Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

by Neal Stephenson

  Later in the day, a queue of these creatures became visible picking its way down the long series of switchbacks that connected the kirk to Eltown. Everyone watched them come, fascinated by the sight of the two-legged souls bestriding four-legged beasts, as if the two kinds of creature had been merged into one. The creatures of the riders did their job so well that the new arrivals were able to manage the tricky and tedious descent in half the usual time.

  And so just like that the riders were at large in the streets of Eltown. Once they descended from their mounts they were of the same general form as other souls. They were tall and symmetrically formed, like Adam and Eve, Thunk, and Walksfar. Their hair was long and fair, swept back from high brows, and their clothing, though somewhat darkened from travel, was also fair. They carried long poles with sharp tips of iron, which Adam guessed were made to keep wolves at bay, and at their hips they had long blades, like the one that Messenger of El had carried when he had changed over into the guise of a human. In sum, they were obviously patterned after the angels of El’s palace, but without wings. Adam had never seen their like when he had dwelled in the Garden with Eve, and so he judged it likely that they were a fresh creation of El’s.

  As much was soon confirmed by the name that the riders used to set themselves apart from the ordinary people of Eltown. They called themselves Autochthons, which was a word meaning “one who sprang naturally from the Land.”

  The Autochthon at the head of the column spied Adam from a distance as they rode slowly through the streets of the town, thronged by curious souls who crowded around to behold them and to touch the muscled legs and flanks of the mounts. This soul, who as they would later learn was called Captain, met Adam’s gaze with no particular emotion, save perhaps curiosity. He turned back to say something to the one behind him, and as he did he lowered the tip of his lance to point it at Adam. Word spread back down the column, and the Autochthons all looked at him.

  “They are here to replace us” was the verdict of Eve, when Adam told her the story later. “We failed in the eyes of El. He said it himself when he threw us out of the Garden; the taint of the Alpha and Beta worlds could not be scoured away from us and so he gave up on ever making us all that he had hoped for. It is obvious what his next step would have been: to fashion altogether new kinds of souls, free of any such taint, in El’s own image, and send them out into the world to achieve what we failed at.”

  Adam was less glum than Eve, but he had to admit that there was something to her words. “I had been wondering,” he admitted, “why El did not send out more angels to cut me, as Messenger of El cut our boys. Now I see it. He can make as many of these new souls as he chooses. We, and our offspring, simply do not matter; we may continue to exist in the nooks and crannies of the Land, as Cairn and other old souls do here in Camp, but it is the Autochthons who are meant to prosper and to rule.”

  It had been a long while since Adam and Eve had copulated, but they did so on the day that the Autochthons came down from Elkirk, and after that made a habit of it.

  The Autochthons made camp in the cleared land surrounding Eltown. This had become overgrown with low scrubby vegetation considered inedible and useless. But the mounts of the Autochthons could seemingly subsist on any kind of vegetation that they could get into their mouths, and so it suited them. When their beasts had cleared an area, the Autochthons, rather than allowing the weeds to grow back, would plant it thickly with seeds that they had brought with them in sacks. Concerning these there was much curiosity among the people of Eltown. Adam did not need to wait for them to sprout and grow to know that it would be some manner of new plant invented by El to sustain his people and that it would grow well and feed them more abundantly than the crops traditionally raised, and the wild plants gathered, by the folk of Eltown.

  The Autochthons kept coming, a few at a time. According to Mab, who flew far and wide across the sea of grass, they issued from the base of the Hive every day in scores, each score behind a Captain, and formed up in columns that headed off in several directions. Some rode straight for Elkirk, but others strayed off toward parts of the Land of which Mab knew nothing.

  Before long, Eltown was surrounded on all sides, save the riverfront, by fields cleared and sown by the Autochthons. This gave fresh impetus to Feller’s project. For until then it had been the habit of the people of Eltown to assume that they could go on forever sprawling out into the treeless waste that they had made around them. But the enclosure of the town changed their thinking and made them of a mind to build more on what space was still to be had. The result was a demand for more logs. Feller renewed his planning and preparations, which had languished as his enterprise had grown more ambitious. His promise to build a new town on the site was of interest to those who now felt hemmed in by the Autochthons and their mounts and their farms.

  The old souls of Camp had been slow to grasp the nature of these changes, for little had altered in their world since the days of the Trek. They did not think or act at the same pace as others. Cairn, for example, though he had moved rapidly against Messenger of El, had been known to remain motionless for years at a time. Though they were fascinated with and delighted by the twelve children of Adam and Eve, they were unable to keep up with the speed and agility of their play. The best that they could do was to weave a makeshift barrier of branches and vines around the edge of Camp’s central clearing and then try to dissuade the little ones from climbing over it.

  Returning every so often from his errands in Town, Adam would tell the people of Camp about the settlements being created by the Autochthons and the tools and materials being stockpiled by Feller. Though they listened and seemed to take in his words, they did not seem to grasp the nature of things until one day when Adam insisted that some of them must leave the familiar confines of Camp, even if only for a few hours, and go down to the river with him.

  They made arrangements for the twelve little ones to be looked after, entrusting them to souls such as Mab and Dusty who could be relied on not to be outrun or outwitted. Adam walked down the hill in the company of Eve, Walksfar, Beast, and Cairn. When they had emerged from the woods that girded the hill and come out into the open they were able to look across the river into the heart of Eltown.

  Formerly this had been partly concealed behind ramparts of logs, but these had become depleted of late and so the flames and smoke of the forges and kilns were directly visible, and around them the camp where newly arrived souls were wont to dwell in the open. Behind that were the buildings of the town, rising higher by the day as timbers were hauled up to their roofs and used to assemble upper stories. Flanking the town to its north and south, and new to those who had not lately stirred from Camp, were belts of open land now bright green with the fresh growth from the seeds sown by the Autochthons. These new fields were crisply delineated by walls that the Autochthons made by heaping up rocks and stumps that they had extracted from the ground with the help of their mounts. Those walls were highest where they faced the town, which made the souls of Eltown seem pent up inside. Their outlet was to the river, and there on the broad flat plain before the fires they had assembled a fleet of rafts and barges laden with rope, canvas, tools, and other supplies that figured into Feller’s plan.

  Adam, knowing their purpose, could not help sweeping his gaze upstream to the place where the two river valleys came together. Just above their junction rose the bare stubbled hill with the great tree at its top. Its branches had been naked to the winter winds when Feller had vowed to cut it down, but by this time were green with new leaves. Around it, the slopes of the hill were now marked with ropes strung taut between stakes, and little flags, and tents and awnings that had been put up in preparation for Feller’s great undertaking.

  Despite the fact that Adam had been forewarning them of all these things for weeks, the old souls of Camp were troubled, and surprised to see what was under way. “Many years ago,” said Walksfar, “when this valley was nothing but trees, I stood up over yonder where th
e tower of Elkirk stands now and looked down and had to strain my eyes to pick out the great one. Now it seems lonely indeed. I would go there now and stand before it and—”

  “Talk to it?” Adam asked.

  “Try to ascertain whether there is anything there that is capable of being talked to, or of talking back,” said Walksfar. “For with these wild souls one never knows; they are not like us.”

  With that errand in mind they went down farther into the settlement of old buildings on their side of the river. Lately many souls had crossed over and crowded shelters into whatever space they could find. Merely getting through to the river had become difficult. As they picked and shouldered their way among the improvised shelters, various souls emerged to stare at them. For there were many whose knowledge of the Land was limited to what they had seen up at Elkirk and down in Eltown, and they had never seen anything like Adam and Eve, to say nothing of Beast or Cairn. By the time they had reached the edge of the river, where Adam had once been in the habit of getting passage on boats, they were surrounded by a crowd of a few score souls who evidently had nothing better to occupy their time than to follow them around.

  “Word of your coming preceded you, Adam,” said Strongback, the boatman who had most commonly taken him across the river in the past. He seemed to be referring to a fleet-footed soul who had been running ahead of them, alerting everyone.

  “I had not known that it was so remarkable an event,” Adam said, “for a few residents of Camp to go on a stroll down to the river.”

  “Times are changing,” said Strongback, “and the folk of Camp are not viewed in the same way as they once were. For many years nothing ever changed there. Then you and Eve showed up. Then there was the strange business with the angel who came in the nighttime. Then all of a sudden twelve new souls who seemed to come out of nowhere. Now the Autochthons are among us and around us, bringing new ways of doing things, straight from El, and with them is Honey herself.” He cast a glance up toward the white tower of Elkirk. “And Honey brings new teachings directly from El.” He looked at the fleet-footed soul who had gone before Adam and the others spreading word of their approach. This had the look of one but lately come from the kirk and not much used to the rigors of life in the town. “Acolyte, say what you know, that all may hear it.”

  Acolyte spoke in great earnest, as if nothing in his short life had prepared him for the possibility that he might be wrong: “There is to be a new way of things in the Land. It comes to us from the Autochthons, who are sent out by El to remedy all that was wrongly done before.” And as if this were not sufficiently obvious he looked searchingly at Adam, Eve, and the others who had come down from Camp.

  They listened in the expectation that this Acolyte might say more, but when nothing was forthcoming Walksfar said, “In what way does this concern me and others in Camp? We lived satisfactorily in First Town before El had even come into the Land, and likewise in Camp afterward. I would draw your attention to the fact that we have not asked El for any advice as to how we might improve ourselves.”

  “Be that as it may,” said Acolyte, “the new town that is to be built on yonder hill will not be another like Eltown but will be ordered according to directions from Honey, who has them from the Palace of El.”

  “It is high time that I went up to the kirk and talked to Honey,” said Walksfar. “Not to dispute the plans you speak of, for they are none of my concern, but to renew an old acquaintance and learn more of these doings. And while I am out of Camp I shall also go up onto the hill and learn how matters stand with that old tree. Strongback, I would cross the river one more time if there is room in your boat.”

  “There isn’t,” said Strongback.

  “There would be,” Walksfar demurred, “if you were to shift that coil of rope back a bit and move that keg of nails.”

  “The management of my boat and its cargo is no concern of yours,” Strongback replied. “There is no room to carry you or any of your sort.”

  Walksfar was taken aback, and Adam saw in his aura shock and confusion. “Well then,” he said, “perhaps on some other occasion.”

  “Perhaps.” Strongback turned away and went down to his boat. His crew untied the lines that held it fast and rowed it out into the stream, headed not straight across to Eltown, but rather up in the direction of the new project.

  Cairn was not well formed for speech, but he grumbled out a few sounds to the effect that none of this made the least difference to him, who could not get into any boat anyway without crashing directly through its hull planks and sinking it. He stomped down toward the water’s edge and kept stomping until he had disappeared, leaving on the surface a trail of bubbles, mud, and loose debris that was soon swept away by the current.

  Accustomed as they were to Cairn and other such old and wild souls, Adam and Eve found this less remarkable than did the townspeople who watched it happen. Far from being delighted by it, however, those took it amiss and grumbled among themselves as to just how unnatural and wrong it seemed.

  Another, newer boat was being loaded nearby, but its owner held up a hand as if to stop Walksfar from even looking at it. “We have all heard of what became of the boat of Feller,” he announced, throwing a dark look at Adam. Which made no sense at all; but in the faces of the people there seemed to be some kind of certainty that because Adam was somehow involved in the story of Feller’s boat, he should never be allowed near a boat again. “The Autochthons,” said Acolyte, “are as big and as strong as you, Adam, and their mounts stronger yet. You are not needed anymore and so it were better for you to stay in Camp and look after the twelve creatures you have spawned and see to it that they do not get up to any mischief.”

  At this Adam and Eve were both full of wrath and had to be conducted away from the place by Walksfar and Beast.

  Since it seemed they were no longer welcome on boats, the next day Adam and Walksfar struck out northward from Camp, walking parallel to the bank of the river toward a bluff on this, its western bank, whence according to Walksfar they would have a clear view directly across the stream to the hill of the great tree. Along the way they retraced some of the path that Adam had trod on the day that Feller’s boat had been destroyed. Adam spied footprints, which looked fresh. Some of them were uncommonly large, and so it was with little surprise that he and Walksfar came in view of Thunk and his band.

  They had made a camp atop the very bluff toward which Adam and Walksfar had been heading. So that way was blocked; but, as they soon became aware, members of Thunk’s band were behind them as well. Adam was of a mind to steal away. But Walksfar said, “There is little point in pretending that we have not been noticed.” On his back he had been carrying a long bundle swathed in old blankets. He swung this down and peeled away the tattered fabric to expose the handle of the weapon that Messenger of El had carried on his hip. Its blade was shrouded in a dark sheath, but when Walksfar drew it out just a finger’s width, the light of it dazzled. “Between this,” he said, “and the knife on your belt, we can meet them, should they come for us, with weapons forged by Thingor himself, and I do not think that they will have much relish for that fight.”

  Adam was left somewhat bolstered in his confidence as well as embarrassed by his own naivete; for in the earlier fight with Thunk’s band, he had carried the angel’s knife in its sheath the entire time. Never had it entered his mind to wield it against the attackers.

  Walksfar stepped out into an open space in view of the bluff and waved an arm above his head and hailed Thunk in a clear voice. As he did so, Adam heard movement in the trees nearby and turned around to see a woman coming into view; she had evidently been following them, but so stealthily that they had not known of her presence until now. It was the woman he had noted before the fight at the boat. Dangling from her hand was that doubled length of cord, a smooth stone nestled in its pocket. Having seen her work before, Adam wondered whether Walksfar’s sword would really have been of any use had she decided to stand off at a distance and pe
lt them with stones.

  But no such thing occurred. Shortly they found themselves up on the top of the bluff being treated cautiously but hospitably by Thunk and the others. Adam recognized some of these. There were two who seemed of a mind to continue fighting where they had last left off. But seeing this Thunk stepped between them and spoke to them: “Adam came last to that fight, and only defended himself and his comrades; if you look askance at him for that, ask what your opinion of him would be had he stood by and done nothing while we struck them all down.”

  This seemed to change their thinking and so they altered their posture and stepped back. Thunk greeted the woman, calling her Whirr, and she greeted him back in a very familiar manner.

  On the day of the fight, Adam had not had leisure to look closely at Thunk’s people, but now that they were standing at ease around a campfire, he saw various types: some old souls; some newer ones, such as Whirr, who appeared to have developed their forms out in wild places where they had no models or effigies upon which to pattern themselves; and others who had clearly been raised in Elkirk. But even the latter were taller and more erect in their bearings than their counterparts in Eltown, as if merely living in the wild with Thunk and his band caused them to change their forms accordingly.

  The vantage point was excellent, affording views both across and down the river. Nodding toward the smudge of the town, now girded in bright green fields, Thunk said, “So those who are pent up yonder now toil to build a new prison for themselves.” His gaze tracked upstream. “Pity that tree is in the way.”