Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,239

given no thought to the hard pips in their centers, nor understood that apples bore within themselves the beginnings of new trees.”

“That is indeed the way of it,” El confirmed, “and were you to plant that seed in the earth and wait patiently, you might see it sprouting into a little tree in the spring.”

The man spoke. “The same is true, I suppose, of the other sorts of plants?”

“They produce their seeds in different ways,” El said, “but they all produce seeds, and it is because of this that the Garden becomes overgrown from time to time and must be weeded back.”

“And is this also true of what grows beyond the wall?” the man asked. “For when the wind blows we can hear it sighing in many branches, and when it storms we hear them cracking.”

“Your perceptions are even keener than I had hoped,” said El, “and do me proud.” But the woman thought she saw once more in El’s face that look of consternation.

“Why were plants made thus, Father?” the man asked. “Why not make them to grow only so much, and no more? Why should each tree produce many apples, and each apple many seeds, when the Garden cannot provide enough space for more than a few trees?”

When El did not answer for a time, the woman asked him, “Father, why did you make it thus?”

“The day grows late and I have matters to attend to in the Palace,” said El, “and so I shall return some other day when we may carry on such conversations.”

The next day El returned. With him were two of his winged host: Defender of El, with a bright sword sheathed at his hip, and Scribe of El, with a stylus in her hand and a tablet in her lap. These were two of the most important members of El’s host, and often when the man and the woman gazed up at the parapet, or through the apertures of the Palace, they would see El consorting with them. The five sat around the fountain, El flanked by his two angels on a bench and the man and the woman together on the rim of the fountain bowl.

“Great is my pride in the continuing improvement of my children’s powers of perception and intellect, and the good questions they ask of me,” said El, as Defender of El looked on approvingly and Scribe of El flicked her stylus across her tablet. “Of late, many of your questions have returned to a common theme regarding the origins of what you see about you and why things are one way and not another. Who made this fountain, and for what purpose? Who set the stars in the sky, and why do the shapes of the constellations sometimes recall things below? Why do plants make more seeds than the earth is capable of bearing? These are all good questions, which you, my children, are in the habit of asking of me as if I were the one who made the world thus, with the many puzzles, contradictions, and, to speak frankly, errors that you have taken note of. And it is altogether natural that you would suppose it thus, for I am the greatest and most powerful soul of whom you have knowledge. I have today set this meeting, along with my chiefest and most beloved lieutenants, to as it were answer all such questions in one fell swoop by bringing you up to speed on certain preexisting realities that were not of my making. For the facts of the matter are these. Before I was here, and before Defender of El and Scribe of El and the others of my host came to the Land, others were here who had preceded us. They were lesser than us. But when they were here, they were here alone, and had sole authority over the making of things and the ordering of the Land.”

“You might think of them as beta versions of what we are,” put in Scribe of El, “having some, but not all, of our features, and with various bugs yet to be worked out.”

“So there was a Beta-El, and a Beta-Defender-of-El, and so on?” asked the woman.

“That is close enough for purposes of this discussion,” said El, stretching out one hand to silence Defender of El, who seemed on the verge of correcting some error in what the woman had just said. “For now,” El went on, “a general answer to the sorts of questions you two