NINE - THE SPIES-2
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John Faa spoke:“Lyra, c?９９lｉｂ.d, Farder has told me about your reading of that instrument.
And Im sorry to say that poor Jacob has just died. I think were going to have to take you with us after all, against my inations. Im troubled in my mind about it, but there doo be any alternative. As soon as Jacobs buried acc to , well take our way. You uand me, Lyra: youre a ing too, but it ent an occasion for joy or jubilation. Theres trouble and danger ahead for all of us.
“Im a putting you under Farder s wing. Dont you be a trouble or a hazard to him, or youll be a feeling the fory wrath. Now cut along and explain to Ma Costa, and hold yourself in readio leave.”
The wo weeks passed more busily than any time of Lyras life so far.
Busily, but not quickly, for there were tedious stretches of waiting, of hiding in damp crabbed closets, of watg a dismal rain-soaked autumn landscape roll past the window, of hiding again, of sleepihe gas fumes of the engine and waking with a sick headache, and worst of all, of never once being allowed out into the air to run along the bank or clamber over the deck or haul at the lock gates or catch a m rope thrown from the lockside.
Because, of course, she had to remain hidden. Tony Costa told her of the gossip ierside pubs: that there was a hunt the length of the kingdom for a little fair-haired girl, with a big reward for her discovery and severe punishment for anyone cealihere were strange rumors too: people said she was the only child to have escaped from the Gobblers, and she had terrible secrets in her possession. Another rumor said she wasnt a human child at all but a pair of spirits in the form of child and daemoo this world by the infernal powers in order treat ruin; a another rumor said it was no child but a fully grown human, shrunk by magid in the pay of the Tartars, e to spy on good English people and prep>藏书网</a>are the way for a Tartar invasion.
Lyra heard these tales at first with glee and later with despondency. All those people hating and fearing her! And she loo be out of this narrow boxy . She loo be north already, in the wide snows uhe blazing Aurora. And sometimes she loo be back at Jordan College, scrambling over the roofs with Roger with the Stewards bell tolling half an hour to diime and the clatter and sizzle and shouting of the kit....Then she wished passiohat nothing had ged, nothing would ever ge, that she could be Lyra of Jordan College forever and ever.
The ohing that drew her out of her boredom and irritation was the alethiometer. She read it every day, sometimes with Farder and sometimes on her own, and she found that she could sink more and more readily into the calm state in which the symbol meanings clarified themselves, and those great mountain raouched by sunlight emerged into vision.
She struggled to explain to Farder what it felt like.
“Its almost like talking to someone, only you t quite hear them, and you feel kind of stupid because theyre cleverer than you, only they do cross or any thing.... And they know such a lot, Farder ! As if they knew everything, almost! Mrs. Coulter was clever, she knew ever such a lot, but this is a different kind of knowing....Its like uanding, I suppose....”
He would ask specific questions, and she would search for answers.
“Whats Mrs. Coulter doing now?” hed say, and her hands would move at once, and hed say, “Tell me what youre doing.”
“Well, the Madonna is Mrs. Coulter, and I think my mother when I put the hand there; and the ant is busy—thats easy, thats the top meaning; and the hlass has got time in its meanings, and partway down theres now, and I just fix my mind on it.”
“And how do you know where these meanings are?”
“I kind of see em. Or feel em rather, like climbing down a ladder at night, you put your foot down and theres another rung. Well, I put my mind down and theres another meaning, and I kind of sense what it is. Then I put em all together. Theres a tri it like fog your eyes.”
“Do that then, and see what it says.”
Lyra did. The long needle began to swing at once, and stopped, moved on, stopped again in a precise series of sweeps and pauses. It was a sensation of such grad power that Lyra, sharing it, felt like a young bird learning to fly. Farder , watg from across the table, he places where the needle stopped, and watched the little girl holding her hair back from her fad biting her lower lip just a little, her eyes following the needle at first but then, when its path was settled, looking elsewhere on the dial. Not randomly, though. Farder was a chess player, and he knew how chess players looked at a game in play. An expert player seemed to see lines of ford influen the board, and looked along the important lines and ighe weak ones; and Lyras eyes moved the same way, acc to some similar magic field that she could see and he couldnt.
The needle stopped at the thunderbolt, the infant, the serpent, the elephant, and at a creature Lyra couldnt find a name for: a sort of lizard with big eyes and a tail curled around the twig it stood on. It repeated the sequeime after time, while Lyra watched.
“Whats that lizard mean?” said Farder , breaking into her tration.
“It dont make sense....! see what it says, but I must be misreading it. The thunderbolt I think is anger, and the child ...I think its me...l was getting a meaning for that lizard thing, but you talked to me, Farder , and I lost it. See, its just floating any old where.”
“Yes, I see that. Im sorry, Lyra. You tired now? Dyou want to stop?”
“No, I dont,” she said, but her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright. She had all the signs of fretful overexcitement, and it was made worse by her long fi in this stuffy .
He looked out of the window. It was nearly dark, and they were traveling along the last stretch of inland water before reag the coast. Wide brown scummed expanses of auary extended under a dreary sky to a distant group of coal-spirit tanks, rusty and cobwebbed with pipework, beside a refinery where a thick smear of smoke asded relutly to join the clouds.
“Where are we?” said Lyra. “ I go outside just for a bit, Farder ?”
“This is Colby water,” he said. “The estuary of the river Cole. When we reach the towie up by the Smoke-market and go on foot to the docks. Well be there in an hour or two....”
But it was getting dark, and in the wide desolation of the creek nothing was moving but their own boat and a distant coal barge lab toward the refinery; and Lyra was so flushed and tired, and shed been inside for so long; and so Farder went on:
“Well, I dont suppose itll matter just for a few minutes in the open air. I wouldnt call it fresh; tent fresh except when its blowing off the sea; but you sit out on top and look around till we get closer in.”
Lyra leaped up, and Pantalaimon became a seagull at once, eager to stretch his wings in the open. It was cold outside, and although she was well ed up, Lyra was soon shivering. Pantalaimon, oher hand, leaped into the air with a loud caw of delight, and wheeled and skimmed and darted now ahead of the boat, now behind the stern. Lyra exulted in it, feeling with him as he flew, and urging him mentally to provoke the old tillermans orant daemon into a race.
But she ignored him aled down sleepily on the handle of the tiller near her man.
There was no life out on this bitter brown expanse, and only the steady chug of the engine and the subdued splashing of the water uhe bows broke the wide silence. Heavy clouds hung low without rain; the air beh was grimy with smoke. Only Pantalaimons flashing elegance had anything in it of life and joy.
As he soared up out of a dive with wide wings white against the gray, something black hurtled at him and struck. He fell sideways in a flutter of shod pain, and Lyra cried out, feeling it sharply. Another little black thing joihe first; they moved not like birds but like flyiles, heavy and direct, and with a droning sound.
As Pantalaimon fell, trying to twist away and make for the boat and Lyras desperate arms, the black things kept driving into him, droning, buzzing, and murderous. Lyra was nearly mad with Pantalaimons fear and her own, but then something swept past her and upward.
It was the tillermans daemon, and clumsy and heavy as she looked, her flight owerful and swift. Her head shis way and that—there was a flutter of black wings, a shiver of white—and a little black thio the tarred roof of the at Lyras feet just as Pantalaimon landed on her outstretched hand.
Before she could fort him, he ged into his wildcat shape and sprang down on the creature, batting it back from the edge of the roof, where it was crawling swiftly to escape. Pantalaimon held it firmly down with a needle-filled paw and looked up at the darkening sky, where the black wing flaps of the orant were cirg higher as she cast around for the other.
Then the orant glided swiftly bad croaked something to the tillerman, who said, “Its gone. Dohat other one escape. Here—” and he flung the dregs out of the tin mug hed been drinking from, and tossed it to Lyra.
She clapped it over the creature at o buzzed and snarled like a little mae.
“Hold it still,” said F?９９ｌｉｂ.arder from behind her, and then he was kneeling to slip a piece of card uhe mug.
“What is it, Farder ?” she said shakily.
“Lets go below and have a look. Take it careful, Lyra. Hold that tight.”
She looked at the tillermans daemon as she passed, intending to thank her, but her old eyes were closed. She thahe tillerman instead.
“You oughter stayed below” was all he said.
She took the mug into the , where Farder had found a beer glass. He held the tin mug upside dow and then slipped the card out from between them, so that the creature fell into the glass. He held it up so they could see the angry little thing clearly.
It was about as long as Lyras thumb, and dark green, not black. Its wing cases were erect, like a ladybirds about to fly, and the wings inside were beating so furiously that they were only a blur. Its six clawed legs were scrabbling on the smooth glass.
“What is it?” she said.
Pantalaimon, a wildcat still, crouched oable six inches away, his green eyes following it round and round ihe glass.
“If you was to crack it open,” said Farder , “youd find no living thing in there. No animal nor i, at any rate. I seen one of these things afore, and I hought Id see one again this far north. Afric things. Theres a clockwork running in there, and pio the spring of it, theres a bad spirit with a spell through its heart.”
“But who sent it?”
“You dont eveo read the symbols, Lyra; you guess as easy as I .”
“Mrs. Coulter?”
“Course. She ent only explored up north; theres strahings aplenty in the southern wild. It was Morocco where I saw one of these last. Deadly dangerous; while the spirits in it, it wont op, and when you let the spirit free, its so monstrous angry itll kill the first thing it gets at.”
“But what was it after?”
“Spying. I was a cursed fool to let you up above. And I should have let you think your way through the symbols without interrupting.”
“I see it now!” said Lyra, suddeed. “It means air, that lizard thing! I saw that, but I couldnt see why, so I tried to work it out and I lost it.”
“Ah,” said Farder , “then I see it too. It ent a lizard, thats why; its a chameleon. And it stands for air because they do nor drink, they just live on air.”
“And the elephant—”
“Africa,” he said, and “Aha.”
They looked at each other. With every revelation of the alethiometers power, they became more awed by it.
“It was telling us about these things all the time,” said Lyra. “We oughter listened. But what we do about this un, Farder ? we kill it or something?”
“I dont know as we do anything. We shall just have to keep him shut up tight in a box and never let him out. What worries me more is the other one, as got away. Hell be a flying bars. Coulter now, with the hat hes seen you. Damn me, Lyra, but Im a fool.”
He rattled about in a cupboard and found a smokeleaf tin about three inches in diameter. It had been used for holding screws, but he tipped those out and wiped the ih a rag before iing the glass over it with the card still in place over the mouth.
After a tricky moment when one of the creatures legs escaped and thrust the tin away with surprising strength, they had it captured and the lid screwed down tight.
“As soo about the ship Ill run some solder round the edge to make sure of it,” Farder said.
“But dont clockwork run down?”
“Ordinary clockwork, yes. But like I said, this uight wound by the spirit pio the end. The more he struggles, the tighter its wound, and the strohe force is. Now lets put this feller out the way....”
He ed the tin in a flannel cloth to stifle the incessant buzzing and droning, and stowed it away under his bunk.
It was dark now, and Lyra watched through the window as the lights of Colby came closer. The heavy air was thiing into mist, and by the time they tied up at the wharves alongside the Smokemarket everything in sight was softened and blurred. The darkness shaded into pearly silver-gray veils laid over the warehouses and the es, the wooden market stalls and the granite many-eyed building the market was named after, where day and night fish hung kippering in the fragrant oakwood>.</a> smoke. The eys were tributing their thiess to the clammy air, and the pleasant reek of smoked herring and mackerel and haddock seemed to breathe out of the very cobbles.
Lyra, ed up in oilskin and with a large hood hiding her revealing hair, walked aloween Farder and the tillerman. All three daemons were alert, scouting around ers ahead, watg behind, listening for the slightest footfall.
But they were the only figures to be seen. The citizens of Colby were all indoors, probably sipping jenniver beside r stoves. They saw no oil they reached the dock, and the first man they saw there was Tony Costa, guarding the gates.
“Thank God you got here,” he said quietly, letting them through. “We just heard as Jack Verhoevens been shot and his boat sunk, and no oned heard where you was. John Faas on board already and jumping to go.”
The vessel looked immeo Lyra: a wheelhouse and funnel amidships, a high focsle and a stout derrick over a vas-covered hatch; yellow light agleam in the portholes and the bridge, and white light at the masthead; and three or four men on deck, w urgently at things she couldnt see.
She hurried up the wooden gangway ahead of Farder , and looked around with excitement. Pantalaimon became a monkey and clambered up the derrick at once, but she called him down again; Farder wahem indoors, or below, as you called it on board ship.
Down some stairs, or a panionway, there was a small saloon where John Faa was talking quietly with Nicholas Rokeby, the gyptian in charge of the vessel. John Faa did nothing hastily. Lyra was waiting for him to greet her, but he finished his remarks about the tide and pilotage before turning to the iners.
“Good evening, friends,” he said. “Poor Jack Verhoevens dead, perhaps youve heard. And his boys captured.”
“We have bad oo,” said Farder , and told of their enter with the flying spirits.
John Faa shook his great head, but didnt reproach them.
“Where is the creature now?” he said.
Farder took out the leaf tin and laid it oable. Such a furious buzzing came from it that the tin itself moved slowly over the wood.
“Ive heard of them clockwork devils, but never seen one,” John Faa said. “There ent no way of taming it and turning it back, I do know that muor is it any use weighing it down with lead and dropping it in the o, because one day itd rust through and out the devil would e and make for the child wherever she was. No, well have to keep it by, and exercise ilance.”
Lyra being the only female on board (for John Faa had decided against taking women, after much thought), she had a to herself. Not a grand , to be sure; in fact, little more than a closet with a bunk and a scuttle, which was the proper name for porthole. She stowed her few things in the drawer below the bunk and ran up excitedly to leahe rail and watgland vanish behind, only to find that most of England had vanished in the mist before she got there.
But the rush of water below, the movement in the air, the ships lights glowing bravely in the dark, the rumble of the ehe smells of salt and fish and coal spirit were exg enough by themselves. It wasnt long before another sensation joihem, as the vessel began to roll in the German O swell.
When someone called Lyra down for a bite of supper, she found she was less hungry thahought, and presently she decided it would be a good idea to lie down, for Pantalaimons sake, because the poor creature was feeling sadly ill at ease.
And so began her jouro the North.
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