"Eric Flint - The Thief and the Roller Derby Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

Even then, she botched it. Loretta still hadn't figured out what a pentacle was, so when they arrived in
Hell they were surrounded by fried calimari. Naturally, the smell drew every imp within range, because
imps love seafood and there's a real shortage of it in the Pit of Damnation.



That's probably what saved them, for the moment, because the imps were so busy gobbling down the
calimari that they didn't think to grab the trespassers until Loretta and the thief were on the lam.



Still, things looked bad.



Loretta and the thief were trying to make their escape across a field of ice. The thief was grousing and
complaining the whole time because he'd dressed for what he thought Hell would be like, and sneakers
and a bathing suit just didn't cut it. Loretta didn't hear him, however, because after the first five seconds
she had skidded completely out of sight. She'd come to Hell in her roller derby outfit. (Damn what the
book said; she wasn't about to deal with demons stark naked again.) And while the knee and elbow
pads kept her from getting too badly scraped up, her roller skates were completely useless. Although, as
it happens, they're probably all that saved her.



But we'll get to that in a moment. First, let's reexamine the moral of the tale.



The problem? Lack of formal education. Both Loretta and her boyfriend had gotten their ideas about
Hell from watching TV evangelists late at night when there wasn't anything else on the tube. And the truth
of it is that televangelists have the silliest ideas about Hell, as well as everything else. That doesn't hurt
them, of course, since they always go to Heaven because God likes them even if they are a lot of con
artists. (He's willing to forgive a pious scam. And it's not even a scam, anyway, because God favors faith
a long way over brains so even the jerks who send in their money get to Heaven.)



But it was tough on Loretta and the thief. If they'd read Dante's Inferno, of course, they'd have known
that Hell was a frigid wasteland.



Again: lack of formal education. Because if you trace it all back, you find that the preachers from
whom they'd gotten their ideas were a poorly educated bunch themselves. Their ideas of Hell they'd
gotten from the only book they'd ever read, which is the Bible. And while the Holy Book was accurate
enough at the time it was written, you've got to stay abreast of the literature in your field. Satan does.
Once the Devil read Dante's description of Hell in the Inferno he redecorated the whole place. Calls it