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probably need tools.”
    Benito nodded. “There is a place, a great swamp, the Styx. Trees grow there. As for the fabric and the tools, we can cross the Styx and get them from the wall.”
    “How many walls have you got here?”
    Benito smiled grimly. “None like this one ahead. Red-hot iron.”
    I believed him. Nothing subtle about Infernoland. “How far down is it? We’re losing altitude with every step.”
    “A good distance yet.” Benito laughed. “A glider. You may be the first ever to think of that. If we can launch from the hill above Styx, we can use the thermal updraft above the red-hot walls. Ecch,” he said, about the time I stepped backward into freezing slush.
    We’d reached another level region. I stood up and looked around. Freezing, stinking muck in all directions. Human beings lay full length in it, like half-immersed logs. The rain was turning to sleet. Cold garbage washed against my ankles.
    “Behold the low-rent district,” I said.
    I got a chuckle from Benito. “Not yet,” he said, and if I hadn’t had the shivers before, I got them then. He swept his arm about him and said, “The Gluttonous.”
    “I don’t want to know. Come on, let’s get through this.”
    We waded out into it.
    In the darkness, and half-blinded by sleet, I managed not to step on any half-buried victims. Some raised their heads to watch us pass, showing us uniform looks of weary despair, then sank back after we were gone.
    “Come with us! Leave this place. I bring you hope,” Benito shouted. No one paid him any attention at all, and after a while Benito gave up. We sloshed along in silence through the sufferers.
    Men and women in about equal numbers, they ranged from pleasantly plump to chubby to gross. Three or four were as bad as the woman in the Vestibule. I wondered if they’d be pleased to know about her.
    And once I wiped frozen slush from my eyes, cursing imaginatively under my breath, and when I dropped my hand he was staring at me: a long-haired blond man built like an Olympic athlete.
    “Allen Carpentier,” he said sadly. “So they got you too.”
    I looked close and recognized him. “Petri? Jan Petri! What are you doing here? You’re no glutton!”
    “I’m the least gluttonous man who ever lived,” he said bitterly. “While all of these creeps were swilling down anything that came near their mouths, from pig meat to garden snails—and you too, for that matter, Allen—I was taking care of myself. Natural foods. Organic vegetables. No meat. No chemicals. I didn’t drink. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t—” He caught himself up. “I didn’t hire you as my lawyer. Why am I bending your ear? You’re here too. You were one of the PIGS, weren’t you?”
    “Yeah.” He meant the Prestigious International Gourmand Society, whose purpose in life was to go out and eat together. I’d joined because I liked the company. “But I’m not staying. This isn’t my slot.”
    He wiped slush from his face to see me better. “So where are you going?”
    “Out of this place. Come along?” He’d be unpleasant company till we got him a bath, but I knew he wouldn’t slow us down. There never was a health nut to match Petri. He used to run four miles a day. I figured he’d be a lot of help building the glider.
    “How do you get out of Hell?”
    So they’d convinced him too. “We go downhill for a while. Then we’ll—”
    He was shaking his head. “Don’t go down. I’ve heard about some of the places downhill. Red-hot coffins and devils and you name it.”
    “We’re not going very far. We’re going to build a glider and go over the walls.”
    “Yeah? And then where?” He seemed to think it was funny. “You’ll just get yourself in more trouble, and for what? You’re better off if you just take what they give you, no matter how unfair it is.”
    “Unfair?” Benito asked.
    Petri’s head snapped around. “Hell yes, unfair! I’m no glutton!”
    Benito shook his head, very sadly. “Gluttony