When the second crew stopped at the end of the day, the puller of the cart behind Hillalum and Nanni came over to them. His name was Kudda.
“You have never seen the sun set at this height. Come, look.” The puller went to the edge and sat down, his legs hanging over the side. He saw that they hesitated. “Come. You can lie down and peer over the edge, if you like.” Hillalum did not wish to seem like a fearful child, but he could not bring himself to sit at a cliff face that stretched for thousands of cubits below his feet. He lay down on his belly, with only his head at the edge. Nanni joined him.
“When the sun is about to set, look down the side of the tower.” Hillalum glanced downward and then quickly looked to the horizon.
“What is different about the way the sun sets here?”
“Consider, when the sun sinks behind the peaks of the mountains to the west, it grows dark down on the plain of Shinar. Yet here, we are higher than the mountaintops, so we can still see the sun. The sun must descend further for us to see night.”
Hillalum's jaw dropped as he understood. “The shadows of the mountains mark the beginning of night. Night falls on the earth before it does here.”
Kudda nodded. “You can see night travel up the tower, from the ground up to the sky. It moves quickly, but you should be able to see it.”
He watched the red globe of the sun for a minute and then looked down and pointed. “Now!”
Hillalum and Nanni looked down. At the base of the immense pillar, tiny Babylon was in shadow. Then the darkness climbed the tower, like a canopy unfurling upward. It moved slowly enough that Hillalum felt he could count the moments passing, but then it grew faster as it approached, until it raced past them faster than he could blink, and they were in twilight.
Hillalum rolled over and looked up, in time to see darkness rapidly ascend the rest of the tower. Gradually, the sky grew dimmer as the sun sank beneath the edge of the world, far away.
“Quite a sight, is it not?”
Hillalum said nothing. For the first time, he knew night for what it was: the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky.
After climbing for two more days, Hillalum had grown more accustomed to the height. Though they were the better part of a league straight up, he could bear to stand at the edge of the ramp and look down the tower. He held on to one of the pillars at the edge and cautiously leaned out to look upward. He noticed that the tower no longer looked like a smooth pillar.
He asked Kudda, “The tower seems to widen further up. How can that be?”
“Look more closely. There are wooden balconies reaching out from the sides. They are made of cypress, and suspended by ropes of flax.”
Hillalum squinted. “Balconies? What are they for?”
“They have soil spread on them, so people may grow vegetables. At this height water is scarce, so onions are most commonly grown. Higher up, where there is more rain, you'll see beans.”
Nanni asked, “How can there be rain above that does not just fall here?”
Kudda was surprised at him. “It dries in the air as it falls, of course.”
“Oh, of course.” Nanni shrugged
By the end of the next day the) reached the level of the balconies. They were flat plafforms, dense with onions, supported by heavy ropes from the tower wall above, just below the next tier of balconies.
On each level the interior of the tower had several narrow rooms inside, in which the families of the pullers lived. Women could be seen sitting in the doorways sewing tunics, or out in the gardens digging up bulbs. Children chased each other up and down the ramps, weaving amidst the pullers' carts and running along the edge of the balconies without fear. The tower dwellers could easily pick out the miners, and they all smiled and waved.
When it came time for the evening meal, all the carts were set down and much food and other goods were taken off to be used by the people here. The pullers greeted their families and invited the miners to join them for the evening meal. Hillalum and Nanni ate with the family of Kudda, and they enjoyed a fine meal of dried fish, bread, date wine, and fruit.
Hillalum saw that this section of the tower formed a tiny kind of town, laid out in a line between two streets, the upward and downward ramps. There was a temple, in which the rituals for the festivals were performed; there were magistrates, who settled disputes; there were shops, which were stocked by the caravan. Of course, the town was inseparable from the caravan: Neither could exist without the other. And yet any caravan was essentially a journey, a thing that began at one place and ended at another. This town was never intended as a permanent place; It was merely part of a centuries-long Journey.
After dinner, Hillalum asked Kudda and his family, “Have any of you ever visited Babylon?”
Kudda's wife, Alitum, answered. “No, why would we? It's a long climb, and we have all we need here.”
“You have no desire to actually walk on the earth?”
Kudda shrugged. “We live on the road to heaven; all the work that we do is to extend it further. When we leave the tower, we will take the upward ramp, not the downward.”
As the miners ascended, in the course of time there came the day when the tower appeared to be the same when one looked upward or downward from the ramp's edge. Below, the tower's shaft shrank to nothing long before it seemed to reach the plain below. Likewise the miners were still far from being able to see the top. All that was visible was a length of the tower. To look up or down was frightening, for the reassurance of continuity was not provided; they were no longer part of the ground. The tower might have been a thread suspended in the air, unattached to either Earth or heaven.
There were moments during this section of the climb when Hillalum despaired, feeling displaced and estranged from the world; it was as if the earth had rejected him for his faithlessness, while heaven disdained to accept him. He wished Yahweh would give a sign, to let men know that their venture was approved; otherwise how could they stay in a place that offered so little welcome to the spirit?