TWENTY-ONE - LORD ASRIELS WELCOME-2

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    “I dont need ahiometer for that. Now I want to hear about your journey here, Lyra. Start from the beginning. Tell me everything.”

    So she did. She began with her hiding iiring Room, a on to the Gobblers taking Roger, aime with Mrs. Coulter, and everything else that had happened.

    It was a long tale, and when she fi she said, “So theres ohing I want to know, and I re Ive got the right to know it, like I had the right to know who I really was. And if you didnt tell me that, youve got to tell me this, in repense. So: whats Dust? And whys everyone so afraid of it?”

    He looked at her as if trying to guess whether she would uand what he was about to say. He had never looked at her seriously before, she thought; until now he had always been like an adult indulging a child in a pretty trick. But he seemed to think she was ready.

    “Dust is what makes the alethiometer work,” he said. “Ah...I thought it might! But what else? How did they find out about it?”

    “In one way, the Church has always been aware of it. Theyve been preag about Dust for turies, only they didnt call it by that name.

    “But some years ago a Muscovite called Boris Mikhailovitch Rusakov discovered a new kind of elementary particle. Youve heard of eles, photons, rinos, and the rest? Theyre called elementary particles because you t break them down any further: theres nothing ihem but themselves. Well, this new kind of particle was elementary all right, but it was very hard to measure because it did in any of the usual ways. The hardest thing for Rusakov to uand was why the new particle seemed to cluster where human beings were, as if it were attracted to us. And especially to adults. Children too, but not nearly so mutil th９９ｌib?eir daemons have taken a fixed form. During the years of puberty they begin to attract Dust more strongly, and it settles on them as it settles on adults.

    “Now all discoveries of this sort, because they have a bearing on the does of the Church, have to be annouhrough the Magisterium in Geneva. And this discovery of Rusakovs was so unlikely and strahat the ior from the sistorial Court of Discipline suspected Rusakov of diabolic possession. He performed an exorcism in the laboratory, he interrogated Rusakov uhe rules of the Inquisition, but finally they had to accept the fact that Rusakov wasnt lying or deceiving them: Dust really existed.

    “That left them with the problem of deg what it was. And given the Churature, there was only ohing they could have chosen. The Magisterium decided that Dust was the physical evidence final sin. Do you know what inal sin is?”

    She twisted her lips. It was like being back at Jordan, being quizzed on something shed been half-taught. “Sort of,” she said.

    “No, you dont. Go to the shelf beside the desk and brihe Bible.”

    Lyra did so, and hahe big black book to her father.

    “You do remember the story of Adam and Eve?”

    “Course,” she said. “She wasnt supposed to eat the fruit and the serpeed her, and she did.”

    “And what happehen?”

    “Umm...They were thrown out. God threw them out of the garden.”

    “God had told them not to eat the fruit, because they would die. Remember, they were naked in the garden, they were like children, their daemons took on any form they desired. But this is what happened.”

    He turo Chapter Three of Genesis, and read:

    “And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

    “But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall  of it, her shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

    “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

    “Fod doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and your daemons shall assume their true forms, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

    “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it leasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to reveal the true form of ones daemon, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

    “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they saw the true form of their daemons, and spoke with them.

    “But when the man and the womaheir own daemons, they khat a great ge had e upon them, for until that moment it had seemed that they were at oh all the creatures of the earth and the air, and there was no differeween them:

    “And they saw the difference, and they knew good and evil; and they were ashamed, and they sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness....”

    He closed the book.

    “And that was how sin came into the world,” he said, “sin and shame ah.

    It came the moment their daemons became fixed.”

    “But...” Lyra struggled to find the words she wanted: “but it ent true, is it?

    Not true like chemistry ineering, not that kind of true? There wasnt really an Adam and Eve? The Cassington Scholar told me it was just a kind of fairy tale.”

    “The Cassington Scholarship is traditionally given to a freethinker; its his fun to challehe faith of the Scholars. Naturally hed say that. But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you ever see any crete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you  calculate all manner of things that couldnt be imagined without it.

    “Anyway, its what the Church has taught for thousands of years. And when Rusakov discovered Dust, at last there hysical proof that something happened when innoce ged into experience.

    “Ially, the Bible gave us the name Dust as well. At first they we<dfn></dfn>re called Rusakov Particles, but soon someone pointed out a curious verse toward the end of the Third Chapter of Genesis, where Gods cursing Adam for eating the fruit.”

    He opehe Bible again and poi out to Lyra. She read:

    “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return....”

    Lord Asriel said, “Church scholars have aluzzled over the translation of that verse. Some say it should read not unto dust shalt thou return but thou shalt be subject to dust, and others say the whole verse is a kind of pun on the wround and dust, and it really means that Gods admitting his own nature to be partly sinful. No one agrees. No one , because the text is corrupt. But it was too good a word to waste, and thats why the particles became known as Dust.”

    “And what about the Gobblers?” Lyra said.

    “The General Oblation Board...Your mang. Clever of her to spot the ce of setting up her own power base, but shes a clever woman, as I dare say youve noticed. It suits the Magisterium to allow all kinds of different ageo flourish. They  play them off against one another; if one succeeds, they  pretend to have been supp it all along, and if it fails, they  pretend it was a renegade outfit which had never been properly lised.

    “You see, your mothers always been ambitious for power. At first she tried to get it in the normal way, through marriage, but that didnt work, as I think youve heard. So she had to turn to the Churaturally she couldnt take the route a man could have taken—priesthood and so on—it had to be unorthodox; she had to set up her own order, her own els of influence, and work through that. It was a good move to specialize in Dust. Everyone was frightened of it; no one knew what to do; and when she offered to dire iigation, the Magisterium was so relieved that they backed her with money and resources of all kinds.”

    “But they were cutting—” Lyra couldnt bring herself to say it; the words choked in her mouth. “You know what they were doing! Why did the Church let them do anything like that?”

    “There ret. Something like it had happened before. Do you know what the word castration means? It means removing the sexual ans of a boy so that he never develops the characteristics of a man. A castrate keeps his high treble voice all his life, which is why the Church allowed it: so useful in Church musie castrati became great singers, wonderful artists. Many just became fat spoiled half-men. Some died from the effects of the operation. But the Church wouldnt flinch at the idea of a little cut, you see. There ret. And this would be so much more hygienic than the old methods, when they didnt have ahetics or sterile bandages or proper nursing care. It would be gentle by parison.”

    “It isnt!” Lyra said fiercely. “It isnt!”

    “No. Of course not. Thats why they had to hide away in the far North, in darkness and obscurity. And why the Church was glad to have someone like your mother in charge. Who could doubt someone so charming, so well-ected, so sweet and reasonable? But because it was an obscure and unofficial kind of operation, she was someohe Magisterium could deny if they o, as well.”

    “But whose idea was it to do that cutting in the first place?”

    “It was hers. She guessed that the two things that happen at adolesce might be ected: the ge in ones daemon and the fact that Dust began to settle.

    Perhaps if the daemon were separated from the body, we might never be subject to Dust—tinal sin. The question was whether it ossible to separate daemon and body without killing the person. But shes traveled in many places, and seen all kinds of things. Shes traveled in Africa, for instahe Afris have a way of making a slave called a zombi. It has no will of its own; it will work day and night without ever running away or plaining. It looks like a corpse....”

    “Its a person without their daemon!”

    “Exactly. So she found out that it ossible to separate them.”

    “And...Tony Costa told me about the horrible phantoms they have in the northern forests. I suppose they might be the same kind of thing.”

    “Thats right. Anyway, the General Oblation Brew out of ideas like that, and out of the Churchs obsession with inal sin.”

    Lord Asriels daemon twitched her ears, and he laid his hand on her beautiful head.

    “There was something else that happened when they made the cut,” he went on.

    “And they did. The energy that links body and daemon is immensely powerful. Whe is made, all that energy dissipates in a fra of a sed. They didnt notice, because they mistook it for shock, or disgust, or moral e, and they traihemselves to feel numb towards it. So they missed what it could do, and they hought of harnessing it....”

    Lyra couldnt sit still. She got up and walked to the window, and stared over the wide bleak darkness with unseeing eyes. They were too cruel. No matter how important it was to find out about inal sin, it was too cruel to do what theyd doo Tony Makarios and all the others. Nothing justified that.

    “And what were you doing?” she said. “Did you do any of that cutting?”

    “Im ied in something quite different. I dont think the Oblation Boes far enough. I want to go to the source of Dust itself.”

    “The source? Wheres it e from, then?”

    “From the other universe we  see through the Aurora.”

    Lyra turned around again. Her father was lying ba his chair, lazy and powerful, his eyes as fierce as his daemons. She didnt love him, she couldnt trust him, but she had to admire him, and the extravagant luxury hed assembled in this desolate wasteland, and the power of his ambition.

    “What is that other universe?” she said.

    “One of untable billions of parallel worlds. The witches have known about them for turies, but the first theologians to prove their existehematically were exunicated fifty or more years ago. However, its true; theres no possible way of denying it.

    “But no ohought it would ever be possible to cross from one universe to ahat would violate fual laws, we thought. Well, we were wrong; we learo see the world up there. If light  cross, so  we. And we had to learn to see it, Lyra, just as you learo use the alethiometer.

    “Now that world, and every other universe, came about as a result of possibility. Take the example of tossing a : it  e down heads or tails, and we dont know before it lands which way its going to fall. If it es down heads, that means that the possibility of its ing down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal.

    “But on another world, it does e down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart. Im using the example of tossing a  to make it cl<mark></mark>earer.

    In fact, these possibility collapses happen at the level of elementary particles, but they happen in just the same way: one moment several things are possible, the  moment only one happens, and the rest do. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which they did happen.

    “And Im going to that world beyond the Aurora,” he said, “because I think thats where all the Dust in this universe es from. You saw those slides I showed the Scholars iiring room. You saw Dust p into this world from the Aurora. Youve seen that city yourself. If light  cross the barrier between the universes, if Dust , if we  see that city, then we  build a bridge and cross. It needs a phenomenal burst of energy. But I  do it.

    Somewhere out there is the in of all the Dust, all the death, the sin, the misery, the destructiveness in the world. Human beings t see anything without wanting to destroy it, L<cite>..</cite>yra. Thats inal sin. And Im going to destroy it. Death is going to die.”

    “Is that why they put you here?”

    “Yes. They are terrified. And with good reason.”

    He stood up, and so did his daemon, proud aiful and deadly. Lyra sat still. She was afraid of her father, and she admired him profoundly, and she thought he was stark mad; but who was she to judge?

    “Go to bed,” he said. “Thorold will show you where to sleep.”

    He turo go.

    “Youve left the alethiometer,” she said.

    “Ah, yes; I dont actually hat now,” he said. “It would be no use to me without the books anyway. Dyou know, I think the Master of Jordan was giving it to you. Did he actually ask you t it to me?”

    “Well, yes!” she said. But thehought again, and realized that in fact the Master never had asked her to do that; she had assumed it all the time, because why else would he have given it to her? “No,” she said. “I dont know. I thought—”

    “Well, I dont want it. Its yours, Lyra.”

    “But—”

    “Goodnight, child.”

    Speechless, too bewildered by this to voice<dfn></dfn> any of the dozen urgent questions that pressed at her mind, she sat by the fire and watched him leave the room.

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