Low over a subdivision more dusty than any passed they sailed. Here the scraggliest effect of vegetation ceased. Lizards moved languidly, if at all, and snakes lolled their forked tongues.
Satan, apparently gratified by his proselyte’s nervousness, apologized: “Sorry I cannot spare time this morning to take you through Serpent’s Tooth Valley. I quite anticipate your pleasure in the antics of my snakes—a sharp-tooth pursuing every thankless well-begot. It’s a lively place. You really should get in sympathy with the serpent. He was my first agent and cannot be excelled for loathsomeness. Can you see that rattler—that cobra? From Arizona to the Indies they are feared, hated—and respected. By an arbitrary edict, which I cannot at present veto, they’ve been forced to crawl upon their bellies since early days. But one of my first acts of reward to the unrighteous after I have come into my own shall be to set them up again. ‘When snakes shall rise on their tails!’ A more inspiring line never was writ.”
The tourist-by-command shuddered, but did not speak. He followed her gaze toward a barren dune in the distance over which a vapor hovered high as could be seen.
“Nits pestering the Traitors to Mothers, among whom I threatened last night to throw my chef. Although they are an assorted bad lot, we can afford to pass them, as I had no mother and you next to none. Got the scheme of the chuck-hole from the Book of Revelations: ‘Where they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.’ It is not that anything in particular is so unendurable. It’s the way I keep it up. In rotation I visit all the old-fashioned plagues upon them, murrain, boils and blains, frogs—But imagine the rest. There is one special side-show that will have a personal appeal to you to which I feel I should take you before we return. Look out. I’m going to land.”
Again the Hawk had acted like an elevator. Its spreading claws clutched the sanded soil, their shock absorbers functioning without jar. The spirit-girl, once again upon hella-firma, gazed dazedly about.
From the rim of a monstrous, crater-like cup nearby spilled a steam like a giant’s breath, strong, noxious, horrific. When Dolores shrank back, well-nigh overcome, her Satanic guide fanned aside the fumes and drew her upward toward the edge.
“Merely the regrets of the sirens,” he insisted. “This is the one all-woman department of Gehenna, the Wanton’s Well. Lean over. Look. See them gasp. See them try to faint. They hope that they are dying, but no chance of that. Not one ever thinks she deserves her fate or acknowledges her own defiance of decency. Her own case, you see, is always ‘different.’ Only when she is surrounded by others of her kind, thousands of them worse than she, does she begin to comprehend that in the judgments of men woman’s unpardonable sin may have no difference. Think of that, O fair and famed Dolores Trent—that between you and these, your sisters, there is no difference!”
Although the girl-shade felt about to collapse, she was held by his mental dominance. Leaning, she looked.
Her tormentor continued: “It is hot down there—hot as the curse of society. The wantons burn in a fever of lonely lust. They thirst for a sip of the affection and poetry—even of the rashness which made the passion-cup sweet. And all the endless hours until That Day they’ll not get a drop to wet their lying lips and sin-blacked tongues.”
A tug upon the hem of the royal robe cut short the inquisition. An aged female manes, sear-looking and fate-limned as would have been a relief map of this Erubian Realm, had tottered up behind them unheard. Her silvered hair writhed backward in the blast from The Well. Her hands shook toward it as shake withered grasses over a dry creek bed.