Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,249

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