Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,338

private room according to their seniority and their sex. Sooth breezed through the living quarters of males and females alike as if she owned the place, and each Autochthon who saw her afforded her some small gesture of respect before casting a curious glance Prim’s way. These barracks had baths in them, and male Autochthons emerging from those steamy places always covered themselves with towels. This raised a question in Prim’s mind she had never previously thought to ask. She knew—or at least had been told—that Autochthons did not become pregnant. They were never children. El brought them into being fully formed in the Palace.

“We have the parts that you have,” said Sooth, “for sex.” They had emerged from the barracks and were skirting a courtyard where twoscore Beedles were being trained to shoot arrows at targets consisting of vaguely humanoid bundles of grass. Not for the first time, Prim knew that Sooth had somehow guessed what she was thinking.

“Our sex does not cause the creation of new souls,” Sooth went on. “Spring erred in bestowing that power upon her children. We do not believe she was evil in so doing. Merely unwise—deceived and beguiled by Egdod, who wished to populate the whole Land with his spawn. El makes only as many of us as are needed to hold dominion. Beedles, left to their own whims, would ruin the place, and so it is given to us to regulate them and see to it that their labors are spent in ways that better the Land rather than exhausting it.”

They had reached an aperture in a side of the courtyard, which would take them toward larger buildings beyond. Prim, before passing through it, cast a look over her shoulder at the Beedles riddling straw men with arrows. They put the military part of the complex behind them and entered a covered gallery that stretched across a garden, running eastward toward a building whose shape and decorations hinted at a more sacred function. The garden was planted with a variety of plants the likes of which Prim had only read about.

“You see the Beedles at arms, practicing to fight,” said Sooth, “and part of you scoffs at me for claiming that they are bettering the Land. But just across the First Shiver are outlaws: runaway Beedles, barbarian Sprung, and wild souls who acquired immense and strange powers during the First Age when there were no limits as to what a soul could do. Confined to the Bits, there is only so much damage that they can inflict—especially if they are at odds with one another. But the price, for us, of keeping things that way is eternal vigilance. You admire this garden. I can see how much you like it, feel the pleasure you are taking in the beauty of each flower. But it is only thus because of the likes of him.” And she pointed to a small gnarled Beedle who was down on his knees in a corner, worrying weeds out of the dirt with a metal shiv.

Then they entered a great door carven with too many decorations for Prim to take in, and passed into a vast light-filled space. Long and barrel-shaped, it was oriented toward the east, and the far end of it consisted mostly of windows. Rising up from the middle of the floor to about the height of Prim’s head was a stepped platform which blocked their view until they circumvented it. Doing so opened up a full view of the Land to the east: rolling hills and valleys giving way to grassland that stretched away many days’ journey. Far away, half obscured by haze, was a white needle projecting straight up into the air, impossibly high.

So this was the first time Prim had seen the Pinnacle and the Palace with her own eyes. It took several moments for her to register them against the many depictions she had seen and descriptions she had read during her education, all of which approximated, but none of which quite approached, the real thing. Few details could be made out at this distance, but that only made the thing seem more enormous. Its upper half was sheer and narrow, but below that it broadened rapidly to a wide base that Prim knew consisted almost entirely of Hive. Prim had eyes mostly for what was on its very top. Gazing at it long and hard, she fancied she could resolve tiny features such as towers and outbuildings. Haze and distance