Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,155

fearful Egdod. By no means was it wrong for him to have fashioned the street in this way. He was not now of a mind to tear it apart into a chaotic wilderness. The trees—the oldest trees in the Land now—he would allow to grow and alter their forms with greater variety, so that each would be different from the next in the branchings and contortions of its boughs. But the nature of the street he would not change, rather leaving it as a relic of his first stirrings, and as a place to which the new dead might be drawn and in which they might find sanctuary.

Egdod had never given the street a definite conclusion or thought about what would happen if he continued walking down it beyond a certain point. At a suitable remove from the top of the hill, where the trees gave out, he now made the ground flat and put grass on it. From the dead ground below the grass he drew out stones and piled them up into walls, and made the walls run straight, not for great distances but just until they intersected other walls at crisp corners, forming enclosures. Those were smaller than the one he had made for himself at the top of the hill but large enough that a few souls might abide in each one, provided that the bodies they made for themselves were of a reasonable size. It seemed wrong for them to have nothing on the top and so he made roofs for them too. The street he caused to branch this way and that among the houses, as the veins of a leaf or the tributaries of a river were wont, save that the street’s branchings were of a more regular nature, with straight lines and right angles that were consonant with the vertical walls and sharp corners of the empty dwellings. Facing the streets he made apertures that he guessed might seem inviting to wandering souls, as the one in his palace atop the hill had apparently beckoned to Follower. In placing the houses and running the streets he followed his whims and his sense of how such a place ought to be laid out; Town, as he called it, had a kind of regularity, but not the perfectly monotonous patterning that he had bestowed on the original street. Some of the streets were longer than others, and not all of the houses were of the same size or shape.

Having put Town’s streets and houses where he thought meet, he left them vague and unfinished, as an invitation to other souls to alter their forms in whatever manner they saw fit. He belted Town with open space where grass grew, and seeded it too with diverse small plants that he had been cultivating in his Garden. In its center he placed a square space devoid of houses, containing only grass.

He was now of a mind to return to the place he had made for himself at the top of the hill and build a roof atop its walls—a thing that had not occurred to him until he had looked at the smaller enclosures of Town and sensed that, without roofs, they were incomplete. He walked out into the little park that he had made in the middle of Town, spread his wings, and took to the air. He flew in a broad circle around Town, viewing its grid of streets from above, and satisfied himself that it was of a correct form. Then he flew up the street until he had reached the space above the hill and the big house he had made there and the Garden behind it. He flew around it a few times, considering what manner of roof would best complete his abode. The name Palace came to him. He descended to the smooth stone floor of the Palace and walked about, regarding it from different angles. Presently he came to its front gate and, gazing down the hill, spied a small form making its way up the street toward him. It was Follower, walking most of the time, occasionally taking to the air and struggling along on his wings for a short distance.

By the time Follower had attained the hilltop, Egdod had prepared for him a smaller house attached to the front of the Palace. He wished for Follower to know that this new thing, the Gatehouse, was for him but that the Palace was Egdod’s alone. Egdod did not