SEVENTEEN - OIL AND LACQUER

百度搜索 THE AMBER SPYGLASS 天涯 或 THE AMBER SPYGLASS 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.

    Mary Malone was strug a mirror. Not out of vanity, for she had little of that, but because she wao test an idea she had. She wao try and catch Shadows, and without the instruments in her laboratory she had to improvise with the materials at hand.

    Mulefa teology had little use for metal. They did extraordinary things with stone and wood and cord and shell and horn, but what metals they had were hammered from native s of copper and other metals that they found in the sand of the river, and they were never used for toolmaking. They were oral. Mulefa couples, for example, oering marriage, would exge strips ht copper, which were bent around the base of one of their horns with much the same meaning as a wedding ring.

    So they were fasated by the Swiss Army khat was Marys most valuable possession.

    Atal, the zatif who was her particular friend, exclaimed with astonishment one day when Mary unfolded the knife and showed her all the parts, and explained as well as she could, with her limited language, what they were for. Oat was a miniature magnifying glass, with which she began to burn a design onto a dry branch, and it was that which set her thinking about Shadows.

    They were fishing at the time, but the river was low and the fish must have been elsewhere, so they let the  lie across the water and sat on the grassy bank and talked, until Mary saw the dry branch, which had a smooth white surface. She burhe design, a simple daisy, into the wood, and delighted Atal; but as the thin line of smoke wafted up from the spot where the focused sunlight touched the wood, Mary thought: If this became fossilized, and a stist in ten million years found it, they could still find Shadows around it, because Ive worked on it.

    She drifted into a sun-doped reverie until Atal asked:

    What are you dreaming?

    Mary tried to explain about her work, her research, the laboratory, the discovery of shadow particles, the fantastical revelation that they were scious, and found the whole tale gripping her again, so that she loo be back among her equipment.

    She didnt expect Atal to follow her explanation, partly because of her own imperfeand of their language, but partly because the mulefa seemed so practical, sly rooted in the physical everyday world, and much of what she was saying was mathematical; but Atal surprised her by saying,

    Yes, we. know what you mean, we call it... and then she used a word that sounded like their word fht.

    Mary said, Light?

    Atal said, Not light, but... and said the word more slowly for Mary to catch, explaining: like the light on water when it makes small ripples, at su, and the light es off in bright flakes, we call it that, but it is a make-like.

    Make-like was their term for metaphor, Mary had discovered.

    So she said, It is not realty light, but you see it and it looks like that light on water at su?

    Atal said, Yes. All the mulefa have this. You have, too. That is how we knew you were like us and not like the grazers, who dont have it. Even though you look so bizarre and horrible, you are like us, because you have , and again came that word that Mary couldnt hea?r quite clearly enough to say: something like sraf, or sarf, apanied by a leftward flick of the trunk.

    Mary was excited. She had to keep herself calm enough to find the right words.

    What do you know about it! Where does it e from?

    From us, and from the oil, was Atals reply, and Mary knew she meant the oil in the great seedpod wheels.

    From you?

    When we have grown up. But without the trees it would just vanish again. With the wheels and the oil, it stays among us.

    When we have grown up... Again Mary had to keep herself from being i. One of the things shed begun to suspect about Shadows was that children and adults reacted to them differently, or attracted different kinds of Shadow activity. Hadnt Lyra said that the stists in her world had discovered something like that about Dust, which was their name for Shadows? Here it was again.

    And it was ected to what the Shadows had said to her on the puter s just before shed left her own world: whatever it was, this question, it had to do with the great ge in human history symbolized iory of Adam and Eve; with the Temptation, the Fall, inal Sin. In his iigations among fossil skulls, her colleague Oliver Payne had discovered that around thirty thousand years ago a great increase had taken pla the number of shadow particles associated with human remains. Something had happehen, some development in evolution, to make the human brain an ideal el for amplifying their effects.

    She said to Atal:

    How long have there been mulefa.

    And Atal said:

    Thirty-three thousand years.

    She was able to read Marys expressions by this time, or the most obvious of them at least, and she laughed at the way Marys jaw dropped. The mulefas laughter was free and joyful and so iious that Mary usually had to join in, but now she remained serious and astounded and said:

    How  you know so exactly? Do you have a history of all those years?

    Oh yes, said Atal. Ever since we have had the sraf, we have had memory and wakefulness. Before that, we remembered nothing.

    What happeo give you the sraf?

    We discovered how to use the wheels. One day a creature with no name discovered a seedpod and began to play, and as she played she…

    She?

    She, yes. She had no name before then. She saw a snake coiling itself through the hole in a seedpod, and the snake said...

    The snake spoke to her?

    No, no! It is a make-like. The story tells that the snake said, "What do you know? What do you remember? What do you see ahead?" And she said, "Nothing, nothing, nothing." So the snake said, "Put your foot through the hole in the seedpod where I laying, and you will bee wise." So she put a foot ihe snake had been. And the oil entered her blood and helped her see more clearly than before, and the first thing she saw was the sraf. It was se and pleasant that she wao share it at oh

    her kindred. So she and her mate took the seedpods, and they discovered that they knew who they were, they khey were mulefa and not grazers. They gave each other hey hemselves mulefa. They he seed tree, and all the creatures and plants.

    Because they were different, said Mary.

    Yes, they were. And so were their children, because as more seedpods fell, they showed their children how to use them. And when the children were old enough to ride the wheels, they began to gee the sraf as well, and the sraf came back with the oil and stayed with them. So they saw that they had to plant more seedpod trees for the sake of the oil, but the pods were so hard that they seldom germinated. So the first mulefa saw what they must do to help the trees, which was to ride on the wheels and break them, so mulefa and seedpod trees have always lived together.

    Mary directly uood about a quarter of what Atal was saying, but by questioning and guessing she found out the rest quite accurately; and her own and of the language was increasing all the time. The more she learhough, the more difficult it <bdi></bdi>became, as eaew thing she found out suggested half a dozeions, each leading in a different dire.

    But she pulled her mind after the subject of sraf, because that was the biggest; and that was why she thought about the mirror.

    It was the parison of sraf to the sparkles on water that suggested it. Reflected light like the glare off the sea olarized; it might be that the shadow particles, when they behaved like waves as light did, were capable of being polarized, too.

    I t see sraf as you , she said, but I would like to make a mirror out of the sap lacquer, because I think that might help me see it.

    Atal was excited by this idea, and they hauled in their  ond began to gather what Mary needed. As a token of good luck there were three fine fish i.

    The sap lacquer roduct of another and much smaller tree, which the mulefa cultivated for that purpose. By boiling the sap and dissolving it in the alcohol they made from distilled fruit juice, the mulefa made a substance like milk in sistency, and delicate amber in color, which they used as a varnish. They would put up to twenty coats on a base of wood or shell, letting eae cure under wet cloth before applying the , and gradually build up a surface of great hardness and brilliahey would usually make it opaque with various oxides, but sometimes they left it transparent, and that was what had ied Mary: because the clear amber-colored lacquer had the same curious property as the mineral known as Id spar. It split light rays in two, so that when you looked through it you saw double.

    She wasnt sure what she wao do, except that she khat if she fooled around for long enough, without fretting, ging herself, shed find out. She remembered quoting the words of the poet Keats to Lyra, and Lyras uanding at ohat that was her own state of mind when she read the alethiometer, that was what Mary had to find now.

    So she began by finding herself a more or less flat piece of a wood like pine, and grinding at the surface with a piece of sandstone (al: no planes) until it was as flat as she could make it. That was the method the mulefa used, and it worked well enough, with time and effort.

    Then she visited the lacquer grove with Atal, having carefully explained what she was intending, and asked permission to take some sap. The mulefa were happy to let her, but too busy to be ed. With Atals help she drew off some of the sticky, resinous sap, and then came the long process of boiling, dissolving, boiling again, until the varnish was ready to use.

    The mulefa used pads of a cottony fiber from another plant to apply it, and following the instrus of a craftsman, she laboriously painted her mirror over and ain, seeing hardly any difference each time as the layer of lacquer was so thin, but letting it cure unhurriedly and finding gradually that the thiess was building up. She painted on over forty coats, she lost t, but by the time her lacquer had run out, the surface was at least five millimeters thick.

    After the final layer came the polishing: a whole day of rubbing the surface gently, in smooth circular movements, until her arms ached and her head was throbbing and she could bear the labor no more.

    Then she slept.

    m the group went to work in a coppice of what they called knot wood, making sure the shoots were growing as they had beeightening the interweaving so that the grown sticks would be properly shaped. They valued Marys help for this task, as she on her own could squeeze into narraps than the mulefa, and, with her double hands, work in tighter spaces.

    It was only when that work was done, and they had returo the settlement, that Mary could begin to experiment, or rather to play, since she still didnt have a clear idea of what she was doing.

    First she tried using the lacquer sheet simply as a mirror, but for lack of a silvered back, all she could see was a doubled refle faintly in the wood.

    Thehought that what she really needed was the lacquer without the wood, but she quailed at the idea of making another sheet; how could she make it flat without a bag anyway?

    The idea came of simply cutting the wood away to leave the lacquer. That would take time, too, but at least she had the Swiss Army knife. And she began, splitting it very delicately from the edge, taking the greatest of care not to scratch the lacquer from behind, but eventually removing most of the pine and leaving a mess of torn and splintered wood stuck immovably to the pane of clear, hard varnish.

    She wondered what would happen if she soaked it in water. Did the lacquer soften if it got wet? No, said her master in the craft, it will remain hard forever; but why not do it like this? And he showed her a liquid kept in a stone bowl, which would eat through any wood in only a few hours. It looked and smelled to Mary like an acid.

    That would hurt the lacquer hardly at all, he said, and she could repair any damage easily enough. He was intrigued by her projed helped her to swab the acid delicately onto the wood, telling her how they made it by grinding and dissolving and distilling a mineral they found at the edge of some shallow lakes she had not yet visited. Gradually the wood softened and came free, and Mary was left with the single sheet of clear brown-yellow lacquer, about the size of a page from a paperback book.

    She polished the reverse as highly as the top, until both were as flat and smooth as the fi mirror.

    And when she looked through it...

    Nothing in particular. It erfectly clear, but it showed her a double image, the right one quite close to the left and about fifteen degrees upward.

    She wondered what would happen if she looked through two pieces, one on top of the other.

    So she took the Swiss Army knife again and tried to score a line across the sheet so she could cut it in two. By w and rew, and by keeping the knife sharp on a smooth stone, she mao score a line deep enough for her to risk snapping the sheet. She laid a thin stider the score line and pushed sharply down on the lacquer, as shed seen a glazier cutting glass, and it worked: now she had two sheets.

    She put them together and looked through. The amber color was denser, and like a photographic filter it emphasized some colors and held back iving a slightly different cast to the landscape. The curious thing was that the doubleness had disappeared, and everything was single again; but there was no sign of Shadows.

    She moved the two pieces apart, watg how the appearance of things ged as she did so. When they were about a hand s: sparkles of light, floating and drifting and sometimes moving in a current of purpose. Among it all was the world she could see with the naked eye, the grass, the river, the trees; but wherever she saw a scious being, one of the mulefa, the light was thicker and more full of movement. It didnt obscure their shapes in any way; if anything it made them clearer.

    I didnt know it was beautiful, Mary said to Atal.

    Why, of course it is, her friend replied. It is strao think that you could. Look at the little one...

    She indicated one of the small children playing in the long grass, leaping clumsily after grasshoppers, suddenly stopping to examine a leaf, falling over, scrambling up again to rush and tell his mother something, being distracted again by a piece of stick, t<q></q>rying to pick it up, finding ants on his trunk and hooting with agitation. There was a golden haze around him, as there was around the shelters, the fishis, the evening fire: strohan theirs, though not by much. But uheirs it was full of little swirling currents of iion that eddied and broke off and drifted about, to disappear as new ones were born.

    Around his mother, oher hand, the golden sparkles were much stronger, and the currents they moved in were more settled and powerful. She reparing food, spreading flour on a flat stone, making the thin bread like chapatis or tortillas, watg her child at the same time; and the Shadows, or the sraf, or the Dust, that bathed her looked like the very image of responsibility and wise care.

    So at last you  see, said Atal. Well, now you must e with me.

    Mary looked at her friend in puzzlement. Atal’s tone was stra was as if she were saying, Finally youre ready; weve been waiting; now things must ge.

    And others were appearing, from over the brow of the hill, from out of their shelters, from along the river: members of the group, but strangers, too, mulefa who were o her, and who looked curiously toward where she was standing. The sound of their wheels on the hard-packed earth was low and steady.

    Where must I go? Mary said. Why are they all ing here?

    Dont worry, said Atal, e with me, we shall not hurt you.

    It seemed to have been long plahis meeting, for they all knew where to go and what to expect. There was a low mound at the edge of the village that was regular in shape and packed with hard earth, with ramps at ead, and the crowd, fifty or so at least, Mary estimated, was moving toward it. The smoke of the cooking fires hung in the evening air, and the setting sun spread its own kind of hazy gold over everything. Mary was aware of the smell of roasting , and the warm smell of the mulefa themselves, part oil, part warm flesh, a sweet horselike smell.

    Atal urged her toward the mound.

    Mary said, What is happening? Tell me!

    No, no... Not me. Sattamax will speak...

    Mary didnt know the tamax, and the zalif whom Atal indicated was a strao her. He was older than anyone shed seen so far: at the base of his trunk was a scatter of white hairs, and he moved stiffly, as if he had arthritis. The others all moved with care around him, and when Mary stole a glahrough the lacquer glass, she saw why: the old zalifs, Shadow cloud was so rid plex that Mary herself felt respect, even though she knew so little of what it meant.

    When Sattamax was ready to speak, the rest of the crowd fell silent. Mary stood close to the mound, with Atal nearby for reassurance; but she sensed all their eyes on her a as if she were a new girl at school.

    Sattamax began to speak. His voice was deep, the tones rid varied, the gestures of his trunk low and graceful.

    We have all e together to greet the stranger Mary. Those of us who know her have reason to be grateful for her activities since she arrived among us. We have waited until she had some and of our language. With the help of many of us, but especially the zalif Atal, the stranger Mary ow uand us.

    But there was ahing she had to uand, and that was sraf. She knew about it, but she could not see it as we , until she made an instrument to look through.

    And now she has succeeded, she is ready to learn more about what she must do to help us.

    Mary, e here and join me.

    She felt dizzy, self-scious, bemused, but she did as she had to and stepped up beside the old zalif. She thought she had better speak, so she began:

    You have all made me feel I am a friend. You are kind and hospitable. I came from a world where life is very different, but some of us are aware of sraf, as you are, and Im grateful for your help in making this glass, through which I  see it. If there is any way in which I  help you, I will be glad to do it.

    She spoke more awkwardly than she did with Atal, and she was afraid she hadnt made her meaning

    clear. It was hard to know where to face when you had to gesture as well as speak, but they seemed to uand.

    Sattamax said, It is good to hear you speak. We hope you will be able to help us. If not, I ot see hoill survive. The tualapi will kill us all. There are more of them than there ever were, and their numbers are increasing every year. Something has gone wrong with the world. For most of the thirty-three thousand years that there have been mulefa, we have taken care of the earth. Everything balahe trees prospered, the grazers were healthy, and even if on a while the tualapi came, our numbers and theirs remained stant.

    But three hundred years ago the trees began to si. We watched them anxiously and tehem with care and still we found them produg fewer seedpods, and dropping their leaves out of season, and some of them died ht, which had never been known. All our memory could not find a cause for this.

    To be sure, the process was slow, but so is the rhythm of our lives. We did not know that until you came. We have seen butterflies and birds, but they have no sraf. You do, strange as you seem; but you are swift and immediate, like birds, like butterflies. You realize there is a need for something to help you see sraf and instantly, out of the materials we have known for thousands of years, you put together an instrument to do so. Beside us, you think and act with the speed of a bird. That is how it seems, which is how we know that our rhythm seems slow to you.

    But that fact is our hope. You  see things that we ot, you  see es and possibilities and alternatives that are invisible to us, just as sraf was invisible to you. And while we ot see a way to survive, we hope that you may. We hope that you will go swiftly to the cause of the trees siess and find a cure; we hope you will i a means of dealing with the tualapi, who are so numerous and so powerful.

    And we hope you  do so soon, or we shall all die.

    There was a murmur of agreement and approval from the crowd. They were all looking at Mary, and she felt more than ever like the new pupil at a school where they had high expectations of her. She also felt a strange flattery: the idea of herself as swift and darting and birdlike was neleasant, because she had always thought of herself as dogged and plodding. But along with that came the feeling that theyd got it terribly wrong, if they saw her like that; they didnt uand at all; she couldnt possibly fulfill this desperate hope of theirs.

    But equally, she must. They were waiting.

    Sattamax, she said, mulefa, you put your trust in me and I shall do my best. You have been kind and your life is good aiful and I will try very hard to help you, and now I have seen sraf, I know what it is that I am doing. Thank you for trusting me.

    They nodded and murmured and stroked her with their trunks as she stepped down. She was daunted by what she had agreed to do.

    At that very moment in the world of Cittagazze, the assassin-priest Father Gomez was making his  a rough tra the mountaiweewisted trunks of olive trees. The evening light slahrough the silvery leaves and the air was full of the noise of crickets and cicadas.

    Ahead of him he could see a little farmhouse sheltered among vines, where a goat bleated and a spring trickled down through the gray rocks. There was an old man attending to some task beside the house, and an old woman leading the goat toward a stool and a bucket.

    In the village some way behind, they had told him that the woman he was following had passed this way, and that shed talked of going up into the mountains; perhaps this old couple had seen her. At least there might be cheese and olives to buy, and springwater to drink. Father Gomez was quite used to living frugally, and there lenty of time.

百度搜索 THE AMBER SPYGLASS 天涯 或 THE AMBER SPYGLASS 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.