Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,181

them down would be in every way the same thing as committing murder. So, for you to point out that I could kill any one of these processes is true. And yet it’s as completely beside the point as for you to point out that in Meatspace, I could hire hit men to have a person killed.”

It took a bit for that to sink in. Jake said, “El, are you making abstract philosophical points here, or issuing threats?”

Corvallis looked across the table at Zula. She looked back at him. On the side of her head that was hidden from the view of the Metatron, she raised her hand, extended her index finger toward her ear, and twirled it around.

34

Once Spring had put life into several bees, it was not necessary to create more of the same kind, since bees had the power to make more bees. Over the course of the summer they propagated into swarms that filled the air like clouds. Freewander led a swarm down the Street to Town, where they found the flower beds that Egdod had created in the Park and that Freewander had since been bettering. On his visits to Town, Egdod observed that the souls were fascinated by the bees and liked to stroll in the Park observing them as closely as could be done without risk of suffering pain from their stings. A solitary bee made a noise too faint to be easily heard, but a swarm of them hummed palpably. Speaksall was fascinated by the sound, and would stand in the Garden for much of the day listening to it and trying to make out whether it was a type of speech. Souls in Town could be heard mixing the buzz of the bees into their sentences, and when two or more gathered to connect their auras, they sometimes emitted a hum so convincing that the bees themselves were drawn thither to investigate. Egdod, still not the most articulate of souls, paid little heed to buzzes and hums, preferring to better the functioning of his mouth parts and his ability to fashion whole sentences. When Speaksall was not trying to make sense of the bees’ speech he would sometimes help Egdod with this, sitting with him at the table in the Palace and engaging him in conversation about the latest improvements in the Land and the doings in Town. Together they would call words to mind and practice the use of them. To frame thoughts in words and sentences required effort, but Egdod saw it was effort worth making.

A few nights after the first bee had been brought to life, Egdod drew a mist about the Garden and changed the shape of the mirror pool that he had fashioned there long ago, when he had first conceived a desire to see himself and to give himself a face. He broadened the pool and then caused a little tower to rise up in the midst of it, then made it so that water would spout from its top and trickle down into the pool. Its overflow found its way into a tiny stream that ran through the Garden before vaulting down into the Forest to join its waters with those that had emerged from Spring. The rim of the pool he broadened into a flat place where a soul might sit or recline. Egdod hoped that Spring might find her way up to this fountain and use it as a kind of abode, within the precincts of the Palace and yet of a nature that suited her. For he now understood at long last that it was she who had been the author of the many different kinds of plants that had sprung forth in the Garden from the early days of the Land. He desired that she should make a home in the place that she had created.

At first Spring seemed to take little note of the fountain, but one morning Longregard let Egdod know that, the previous evening, looking down from her tower, she had seen Spring emerge from the pool in moonlight, shaping herself into a form with arms and legs and sitting on the edge, much as Egdod had hoped that she might. After that she began to frequent the place and even to walk about the Garden and the Palace in that form.

The sight of bees swarming among flowers confirmed to Egdod that his thinking about souls-that-were-not-souls had been correct, and emboldened him to consider more small forms