Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,337

when they topped the ridge and came in view of the Temple of Elkirk, which presented her with so much to see that she reined in the mount and sat there for some time taking it all in.

Almost straight ahead was a squat tower, not much to look at, that Prim guessed from her history lessons must be the original Elkirk. Right next to it, nearly as old, was a gate. She knew that this was the beginning—or, depending on how you looked at it, the end—of the road that stretched all the way to the Far Teeming on the opposite side of the Land. The part of it that she could see was lined with stone buildings that were of similar age and size to much of what constituted Secondel.

All told, these mean old buildings made up but a small fraction of the complex. The story told by the rest of it was that Autochthons had shown up, found a place where Pluto had been so considerate as to leave a sizeable deposit of white rock, domesticated a lot of Beedles, and, for an eon, made them pile stone higher and higher, building ever larger structures: magnificent ones facing east toward the distant Palace, and imposing ones glowering down over Secondel, the First Shiver, and the Bits beyond.

Somewhat later, after they had run out of ideas, stone, or Beedles, the Hive had made contact with this place. This it had done by growing slowly from the base of the Palace, sending a long tendril along the road like a vine growing along a tree branch. Once it had connected to the Temple complex here, it had broadened and ramified, filling gaps between the stone buildings with a foamy lattice of cells. It reminded Prim of what happened when you left bread dough to rise, and forgot about it, and came upon it much too late to find it had expanded right out of its bowl and found other places to go. Yet it seemed to have a kind of commonsensical ability to avoid windows and doors: those still peered out in regular rows and columns through curtains of Hive-stuff that were otherwise bulgy and lacking in any sense of plan or of order as Autochthons or Sprung might think of it.

It occurred to her that she had been sitting still for quite a while, taking this all in, and yet Sooth—who had ridden some distance farther toward the gate—was showing no signs of her usual brisk impatience. Instead she was allowing her mount to crop grass from a broad lawn that stretched along the west front of the Temple complex, and was just sitting there in the saddle, quiet but attentive, as though listening to music. Prim persuaded her own mount to stop tearing at the grass and rode slowly toward Sooth. Yet the Autochthon took no notice but only kept her face turned toward the east, like one who has emerged from a storm wet and cold and now wishes to bask in the warmth of the sun. Which was definitely the sort of look she had on her face when Prim circled round to approach her from that direction. Prim had in the meantime become conscious of a low hum suffusing the air and the ground.

“The Hive,” said Sooth. “So much is in it that I shall never fully understand. Yet even in what little comes through, I feel myself connected to it and to El.”

They left their mounts to graze near the gate. Sooth showed Prim the old tower of Elkirk, which was no longer used for giving forms to newly spawned souls; but she saw the old statues, looking halfway between Beedle and Sprung, from which in ancient times the souls of Eltown had taken their original shapes. A much larger building now served the same function, and was equipped with statues of various subtypes of Beedles after which new souls were patterning themselves in preparation for service down below. The same building had upper stories that Sooth described as a school where Beedles who had ripened to their final forms learned how to empty chamber pots, chop vegetables, carve stone, or fight.

The fighters, once they had acquired a few skills, seemed to spend most of their time out of doors, drilling in formation on expanses of pounded dirt under the direction and the discipline of mounted Autochthon officers. Those were of various ranks, and they lived in barracks, each with a bed or a