Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

by Stephenson, Neal

  “We did not bring any wood for your fire,” said Adam, “only because we did not understand the need for it until we had reached the place where there was no more to be had.”

  “That is perfectly all right! El will take no offense!” said the man in the robe. “Particularly as I see you have brought with you a flock of new souls—a gift much more pleasing to him than fuel for his eternal fire.”

  “They are not ours to give,” Eve said. “They merely followed us.”

  “Such as these come from all around,” said the man, “but rarely so many at once. El has blessed you, it would seem, with some power of drawing them forth.”

  “In the land to the east we sometimes saw them headed this way,” Adam said, “but never understood why.”

  “Well, now understanding is yours!” the man said, with a nod at the tower. “Praise El.”

  “Is it?” Eve asked. “We see them and we see your tower with its hungry flame but my curiosity remains unsatisfied as to what happens to such new souls once they have reached this place.”

  “Well then, come and see! Come and see!” said the man, and beckoned them forward. “I am Looks East and I am the first priest here.”

  Adam and Eve each stated their own name, since apparently this was the done thing when souls met each other. “We don’t know the meaning of ‘priest’ or what would make you first among such,” said Eve. She looked around out of habit, expecting to see Mab, who frequently supplied them with explanations, but the sprite was nowhere to be seen.

  “It simply means that I carry in my head much knowledge concerning El, and that I make it my business to explain such matters to the other souls who find their way to the kirk.” As he spoke that unfamiliar word he nodded toward the white tower, which they had almost reached.

  “Do you speak to El frequently then?” asked Adam, and exchanged a look with Eve. Both had the same thought: perhaps this Lookseast had heard their story directly from El or one of his angels.

  Lookseast seemed confused by the question. “No, of course not, if you mean the sort of speaking we are doing now. That’s not El’s way. Perhaps it was thus in the age before the Trek, but there are few who remember those times.”

  “We are not familiar with the Trek,” said Eve.

  “Oh. It is how Elkirk came to be,” said Lookseast. “In olden times, all the souls dwelled together in peace and harmony at the base of El’s palace. While El was away tending to some other matters, the Usurper took power for a time. He was a cruel sort, of great power, who hurled thunderbolts from the Palace. All the souls who dwelled below dispersed in terror of his rages. Our forebears trekked westward across the grassland and crossed the river and settled in the valley you see below, where they were sheltered from the Usurper’s wrath. But later El came and flung the Usurper and his minions into the sky and rebuilt the Palace as you see it today. We built the kirk here upon this high place so that El and his angels can look down upon it from their seat in the clouds and know that we revere him.”

  Adam and Eve followed Lookseast into the chamber that occupied most of the building’s lowest story. This was square, plain, and empty save for two effigies made out of stone. One was male and the other female. They had the same general number and arrangement of limbs, extremities, and external organs as Adam and Eve, or, for that matter, El himself.

  Adam and Eve were silent for a while as they contemplated these.

  “Lo, these are the forms that El in his wisdom ordained for us. New souls are drawn to this place by the light of the fire. Here they contemplate these forms and shape themselves accordingly, each choosing the male or the female type as it suits their nature.”

  Seeing now more clearly as their eyes adjusted to the dimness, Adam and Eve detected many auras in the room, some larger and better formed, others small and indistinct. They were not scattered about the place but instead surrounded the effigies in a broad ring, as if they were all gazing inward. In the moments after Adam and Eve came into the place, it became considerably more crowded as each of the souls following in their wake spread out across the floor seeking its own vantage point. “These new ones will create forms as is proper, some sooner and some later, for El ordained that not all develop at the same pace. But one day they will each attain this perfection.” Beaming, Lookseast extended one arm toward the effigies.

  Neither of them looked especially perfect to Adam or Eve; they were lumpish, with indistinct features. “I regret to say,” said Lookseast, “that it is too late for the both of you.”

  “What mean you by that?” Adam asked.

  Lookseast changed his look and his tone in a manner that reminded them of El when he had needed to disabuse them of some especially childish misconception. “El has so ordained it that once a soul has adopted a particular form, that form does not change very much. Oh, slight adjustments are possible if one strives long and hard. But what I am trying to tell you is that, formed as you were in the wild lands beyond the river, with no models such as these to shape and guide you, your mistakes and deformities are, I am sorry to say, permanent. You will never achieve the perfection of these.” Once again he drew their attention to the effigies. Adam and Eve perceived in Lookseast’s manner a kind of reverence, such as the angels were wont to direct toward El. And when he turned the other way to gaze upon Adam and Eve, he got a look akin to how they had reacted to the smell of their first shit.

  This turn of events left them speechless for some moments. Adam sensed that Eve was becoming quite wrathful, and rested a gentle hand on her shoulder before saying, “I deem it unlikely that forms such as these are really the ones preordained by El for all future souls to emulate. Their imperfections are easily seen. The woman’s left breast is disfigured by what appears to be a chisel mark. Her arm has broken off and been reattached by someone apparently working in poor light. The man’s face is asymmetrical, with the right eye hanging—” But here Adam stopped, for Eve had reached out and grabbed his forearm and given it a hard squeeze. Her gaze was fixed upon the face of Lookseast. Adam looked and perceived, too late, that the right eye of the First Priest of El was mounted in his head somewhat lower than the left—just like that of the male effigy.

  “What El has ordained,” said Lookseast, “is not to be questioned by misshapen yokels from the back of beyond.” He cast his lopsided gaze over the crop of nascent souls that had followed Adam and Eve into the kirk. “It is fortunate for these new ones that they came upon this place before being too much influenced by the sight of you two.”

  “We could simply ask him,” suggested Eve. Adam knew what she meant: We could simply ask El. But now it was his turn to give her a warning. Something in the way this man spoke about El suggested that he had never actually seen, much less spoken to, El or any of his host.

  “Forgive my presumption,” Adam said. “I was confused by the fact that I do not see, in this room, any souls that have advanced very far toward having definite forms.”

  “Those move up to the next level,” explained Lookseast, and beckoned for them to follow him up a stairway.

  The second story contained no statues, but its walls were decorated with paintings that depicted persons—all more or less resembling the effigies below—engaged in various activities such as quarrying stone, tending plants, spearing wolves, cooking, and copulating. Perhaps a dozen souls occupied this space, all of them well advanced toward having complete forms. It seemed that they were all paying keen attention to the pictures and rehearsing the actions depicted. “This is where they learn the ways of the world El has made, so that when they go down into Eltown they may be of some use. Others, larger and better formed than these, go out into the hills or down into the town, accompanied by the other priests of El, to practice and perfect their skills.”

  “And the third story above us?” Eve asked.

  “That is for me and the other priests of El,” said Lookseast, “and it is off-limits.”

  “What then becomes of the new souls?”

&n
bsp; “When they are fully formed,” said Lookseast, “they go down into Eltown and dwell there in whatever way they choose.”

  “Who are the bringers of firewood?” Adam asked.

  “You ask a great many questions,” said Lookseast. Which struck Adam and Eve as a curious sort of observation for the priest to have made. But after an awkward pause, he answered, “Eltown is, as its name suggests, devoted to the service of El. And so it is expected that all who dwell in it will do their part to keep the fire burning and otherwise help the priests carry out El’s will.”

  It now seemed that the conversation was over. There was no place for Adam and Eve to stay here, and nothing for them to do, and so they left Elkirk behind and began to descend a zigzagging path toward the town below. This they could smell better than see. The air did not stir much in the valley, which had filled up with a hazy atmosphere of smoke and humidity that glowed a dim red in the light of the fires burning below. It smelled strongly of wood smoke and faintly of shit. But as they descended the switchbacks they were able to see Eltown spread out beneath them, a network of streets, mostly irregular, as it conformed to the banks of the river that snaked through its middle. The streets were nothing more than the unbuilt strips of ground between houses. Raised in the Garden, Adam and Eve were new to such ideas as streets and houses, but Mab supplied them with explanations during the hike down, and so by the time they verged on Eltown itself they understood the general notions.

  “When we were growing up in the Garden,” Adam remarked, “we asked many questions of El and his host, which they were pleased to answer. But that Lookseast did not like our questions one bit.”

  “You are certainly right about Lookseast,” Eve returned, “but my recollection of the Garden differs from yours. Yes, when we were younger El was pleased to answer questions about the names of flowers and other such matters, but in the last days before he threw us out he seemed uneasy with what we asked concerning Spring and the other Beta Gods.”

  “That is very true,” admitted Adam. There was a brief pause while they negotiated an awkward turn in the path. “Perhaps it is well that the conversation ended when it did, for I was about to correct Lookseast.”

  “Correct him as to what?” Eve said. “For so much of what he said wanted correcting.”

  “As to why you and I are shaped as we are,” Adam said. “According to Lookseast, the common form of souls—two legs, two arms, a head and a face, and so on—was ordained by El. But El himself told us that we were created not by him but by Spring, with some help from Egdod. El came along later. The form adopted by you, me, Lookseast, and all the people of Eltown is not El’s work at all.”

  “If it were,” said Eve, “it would be more perfect than those crude effigies in the kirk. Say what you will of El, his creations are more symmetrical and elegantly formed than anything in that place.”

  “To the people down there,” Adam reminded her, gesturing to the town below, “they are beautiful and we are crude, and so we may just have to get used to being looked on as Lookseast looked on us.”

  To see the houses of Eltown was to understand how they had been put together: in some cases by stacking one square rock atop another until nothing further could be added lest it topple over, in other cases by pursuing a similar strategy with the trunks of felled trees. When these things had been raised as high as their tendency to fall over would allow, they were covered over with frameworks of tree-stuff and grass to keep rain and snow from falling into them. Mysterious to Adam and Eve was where the souls of the town had obtained such a quantity of material. But by following the light of the fires they discovered answers: in the center of the town, along the banks of the river, was a place where many felled trees had been stacked. These were fuel for great fires, contained in stone boxes the size of houses. The earth of the riverbank, mixed with water, formed a mud that could be shaped into blocks and burned in the fire houses until it was dry and hard enough to be stacked up into walls. Another sort of earth—black sand from a different stretch of the river—could be burned until it melted and fused into metal, which could be shaped into tools for tree chopping. These furnaces burned all day and all night. The wood that fueled them was brought to the place by the simple expedient of chopping trees down somewhere else and floating them on the river.

  During their first hours in Eltown, Adam and Eve took in a vast amount of knowledge about how souls lived together in a town, how they worked together and built things. The fascination of learning so much caused them to forget their own hunger and tiredness until day had broken and the sun had risen above the white tower of Elkirk looming high above. But then Eve in particular pronounced herself very hungry and tired indeed, resting a hand on the bulge of her belly.

  Food was provided to the workers at long tables in an open space among the great ovens. Little of it was familiar to Adam and Eve. The people of Eltown knew how to bake disks of bread in ovens and spread honey on them, and had apples and other sorts of fruit that Adam and Eve recognized from the Garden. All in all they ate better than Adam and Eve were accustomed to; they did not have much game, but they had fish from the river and a wider variety of plant food. They did not begrudge these to the newcomers, for their practice was that all who worked at the kiln and the forge could eat their fill here. Though Adam and Eve were new to such labors, they had quickly understood the nature of the work and had applied themselves to it. They had learned faster than other new souls and they had carried more weight. For it seemed that in mind and body alike they possessed certain advantages over the souls who had been brought up in the kirk and made their way down the mountain. All of which had been less obvious in smoke and firelight than it was now in the light of the morning. Standing tall among the other souls, half-clad in the pelts of small animals, Adam and Eve were conscious of many eyes upon them, staring out of lopsided faces that all more or less resembled the effigies in the kirk. None of the people of Eltown seemed keen on sharing a table with them and so they sat together at one end of a split-log bench and ate their fill. This led to drowsiness, especially on the part of Eve, who had been sleeping more the larger her belly grew.

  They had given no thought as to where they would sleep, accustomed as they were to bedding down wherever it struck their fancy. They now looked about in vain for a tree or swath of tall grass where they might rest. The predicament was a common one among newly arrived souls who had not yet built houses for themselves, and a place had been made for them to sleep in rows under a broad roof, pocked here and there with chimneys rising from wide hearths where fires were kept burning to ward off the chill. Adam and Eve curled up together near one of those and slept until late in the day, when hunger, and a need to shit, woke Eve. Thus they learned about the locals’ shitting arrangements, which were shared among all and which emptied at length into the river.

  It was during their afternoon meal that they were approached by another soul who looked like them.

  Like them he was symmetrically framed and taller than the people of Eltown. Nearly imperceptible in the bright light of the afternoon was the wispy form of Mab, flitting about him and darting ahead to lead him in Adam and Eve’s direction.

  “I am Walks Far,” he announced.

  “Adam and Eve,” said Adam, speaking on behalf of his companion since her mouth was full of bread.

  Walksfar sized them up, as if verifying that the newcomers were indeed of a different order of souls than most here. They did likewise. About him was a graveness and solemnity that suggested he had spawned many years ago and had seen much since then. “Have you dwelled in Eltown for very long?” Eve asked him. For though his form was unusual here, he wore clothes of spun fiber like all of the others, and though he drew some notice as he walked about, most of the townspeople seemed to find him unremarkable.

  “Since before it was a town,” Walksfar affirmed. “I dwelled in the First Town.” He looked them both up and down. “As it would seem you did—and yet I do not recognize you from those days, and
I knew every soul in the place.”

  “This is the only town we have ever been to,” said Adam, “and we only just got here.”

  “Where is the First Town?” Eve asked. “If there are more like us there, perhaps we should—”

  “It no longer exists,” said Walksfar, “and that you do not know as much suggests to me that you must have some very odd tale to tell concerning how you came to be here.”

  Adam shrugged. “It is not odd to us. But from what we have lately seen up in the kirk and down here along the river, I will readily admit that it would seem odd when told in this company.”

  “Not in the company I keep,” said Walksfar. “Come with me, if you are so inclined, to Camp.” And he directed his gaze across the river.

  The west bank too was built up with kilns and forges and houses, but not so much as the east; and what was here seemed smaller and worn out. They crossed over to it in a boat that Walksfar drove across the stream with oars or with a long pole, depending on its depth. A short walk up out of the floodplain took them to a hill settled with log dwellings that were plainly much older than the ones on the eastern bank. Some great trees had been suffered to remain standing and so Camp, as Walksfar called the place, gave Adam and Eve the sense of being once again in the forest—but without wolves.

  Camp appeared to have started in a flattish area near the top of a hill, with a ring of dwellings that formed a rough oval centered on a hole in the ground whence they could draw water up in buckets. Around this, more such houses had later been built, but the full count of them did not exceed twenty. Most had but a single room with bed, hearth, and table. Walksfar’s dwelling was no exception, though he had extended it with a sloping roof supported by stilts made of small tree trunks planted in the earth. On their upper surface, all of the roofs of Camp were so deeply covered with moss and leaf mold, as well as grass and other small plants that had taken root in them, that the whole neighborhood seemed as if it were being absorbed by the hill.