Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,309

(as above)

. . . those who found the sudden arrival of a fairy-tale creature

. . . fascinating and charming

. . . or evil/loathsome/dire

Those who had known all along that such creatures existed and who were not greatly surprised to encounter one at dinner, divided into

. . . one who rather liked him (Prim)

. . . those calmly reserving judgment (e.g., Brindle)

. . . those who hated him (the yellow-haired woman and the man with the hair on his upper lip)

At any rate the total number of persons at the table was not enormously larger than the number of categories, meaning that nearly everyone present was reacting in an altogether different way, and in most cases doing so rather strongly, leading to a pandemonium of fainting, screaming, knife waving, malicious glaring, furious remonstration, hand-clapping delight, dismay, judicious beard stroking, etc. to say nothing of secondary interactions, as when a knife waver collided with a screamer. Corvus, accustomed to soaring alone, found himself frankly quite overwhelmed and thought it best to fly away. He did not go off to any great remove but, from their point of view, probably vanished into the darkening sky, touching off a resurgence of the doubting-the-evidence-of-their-own-senses crowd.

The dinner seemed to have been terminated. At least half of them went into the hall, many pausing on the threshold to cast suspicious looks over their shoulders. But when it seemed things had settled down, Corvus descended and perched on the back of a chair that had been vacated. Still present were Brindle, Prim, Paralonda (though she had taken advantage of the upset to pick up her goblet and move closer), and half a dozen or so mixed Calladons and Bufrects. The latter seemed generally in the astonished-but-agreeably-fascinated camp, whereas Calladons, being queer folk, seemed more likely to view talking animals as part of the natural order of things.

This was the moment when a human would have apologized for having ruined the dinner party, but one of the liberties that went along with being a raven was never being sorry for anything.

“Can you say anything more about the nature of your Quest?” asked Brindle. “You mentioned that you knew which direction to go in, and that is certainly an improvement upon how matters stood a year ago. But what do you expect to find at journey’s end, and what do you envision doing once you have found it?”

While Corvus was thinking about this—and to be quite honest, he was thinking about it for the first time ever—the man with the hair on his lip and the woman with the yellow hair emerged from the Hall. They moved with more haste than grace in a straight line for Prim. “Merville,” said Brindle. “Felora. Would you care to sit with us? There is no lack of empty chairs.” But it seemed that Merville and Felora preferred standing behind Brindle and Prim to sitting just a tiny bit farther away. “What I don’t get is this,” Merville announced. “This creature is quite obviously capable of flight—which we are not. It can go anywhere it pleases, any time it chooses. Why then does it not simply go to wherever this Quest is to be—culminated, or whatever—and do whatever needs doing?”

After a short pause, Felora spoke. “I’ll tell you why not. It must be that the completion of the Quest requires humans. The raven can’t get it done without us. And what are humans good at that ravens are not? Well, fighting and all that goes with it in the way of getting hurt and maimed and dying and so on.” And she rested a hand on Prim’s shoulder. This made Prim twitch, but she did just manage to control an impulse to shrug or slap Felora’s hand away.

“Huge talking ravens actually can fight,” Corvus pointed out, “and I have scars to prove it.”

“And this is supposed to reassure us?” asked Merville in an incredulous tone.

“I can’t shake the notion that the Quest will somehow involve going underground,” Corvus said, “or at any rate into some sort of structure so deep and convoluted that it might as well be underground, and perhaps that is why I have been absolutely certain from the beginning that humans must be part of it.”

“Again,” said Merville, “if the intent of these statements is to reassure us as to the nature of the planned activities—or, for that matter, whether you have even the vaguest notion as to what those activities are to consist of—then you might wish to fly away