NINE - THE SPIES-1

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    Over the  few days, Lyra cocted a dozen plans and dismissed them impatiently; for they all boiled down to stowing away, and how could you stow away on a narrowboat? To be sure, the real voyage would involve a proper ship, and she knew enough stories to expect all kinds of hiding places on a full-sized vessel: the lifeboats, the hold, the bilges, whatever they were; but shed have to get to the ship first, and leaving the fe traveling the gyptian way.

    And even if she got to the coast on her own, she might stow away on the wrong ship. It would be a fihing to hide in a lifeboat and wake up on the way to High Brazil.

    Meanwhile, all arouhe tantalizing work of assembling the expedition was going on day and night. She hung around Adam Stefanski, watg as he made his choice of the volunteers for the fighting force. She pestered Roger van Poppel with suggestions about the stores they o take: Had he remembered snow goggles? Did he know the best place to get arctic maps?

    The man she most wao help was Benjamin de Ruyter, the spy. But he had slipped away in the early hours of the m after the sed roping, and naturally no one could say where hed gone or when hed return. So in default, Lyra attached herself to Farder .

    “I think itd be best if I helped you, Farder ,” she said, “because I probably know more about the Gobblers than anyone else, being as I was nearly one of them. Probably youll need me to help you uand Mr. de Ruyters messages.”

    He took pity on the fierce, desperate little girl and didnt send her away.

    Instead he talked to her, and listeo her memories of Oxford and of Mrs.

    Coulter, and watched as she read the alethiometer.

    “Wheres that book with all the symbols in?” she asked him one day.

    “In Heidelberg,” he said.

    “And bbr>９９ｌｉｂ?</abbr>is there just the one?”

    “There may be others, but thats the one Ive seen.”

    “I bet theres one in Bodleys Library in Oxford,” she said.

    She could hardly take her eyes off Farder s daemon, who was the most beautiful daemon shed ever seen. When Pantalaimon was a cat, he was lean and ragged and harsh, but Sophonax, for that was her name, was golden-eyed and elegant beyond measure, fully twice as large as a real cat and richly furred.

    When the sunlight touched her, it lit up more shades of tawny-brown-leaf-hazel--gold-autumn-mahogany than Lyra could name. She loo touch that fur, to rub her cheeks against it, but of course she never did; for it was the grossest breach of etiquette imagio touother persons daemon. Daemons might touch each other, of course, ht; but the prohibition against human-daemon tact went so deep that even in battle no warrior would tou enemys daemon. It was utterly forbidden. Lyra couldnt remember having to be told that: she just k, as instinctively as she felt that nausea was bad and food. So although she admired the fur of Sophonax and even speculated on what it might feel like, she never made the slightest move to touch her, and never would.

    Sophonax was as sleek ahy aiful as Farder  was ravaged and weak. He might have been ill, or he might have suffered a crippling blow, but the result was that he could not walk without leaning on two sticks, arembled stantly like an aspen leaf. His mind was sharp and clear and powerful, though, and soon Lyra came to love him for his knowledge and for the firm way he directed her.

    “Whats that hlass mean, Farder ?” she asked, over the alethiometer, one sunny m in his boat. “It keeps ing back to that.”

    “Theres often a clue there if you look more close. Whats that little old thing on top of it?”

    She screwed up her eyes and peered.

    “Thats a skull!”

    “So what dyou think that might mean?”

    “Death...Is that death?”

    “Thats right. So in the hlass range of meanings you get death. In fact, after time, which is the first one, death is the sed one.”

    “Dyou know what I noticed, Farder ? The needle stops there on the sed go-round! On the first round it kind of twitches, and on the sed it stops. Is that saying its the seeaning, then?”

    “Probably. What are you asking it, Lyra?”

    “Im a thinking—” she stopped, surprised to find that shed actually been asking a question without realizing it. “I just put three pictures together because...! was thinking about Mr. de Ruyter, see....And I put together the serpent and the crucible and the beehive, to ask how hes a getting on with his spying, and—”

    “Why them three symbols?”

    “Because I thought the serpent was ing, like a spy ought to be, and the crucible could mean like knowledge, what you kind of distill, and the beehive was hard work, like bees are always w hard; so out of the hard work and the ing es the knowledge, see, and thats the spys job; and I poio them and I thought the question in my mind, and the needle stopped at death....Dyou think that could be really w, Farder ?”

    “Its w all right, Lyra. What we dont know is whether were reading it right. Thats a subtle art. I wonder if—”

    Before he could finish his sentehere<s></s> was an urgent knock at the door, and a young gyptian man came in.

    “Beg pardon, Farder , theres Jacob Huismans just e back, and hes sore wounded.”

    “He was with Benjamin de Ruyter,” said Farder . “Whats happened?”

    “He wont speak,” said the young man. “You better e, Farder , cause he wont last long, hes a bleeding inside.”

    Farder  and Lyra exged a look of alarm and wonderment, but only for a sed, and then Farder  was hobbling out on his sticks as fast as he could manage, with his daemon padding ahead of him. Lyra came too, hopping with impatience.

    The young mahem to a boat tied up at the sugar-beet jetty, where a woman in a red flannel apron held open the door for them. Seeing her suspicious gla Lyra<cite></cite>, Farder  said, “Its important the girl hears what Jacobs got to say, mistress.”

    So the womahem in and stood back, with her squirrel daemon perched silent on the wooden clock. On a bunk under a patchwork coverlet lay a man whose white face was damp with sweat and whose eyes were glazed.

    “Ive sent for the physi, Farder ,” said the woman shakily. “Please dont agitate him. Hes in an agony of pain. He e in off Peter Hawkers boat just a few minutes ago.”

    “Wheres Peter now?”

    “Hes a tying up. It was him said I had to send for you.”

    “Quite right. Now, Jacob,  ye hear me?”

    Jacobs eyes rolled to look at Farder  sitting on the opposite bunk, a foot or two away.

    “Hello, Farder ,” he murmured.

    Lyra looked at his daemon. She was a ferret, and she lay very still beside his head, curled up but not asleep, for her eyes were open and glazed like his.

    “What happened?” said Farder .

    “Benjamins dead,” came the answer. “Hes dead, and Gerards captured.”

    His voice was hoarse and his breath was shallow. Wheopped speaking, his daemon uncurled painfully and licked his cheek, and taking strength from that he went on:

    “We was breaking into the Ministry of Theology, because Benjamin had heard from one of the Gobblers we caught that the headquarters was there, thats where all the orders was ing from....”

    He stopped again.

    “You captured some Gobblers?” said Farder .

    Jaodded, and cast his eyes at his daemon. It was unusual for daemons to speak to humans other than their own, but it happened sometimes, and she spoke now.

    “We caught three Gobblers in Clerkenwell and made them tell us who they were w for and where the orders came from and so on. They didnt know where the kids were being taken, except it was north to Lapland....”

    She had to stop and pant briefly, her little chest fluttering, before she could go on.

    “And so them Gobblers told us about the Ministry of Theology and Lord Boreal.

    Benjamin said him and Gerard Hook should break into the Ministry and Frans Broekman and Tom Mendham should go and find out about Lord Boreal.”

    “Did they do that?”

    “We dont know. They never came back. Farder , it were like everything we did, they knew about before we did it, and for all we know Frans and Tom were swallowed alive as soon as they got near Lord Boreal.”

    “e back to Benjamin,” said Farder , hearing Jacobs breathiing harsher and seeing his eyes close in pain.

    Jacobs daemon gave a little mew of ay and love, and the woman took a step or two closer, her hands to her mouth; but she didnt speak, and the daemo on faintly:

    “Benjamin and Gerard and us went to the Ministry at White Hall and found a little side door, it not being fiercely guarded, aayed on watch outside while they unfastehe lod went in. They hadnt been in but a minute when we heard a cry of fear, and Benjamins daemon came a flying out and beed to us for help and flew in again, aook our knife and ran in after her; only the place was dark, and full of wild forms and sounds that were fusing in their frightful movements; and we cast about, but there was a otion above, and a fearful cry, and Benjamin and his daemon fell from a high staircase above us,<big></big> his daemon a tugging and a fluttering to hold him up, but all in vain, for they crashed oone floor and both perished in a moment.

    “And we couldnt see anything of Gerard, but there was a howl from above in his void we were too terrified and stuo move, and then an arrow shot down at our shoulder and pierced deep down within....”

    The daemons voice was fainter, and a groan came from the wounded man. Farder  leaned forward aly pulled back the terpane, and there protruding from Jacobs shoulder was the feathered end of an arrow in a mass of clotted blood. The shaft and the head were so deep in the poor mans chest that only six inches or so remained above the skin. Lyra felt faint.

    There was the sound of feet and voices outside oty.

    Farder  sat up and said, “Heres the physi, Jacob. Well leave you now.

    Well have a loalk when youre feelier.”

    He clasped the womans shoulder on the way out. Lyra stuck close to him oty, because there was a crowd gathering already, whispering and pointing.

    Farder  gave orders for Peter Hawker to go at oo John Faa, and then said:

    “Lyra, as soon as we know whether Jacobs going to live or die, we must have aalk about that alethiometer. You go and occupy yourself elsewhere, child; well send for you.”

    Lyra wandered away on her own, ao the reedy bank to sit and throw mud into the water. She knew ohing: she was not pleased or proud to be able to read the alethiometer— she was afraid. Whatever power was making that needle swing and stop, it khings like an intelligent being.

    “I re its a spirit,” Lyra said, and for a moment she was tempted to throw the little thing into the middle of the fen.

    “Id see a spirit if there was one in there,” said Pantalaimon. “Like that old ghost in Godstow. I saw that when you didnt.”

    “Theres more than one kind of spirit,” said Lyra reprovingly. “You t see all of em. Anyway, what about those old dead Scholars without their heads? I saw them, remember.”

    “That was only a night-ghast.”

    “It was not. They were proper spirits all right, and you know it. But whatever spiritss moving this blooming needle ent that sort of spirit.”

    “It might not be a spirit,” said Pantalaimon stubbornly.

    “Well, what else could it be?”

    “It might be...it might be elementary particles.” She scoffed.

    “It could be!” he insisted. “You remember that photomill they got at Gabriel?

    Well, then.”

    At Gabriel College there was a very holy object kept on the high altar of the oratory, covered (now Lyra thought about it) with a black velvet cloth, like the one around the alethiometer. She had seen it when she apahe Librarian of Jordan to a service there. At the height of the invocatioercessor lifted the cloth to reveal in the dimness a glass dome inside which there was something too distant to see, until he pulled a string attached to a shutter above, letting a ray of sunlight through to strike the dome exactly. Th<s></s>en it became clear: a little thing like a weathervane, with four sails bla one side and white oher, that began to whirl around as the light struck it.

    It illustrated a moral lesson, the Intercessor explained, a on to explain what that was. Five minutes later Lyra had fotten the moral, but she hadnt fottetle whirling vanes in the ray of dusty light. They were delightful whatever they meant, and all done by the power of photons, said the Librarian as they walked home to Jordan.

    So perhaps Pantalaimon was right. If elementary particles could push a photomill around, no doubt they could make light work of a needle; but it still troubled her.

    “Lyra! Lyra!”

    It was Tony Costa, waving to her from the jetty.

    “e over here,” he called. “You got to go and see John Faa at the Zaal. Run, gal, its urgent.”

    She found John Faa with Farder  and the other leaders, looking troubled.

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