Escape From Hell by Larry Niven Page A

oven! God, do you hear me? I’m sorry! I was sorry while I was doing it! Allen, I was acting like a jerk, I knew it then, and God knows I know it now!”
    “Sylvia —”
    “It’s all right. I’m all right. Really, I am, this time. Go on with your story. I want to know how you lost Rosemary.”
    •    •    •
    T he palace was marble, and enormous. The only furnishings other than Minos’s throne were some stone benches. The walls were decorated with frescoes. A royal court of beautiful women in flounced skirts, jackets open to show bare breasts, watched more pretty girls dancing with tame bulls. The palace was lit with torches in bronze holders along the walls.
    “It’s beautiful,” Rosemary said. Then she saw Minos at the end of the chamber. Very large, vaguely bovine, imposing on his white alabaster throne. He seemed to be staring at us. A faint smile flickered across his wide lips.
    We hung back. I wanted to give Rosemary a chance to get used to the situation.
    “I shortchanged everyone,” she whispered. “Maybe I’m bad luck, Allen.”
    The room was big and crowded, but they all ignored each other. People edged back from the huge bestial shape of Minos, leaving an arc. A middle–aged woman edged into the vacant space leading an older boy.
    “Do you seek judgment?” Minos demanded. “The winds, I think, but tell me first.” He listened as they spoke of a teacher–student relationship gone too far. “Winds,” he said, and looked up from them to me. “Hail again, Allen Carpenter. You refused my judgment before. Do you seek it now?”
    “No. I know my way out, now.”
    “And you, Rosemary Bennett? My judgment is fair. You have left your assigned place, and your guide cannot protect you once you leave this palace. Do you want judgment?”
    “Careful what you say,” I urged her.
    “I do not seek your judgment, Your Honor.”
    Minos laughed. The first time I’d seen Minos I thought he was an alien evolved from a bovine species, but that was when I believed this was an entertainment complex built on horror fiction. Now I knew better, and I examined him again.
    He was real enough. What possible reason could God have for staffing Hell with mythical creatures? Just who was Minos? A mythical king/emperor, the son of Europa and Zeus, but when Zeus carried her away he was in the form of a bull. Not even Dante could have believed that story.
    •    •    •
    S ylvia interrupted my story. “It’s part of your education,” she said.
    “Eh?”
    “Allen, you didn’t believe in Hell. You thought this whole place was constructed by — by what? Alien engineers? Deviants from the future?”
    “Either. Both. But it couldn’t be. I mean, maybe it could. Clarke’s Law says that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, but Sylvia, it doesn’t feel like magic! And it’s not a dream, it’s a lot too real, and —”
    “Education,” Sylvia said. “Shock treatment. You needed all this to convince you that it is all real.”
    “And you didn’t?”
    A tree can’t shrug, but I could hear a shrug in her voice. “Not really. You were a thoroughgoing atheist. Rationalist. Believed in science and engineering and nothing else.”
    “Yes?”
    “I was a poet, Allen. I said I was an atheist, or agnostic, or just didn’t care, and most of the time that was probably true, but I wasn’t really. I believed in truth and justice, and that virtues were real even if I didn’t have them. Allen, I didn’t need to be shocked out of my rationalism. You did. Tell me more.”
    •    •    •
    “M inos is staring at me,” Rosemary said. “I’m scared. Let’s get out of here.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the room.
    The next room looked a lot like the last one, but there were differences. It was larger. Friezes on the marble walls showed different scenes. This time the theme was viniculture, growing and trimming and harvesting grapes.
    Minos sat