Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,332

cool their heels for a night as they waited for Robst to collect them, but the distance they had to cover simply was not that great.

So Prim strode south along the coast road, finding it easy going compared to the mountain passes of Calla. She was wrapped in a blanket that was pulled up over her head like a cloak, and carrying a bag slung over her back that contained a few days’ simple food, a purse with a few coins in it, and a writing kit: quills, a penknife, and the oddments needed to make ink.

The road followed the coastline, which was not straight. Every so often she, and the other travelers strung out along the road near her, would come round a point and see the city. The place had been protected very early by a seawall—or, in those days, a riverwall—put up to prevent inundations such as the one that had destroyed the first Eltown. Newer buildings, mostly of burnt mud, had later gone up around the outside of the walls and now blurred its lower reaches with a confusion of various rooflines and drifting smoke. But easily discerned was the wall top, running straight from one tower to the next.

The towers were five in number and arranged so as to command interlocking vistas of the First Shiver and, opposite, Campside. Impressive as those might have been, they were dwarfed by what loomed above them. The slopes of the mountain behind the city were grown with trees that, since the death of Adam, had become quite ancient. The trace of a road-cut could be discerned zigzagging up the slope. But at its top, the skyline was a froth of white stuff, like the foamy crest of a wave poised to break over the city. Accustomed to the mountains of Calla, Prim would have pegged it as the thick lip of a glacier had she not known what it really was: Hive. A complex of cells inhabited by souls that were unimaginably different from the sort who walked around on two legs and talked to one another with words, songs, looks, and gestures.

Little could really be known of the Hive save that it surrounded the base of the Pinnacle in the middle of the Land, and spread out from there along the Hive-Way, thin tendrils running east to the Teemings and west to the ridge above Secondel. There, over time, the Hive had filled in the gaps between the great stone temples and basilicas that Beedles had piled up to the glory of El, forming a seamless complex running for a mile along the ridgetop. Few of the souls who dwelled below in the walled city of Secondel ever set foot in the Temple. If they toiled up the switchbacks to the top of the ridge, they might pass through an aperture in the middle that marked the beginning of the great road east. But entry to the Temple itself was an honor conferred only on a few.

“I am bound for Toravithranax,” she said. She had rehearsed it a hundred times, learning to say the words in the thick accent of the cold Bits that lay north of Calla. This was the first time she had spoken them directly to a stranger.

“And what is your business there?” inquired the Autochthon.

Prim and a score of other travelers were milling around before the north gate of Secondel, being looked at and interrogated by a few Autochthons who nudged their mounts about, approaching anyone who aroused their curiosity.

She tried to ignore this Autochthon’s mount, which was curiously shoving its huge nose into her pack, drawn no doubt by the scent of the apples. Instead she shielded her eyes with her hand—for the sun was very near the Autochthon’s head—and looked him in the eye as best she could.

“I have been sent into the south by my family to learn the art of writing from Pestle,” Prim said—meaning, as this Autochthon would understand, the Academy that Pestle had founded ages ago.

“Who’s to say they’ll have you?” asked the Autochthon, looking her up and down.

“If they won’t, I shall learn it from one of the lesser scribes who, it is said, have little schools around the verges of the great one.”

“And what is writing to your family, that they would send you so far to learn it?”

“We have three ships and much need of keeping records.”

The Autochthon still had her at a disadvantage, because of the angle of the sun, but she could