CHAPTER FOUR: TREPANNING-1
百度搜索 THE SUBTLE KNIFE 天涯 或 THE SUBTLE KNIFE 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.
As soon as Lyra had gone her way, Will found a pay phone and dialed the number of the lawyers offi the letter he held."Hello? I want to speak to Mr. Perkins."
"Whos calling, please?"
"Its in e with Mr. John Parry. Im his son."
"Just a moment, please..."
A minute went by, and then a mans voice said, "Hello. This is Alan Perkins. Who am I speaking to?"
"William Parry. Excuse me for calling. Its about my father, Mr. John Parry. You send money every three months from my father to my mothers bank at."
"Yes..."
"Well, I want to know where my father is, please. Is he alive or dead?"
"How old are you, William?"
"Twelve. I want to know about him."
"Yes ... Has your mother ... is she ... does she know youre phoning me?"
Will thought carefully.
"No," he said. "But shes not in very good health. She t tell me very much, and I want to know."
"Yes, I see. Where are you now? Are you at home?"
"No, Im ... Im in Oxford."
"On your own?"
"Yes."
"And your mothers not well, you say?"
"No."
"Is she in hospital or something?"
"Something like that. Look, you tell me or not?"
"Well, I tell you something, but not mud nht now, and Id rather not do it over the phone. Im seeing a t in five minutes. you find your way to my office at about half past two?"
"No," Will said. It would be too risky; the lawyer might have heard by then that he was wanted by the police. He thought quickly a on. "Ive got to catch a bus to Nottingham, and I dont want to miss it. But what I want to know, you tell me over the phone, t you? All I want to know is, is my father alive, and if he is, where I find him. You tell me that, t you?"
"Its not quite as simple as that. I t really give out private information about a t unless Im sure the t would wao. And Id need some proof of who you were, anyway."
"Yes, I uand, but you just tell me whether hes alive or dead?"
"Well ... that wouldnt be fidential. Unfortunately, I t tell you anyway, because I dont know."
"What?"
"The money es from a family trust. He left instrus to pay it until he told me to stop. 1 havent heard from him from that day to this. What it boils down to is that hes... well, I suppose hes vahats why I t answer your question."
"Vanished? Just... lost?"
"Its a matter of public record, actually. Look, why dont you e into the offid—"
"I t. Im going to Nottingham."
"Well, write to me, et your mother to write, and Ill let you know what I . But you must uand, I t do very much over the phone."
"Yes, I suppose so. All right. But you tell me where he disappeared?"
"As I say, its a matter of public record. There were several neer stories at the time. You know he was an explorer?"
"My mothers told me some things, yes."
"Well, he was leading an expedition, and it just disappeared. About ten years ago. Maybe more."
"Where?"
"The far north. Alaska, I think. You look it up in the public library. Why dont you—"
But at that point Wills money ran out, and he didnt have any more ge. The dial tone purred in his ear. He put the phone down and looked around.
What he wanted above all was to speak to his mother. He had to stop himself from dialing Mrs.
Coopers number, because if he heard his mothers voice, it would be very hard not to go back to her, and that would put both of them in danger. But he could send her a postcard.
He chose a view of the city, and wrote: "DEAR MUM, I AM SAFE AND WELL, AND I WILL SEE YOU AGAIN SOON. I HOPE EVERYTHING IS ALL RIGHT. I LOVE YOU. WlLL." Then he addressed it and bought a stamp ahe card close to him for a minute before dropping it in the mailbox.
It was midm, and he was in the main shopping street, where buses shouldered their way through crowds of pedestrians. He began to realize how exposed he was; for it was a weekday, when a child of his age should have been in school. Where could he go?
It didnt take him long to hide. Will could vanish easily enough, because he was good at it; he was even proud of his skill. Like Serafina Pekkala on the ship, he simply made himself part of the background.
So now, knowing the sort of world he lived in, he went into a stationery shop and bought a ballpoint, a pad of paper, and a clipboard. Schools ofte groups of pupils off to do a shopping survey, or something of the sort, and if he seemed to be on a project like that he wouldnt look as if he was at a loose end.
Then he wandered along, pretending to be making notes, a his eyes open for the public library.
* * * Meanwhile, Lyra was looking for somewhere quiet to sult the alethiometer. In her own Oxford there would have been a dozen places within five minutes walk, but this Oxford was so discertingly different, with patches of poignant familiarity right o the dht outlandish: why had they paihose yellow lines on the road? What were those little white patches dotting every sidewalk? (In her own world, they had never heard of chewing gum.) What could those red and green lights mean at the er of the road? It was all much harder to read than the alethiometer.
But here were St. Johns College gates, which she and Roger had once climbed after dark to plant fireworks in the flower beds; and that particular worn sto the er of Catte Street—there were the initials SP that Simon Parslow had scratched, the very same ones! Shed seen him do it!
Someone in this world with the same initials must have ９９lib?ood here idly and doly the same.
There might be a Simon Parslow in this world.
Perhaps there was a Lyra.
A chill ran down her back, and mouse-shaped Pantalaimon shivered in her pocket. She shook herself; there were mysteries enough without imagining more.
The other way in which this Oxford differed from hers was in the vast numbers of people swarming on every sidewalk, in and out of every building; people of every sort, women dressed like men, Afris, even a group of Tartars meekly following their leader, all ly dressed and hung about with little black cases. She glared at them fearfully at first, because they had no daemons, and in her world they would have been regarded as ghasts, or worse.
But (this was the strahing) they all looked fully alive. These creatures moved about cheerfully enough, for all the world as though they were human, and Lyra had to cede that human was what they probably were, and that their daemons were ihem as Wills was.
After wandering about for an hour, taking the measure of this mock-Oxford, she felt hungry and bought a bar of chocolate with her twenty-pound he shopkeeper looked at her oddly, but he was from the Indies and didnt uand her at, perhaps, although she asked very clearly. With the ge she bought an apple from the Covered Market, which was much more like the proper Oxford, and walked up toward the park. There she found herself outside a grand building, a real Oxford-looking building that did in her world at all, though it wouldnt have looked out of place. She sat on the grass outside to eat, and regarded the building approvingly.
She discovered that it was a museum. The doors were open, and inside she found stuffed animals and fossil skeletons and cases of minerals, just like the Royal Geological Museum shed visited with Mrs. Coulter in her London. At the back of the great iron-and-glass hall was the entrao another part of the museum, and because it was nearly deserted, she went through and looked around. The alethiometer was still the most urgent thing on her mind, but in this sed chamber she found herself surrounded by things she knew well: there were showcases filled with Arctic clothing, just like her own furs; with sledges and walrus-ivory carvings and seal-hunting harpoons; with a thousand and one jumbled trophies and relid objeagid tools and ons, and not only from the Arctic, as she saw, but from every part of this world Well, how strahose caribou-skin furs were exactly the same as hers, but theyd tied the traces on that sledge pletely wrong. But here hotogram showing some Samoyed hunters, the very doubles of the ones whod caught Lyra and sold her to Bolvangar. Look! They were the same men! And even that rope had frayed and beeted in precisely the same spot, and she k intimately, haviied up in that very sledge for several agonizing hours.... What were these mysteries? Was there only one world after all, which spent its time dreaming of others?
And then she came across something that made her think of the alethiometer again. In an old glass case with a black-painted wooden frame there were a number of human skulls, and some of them had holes in them: some at the front, some on the side, some oop. The one in the ter had two.
This process, it said in spidery writing on a card, was called trepanning. The card also said that all the holes had been made during the owners lifetimes, because the bone had healed and grown smooth around the edge. One, however, hadnt: the hole had been made by a bronze arrowhead which was still in it, and its edges were sharp and broken, so you could tell it was different.
This was just what the northern Tartars did. And what Stanislaus Grumman had had doo himself, acc to the Jordan Scholars whod known him. Lyra looked around quickly, saw no one nearby, and took out the alethiometer.
She focused her mind on the tral skull and asked: What sort of person did this skull belong to, and why did they have those holes made in it?
As she stood trating in the dusty light that filtered through the glass roof and slanted down past the upper galleries, she didnt notice that she was being watched.
A powerful-looking man in his sixties, wearing a beautifully tailored linen suit and holding a Panama hat, stood on the gallery above and looked dowhe iron railing.
His gray hair was brushed ly back from his smooth, tanned, barely wrinkled forehead. His eyes were large, dark and long-lashed and intense, and every minute or so his sharp, dark-poiongue peeped out at the er of his lips and flicked across them moistly. The snowy handkerchief in his breast pocket was sted with some heavy cologne like those hothouse plants so rich you smell the decay at their roots.
He had been watg Lyra for some minutes. He had moved along the gallery above as she moved about below, and wheood still by the case of skulls, he watched her closely, taking in all of her: her rough, untidy hair, the bruise on her cheek, the new clothes, her bare neck arched over the alethiometer, her bare legs.
He shook out the breast-pocket handkerchief and mopped his forehead, and then made for the stairs.
Lyra, absorbed, was learning strahings. These skulls were unimaginably old; the cards in the case said simply BRONZE AGE, but the alethiometer, whiever lied, said that the man whose skull it was had lived 33,254 years before the present day, and that he had been a sorcerer, and that the hole had been made to let the gods into his head. And then the alethiometer, in the casual way it sometimes had of answering a question Lyra hadnt asked, added that there was a good deal more Dust around the trepanned skulls than around the oh the arrowhead.
What in the world could that mean? Lyra came out of the focused calm she shared with the alethiometer and drifted back to the present moment to find herself no longer alone. Gazing into the case was an elderly man in a pale suit, who smelled sweet. He reminded her of someone, but she couldnt think who.
He became aware of her staring at him, and looked up with a smi<q>.９9ｌｉb?</q>le.
"Youre looking at the trepanned skulls?" he said. "What strahings people do to themselves."
"Mm," she said expressionlessly. "Dyou know, people still do that?" "Yeah," she said.
"Hippies, you know, people like that. Actually, youre far too young to remember hippies. They say its more effective than taking drugs."
Lyra had put the alethiometer in her rucksad was w how she could get away. She still hadnt asked it the maiion, and now this old man was having a versation with her.
He seemed niough, and he certainly smelled nice. He was closer now. His hand brushed hers as he leaned across the case.
"Makes you wonder, doesnt it? No ahetio disiant, probably doh stoools.
They must have been tough, mustnt they? I dont think Ive seen you here before. I e here quite a lot. Whats your name?" "Lizzie," she said fortably.
"Lizzie. Hello, Lizzie. Im Charles. Do you go to school in Oxford?"
She wasnt sure how to answer. "No," she said.
"Just visiting? Well, youve chosen a wonderful place to look at. What are you specially ied in?"
She was more puzzled by this man than by anyone shed met for a long time. On the one hand he was kind and friendly and very and smartly dressed, but oher hand Pantalaimon, inside her pocket, lug at her attention and beggio be careful, because he was half-remembering something too; and from somewhere she sensed, not a smell, but the idea of a smell, and it was the smell of dung, of putrefa. She was reminded of lofur Raknisons palace, where the air erfumed but the floor was thick with filth.
"What am I ied in?" she said. "Oh, all sorts of things, really. Those skulls I got ied in just now, when I saw them there. I shouldnt think anyone would want that dos horrible."
"No, I wouldnt enjoy it myself, but I promise you it does happen. I could take you to meet someone whos do," he said, looking so friendly and helpful that she was very nearly tempted.
But then out came that little dark tongue point, as quick as a snakes, flick-moisten, and she shook her head.
"I got to go," she said. "Thank you for , but I better not. Anyway, I got to go now because Im meeting someone. My friend," she added. "Who Im staying with."
"Yes, of course," he said kindly. "Well, it was alking to you. Bye-bye, Lizzie."
"Bye," she said.
"Oh, just in case, heres my name and address," he said, handing her a card. "Just in case you want to know more about things like this."
"Thank you," she said blandly, and put it itle pocket on the back of her rucksack before leaving. She felt he was watg her all the way out.
Once she was outside the museum, she turned in to the park, which she knew as a field for cricket and other sports, and found a quiet spot under some trees and tried the alethiometer again.
This time she asked where she could find a Scholar who knew ></a>about Dust. The answer she got was simple: it directed her to a certain room iall square building behind her. In fact, the answer was shtforward, and came so abruptly, that Lyra was sure the alethiometer had more to say: she was beginning to sense now that it had moods, like a person, and to know when it wao tell her more.
And it did now. What it said was: You must yourself with the boy. Your task is to help him find his father. Put your mind to that.
She blinked. She was genuinely startled. Will had appeared out of nowhere in order to help her; surely that was obvious. The idea that she had e all this way in order to help him took her breath away.
But the alethiometer still hadnt fihe needle twitched again, and she read: Do not lie to the Scholar.
She folded the velvet around the alethiometer and thrust it into the rucksack out of sight. Theood and looked around for the building where her Scholar would be found, a off toward it, feeling awkward and defiant.
Will found the library easily enough, where the reference librarian erfectly prepared to believe that he was doing some research for a school geography projed helped him find the bound copies of The Times index for the year of his birth, which was when his father had disappeared. Will sat down to look through them. Sure enough, there were several refereo John Parry, in e with an archaeological expedition.
Each month, he found, was on a separate roll of mi. He threaded ea turn into the projector, scrolled through to find the stories, ahem with fierce attention. The first story told of the departure of an expedition to the north of Alaska. The expedition onsored by the Institute of Archaeology at Oxford Uy, and it was going to survey an area in which they hoped to find evidence of early humalements. It was apanied by John Parry, late of the Royal Marines, a professional explorer.
The sed story was dated six weeks later. It said briefly that the expedition had reached the North Ameri Arctic Survey Station at Noatak in Alaska.
The third was dated two months after that. It said that there had been no reply to signals from the Survey Station, and that John Parry and his panions were presumed missing.
There was a brief series of articles following that one, describing the parties that had set out fruitlessly to look for them, the search flights over the Berihe rea of the Institute of Archaeology, interviews with relatives....
His heart thudded, because there icture of his own mother. Holding a baby. Him.
The reporter had written a standard tearful-wife-waiting-in-anguish-for-news story, which Will found disappointingly short of actual facts. There was a brief paragraph saying that John Parry had had a successful career in the Royal Marines and had left to specialize in anizing geographical and stific expeditions, and that was all.
There was no other mention in the index, and Will got up from the mi reader baffled.
There must be some more information somewhere else; but where could he go ? And if he took too long searg for it, hed be traced....
He handed back the rolls of mi and asked the librarian, "Do you know the address of the Institute of Archaeology, please?"
"I could find out.... What school are you from?"
"St. Peters," said Will.
"Thats not in Oxford, is it?"
"No, its in Hampshire. My class is doing a sort of residential field trip. Kind of enviroal study research skills."
"Oh, I see. What was it you wanted? ... Archaeology? ... Here we are."
Will copied down the address and phone number, and si was safe to admit he didnt know Oxford, asked where to find it. It wasnt far away. He thahe librarian a off.
Ihe building Lyra found a wide desk at the foot of the stairs, with a porter behind it.
"Where are you going?" he said.
This was like home again. She felt Pan, in her pocket, enjoying it.
"I got a message for someone on the sed floor," she said.
"Who?"
"Dr. Lister," she said.
"Dr. Listers ohird floor. If youve got something for him, you leave it here and Ill let him know."
"Yeah, but this is something he needs right now. He just sent for it. Its not a thing actually, its something I o tell him."
He looked at her carefully, but he was no match for the bland and vacuous docility Lyra could and when she wao; and finally he nodded a back to his neer.
The alethiometer didnt tell Lyra peoples names, of course. She had read the name Dr. Lister off a pigeonhole on the wall behind him, because if you pretend you know someoheyre more likely to let you in. In some ways Lyra knew Wills world better than he did.
On the sed floor she found a long corridor, where one door en to ay lecture hall and ao a smaller room where two Scholars stood discussing something at a blackboard.
These rooms, the walls of this corridor, were all flat and bare and plain in a way Lyra thought beloo poverty, not to the scholarship and splendor of Oxford; ahe brick walls were smoothly painted, and the doors were of heavy wood and the banisters were of polished steel, so they were costly. It was just another way in which this world was strange.
She soon found the door the alethiometer had told her about. The sign on it said DARK MATTER RESEARIT, and u someone had scribbled R.I.P. Another hand had added in pencil DIRECTOR: LAZARUS.
Lyra made nothing of that. She knocked, and a womans voice said, "e in."
It was a small room, crowded with t piles of papers and books, and the whiteboards on the walls were covered in figures aions. Tacked to the back of the door was a design that looked ese. Through an open doorway Lyra could see another room, where some kind of pl<dfn></dfn>icated anbaric maery stood in silence.
For her part, Lyra was a little surprised to find that the Scholar she sought was female, but the alethiometer hadnt said a man, and this was a strange world, after all. The woman was sitting at an ehat displayed figures and shapes on a small glass s, in front of which all the letters of the alphabet had been laid out on grimy little blocks in an ivory tray. The Scholar tapped one, and the s became blank.
"Who are you?" she said.
Lyra shut the door behind her. Mindful of what the alethiometer had told her, she tried hard not to do what she normally would have done, and she told the truth.
"Lyra Silvertongue," she answered. "Whats your name?"
The woman blinked. She was in her late thirties, Lyra supposed, perhaps a little older than Mrs.
Coulter, with short black hair and red cheeks. She wore a white coat open reen shirt and those blue vas trousers so many people wore in this world.
At Lyras question the woman ran a hand through her hair and said, "Well, youre the sed ued thing thats happeoday. Im Dr. Mary Malone. What do you want?"
"I want you to tell me about Dust," said Lyra, having looked around to make sure they were alone.
"I know you know about it. I prove it. You got to tell me."
"Dust? What are you talking about?"
"You might not call it that. Its elementary particles. In my world the Scholars call it Rusakov Particles, but normally they call it Dust. They dont show up easily, but they e out of spad fix on people. Not children so much, though. Mostly on grownups. And something I only found out today—I was in that museum down the road and there was some old skulls with holes in their heads, like the Tartars make, and there was a lot more Dust around them than around this other ohat hadnt got that sort of hole in it. Whens the Bronze Age?"
The woman was looking at her wide-eyed.
"The Bronze Age? Goodness, I dont know; about five thousand years ago," she said.
"Ah, well, they got it wrong then, when they wrote that label. That skull with the two holes in it is thirty-three thousand years old."
She stopped then, because Dr. Malone looked as if she was about to faint. The high color left her cheeks pletely; she put one hand to her breast while the other clutched the arm of her chair, and her jaw dropped.
Lyra stood, stubborn and puzzled, waiting for her to recover.
"Who are you?" the woman said at last.
"Lyra Silver—"
"No, where dyou e from? What are you? How do you know things like this?"
Wearily Lyra sighed; she had fotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to uand.
"I e from another world," she began. "And in that world theres an Oxford like this, only different, and thats where I e from. And—"
"Wait, wait, wait. You e from where?"
"From somewhere else," said Lyra, more carefully. "Not here."
"Oh, somewhere else," the woman said. "I see. Well, I think I see."
"And I got to find out about Dust," Lyra explained. "Because the Church people in my world, right, theyre frightened of Dust because they think its inal sin. So its very important. And my father... No," she said passionately, and stamped her foot. "Thats not what I bbr>藏书网</abbr>meant to say. Im doing it all wrong."
Dr. Malone looked at Lyras desperate frown and ched fists, at the bruises on her cheek and her leg, and said, "Dear me, child, calm down."
She broke off and rubbed her eyes, which were red with tiredness.
"Why am I listening to you?" she went on. "I must be crazy. The fact is, this is the only pla the world where youd get the answer you want, and theyre about to close us down. What youre talking about, your Dust, sounds like something weve been iigating for a while now, and what you say about the skulls in the museum gave me a turn, because... oh, no, this is just too much. Im too tired. I want to listen to you, believe me, but not now, please. Did I say they were going to close us down? Ive got a week to put together a proposal to the funding ittee, but we havent got a hope in hell..."
She yawned widely.
"What was the first ued thing that happeoday?" Lyra said.
"Oh. Yes. Someone Id been relying on to back our funding application withdrew his support. I dont suppose it was that ued, anyway."
She yawned again.
"Im going to make some coffee," she said/"If I dont, Ill fall asleep. Youll have some too?"
She filled aric kettle, and while she spooned instant coffee into two mugs Lyra stared at the ese pattern on the back of the door.
"Whats that?" she said.
"Its ese. The symbols of the I g. Dyou know what that is? Do they have that in your world?"
Lyra looked at her narrow-eyed, in case she was being sarcastic. She said: "There are some things the same and some that are different, thats all. I dont know everything about my world. Maybe they got this g thing there too."
百度搜索 THE SUBTLE KNIFE 天涯 或 THE SUBTLE KNIFE 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.