Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,334

expect anything except direct orders or pleas for mercy.

Sure enough, though, he did receive an order from someone within, which made no sense to Prim—for it was in a crude sort of speech used only by Autochthons to boss Beedles around. The Beedle smashed his heels together, pivoted, and extended his weak left arm toward the doorway. Prim took that as her cue to pass through into the next room. The purpose of the long plank tables soon became clear as an Autochthon directed her to place her bag on one for inspection.

Indoors, standing on his own two feet, unarmed and unarmored, this Autochthon was not much bigger than Mard or Lyne. Burr would have been more than a match for him. But where Burr’s features were rough and bold, the Autochthon was elegant, and Prim felt herself responding to his beauty as he cast his pale eyes and long lashes down at the mean assortment of apples, undergarments, and writing tools that he was pulling from her bag and setting out on the table. He examined one of the apples and gave it a long sniff with his fine-boned nose. It was a variety that grew in the far north; he seemed to know this. More interesting was the wooden box that contained her writing supplies. Rolled up in there were several leaves of paper, made of northern linen, on which Prim had scratched out two different alphabets.

He bade her pack up her things and directed her to another door. This one took her up a curving staircase and past another Beedle into a chamber with a table, two chairs, and a little window through which she could look out into the streets of Secondel. There playing out below her was a curious sort of commerce in which various roles were played, according to their kind, by Beedles, Spawned, Autochthons, and—

“Sprung,” said a woman’s voice.

Prim turned to see an Autochthon in a long white gown who had entered the room while Prim had been gazing out the window. She had long full yellow hair cast back behind her shoulders, and such was her bearing that it looked as though that hair was going to stay where it had been put. It was hard to guess how long she had been there, but a faint sweet fragrance now making itself welcome in Prim’s nostrils hinted that she had only just arrived. “Souls patterned after Spring, and her notions of what people ought to look like,” the woman explained. “Sprung. That is our word for them. For you.”

“You are—” Prim began.

“Externally similar. The same really. Aesthetics apart.” She looked Prim up and down. “The world would be less confusing if Autochthons had a completely different form from Sprung—if we were as different on the outside as we are here.” She raised a hand, causing a white sleeve to tumble away from a graceful, pale wrist, and tapped her forehead. “But El in his wisdom had reasons for giving us a like form.” She turned slightly toward the east and inclined her head as she said El’s name. Prim remembered her manners just in time and did likewise. “It is good in one way, which is that it enables us to converse, as you and I are doing now. Thus do the Sprung serve as an endless source of fascination and bemusement to us.”

“Happy to be of service,” said Prim. Distracted as she was by all of the curious things that the woman was saying—as well as by her beauty—it was all she could do to remember to speak with the far-north accent she’d been feigning. For this woman was speaking perfectly the language that Sprung spoke on the Bits, and she’d be quick to notice any inconsistency in the visitor’s pronunciation.

“Then you may be of further service by writing out a word.” The woman was going through Prim’s writing box as if she owned it. She chose a fresh leaf of paper and spread it out on the table. Next to it she set out a quill and a bottle of ink, which she gave a little shake, and unstoppered. “Quercus. Or, in your language, oak-gall,” she announced, after giving it a sniff. “Good stuff.” She said it in a way that left considerable room for doubt as to whether she was being sarcastic. “You may write your name,” she said, and looked Prim in the eye.

“In which alphabet?”

“Does it matter? The purpose of the exercise, quite obviously, is to test