Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,355

legs all the way up to the groin, reinforced below the knees with gaiters of the thickest sort of leather.

None of them were, as a rule, complainers. They had, after all, agreed of their own free will to go on a Quest. Unlike Brindle, they were still alive. And unlike Querc, they hadn’t suffered much hardship—just moved around quite a bit. Nevertheless, the next morning, having all spent a sleepless night listening to airborne things whining and ground-based things gnawing, they were in a low mood as they sat round the cook-fire. And they had not ventured more than a few yards from the shore.

“I do sometimes wonder what Spring was thinking when she created certain types of things,” Prim said, scratching at a red swelling on her arm that she hoped was nothing more than an insect bite.

“This is nothing,” Pick scoffed. “Your ancestors Adam and Eve were pursued by wolves—and they were the very children of Spring!”

“Granted,” Mard said, “but I’m not sure how that answers Prim’s question.”

“It’s more like you have only reasked it in a more pointed way,” Querc put in. She was more bedraggled than had been expected by Prim, who’d hoped and assumed that the scribe would perk up and flourish in her native desert environment. That she hadn’t did not seem to bode well for those who were new to it.

“It has to suck this badly,” said Corvus, “in order for everything to make sense.”

“What do you mean, ‘make sense’?” Fern demanded. She had slept on the boat—a good idea—but come ashore for breakfast. “Nothing makes sense.” And she looked out toward the ocean.

“Oh, but it does. You might not like it. And this might lead you to question things, even to say, ‘This is senseless!’ But whenever I think that, I take a closer look, and lo, it does make sense, from end to end and top to bottom. Because it must. Because if it didn’t, the whole thing would split open and fall to pieces in an instant.”

“What whole thing?” Lyne asked. “What are you even talking about?”

“The Land. All of it.”

“You’ll see,” Pick said, “you’ll see.”

“I look forward to it,” said Corvus. “Now, let’s get going before the sun gets any higher.”

Back at home, Prim had been on many hikes in the interior of Calla where the going had seemed slow, even difficult at times, and yet when you reached a high place from which you could turn round and look back, you were astonished by how far you had come.

This was not like that at all. Half a day’s strenuous scrambling had left them exhausted and bloody. In some pitches they had to leave That Fucking Box behind and haul it up on a rope later. When they at last crawled up out of the long crack to a place where they could look down, they saw Silverfin at anchor in the blue pool directly below them, seemingly so close that they could throw stones and hit its deck. Which they were tempted to do, since Fern—who had decided not to join them on the climb—and her crew were comfortably dozing under the shade of stretched tarpaulins. But the effort of throwing rocks would have made them hotter than they already were and so instead they scuttled across an open ramp of hot stone to a place where they could shelter from the afternoon sun in the shade of a cliff. Pitching a tarpaulin of their own, they made themselves as comfortable as they could and tried to catch up on some of the sleep they had failed to get last night. When the sun got low and the air finally began to cool, they broke camp and hiked until it was full dark, coming at last to a site that Corvus had picked out from above. They ate their rations and then found it impossible to sleep.

The night sky in these parts seemed to hold ten stars for every one that they could see in Calla. Lying out under them one had the feeling of trying to sleep on the stage of an amphitheater while a thousand eyes watched.

The red constellation that some called Egdod’s Eye was wheeling over them, higher in the sky than they ever saw it at home. It was the first time Prim had got a really good look at it since certain facts had been brought to her attention in Secondel. As a girl she had seen it as a place of myths