Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,160

those tribes and their cultural practices were now available, but the names on the maps had mostly stuck. The one exception was the stretch of beach where the corpses had washed up, which went down on the eighteenth-century charts as Cannibal Shore but was now called Ruination Reach.

No business owner in their right mind would want to sink a lot of capital into a resort named after that. “Devastation” was only a little less discouraging, but “Desolation” had a ring to it that a clever marketing team could make hay with. So Desolation Lodge was the name of the resort that had been built on the island, just above Surge Rocks, and within view of Scylla Point (the hazard that had punched in the longboat’s side) and Charybdis Head. It was an old logging camp, abandoned sufficiently long ago that the trees on the surrounding slopes had grown back to proportions where most tourists assumed they were looking at virgin wilderness. There wasn’t much flat land, but concrete foundations had been poured on some of the rocks within spitting distance of the shore and conjoined by a network of timbers and girders to support acres of cedar-plank platforms where docks, walkways, ramps, a helipad, a seaplane port, and other facilities had been constructed to service the lodge proper.

Arriving guests—whether they came by boat, plane, or chopper—were all funneled into a cozy red-cedar reception hall where they sat by a fire and enjoyed a complimentary beverage while filling out bland but bloodcurdling waivers and getting a stern talking-to from a rugged senior guide. The guide had been picked out for his impressive physical presence, his authoritative voice, and a certain thousand-meter-stare quality in his blue-eyed gaze suggesting he’d seen shit you wouldn’t believe. He had important things to say, yes, about grizzly bears and slick footing, but his talk began and ended with remarks about water safety. These were bolstered with statistics and festooned with anecdotes, but essentially what he wanted you to know was that if you went into that water out there you would die. Even ankle-deep, the tidal surge would kick your legs out from under you with the remorseless precision of a jujitsu champion. As your upper body contacted the water you would go into shock from the intensity of the cold. You would gasp for breath rather than taking this one last opportunity to cry out for help. Within seconds your hands would be useless. The muscles of your arms would shut down in less than a minute. Some would simply go under and never come up, others would struggle to fight the current for a minute or two before hypothermia rendered their limbs useless. The resort abounded in hot tubs and swimming pools. Visitors who insisted on going into actual seawater would be directed to a sheltered, supervised cove five minutes’ walk away. But no one should go anywhere near the main channel without a survival suit and a rescue team.

Having driven that point home and made eye contact with each arriving visitor, the senior guide would then tack on a couple of footnotes about bears and excuse himself. A younger and more bubbly staff member would then prattle on about the spa and the indoor tennis courts while the ancient mariner would, one presumed, totter off to a dark corner of the bar to drink straight whiskey while gazing out over the chilly and violent waters of the strait and ponder death.

The only visitor who managed to avoid this introductory session was El Shepherd. As always, he stayed home in Zelrijk-Aalberg and shipped a telepresence robot to the site. It arrived a day early, hoisted out of the hold of a supply boat along with the resort’s usual supply of beer, broccoli, and laundry detergent. It was in a fetal position with a shipping label stuck to its back, blazoned with the name METATRON. For, having found these devices useful, El had executed a roll-up, purchasing a few companies that had been competing in the telepresence space, merging them into one, and giving them a snappy new brand name.

The staff wheeled the Metatron up to the main lodge on a dolly and set it down. It emitted a warning tone, suggested that everyone stand clear, and then stood up. It moved in generally humanoid fashion. But because it was, for the time being, just running an automated program, it was infinitely patient, pausing frequently to scan its surroundings and consider its next move. The