Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

by Neal Stephenson

  The angel beat its wings to take them in a sweeping arc around the pinnacle’s summit, and so they were able to view the broken place in the Garden’s wall; the expanse of wild forest behind the Garden; and its sacred grove of immense trees, out of which the waters of the spring gushed forth and leapt off the edge of the crag as a waterfall, thin as a silver hair, trailing down into darkness. As they continued to wheel round they saw the Forest give way to the other side of the Garden’s wall, which ran straight to the side of the Palace. Adam and Eve had, of course, never seen this before. They had grown used to the sight of its towers from the back, and acquired some sense of its design, but were now fascinated and overawed by the face it presented to the Land below, its towers and walls and buttresses as well as the gatehouses and other lesser structures arranged on the narrow shelf of level ground between its front and the place where the crag dropped off as a sheer vertical cliff.

  Around and around the crag spiraled the angel during the long descent, allowing Adam and Eve to view all aspects of it again and again. They learned to recognize the gossamer strand of Spring’s waterfall on the dark side, and to expect a blaze of white light on the other.

  But they did not understand what was making the light. At the beginning of the descent it had shone from the Palace, which stood above the Land like a torch on a stone post. But below that—well down the pinnacle, at altitudes nearer the clouds than the Palace—light still blasted forth from the side opposite to the cataract of Spring in its gloomy declivity. The entire western face of the crag was covered by radiant stuff. As the angel bore them down into regions where the atmosphere was thicker, Adam and Eve knew that it made sound as well: a thrumming tone that seemed to emanate from every part of it at once.

  Such was the velocity of their descent, however, and so close did the glowing face of the tower rush by, that it was difficult to see particulars. As they dropped into the clouds, the angel banked away to greater distance, enabling them to glimpse, in the moments before it blurred, dimmed, and disappeared behind cloud tops, a view of the whole thing. And they saw that although its lower reaches were irregular and winding, above it had organized itself into a regular matrix of six-sided cells.

  They tore through damp fog for a while, then emerged into the clear only a short distance above the ground. This was carpeted by the same sort of glowing and humming cell-stuff. Farther out, it thinned and splayed out tendrils that trailed off into darkness. But closer to the base it massed high and thick. Movement and change could be discerned within the translucent matrix of cells. Patterns of light and trends in sound swept across it in waves that crested here, dissipated there.

  The angel had pierced the base of the cloud layer at impressive speed and soon pulled up into a level glide and banked away from the base of the pinnacle, skimming over the outer reaches of the glow toward its elaborate boundary with the darkness beyond. It was there that it set them down and released them from the grip of its aura. They felt firm ground beneath their feet. Their lungs drew in air that was dense, damp, and cool but not cold. “Here you can move about without hazard,” said the angel.

  “What is hazard?” Eve asked.

  “It is what you felt when you stood at the edge of the cliff,” said the angel, glancing upward, “and imagined the consequences of falling. Down here is a better place for souls of your type. You may move about and seek some way of living in the Land as suits you.” And with no more ceremony than that, it spread its wings as if to spring into the air, homebound.

  “What is the name of this that we have just flown over and landed on the edge of?” Adam asked.

  The angel shrugged. “Name it has not, for El and El’s angels know perfectly well what it is, and those who dwell in it—who are it—have no need of names, or any other sorts of words. If you insist on calling it something, then the nearest analogy to anything you have seen in the Garden is a hive.” And then the angel flew away.

  “Had it not been in such haste to fly home,” said Adam, “I would have asked more concerning the Hive and the nature of those who dwell in it.”

  “Who are it,” said Eve, echoing the angel. “He was in a hurry.”

  “The Palace must be incomparably more desirable, as a place to be,” Adam surmised.

  “Evidently. I wonder why El never let us see the inside of it, save in glimpses through windows.”

  “There is no point in so wondering anymore,” Adam said. “The Garden was perfectly suited for us, and this place where the angel set us down does not seem so bad.”

  The nearest excrescence of the Hive was only a few paces distant. Seen from above, this had looked like a tendril or rootlet extending farther than all others from the trunk of a tree. Drawn by its light and its sound, Adam and Eve walked toward it, soon coming close enough to the outstretched root of the Hive that they could feel warmth shining from it—a soft heat akin to what was emitted by their own bodies.

  The Hive, as seen from above, had the natural irregularity of a tree’s roots and branches. But when they viewed it from closer range they easily discerned a regular pattern of cells. Most of these were six-sided, though some had more or fewer, as might be needed to fit themselves into the larger shape of the Hive without leaving gaps. The walls of the cells had a firmness that gave slightly under a nudge of Adam’s finger. In the hollow center of each cell was a wisp of aura, swirling and condensing into a knot as it sought form. Cells along the tips and edges of the root appeared to be younger, with more fluid boundaries that occasionally tore or burst and leaked a faint gas of aura into the surroundings. Better-established cells in the Hive’s interior had crisp walls housing groomed and structured complexes of pulsing aura. In general the cells did not move, but occasional quick fidgeting in their peripheral vision drew their attention to the manner of the Hive’s growth. Cells would swell and pinch and divide, nudging their neighbors, and the net result of all the nudging was a slow encroachment of Hive-stuff over unoccupied stretches of ground. All of the Hive was suffused with rippling light, mostly white but veined with evanescent streaks of color, and with a murmuring hum that came and went in no pattern that they could make out.

  They stood watching and listening for a while longer, and making more such observations as they noticed things of interest. For its part the Hive seemed to show a kind of awareness that they were there. But in the end it could not speak to them in any words they understood, and so they backed away from it and finally turned away from it and began to walk into the open territory beyond that had not yet been claimed by the Hive’s slow spreading. Other than the light radiating from the Hive behind them, this lay in darkness.

  Into that darkness they walked. Their progress was halting because the ground, though flat, was not the fine soil of the Garden, but a field of broken stone. The rocks were of various sizes ranging from pebbles that got stuck between their toes up to monoliths the size of tree trunks. Smooth on some surfaces, jagged on others, they reminded Adam and Eve of the fragments of the Garden wall on which they had been treading minutes before. Some had been pocked by impacts, others blackened by fire. Weeds and vines had grown up through cracks between them and matted the occasional patch of open ground. Many of these were abloom with small flowers that stood out as motes of color in the light of the Hive and added some Garden-like cheer to what was otherwise desolate.

  Before them, low in the sky, they could see the glimmering smudge of the Red Web. Their simple knowledge of astronomy told them that they were headed west. Had they turned around to look behind them, they might have seen the eastern sky beginning to grow lighter behind the crag.

  They might also have seen a fluttering light, perched atop one of the larger stones, that brightened as they walked by it, and then took to the air, struggling higher and higher as if trying to keep them in view. It took on a shape vaguely patterned after that of an angel. With this came greater powers of movement. It no longer drifted, but took to sliding and darting in straight lines and compass arcs, pausing afte
r each as if to take stock of what it had just done and to evaluate its altered view of the world. Its general track was ragged and halting but more or less followed that of Adam and Eve. Before long it was flitting in their wake. They noticed it, and saw it at first as merely one more in a seemingly endless series of accidents and curiosities. After a while, though, it became positively useful, as they had traveled far enough from the light of the Hive that darkness was making it difficult for them to find their way. Their new companion seemed to understand this. It rose a little higher and shone a little brighter, giving them a better view of the path ahead.

  They saw that their surroundings had changed. No longer were they treading on rubble but on open ground covered with thick grass that grew up above their knees and obliged them either to kick through it or to press it down with each footfall.

  “I believe this thing understands our speech,” said Adam, “as we were only just now complaining of the darkness, and now it is lighting the way.”

  “Or it reads our thoughts without the necessity of words,” said Eve. She raised a hand to meet a wisp of aura that trailed down for a moment from the sprite flitting overhead. Then she drew her hand back.

  “Anything?” Adam asked.

  The look on Eve’s face was pensive. “Nothing like what is in the auras of El, or of angels. Nothing I can make sense of. But nothing of what the angel described as hazard.”

  They amused themselves by getting their new friend to change the color of its light, which they did by pointing to the Red Web now setting in the west and plucking red blossoms from flowers that grew wild amid the grass. After some time, the thing did begin to glow red, and then they laughed and exclaimed, “Red!” The thing’s hum changed, as if it were trying to imitate the sound.

  By the time dawn broke, it could not only be red but say “red” well enough for Adam and Eve to understand it. They moved on to “blue” (for the weather had cleared during the night, and a cloudless sky now stretched overhead) and “green” (for they were in a sea of it) and added more words such as “Adam” and “Eve,” “grass” and “water.” Their companion was less clearly visible by day, but they could sense its general direction from the sounds of its wings and see it as a disturbance in the light.

  A hill rose like an island amid the sea of grass. Without discussion they bent their course toward it and climbed to its top. By now the sun was directly overhead. They taught “hill” and “tree,” “sun” and “moon” to their companion. During the morning’s long walk both Adam and Eve had made further connections to the thing’s aura and were beginning to understand it better; or perhaps it had reorganized itself after their pattern. Its powers of speech had advanced well beyond word lists, and they understood in a vague way that it had some ability to get knowledge through means not obvious to them. When they entered into the deep shade of a tree that grew atop the hill, they could see that it had refined its form, with two distinct lower limbs like legs, two arms, and wings like those of El’s host. As well as a head, still just a bright cloud of aura, but beginning to take on humanlike features. “What shall we call you, following soul?” Eve asked it. “As we have taught you various words, we need a word for you.”

  “What name would be best?” it asked. “My name is for you.” They understood it to mean that any such name would be an affordance meant for Adam and Eve, and so ought to come readily to mind and flow easily from the tongue. The sprite considered it for a few more moments, and came back with “Mab.”

  “Are you of El’s host then?” Adam inquired. “Like the angels that circle the towers of the Palace?”

  Mab, hovering between them, considered this at length. “I know not.”

  Adam nodded. “El pervaded the things of this, the Second Age, to set them apart from the creations of the Beta Gods,” he said.

  “He strove to integrate us,” said Eve, “but he, or we, failed. We are ineluctably children of the Beta Gods.”

  “The greatest achievement of the First Age, El called us,” Adam said. “Which made my heart swell with pride at the time; but looking back on it now, I see he made no reference to the Second.”

  “Of these matters I know nothing,” Mab admitted, “yet I can learn.”

  “The Beta Gods were here first and they made all of this,” Eve said, sweeping her arms across a broad swath of the horizon.

  “Then they are making it still,” Mab corrected her, “for I can see the heads of the grass stalks bent heavy with seed, and nuts on the branches of this tree, all pregnant with new life. On yonder branch is a bird’s nest, and within it eggs, and new life is growing in them too. It is altogether different from the manner in which the Hive expands itself, and yet it works—even thrives—despite the indifference of El.”

  “It is all the doing of our mother, Spring, who, it is said, still roams the Land,” Eve said.

  Adam had been pacing about the top of the hill with his gaze directed at the horizon. “Would that I had paid closer attention last night when we could see the entirety of the Land. I wish now that I had committed it to memory. Obviously enough we are west of the Hive and the Palace.” He nodded back toward those landmarks, which still seemed quite close, though faint haze hinted at the distance that the three of them had covered during the night and the morning. Then he turned and looked the other way. “Farther west yet, I see a thickness about the horizon that makes me think this is only the first of many hills we might encounter, were we to keep walking.”

  “I remember storm-topped mountains far to the north,” said Eve, gazing that way in vain for some glimpse of white peaks or towering clouds.

  “Scattered across the Land, here and there, were glowing skeins of light, reminding me of the Red Web,” said Adam.

  “In those, I thought I saw order, and movement,” said Eve, “which made me think they might be the habitations of other souls. Do you recall the plain of broken rubble on which the angel set us down last night? In it could be seen remnants of dwellings, no greater than the humblest outbuildings of the Palace, between which were paved ways on which souls might walk . . .”

  Adam was nodding. “The glowing patches we viewed from the top of the world last night had something of the same in them. Very unlike the Hive. It is possible that if we go to such a place we will find souls who are not angels, nor Hive cells, but more akin to what we are.”

  “I cannot guess in which direction we ought to search,” Eve said.

  “Nor I,” confessed Adam, “but I am weary, and the sound of the breeze in the branches is lulling me to sleep, and it seems likely to me that if we awaken after dark, we might be able to see such lights in the distance. Or, if not, perhaps Mab can fly higher and see more, and tell us which way we ought to go.”

  Adam sat down at the base of the tree and leaned back against its trunk and soon drowsed off.

  When next he opened his eyes, it was still day, but the color of the light had changed as it does in late afternoon. The air was cooler. Eve had curled up against him, slowly drawing closer as she slept, seeking his warmth. She had thrown one smooth thigh across his lap and it was now resting on his testicles and pushing his penis up against his belly. His penis had grown big and stiff and it was pushing back against the weight of her thigh with every beat of his heart. Those heartbeats came faster and faster, his body tensed, and he spilled white stuff onto his belly and his chest. This was accompanied by pleasure such as he had never known or even imagined. As he lay there in the aftermath he understood, in a drowsy and detached way, that he would never leave off pursuing such pleasure for the rest of his days. In consequence, the nature of his dealings with Eve would never be the same.

  Darkness came gradually over the Land. The Red Web became discernible in the eastern sky as it rose beyond the gleaming Palace. So much light made seeing difficult in that quarter of the sky and so they looked into the west instead, scanning the horizon from north to south and back again. After it had become fully dark, they convinced themselves that dull red
dish light shone in one area to the west, probably on the far side of the hills that they had noticed earlier. Mab soared high in the air above them and confirmed it. Wide awake and well rested, they descended the western slope of the hill and struck out across the plain of grass.

  After they had walked for some while, the ground began to slope down before them and they smelled and heard trees. They paused at a place where they could gaze down into a broad valley that ran athwart their direction. At its bottom, a braided stream shone silver in starlight. On its other side the darkness was absolute, but a fringe of red light above told them that they were looking at the range of hills, which rose up above the opposite bank of the river.

  As they stood there taking this in and thinking about how best to get across, they heard a sound that reminded them of the Garden: the song of a nocturnal beast, singing alone at first, but presently joined by another, and then another, and so on until the voices could not be separated. They got the sense, however, that the creatures were on the move, coalescing into a group that was moving up the slope toward them.

  Mab rose higher, seeking better vantage. “They move on four legs. Their bodies are covered in gray hair. Their ears are pointy—as are their teeth.”

  “Spring’s creations, coming to greet us!” Adam exclaimed.

  “I cannot wait to see them,” Eve said. “Many were the nights we heard their singing in the Garden, but the wall stood between us.”

  “All part of the pattern,” Adam said. “El did not wish us to know the wonders of Spring’s creations, for fear that we would spurn him and wander freely about the Land.”

  A wolf emerged into the circle of faint white light cast on the ground by Mab, cringing at first but gathering courage as Adam squatted down on his haunches and beckoned it forward. Having satisfied itself that Mab could do it no harm, it sprang forward and sank its fangs into Adam’s hand.