Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,276

knew what was causing her such concern: word had reached them that some who were gravely injured in such accidents ceased to be; their souls took leave of their ruined forms, which dissolved, and the souls either vanished altogether or fled and did not come back. “I shall take the utmost care,” Adam assured her, “never to put myself in the way of any harm so great as that.” But in the back of his mind he wondered how it might go if one who wished him ill were to place him deliberately in the way of a falling tree. Eve seemed somewhat reassured. But the fact remained that he had been gone all day and was now bloody, dirty, and exhausted. “Why do you toil so when we have all we need here?” she asked. “Stay in Camp and keep me company!”

“You know why,” he returned. “Mab has foretold that soon there will be more of us. This old cabin, cozy as it is, does not have enough room.”

Eve did not press the argument further that night, for she could see his weariness plainly enough. They had talked about it before, and it was plain to see that Adam derived a kind of pleasure from venturing into wild places to cut trees, and nothing that came out of Eve’s mouth could gainsay it.

Adam made it a practice after that to board Feller’s boat in the morning. On the second day he rowed harder than Bluff was capable of, so that the boat over and over again slewed around to Bluff’s disadvantage and caused Bluff to become the butt of rebukes and mockery from Feller. From this Adam derived a kind of satisfaction that repaid him in a small way for the injury he had suffered the day before. For he was quite certain now that this had been inflicted upon him by Edger or Bluff in a cunning and underhanded way.

In any event no more trees fell toward Adam after that. He and Bluff, without exchanging any words, arrived at an understanding concerning how hard they would row the boat, and thereby made progress that was more steady, even though Feller made remarks intended to provoke more competition between them. For the most part, though, the journeys to and from the logging site were spent in silence or in idle conversation. Feller inquired about the place where Adam and Eve were living in Camp, whether it was quite large enough for their tastes, what sort of condition it was in, and so forth. Adam came to see that no conversation was truly idle for Feller and that his words always had a purpose. In this case, it was to make Adam desire more, so that he would row faster and cut down more trees.

Too—and just as purposefully—he and the others asked about Eve. They had not actually seen Eve since her first day in Eltown, but word had got around about her curious shape. That was mysterious to them, but all understood that, even though Eve was not so great in stature as Adam, still she was bigger and stronger than most souls in Eltown and could outdo them if she chose to work.

From these conversations it was clear to Adam that none of these people had the faintest idea of what was really going on with Eve. The production of new souls was not a thing that ever happened among them. The nature of his dealings with Feller and Edger and Bluff caused him to think better of divulging all that he knew. So he said only that Eve worked in Camp practicing those crafts that brought satisfaction to her and that she would not soon be joining them in the boat.

They cut down many trees, and bound them together in rafts that they floated down the Western fork to its junction with the Middle, and thence to the place where the East fork flowed into it at the foot of the great bare hill where the lone tree stood. Whenever they passed by that, Feller would leave off for a while from his questions and rebukes and all of the other carefully considered words that emerged from his mouth, and he would gaze up at that tree, and all the rest of the crew, not daring to interrupt his silence, would do likewise, and in time it seemed that they had all formed a shared resolve to go up there one day and chop it down.

Then it