that way.'
Nick looked at him in surprise. 'Why not?'
'There's a shortcut. Who wants to go through all that stuff again? The noise, the crowd-' He waved his hand, made an annoyed noise. 'Nick, why go through all that again? You did it once. Once is enough. Suffering for a purpose-' He looked up, as it were, through the depth of Deathworld, somehow including in the glance all the screaming and horror of the upper levels, all the rage, and the acknowledgment of evil. 'That's one thing. Purification, punishment with an object, to deter or teach you never to do it again, that's one thing. But prolonging it indefinitely, punishment for its own sake, for the mere love of cruelty-' He shook his head. 'That's not how we do it in Des Moines. Come on.'
He led them toward the back of the entry hall. The place was empty, for the moment, except for the three of them. 'One word,' said Joey. 'You got to the very threshold, last time, before you left. We have an agreement, which one of my clones would 1-lve administered to you before passing that last doorwL you saw off in the distance. We do not discuss with anyone but other people who've passed Nine, what lies beyond that portal. Anyone who does and is caught at it is banned for life.' He shrugged. 'Every now and then someone breaks the promise and tells… but you know what? No one believes them. Suits me. And as for the rest of us… sometimes it's fun to have a secret. Sometimes it's fun to make a promise and keep it forever. Can you cope with that?'
They both nodded.
'Right,' Joey said.
He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, piercingly.
Suddenly the air was full of music the likes of which Nick had never heard before-Camiun singing, for once, not in its usual dark fierce minor, but in a triumphant clarion major that was most uncharacteristic. Around them, like a mist, like a dream, the darkness and the stone and the night all began to melt away. Light came pouring in, and the view across a green landscape that scaled up and up through rolling hills. Farther up yet, to mountains stacked halfway up the sky, green at first, then blinding with snow, but snow that looked down on what seemed like an eternal spring.
The chords crashed around them as Nick looked at Joey Bane, the only dark thing in all that landscape, with astonishment.
'Okay, so life stinks,' Joey said, '. but then you stop complaining, and get on with finding out how to make it work.'
Through waves of triumphant music of lute and bass and jazz sax the three of them walked uphill, into the light, toward the crowd of Banies dancing under the second sun.
