Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,168

his part was pondering some of the images that had entered his mind from the aura bridge. Among other things, he had seen the park in the middle of Town. It was a flat square of grass and it was empty of souls, buildings, and trees. This was how he had made it, a long time ago, according to his normal practice, which was to shape the land first in a crude manner, putting a mountain here and a river there, and then return later to better them. The glimpse of the park that he had seen through the eyes of Ward told him that its improvement was overdue. Moreover his own lack of facility with forming words told him that he might benefit from more contact with souls in Town.

So he walked out into the Garden and reminded himself of the shapes of some of the flowers that had lately appeared there. Then he took wing and flew down the length of the street and touched down in the middle of that featureless square of grass. Walking about on it he began to place flowers here and there, not spreading them all about like grass but clustering them in groups that were more pleasing to the eye. As he did so he was again struck by the knowledge—confident, unremarkable—that he was not creating anything anew but rather summoning up a memory of his previous life. He sensed that when the park was finished, paths of something like stone would meander through it, coming near each of the flower beds. In its center would rise a structure made out of stone. Not a large one. Nothing like the Palace. Scarcely large enough to contain a few souls. Not a thing to dwell in but rather an ornament to look at.

In his efforts to summon and sharpen these memories he had stopped paying attention to goings-on around him. Coming back to the here and now for a moment, he gazed about and saw that souls had gathered all around the edge of the park. He was surprised by the number of them: more than he could easily count. Thousands. They were not ordered in uniform ranks but rather clumped together according to some pattern that evidently suited them. As before, some of them spoke to their neighbors by forming words, while others joined their auras together so that they could share perceptions and thoughts directly. Those who did speak used a greater variety of words than Egdod had expected. “Egdod” seemed to be universal but “flower” was not. Different clumps of souls seemed to have different opinions as to which sound patterns designated which things. It was another of those realizations that came to Egdod’s mind as a fresh thing but that he sensed had been commonplace in wherever it was that he had come from. Souls were not all the same, but grouped according to degrees of similarity that existed among them, and one of the ways they did so was according to their use of words.

All save one of them, however, seemed reluctant to step upon the park’s grass. The exception was a relatively large and well-formed soul who was moving freely about the park, flying more often than walking, moving from one bed of flowers to the next as if inspecting Egdod’s handiwork. Egdod named her Free Wander. He tried to convey by gestures and a few words that she was welcome in the park, but this was of little value since Freewander appeared to know this already—or perhaps did not care.

Watching and listening to this exchange was another distinct and mature soul whom Egdod had noticed moving among the different clumps of souls. Egdod named him Speaks All.

Egdod now summoned Freewander and Speaksall to his presence, and beheld the different forms that they had made for themselves. Freewander’s body was as slender and strong as a new green branch. She seemed to be made mostly of wings, which she used more adeptly than any of the other souls. Her aura was a waterfall of white static into which she had already braided skeins of flowers harvested from those that Egdod had only just introduced to the park. Egdod was irked by this, but casting his gaze over the flower beds he saw that they had not diminished from Freewander’s harvesting but were replenishing themselves already.

Speaksall was more robust than Freewander but less so than Ward. He had taken the unusual step of distributing small wings about various