Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,211

surprising her. As soon as its feet were on the pavement it could tug on her arm with strength that was more than human. When she jerked, it jerked back ten times faster; it was like having one wrist embedded in the Washington Monument. But she understood that it didn’t weigh that much. Its only power came from its contact with the ground.

She gave in, let it pull her up against its hard body, and thrust her free hand between its legs. She hooked her arm under its pelvis, getting the crook of her elbow where the genitals would be on a human, and gathered her legs under her and stood up. Like mighty Heracles severing Antaeus from his contact with the ground. The force she’d been fighting vanished, throwing her off balance. She staggered back along the chopper’s flank. Sensing the hum of the tail rotor dangerously close, she turned away from the danger, inadvertently feeding the Metatron’s outstretched legs into the whirring blade.

What occurred then was too fast and violent for any human senses to take in. It was like a shock cut in a movie; there was only before and after. She knew it was bad and that she had sustained injuries. The tail rotor was ruined, the helicopter out of trim. Its tail swung around, collected her and what was left of the Metatron, and knocked them off the edge of the helipad.

The water below was as cold as advertised. She tried to raise her arms to swim, but the Metatron was still holding one of her wrists in a death grip. Her free hand came up. Daisy came up with it, the faded plastic petals floating in front of her face but gradually fading from view as she sank.

41

The Palace’s tallest tower was the dwelling place of Longregard. Just below it was a stretch of high parapet where Egdod was wont to pace back and forth. Once it had offered a pleasant view of Town, which in those days had been situated only a short distance below. Now Town was a jumbled ruin, spread across ground so far below the top of the pinnacle that Egdod’s view of it was frequently obscured by intervening strata of cloud. It was a smudge upon the surface of the Land, devoid of color since all of the trees had been felled.

At some distance the forest resumed. There the red leaves had been falling in uncountable numbers, as had been the way of things in the very beginning when Egdod had dwelled alone in the Land. Gazing down into that red sea from far above, he remembered fondly those days when all things had been as he made them, for better or worse. The red forest below would turn brown and bare as the leaves dried up and blew away, then become white and then green as the seasons took their turns, so on and so forth for thousands of years without any need for Egdod to stretch forth his hand. Now, from the high place, the forest looked as it had in those days, but he knew that beneath its red canopy the people who had formerly lived in Town were on the move, fanning out in all directions, cutting down trees and shitting on the ground wherever they went.

Some went west into the broad sea of grass that stretched toward the mountain ranges Pluto had raised along the Land’s western coast. Some went south, then bent their course eastward to avoid the rocky desert of the Land’s southwestern quadrant, and sought the green warm bottomlands of the central gulf. Others doubled back around the base of the Pinnacle and followed the course of the great river eastward, looking for places where they might settle in its broad valley.

Few as yet were going north, for there winter came earlier and harder, and the going was difficult. Mountain ranges alternated with deep gorges all the way to the Knot. And even if the people of Town had had wings to fly over those, they would have avoided venturing into that territory, since it was understood that it was the inviolable domain of Egdod and certain favorite members of the Pantheon.

Perhaps Longregard sensed that Egdod’s thoughts were directed toward the Fastness, for she glided down from her perch in the high tower and alit near him, to his right side, like him facing north toward the column of dark clouds that marked the eternal storm.

“Something very strange is afoot in