “It is commanded that we praise Him!”
    “Then He must need praise.”
    “Praise God from whom all blessings flow!” Sung, in a pretty good voice.
    “Not just any praise,” I said. “I’ve been to the pit of the flatterers. You don’t want to be in there! Hey, we’re here.”
    Charon’s ferryboat was different from what Dante had described, bigger, but it hadn’t changed since I first saw it. A medium–sized ferryboat, single deck, ugly, run by an old man with a long beard and a bad disposition. I never saw the propulsion system, but I never saw Charon use his oar except to hurry people along.
    There was a big crowd coming when we got there. I waited for them, hoping to get aboard without being noticed. No such luck.
    “You again!” Charon shouted at me. “Where’s Benito?”
    I pointed up.
    “Well, you won’t get away again.” He brained me with his oar, and I fell into the scuppers.
    “You are unfair!” Rosemary was shouting.
    “Silence!” Charon shouted. “Another word and I put you back ashore.” He lifted his oar to whack me again.
    “Don’t!” Rosemary shouted.
    Another bolus of people arrived just then, and Charon got busy packing them aboard. I’d seen riders being packed that way in Tokyo, levered into a subway train until they were thick as sardines. Rosemary came and crouched above me, protecting.
    Dante had passed out on the boat trip across Acheron, but I didn’t have any such luck. I lay there, dizzy and hurt.

Chapter 5
    First Circle
    Virtuous Pagans
----
     
    People were there with solemn eyes and slow,
Of great authority in their countenance;
They spake but seldom and with gentle voices.
    C haron docked at a broad avenue, walled on either side. The road led downhill as far as I could see. Charon used his oar to drive us all off the boat. I staggered off with my arm over Rosemary’s shoulder.
    “Auf Wiedersehen!” he shouted at me. The boat backed away.
    The crowd surged down the broad avenue. I couldn’t see very far in the dirty air, but I knew where they were going. I wasn’t ready to see Minos again. I thought my best chance of finding someone who’d go with me was right here, if I could get