SIXTEEN - THE SILVER GUILLOTINE-1

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    Lyra ducked her head at onder the shelter of her wolverine hood, and shuffled in through the d<mark></mark>ouble doors with the other children. Time enough later to worry about what shed say when they came face to face: she had another problem to deal with first, and that was how to hide her furs where she could get at them without asking permission.

    But luckily, there was such disorder inside, with the adults trying to hurry the children through so as to clear the way for the passengers from the zeppelin, that no one was watg very carefully. Lyra slipped out of the anorak, the leggings, and the boots and buhem up as small as she could before shoving through the crowded corridors to her dormitory.

    Quickly she dragged a locker to the er, stood on it, and pushed at the ceiling. The panel lifted, just as Roger had said, and into the space beyond she thrust the boots and leggings. As an afterthought, she took the alethiometer from her poud hid it in the inmost pocket of the anorak before shoving that through too.

    She jumped down, pushed back the locker, and whispered to Pantalaimon, “We must just pretend to be stupid till she sees us, and then say we were kidnapped. And nothing about the gyptians or lorek Byrnison especially.”

    Because Lyra now realized, if she hadnt done so before, that all the fear in her nature was drawn to Mrs. Coulter as a pass needle is drawn to the Pole.

    All the other things shed seen, and even the hideous cruelty of the intercision, she could cope with; she was strong enough; but the thought of that sweet fad gentle voice, the image of that golden playful monkey, was enough to melt her stomad make her pale and ed.

    But the gyptians were ing. Think of that. Think of lorek Byrnison. And dont give yourself away, she said, and drifted back toward the teen, from where a lot of noise was ing.

    Children were lining up to get hot drinks, some of them still in their coal-silk anoraks. Their talk was all of the zep-pelin and its passenger.

    “It was her—with the monkey daemon—”

    “Did she get you, too?”

    “She said shed write to my mum and dad and I bet she never....”

    “She old us about kids getting killed. She never said nothing about that.”

    “That monkey, hes the worst—he caught my Karossa and nearly killed her—I could feel all weak....”

    They were as frightened as Lyra was. She found Annie and the others, and sat down.

    “Listen,” she said, “ you keep a secret?”

    “Yeah!”

    The three faces turo her, vivid with expectation.

    “Theres a plan to escape,” Lyra said quietly. “Theres some people ing to take us away, right, and theyll be here in about a day. Maybe sooner. What we all got to do is be ready as soon as the signal goes a our cold-weather clothes at ond run out. No waiting about. You just got to run. Only if you do your anoraks and boots and stuff, youll die of cold.”

    “What signal?” Annie demanded.

    “The fire bell, like this afternoon. Its all anized. All the kidsre going to know and none of the grownups. Especially not her.”

    Their eyes were gleaming with hope aement. And all through the teen the message was being passed around. Lyra could tell that the atmosphere had ged. Outside, the children had beeid eager for play; thehey had seen Mrs. Coulter they were bubbling with a suppressed hysterical fear; but now there was a trol and purpose to their talkativeness. Lyra marveled at the effect hope could have.

    She watched through the open doorway, but carefully, ready to duck her head, because there were adult voices ing, and then Mrs. Coulter herself was briefly visible, looking in and smiling at the happy children, with their hot drinks and their cake, so warm and well fed. A little shiver ran almost ins<var></var>tantaneously through the whole teen, and every child was still and silent, staring at her.

    Mrs. Coulter smiled and passed on without a word. Little by little the talk started again.

    Lyra said, “Where do they go to talk?”

    “Probably the feren,” said Ahey took us there once,” she added, meaning her and her dasmon. “There was about twenty grownups there and one of em was giving a lecture and I had to stand there and do what he told me, like seeing how far my Kyrillion could go away from me, and th<dfn></dfn>en he hypnotized me and did some other things....Its a big room with a lot of chairs and tables and a little platform. Its behind the front office. Hey, I bet theyre going to pretend the fire drill went off all right. I bet theyre scared of her, same as we are....”

    For the rest of the day, Lyra stayed close to the irls, watg, saying little, remaining inspicuous. There was exercise, there was sewing, there was supper, there laytime in the lounge: a big shabby room with bames and a few tattered books and a table-tennis table. At some point Lyra and the others became aware that there was some kind of subdued emergency going on, because the adults were hurrying to and fro or standing in anxious groups talking urgently.

    Lyra guessed theyd discovered the daemons escape, and were w how it had happened.

    But she didnt see Mrs. Coulter, which was a relief. When it was time for bed, she knew she had to let the irls into her fidence.

    “Listen,” she said, “do they ever e round and see if were asleep?”

    “They just look in once,” said Bella. “They just flash a lantern round, they dont really look.”

    “Good. Cause Im going to go and look round. Theres a way through the ceiling that this boy showed me....”

    She explained, and before shed even finished, Annie said, “Ill e with you!”

    “No, you better not, cause itll be easier if theres just one person missing.

    You  all say you fell asleep and you dont know where Ive gone.”

    “But if I came with you—”

    “More likely to get caught,” said Lyra.

    Their two daemons were staring at each other, Pantalaimon as a wildcat, Annies Kyrillion as a fox. They were quivering. Pantalaimon uttered the lowest, softest hiss and bared his teeth, and Kyrillion turned aside and bega9９ｌiｂ?o groom himself unedly.

    “All right then,” said Annie, resigned.

    It was quite on for struggles between children to be settled by their daemons in this way, with one accepting the dominance of the other. Their humans accepted the oute without rese, on the whole, so Lyra khat Annie would do as she asked.

    They all tributed items of clothing to bulk out Lyras bed and make it look as if she was still there, and swore to say they knew nothing about it. Then Lyra liste the door to make sure no one was ing, jumped up on the locker, pushed up the panel, and hauled herself through.

    “Just dont say anything,” she whispered down to the three faces watg.

    Then she dropped the panel gently bato plad looked around.

    She was croug in a narrow metal el supported in a framework of girders and struts. The panels of the ceilings were slightly translut, so some light came up from below, and in the faint gleam Lyra could see this narrow space (only two feet or so i) extending in all dires around her. It was crowded with metal ducts and pipes, and it would be easy to get lost in, but provided she kept to the metal and avoided putting a on the panels, and as long as she made no noise, she should be able to go from one end of the station to the other.

    “Its just like ba Jordan, Pan,” she whispered, “looking iiring Room.”

    “If you hadnt dohat, none of this would have happened,” he whispered back.

    “Then its up to me to undo it, isnt it?”

    She got her bearings, w out approximately which dire the feren was in, and the off. It was a far from easy journey. She had to move on hands and knees, because the space was too low to crou, and every so often she had to squeeze under a big square duct or lift herself over some heating pipes. The metal els she crawled in followed the tops of internal walls, as far as she could tell, and as long as she stayed in them she felt a f solidity below her; but they were very narrow, and had sharp edges, so sharp that she cut her knuckles and her knees on them, and before long she was sore all over, and cramped, and dusty.

    But she knew roughly where she was, and she could see the dark bulk of her furs crammed in above the dormitory to guide her back. She could tell where a room was empty because the panels were dark, and from time to time she heard voices from below, and stopped to listen, but it was only the cooks i, or the nurses in what Lyra, in her Jordan way, thought of as their on room.

    They were saying nothing iing, so she moved on.

    At last she came to the area where the feren should be, acc to her calculations; and sure enough, there was an area free of any pipework, where air ditioning aing ducts led down at one end, and where all the panels in a wide regular space were lit evenly. She placed her ear to the panel, and heard a murmur of male adult voices, so she knew she had found the right place.

    She listened carefully, and then inched her way along till she was as close as she could get to the speakers. Then she lay full length ial el and leaned her head sideways to hear as well as she could.

    There was the occasional k of cutlery, or the sound of glass on glass as drink oured, so they were having dinner as they talked. There were four voices, she thought, including Mrs. Coulters. The other three were men. They seemed to be discussing the escaped dasmons.

    “But who is in charge of supervising that se?” said Mrs. Coulters gentle musical voice.

    “A research student called McKay,” said one of the men. “But there are automatic meisms to prevent this sort of thing happening—”

    “They didnt work,” she said.

    “With respect, they did, Mrs. Coulter. McKay assures us that he locked all the cages when he left the building at eleven hundred hours today. The outer door of course would not have been open in any case, because he entered a by the inner door, as he normally did. Theres a code that has to be entered in the ordinator trolling the locks, and theres a record in its memory of his doing so. Uhats done, an alarm goes off.”

    “But the alarm didnt go off,” she said.

    “It did. Unfortunately, it rang when everyone was outside, taking part in the fire drill.”

    “But when you went baside—”

    “Unfortunately, both alarms are on the same circuit; thats a des<bdi>..</bdi>ign fault that will have to be rectified. What it meant was that when the fire bell was turned off after the practice, the laboratory alarm was turned off as well. Eve would still have been picked up, because of the normal checks that would have taken place after every disruption of routine; but by that time, Mrs. Coulter, you had arrived uedly, and if you recall, you asked specifically to meet the laboratory staff there and then, in your room. sequently, no ouro the laboratory until some time later.”

    “I see,” said Mrs. Coulter coldly. “In that case, the daemons must have been released during the fire drill itself. And that widens the list of suspects to include every adult iation. Had you sidered that?”

    “Had you sidered that it might have been done by a child?” said someone else.

    She was silent, and the sea on:

    “Every adult had a task to do, and every task would have taken their full attention, and every task was dohere is no possibility that any of the staff here could have opehe door. None. So either someone came from outside altogether with the iion of doing that, or one of the children mao find his way there, open the door and the cages, aurn to the front of the main building.”

    “And what are you doing to iigate?” she said. “No; on sed thought, dont tell me. Please uand, Dr. Cooper, Im not critig out of malice. We have to be quite extraordinarily careful. It was an atrocious lapse to have allowed both alarms to be on the same circuit. That must be corrected at once.

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