Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,347

unfair to describe as scurrying. Some kind of discourse was taking place between them, the big one pointing at things with an elaborate walking stick and the smaller one looking where he pointed, then writing things down on a tablet. The former had eyes only for the evidently hot and fascinating goings-on down below, but the latter occasionally had moments of leisure while the former stroked his beard or held the stick up to his face. It was during one such moment that she—for by now the visitors had drawn near enough to discern that, notwithstanding a short haircut and boyish clothes, the small one was female—noticed Prim and Mard and Lyne picking their way up the rampart of shrugged-off shards that had accumulated near the brink of this new Shiver. She had seated herself on a slab edge so that she could write on her lap, but now reached up and tugged at the hem of this big one’s garment. This was long, and if its purpose was to protect the wearer from flying sparks and cinders, then it had put in long service and perhaps saved his life. He turned around to face them and repeated the queer gesture of holding the head of his stick up to his face.

“Querc,” he said, “it would seem we have visitors.”

Querc’s response was to glance up. She pointed into the sky, and Prim, following the gesture, saw Corvus wheeling high above, out of range of the glowing rocks that occasionally launched from the gorge. “I told you that was no ordinary crow, Pick!”

“And I pointed out that that much was obvious!”

Querc was already shuffling through loose pages in a sort of wallet slung over her shoulder. “My notes will show that I predicted the giant crow betokened other visitors to come.”

“Then don’t bother digging them out,” Pick said wearily. “They’re never wrong; and if they were, I’d have no way of proving it, since my opinion would be contradicted by your bloody notes.”

By now the visitors had drawn to within a few yards, near enough that ordinary persons might have greeted them and ventured some remarks in a conversational vein. But Pick and Querc were not ordinary persons. Prim decided to make the first foray. “Hail, denizens of the Last Bit!” she said. “We have come from faraway Calla to gaze upon the far-famed Last Shiver.”

“It’s twenty miles long,” said Pick, and then glanced at Querc as if worried she might pull a sheet from her wallet and contradict him. But she was silent, allowing him to go on: “But you just happened to come directly to us. No, it’s us you want to see, and not the Newest Shiver.”

Prim had no comeback. Querc scrambled to her feet and said, “But as long as you have come so far, you might as well have a look anyway!” She extended an arm toward the brink, only a long pace away from her.

Much in the postures of Mard and Lyne suggested that they were aware that a sweep of Pick’s stick would knock them over the edge. He was a big man, and in no way pleased to see them. But the thing in his hand seemed too elaborate and contraption-like to serve as a weapon. Its foot was shod in steel, forged in the shape of a paw with extended claws. Those were worn almost to nubs, and when Prim saw how he planted it on the rock to steady himself, she understood why. At the other end, where a cane might have had a knob or a curved handle, this thing had a sharp pick, forged in the shape of a bird’s beak, and it too had been worn down from hard use. The head of the bird sported glass eyes, through which light shone. From that and from Pick’s habit of holding it up to his face, she guessed it was a spyglass. Somewhat emboldened, she stepped past Querc and then dropped to one knee, then both knees as she neared the edge. Not to be outdone, Mard dropped into a similar attitude next to her. Prim had imagined a glowing river of lava flowing to the sea, for she had read of such things in books—at least one of which, come to think of it, mentioned this Pick chap by name. But if any such thing existed at the bottom of this gorge, it was obscured by steam and only hinted at by a lambent glow.

A red star hurtled