Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,247

under their soles like a hard embodiment of chaos itself.

They did not walk far before the trail of broken stone terminated at the brink of a precipice that dropped straight down farther than they could make sense of. Miles below them—a greater distance than they had ever been able to behold, confined as they had always been within the walls of the Garden—a layer of clouds, glowing dull silver in the light of the moon and stars, lay over the Land and concealed it from their view. The vastness of the spectacle left them dumbstruck and paralyzed for some while. For to suspect that a larger world existed outside the Garden was one thing, but actually to behold it was another.

Behind them, visible through the rough aperture in the wall, were the glowing towers of the Palace. Until moments earlier, they had conceived of those as tall. Now they understood that the entirety of the Palace and its grounds was as a tiny seed poised upon the tip of a finger: a column of stone thrust above its foundations in the midst of the Land by a distance the likes of which their eyes had never developed the faculty of seeing and their minds had nothing against which to compare. From the base of this column, the Land then stretched away to the limit of their vision, seeming to meet the vault of the dark and starry sky where it curved down to find the horizon. Some parts of the Land were smothered beneath fleecy blankets of clouds, but others lay exposed to the sky, their lakes and rivers gleaming with reflected starlight. Ranges of mountains heaved ripples and crests of white ice up above the weather, and those seemed to glow from within, so brightly did they bounce back the light of the moon. In one place four ranges of mountains intertwined as though wrestling to see which could mount highest, but even the highest of them was overtopped by a tower of cloud that was lit from within by flickers of blue light. This prodigy was the only thing in the Land whose height was comparable to that of the Palace. The storm tower stretched out a long sharp horn, wispy on its nether surface with torrential rains that evaporated miles before reaching the ground. Slow whorls and brawny evolutions spoke of immense turbulence within. In spite of this, it did not dissipate, but seemed to bend its energies ever inward.

Here and there across the Land, patches of warmer light stained the clouds from beneath, or, where the sky was clear, shone sharp and glittering. Their hue recalled that of the murky red constellation often visible in the firmament high overhead. Seeking to get his bearings, Adam tilted his head back and looked around for the Red Web, as they had named it. But it had wheeled around to the point where it was hidden from view behind the towers of the Palace.

“What are you looking for?” Eve asked him.

“The Red Web,” Adam said. “The color of it reminds me of those patches down below on the Land—as if one were imitating the other.” And he pointed to one such place, not far from the base of the pinnacle on which they stood, where grainy lines of red light strayed outward from a bright center, all of the light blurred by thin layers of cloud and flickering from its passage through a windy atmosphere.

Eve however did not look where Adam pointed, but rather fixed her gaze upon the high parapet of El’s Palace. An angel had just taken wing from there. After beating its wings a few times to gain altitude, it folded them and banked down in their direction. Adam and Eve became mindful of their precarious situation near the brink of the precipice. They crouched and moved inward out of an inborn fear that the angel would knock them off. But instead it passed overhead and interposed itself between them and the fall-off, beating its wings gently as if to waft them back onto safer ground. “There is no safe way down for you,” the angel explained, “and so I have been sent forth to conduct you safely to the level ground below.” Without waiting for an answer it stretched forth its aura like another pair of wings and gathered them up in it. Then it allowed itself to fall backward off the cliff. Adam and Eve were borne along. Directly they were struck by cold