Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,349

family had arrived (though the tone in which Querc said this—wistful, even sheepish—hinted that she now saw that as naive). But the thing that really sold her on the job was its subject matter. Much of what Pick liked to talk about put her strongly in mind of her gem-hunting forebears and the notions they’d handed down as to how different kinds of precious stones came into being and where they might most profitably be sought. Some of which now struck her as eminently reasonable while much was completely demented. Pick had a whole picture in his mind that strung together all of the former while firmly rejecting the latter. So she had gone with him and had never regretted doing so—though, she had to admit, greater variety in food would have been nice.

Thus Querc. Her tale-telling was interrupted several times by complications having to do with the preparation and serving of the meal, and during those interludes Prim looked about the hut curiously. From a distance it had looked far more ramshackle than it really was. That was because its roof was patched together from whatever they could find.

But that was only the roof. Seen from the inside, it was one of the most solid edifices Prim had ever beheld. And this was because it wasn’t really built at all, in the normal sense of the word. Most of it was belowground, simply sunk into the living rock. It was a square cavity that went straight down to about the height of Pick’s head. That was divided into three rooms by stone walls. But the walls had not been built by piling one rock atop another. They were just there. The table on which they ate their fish was a stone mushroom that came right up out of the floor with no seam. Purpose-shaped niches in the walls held candles, cook pots, books. Strangest of all was that there was a drain in the floor. It was a smooth-bored tunnel in the stone floor, and it apparently led away somewhere. No hammer-and-chisel-wielding Beedle could have carved that. Yet there it was, and neither Pick nor Querc showed any hesitation about throwing stuff into it. Olfactory evidence suggested that it terminated at length in some place that was very hot. Prim had never seen anything remotely like it. The only analogy she could come up with was that if one were to begin with a block of ice, cut from a frozen lake in the far north, and shape it by plunging in red-hot irons, one might produce forms such as these.

According to the old stories, there was a precedent for this in the creation of the Palace, the Pinnacle, and First Town by Egdod and those who came after him. For that matter, the Land itself must have been created somehow, and the usual explanation was that Egdod had done it simply by flying around and willing it into existence. If they had come upon a hut such as this one in the middle of the Land, Prim might have explained it by supposing that Egdod or Pluto had made it thus for some long-forgotten reason, and left it there, and Pick had happened upon it. But the Last Bit was supposed to be new land.

“Lithoplast” was a word that Prim had heard Corvus use in obscure late-night conversations with both Brindle and Edda. Part of it meant “rock” and part of it had to do with shaping. At the time, she had not been able to make heads nor tails of it. She wondered now if it might be a word for a particular sort of person.

Corvus was almost offensive in his lack of curiosity about Querc. He had got a fish of his own by diving into the ocean and grabbing one and dragging it up here. So, laced all through Querc’s narration were rude noises of rending, disemboweling, cracking, and gulping. But he minded his manners and hopped closer when Pick—loosened up, somehow, by Querc’s story—began to speak.

“I am not Pluto,” he began.

The confused silence that followed was so obvious that even Pick was moved to explain himself. “Sometimes when strangers such as you seek me out in the way you have done, it is because they think I am Pluto.”

“Pick, let me set you at ease, as far as that sort of thing is concerned,” Corvus said. “We are well informed, even by the extraordinarily high standards of the landed nobility of Calla. In particular