Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,244

future.”

He went on, “But a third possibility, which troubles me greatly, is that this is some plot of the Old Ones—the Beta Gods who ruled the Land in the First Age. Long ago I expelled them but ever they seek to return.” Behind El, Adam and Eve could now see thousands of angels, brandishing their dazzling swords, spewing in echelons from the top of the watchtower and dispersing to the four winds. “Great is the diligence of my angels and fearsome is their power. But the Old One is crafty and may have back doors of which I cannot know. If you see in the Garden any unfamiliar soul, particularly one in the guise of a winged creature, dark and disfigured, raise the alarm.”

“We have seen nothing of the sort,” said Eve.

“That is reassuring,” said El. “I must now attend a council of war that Defender of El is convening in the watchtower.” And El rose into the air like a hasty sunrise.

“Worm, know you anything of the Old One?” asked Adam the next time they happened to find the visitor on an apple. This was the next day. The Palace had been in an uproar. Squadrons of angels still tore the sky above the Garden, and others had been posted atop the walls, facing outward.

“I made no secret that I am old, older than El,” said the worm. “The same is true of many other souls. Did El provide a description?”

“Like a great angel, but darkened and ruined.”

“I’ll keep my eyes peeled,” said the worm.

“How is it that neither El nor any of his vigilant host knows you are here?” asked Eve.

“I am small.”

“They have the power of seeing things that are small or hidden,” said Adam.

“Their power is considerable and yet not infinite.”

“So you are using some trickery to baffle their vision,” said Adam.

“I am choosing to go where I will, when I will,” said the worm mildly. “I see myself as under no obligation to notify El of my doings or ask his say-so. This is no more his Garden than it is Spring’s.”

“Tell us more of Spring,” said Eve. “I would know her story even if, as I suspect, it be a sad one.”

“It is not altogether sad,” the worm said. “Spring was the author of all new life in the First Age. Before she came into her power, living things existed in the Land but had not the ability to make more of their own kind. All of them were plants. There were no bugs, birds, or beasts. It was Spring who made the apple tree bloom and bear fruit, pregnant with seeds. With Thingor, who was a god of that age, she fashioned creatures that could move about: first bees, then birds, and later four-legged beasts. These too all had the ability to make more of their kind: some by making seeds, some by laying eggs, others by coupling, male with female, conjoining those organs most apt for the giving of pleasure. Finally, as her greatest work, she began to gestate you, Adam and Eve.”

Eve listened raptly, awaiting the next turn in the story. She glanced at Adam. But some detail in the worm’s narration had caused Adam to become distracted by the sight of his own penis.

“Alone?” Adam asked. “Or was it more in the style of the beasts?”

“You did not issue from a virgin,” said the worm.

“What is a virgin?” Eve inquired.

“You are,” said the worm. “What I am saying is that you were the issue of both a mother and a father, who came together after the manner of beasts.”

“Who was our father?” Adam asked.

“Beta-El. Egdod. The greatest god of the First Age. You were born into the world just at the close of that Age, not long after he and the rest of the old gods had been thrown down by El. But above all other things in the Land, El cherished you, and so his first act upon conquering the Palace was to surround Spring with a guard of angels. Safe in the Garden’s confines she completed her labor of creating you. But she missed the company of the old ones and longed to roam about the Land. When she saw that you were in safekeeping with El, she one day shifted her form into a freshet and ran down from this fountain out the wall to her sacred grove just yonder, and from there went out into the open Land, where she roams still, creating life wheresoever she