Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [54]
“So what’s with the pyramid-looking thing? A rest stop, I hope.”
“A pyramid? Really, Mr. Hudson, you must’ve studied your geometry with the same zeal you studied Homer. It’s not a pyramid, it’s a trisoctahedron: a quadrilateral polygon bearing no parallel sides, also referred to as a trapezohedron. Lucifer is very much enamored of polygons, because in Hell, geometry is thoroughly non-Euclidian. Planes and the angles at which they exist serve as a heady occult brew. I wrote of such stuff and wonder now from whence the ideas arrived.” Howard seems to be trying to recollect something. “Gad, I do hope my Shining Trapezohedron in ‘Haunter of the Dark’ was born of my own creativity and not that of some sheepshank scrivener in Hell.” Suddenly a look of utter dread comes to his marbled face. “What a cosmic outrage that would be.”
You still don’t know what he’s talking about, but in an attempt to divert your attention from the staggering height, you offer, “Maybe it was Lucifer’s idea, and he’s the one who piped it into your head.”
“Impossible,” Howard quickly replies. “Fallen Angels, though essentially immortal, are completely estranged from creativity and imagination. Every idea, every occult equation and sorcerial theorem, every ghastly erection of architecture, and even every invention of social disorder—it all comes from a single source: the Human Damned.”
This is getting too deep for me, you consider. Your pumpkin-head reels—or it would have, if it could. Now you think of ski lifts carrying skiers to the peaks, only there’s no snow here, just craggy rock pink as the inside of a cheek. As you near the black polygon, you discern that it’s about the size of Randal’s Qwik-Mart. Just when it appears that the steam-car would drive directly into the polished black side of the thing, an opening forms: a lopsided triangle that stretches from the size of a Dorito to an aperture sizeable enough to admit the car.
Well, that was nifty . . . I guess. Relief washes over your psyche; the Humanus Viaduct is at last behind you. But now what?
“Welcome to the Cahooey Turnstile,” Howard says, “a superior mode of entertaining your tour. The process saves us from driving for untold thousands of miles.”
“What do you mean, turnstile?” you counter. “You mean like in a subway?”
“Think, instead, of an occult revolving door.”
A revolving door . . . to where?
The aperture closes silently behind, leaving you to peer around the unevenly walled room of smooth black planes. It looks like something born of science fiction, save for the sputtering torches that light the chamber. Then—
Whoa!
A shadow moves. When the Golemess shuts down the steam-car, you see the hulking shape approach: a sinewy Demon with meat cleavers for hands and a helmet fashioned from the jaws of some outrageous beast. Below the forward rim of teeth like Indian arrowheads, two tiny eyes bulge, and there are two rimmed holes for nostrils but no mouth. No ears can be seen either but only plugs of lead that seem to fill two holes where the ears should be. Some manner of cured hide covered with plates make up the Demon’s armor. Reddish brown muscles throb when it regards the car.
“What the HELL is that?”
Howard answers. “The Keeper of the Turnstile, Mr. Hudson—an Imperial Truncator, of the genus Bellicosus Silere. It can’t hear or speak; it can only observe and act. The Imperial Conditioning is self-evident; note the spread jaws of a Ghor-Hound which suffice for the helm.”
You notice it, all right, but don’t like the way it approaches the car.
“Should the Truncator entertain even a single anti-Luciferic thought? Those jaws slam shut and bite off the top of its head.”
Hard-core, you think. “And its his job is to—”
“Anyone or thing who enters the Turnstile without authority,” Howard says, “will be diced into bits, tittles, and orts.”
Just as the sentinel’s cleaverlike hands raise, the Golemess lithely leaves the car and shows it a sheet of yellowed parchment.
The guard nods, steps back, yet oddly beckons the Golemess with