Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

by Neal Stephenson

  In any event, Adam followed Messenger of El into the cabin, and Mab followed Adam. They stood and beheld Eve asleep in her bed, half-concealed under the forms of the twelve new little ones. Some of those slept, stirring and sighing from time to time. Others lay silently awake, their open eyes taking in impressions of the visitors and the other things around them. Two fussed and were comforted by Mab, who darted in to beguile them with her bright form. Messenger of El, bereft of his wings for the time being, walked around the bed, counting the little souls and bending closer to inspect them.

  As this went on, Adam came to notice that the visitor was paying special attention to where the legs came together.

  “Six male and six female,” said Messenger of El finally.

  “Yes,” Adam said. “I know of no particular reason why their numbers should be equal, save that Spring so preordained matters. Perhaps she had it in mind that the males and females would form pairs as Eve and I have done.”

  Messenger of El listened carefully and nodded agreement. “And what purpose do you suppose is served by the forming of such pairs?”

  Adam shrugged. “Companionship. Striving together as one to do what is beyond the reach of a lone soul.”

  “The pairing of male and female is not needed for such purposes,” Messenger of El pointed out.

  “What do you think then?” Adam asked, for it seemed that the angel already had some answer to the riddle he had posed.

  One of the little ones awoke and cried out. Mab flitted to it.

  So as not to further disturb the sleeping ones, Adam and Messenger of El opened the cabin’s door, stepped outside into the cold air, closed it behind them, and continued to talk beneath the starlight. “For many years to come,” said the angel, “those little ones shall require your protection and your instruction. It is a task demanding the energies of two souls, and then some! Spring foresaw as much when she so programmed your forms to spawn males and females in equal numbers.”

  “You are saying that six such pairs might eventually be formed from the twelve just spawned,” said Adam.

  “Yes, and each of those pairs might in time bring forth more little ones just as you and Eve have done. And indeed Eve still has it in her to spawn new little ones as well, once she has recovered from the labors of this day.”

  None of these possibilities had previously entered the mind of Adam, who in his astonishment and exhaustion and joy had not had leisure to work it all through. He now felt some embarrassment at having been so slow to grasp the nature of Spring’s plan.

  His mind went for some reason to the forests where he ranged every day with the woodcutters. For as far as a soul might travel in a week, the mountains were clad in trees, far too numerous to count. And yet according to what they had learned in the Garden, they and all other things that lived had begun as single seeds that had multiplied and spread with the passage of many years. If the six pairs only just spawned by Eve were to spawn more in due course, the number of souls would soon mount to rival the population of Eltown. Only Mab could calculate the numbers, but the vastness of the forest gave Adam a way of thinking about where it could lead: a Land populated with souls too many to count, all formed after the general shape of Adam and Eve. And they would raise and instruct those souls to deal with one another justly, so that none would wax stronger and more perfect at the expense of another.

  “Forgive me,” said Adam, “for not having seen it until now. Yes, I do believe I understand the nature of Spring’s program now.”

  “Very well,” said Messenger of El. “Raised as you were in the Garden by El to wield your powers of intellect, you were bound to sort it out sooner or later, to perceive the error of Spring and to understand the nature of the problem.”

  “Error? Problem?” Adam repeated.

  “Yes,” said Messenger of El. “Quite plainly, the Land has not the capacity to support the number of souls that would in time be spawned by the carrying forward of Spring’s misbegotten program. The hills for miles around Eltown have already been logged bare by souls who spawn in the usual manner—and more such come down from Elkirk every day. Do not think that El in his Palace is oblivious to this. Similar stories could be told of other towns and cities all over the Land. To add the descendants of Adam and Eve in their thousands and their millions would soon strip the whole Land bare, and make it as dead and disfigured as that place.” The angel lifted his gaze to the burning crater of the Red Web high above.

  Adam knew not what to say, and thought on it for a while. “I cannot deny that I have with my own hands felled many trees of late, out of a desire to build a larger habitation for the little souls being spawned by Eve. Nor that the same actions carried out by thousands of my descendants—”

  “Millions,” the angel put in.

  “—would lay bare much Land that now is pleasantly forested. But to produce so many souls will take many years, and is it not possible we might change our ways in the meantime? We are not blind devourers. Already the souls of Eltown find ways to live comfortably while cutting down fewer trees.”

  “That will only delay the inevitable,” said Messenger of El. “Fortunately, a simple fix, undertaken now, will prevent anything of the kind from ever occurring. It is the easiest thing in the world.” And the angel’s hand strayed to his right hip, where the pommel of a small knife gleamed as it protruded from a hidden sheath.

  “What is the nature of this fix,” inquired Adam, “and in what way does it involve that knife?”

  “Inborn to each of those twelve is the faculty of spawning more souls,” explained Messenger of El. “The males take after you in this respect, and the females take after Eve. The latter have their organs of reproduction deep inside, but you and the boys wear yours externally, where the mistake of Spring can be fixed by the smallest cut of a knife. No parts will be removed. It is merely the severing of an internal connection, quite nearly painless. While they are sleeping I will just see to it.” The angel turned back toward the door of the cabin, drawing the knife from its sheath. Its blade was scarcely larger than Adam’s fingernail and it gleamed white under the light of the stars.

  Adam reached out and clapped a hand upon the other’s shoulder. “If it is all so quick and simple as you say,” he said, “then do you come back at some later time after Eve and I have had the opportunity to consider your proposal.”

  “It is no proposal,” said the Angel, turning to face him and shrugging off his hand, “but a thing that is to be done, by order of El himself, this very night.”

  “The writ of El does not run here,” said a third voice, and Adam turned to discover Walksfar approaching them across the clearing. “Camp may be small and mean to you who have come lately from the heights of the Palace, but it is old, founded in a place of wild souls by ones such as I who spawned in the age of the Old Gods and who looked upon Egdod himself with our own eyes. We did not invite El to the Land and we do not grant him the authority to send his minions into our dwellings and alter our forms with knives.”

  Courage overtook Adam upon hearing these words and seeing the confident stride and proud bearing of Walksfar. He advanced toward the entrance of the cabin so as to prevent the angel from drawing any closer.

  “Those are brave words from an indolent hermit who has done nothing but sulk in his cabin and drink tea for centuries,” said Messenger of El. “But while you were thus occupied, great changes came over the Land. You would be well advised to walk far again, as you did of old, and familiarize yourself with things as they are before insulting El and impeding his messenger.”

  Walksfar’s face clouded and he did not seem ready with an answer, but Adam spoke: “I am well informed, as you know, and am hardly of a mind to insult El. But I will gladly impede his messenger in this case.”

  It had now come about that Messenger of El was between Adam and Walksfar, for the latter had not slowed in his advance. Looking both ways and finding himself hemmed in, the angel became an angel again. Its garment brightened unti
l it was making light of its own, and unfurled into bright wings, and it sprang into the air, a little higher than a man might jump, so that Adam and Walksfar were looking upon its winged feet. “I am sent to make matters right here,” it announced, “not to bandy words!” The angel spread its wings to an immense breadth and beat them once with all of its might. Adam and Walksfar were flung back on the ground with such violence that they both lay dazed for some little while.

  Adam was brought to his senses by the cries of small souls in pain, and of Eve in horror and rage. He got up to his feet and ran into the cabin to find the angel bent over a male soul, at work with the little knife. The infant let out a sharp cry and the angel turned away, finished, blood dripping from its hand. At a glance Adam took in the five other boys, all screaming with small ribbons of blood between their legs. Eve was trying to comfort them. They had all been cut while Adam lay dazed.

  “Yes,” said Messenger of El, turning toward Adam, “it is all finished—except for you, Adam. One more cut and the Land will be forever safe from the errors of Egdod and of Spring.”

  Adam reached behind the door and found the handle of his axe and drew it forth.

  The angel laughed. “You are more naive than I had imagined if you think to oppose the might of one of El’s hosts with that.”

  Something hard and cold pushed Adam aside, and he felt the earthen floor shake under the tread of one who outweighed him by a hundredfold. Cairn had entered, and now directly confronted the angel, who only looked upon the old soul curiously, as if he had never seen or imagined its like. Cairn advanced one more step, as if obliging the angel’s curiosity. They stood face-to-face for a moment. Then Cairn clapped his hands, or rather the blunt extremities of his upper limbs.

  Messenger of El burst like a ripe fruit struck with a hammer. Gobbets of its aura sprayed the walls, ceiling, and floor. Its head and upper body were gone altogether. The lower parts and the arms and wings lost coherence and drifted apart, settling in various parts of the cabin. The effect was somewhat like how it had been at Elkirk when Adam and Eve had stood in the lower chamber with many new souls, scattered about the place, barely holding themselves together. The stuff that angels were made of was brighter. Yet the fragments of it lacked the coherence even of new souls, so powerfully had the blow dealt by Cairn disrupted Messenger of El’s form. Scarce any part of the cabin’s interior had gone unspattered, and the whole place was alight with the fizzing and fluctuating shine of the angel’s aura. Adam reached out to comfort the six of the infants who had come under the knife, then drew his hand back as he noticed that it had been spattered. As he gazed in fascination at the gobbet of aura on the back of his hand, the stuff spread out and melted into his flesh, which glowed. This presently faded but he could feel something new coursing up his arm and into his chest, whence it spread through his body, making his head swim and his extremities tingle. He reached out again, this time to steady himself on the table where Messenger of El had done the cutting. The little boy lying before him had stopped crying. Patches of angel-stuff were soaking into him, setting most of his body aglow, and Adam could only assume that the boy was experiencing similar sensations.

  Eve was up on her feet, gathering handfuls of it from places where it had spattered on the floor or the walls. Much of it had sunk into the earth. Adam fancied that the ground was shifting under his feet, though perhaps this was just the result of Cairn shambling out the door.

  Cairn’s rough form was silhouetted by a brilliant light, which caused Adam a moment’s fear that more angels were coming, but when Cairn stepped aside, revealed was Walksfar, approaching the cabin holding the sword that the angel had left leaning against the tree. This had reverted to its original radiant form. “I did not expect that today was going to end with us in a fight with angels,” said Walksfar, “but if that is the case, Thingor would want us to make use of this.”

  The talk of fighting was more than Adam wished to hear and so he turned his back to see how matters now stood in the cabin. Most of the angel-stuff was gone, for it was too chaotic and volatile to linger for very long in any one place without an organizing soul to keep it collected. But what had not disappeared yet Eve was scooping up and applying to the infants’ bodies as if it were a balm. Seeing the way Adam looked on her she said, “The more of it is in us, the less is there for the use of El or any of his minions.”

  “Do we then owe something to El by having it in us—constituting us?”

  “We owe El nothing save retribution,” spat Eve.

  “I mean, does it give El some power over us that he had not before?” Adam asked.

  “I know not. But I am stronger now, more aware, than I was. And behold the little ones.”

  Adam beheld them and saw that the twelve were not as little as they had been earlier. In form they were still infants, but they now gazed about them curiously instead of sleeping or fussing, and their size was greater than what it had been.

  “It would appear that I need to cut down even more trees,” he said dryly. He met Eve’s eye and they shared an affectionate look. But this was cut short by a flicker of light, which drew their gazes directly to the floor between them. One of the boys had got up on hands and knees and crawled to the place where Messenger of El had been standing when Cairn had crushed him. The angel’s knife had there fallen to the floor and now lay shining like a tiny flake of thunderbolt, beguiling the eye. The child was reaching for it.

  As one, Adam and Eve flung themselves at him. Adam was closer, and got there first, and clapped his hand over the bloody handle. He and Eve laughed. They had never laughed before.

  Fighting did not come that day, or the next, or the next. Angels flew over Camp from time to time but did not alight. Adam did not go down to the river for two days, though he knew that Feller would dock his log pile. The twelve little ones wanted much attention. During the next few days they stayed close about Eve. The auras of the children and their mother were intertwined in a way that confounded Adam, but Eve, noting his amazement, let him know that this was all well and good, and that in this way the little ones drew from her both sustenance for their forms and knowledge that informed their minds. Each of them, she explained, was developing a personality of his or her own. She could with ease tell them apart. Adam was a little slower to discern them.

  There were several souls in Camp who, though forgettish and even foolish in some ways, enjoyed the novelty of having small young souls about the place, and came by the cabin at all hours to look in on them. When it seemed that the little ones could be tended to without his being present, Adam resumed his practice of going down to the river at dawn to board Feller’s boat. But the nature of his dealings with Feller had changed. Formerly, Adam had respected Feller and wished to please him. Now all such desires were gone from his soul. For Adam had fathered progeny and struggled against an angel and seen that angel destroyed by an animated pile of rock from the First Age. He had absorbed angel-stuff into his own soul and form. These events made all of Feller’s doings seem so small and mean that Adam could scarcely be bothered to pay heed to the words coming from the boss’s mouth or to care about the petty deeds and squabbles that occupied every waking moment of the likes of Bluff and Edger. The days when Bluff’s size and strength had seemed impressive were now long past. And Adam was not the only soul who thought so, for it was now widely agreed in Eltown that Thunk, the free-roving woodcutter who came to town only infrequently, was the biggest and strongest soul in these parts, other than Adam.

  In addition to axes, several other kinds of implements rattled in the bottom of Feller’s boat. As the days went by, Adam learned the uses of these: mauls and wedges for splitting tree trunks lengthwise, a saw for crosscutting, knives and fids for rope work. Too there were several rods of iron, about as long as a man’s forearm, devoid of any features that might hint at their purpose.

  One day they arrived at the logging site to be greeted by the sound of axes biting into tree trunks. No other boat was to be seen, but f
resh footprints were on the riverbank and some cut trees had been dragged down and marked with a glyph that was not known to Adam. Feller recognized it though, and reacted with disgust that soon flourished into wrath. He bent down and picked up one of the iron rods and handed it to Bluff, saying, “You know what to do,” and then went on to distribute more rods to the others. He ran out of them before he got to Adam, but instead fetched him a spare axe handle, saying, “Watch and learn, for there is no hope for you in this fallen world unless you have it in you to fight those who would take from you.” And he vaulted out of the boat onto the bank, where the rest of the crew were waiting, hefting their iron rods and swinging them through the air.

  “I would stay here at the boat,” Adam demurred, out of not so much fear as lack of interest in whatever it was Feller had in mind.

  Feller appraised him and he could sense the others likewise giving him hard looks. “And what good will that do you if those murderers strike us, your friends, down with their axes? Then they will come for you, Adam. Will you fight them alone? Then you may forgo all hope of ever again looking upon the face of Eve.”

  Adam saw that a concern for his own safety, if not loyalty to his crew, dictated that he go into the woods with the others, and so that is what he did.

  The ones Feller had called murderers were easily found, as they were not far away, and making no effort to be furtive.

  Adam, not as eager as the others, arrived last, and found Feller already rebuking a woodcutter who, from the looks of things, was the leader of the other group; he was taller and broader than the rest, and the head of his axe contained much iron. This was Thunk. Adam had heard much of him but never seen him until now. Feller and Thunk had faced off in a space that was logged clear, into which felled trees had been dragged so that their limbs could be lopped. Feller had poised his iron rod on his shoulder, and Thunk had done likewise with his axe, which was double-edged. They were maintaining a certain distance from each other while maneuvering slowly about, and since each was gazing fixedly at the other’s face, they planted their feet with care as they stepped, ever mindful of the stumps, logs, and boughs scattered underfoot. Feller was flanked by Bluff and Edger and the rest of his crew, but Thunk stood alone, as his people seemed generally of a mind to shrink back and seek refuge in the trees. To judge from the sounds made by these souls as they thrashed through the dried leaves, some of them were simply running away as fast as they could. Less obviously, though, others seemed to be moving around to form a circle about the crew of Feller. Adam, arriving late, nearly tripped over one such, surprising a tall woman as she sidestepped along the edge of the clearing, her attention focused toward the center. She nearly sprang into the air when she realized that Adam was right behind her. Then, recovering her poise, she slipped back, eyes seeking and finding the axe handle first. Only when she was safely out of its range did she give Adam the curious head-to-toe examination that he had grown accustomed to. Adam returned it in kind. She was the tallest woman he had seen, with long muscles showing on her limbs. Slung over her shoulder was a pouch that seemed to contain something heavy. Dangling loosely from one hand was a double length of cord with a scrap of netting woven into its middle.