CHAPTER FOUR: TREPANNING-2
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"Im sorry," said Dr. Malone. "Yes, maybe they have.""Whats dark matter?" said Lyra. "Thats what it says on the sign, isnt it?"
Dr. Malo down again, and hooked another chair out with her ankle for Lyra.
She said, "Dark matter is what my research team is looking for. No one knows what it is. Theres more stuff out there in the universe than we see, thats the point. We see the stars and the galaxies and the things that shine, but for it all to hang together and not fly apart, there o be a lot more of it—to make gravity work, you see. But no one detect it. So there are lots of different research projects trying to find out what it is, and this is one of them."
Lyra was all focused attention. At last the woman was talking seriously.
"And what do you think it is?" she asked.
"Well, what we think it is—" As she began, the kettle boiled, so she got up and made the coffee as she tinued. "We think its some kind of elementary particle. Something quite different from anything discovered so far. But the particles are very hard to detect. ... Where do you go to school? Do you study physics?"
Lyra felt Pantalaimon nip her hand, warning her not to get cross. It was all very well, the alethiometer tellio be truthful, but she knew what would happen if she told the whole truth. She had to tread carefully and just avoid direct lies.
"Yes," she said, "I know a little bit. But not about dark matter."
"Well, were trying to detect this almost-uable thing among the noise of all the other particles crashing about. Normally they put detectors very deep underground, but what weve done instead is to set up aromagic field around the detector that shuts out the things we dont want ahrough the ones we do. Then lify the signal and put it through a puter."
She handed across a mug of coffee. There was no milk and no sugar, but she did find a couple of ginger biscuits in a drawer, and Lyra took one hungrily.
"And we found a particle that fits," Dr. Malo on. "We think it fits. But its se ...
Why am I telling you this? I shouldnt. Its not published, its not refereed, its not even written down. Im a little crazy this afternoon.
"Well ..." she went on, and she yawned for so long that Lyra thought shed op, "our particles are stratle devils, make no mistake. We call them shadow particles, Shadows. You know what nearly knocked me off my chair just now? When you mentiohe skulls in the museum. Because one of our team, you see, is a bit of an amateur archaeologist. And he discovered something one day that we couldnt believe. But we couldnt ig, because it fitted in with the craziest thing of all about these Shadows. You know what? Theyre scious. Thats right. Shadoarticles of sciousness. You ever heard anything so stupid? No wonder we t get rant renewed."
She sipped her coffee. Lyra was drinking in every word like a thirsty flower.
"Yes," Dr. Malo on, "they know were here. They answer back. And here goes the crazy part: you t see them unless you expect to. Unless you put your mind in a certain state. You have to be fident and relaxed at the same time. You have to be capable— Wheres that quotation ..."
She reached into the muddle of papers on her desk and found a scrap on whieone had written with a green pen. She read:
" ... Capable of being in uainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reag after fad reason. You have to get into that state of mind. Thats from the poet Keats, by the way. I found it the other day. So you get yourself in the right state of mind, and then you look at the Cave—"
"The cave?" said Lyra.
"Oh, sorry. The puter. We call it the Cave. Shadows on the walls of the Cave, you see, from Plato. Thats our archaeologist again. Hes an all-around intellectual. But hes gone off to Geneva for a job interview, and I dont suppose for a moment hell be back.... Where was I? Oh, the Cave, thats right. Once youre linked up to it, if you think, the Shadows respond. Theres no doubt about it. The Shadows flock to your thinking like birds...."
"What about the skulls?"
"I was ing to that. Oliver Payne—him, my colleague— was fooling about one day testing things with the Cave. And it was so odd. It didnt make any sense in the hysicist would expect. He got a piece of ivory, just a lump, and there were no Shadows with that. It did. But a carved ivory chess piece did. A big splinter of wood off a plank didnt, but a wooden ruler did. And a carved wooden statuette had more.... Im talking about elementary panicles here, foodness
sake. Little minute lumps of scarcely anything. They knew what these objects were. Anything that was associated with human workmanship and human thought was surrounded by Shadows....
"And then Oliver—Dr. Pay some fossil skulls from a friend at the museum aed them to see how far ba time the effect went. There was a cutoff point about thirty, forty thousand years ago. Before that, no Shadows. After that, plenty. And thats about the time, apparently, that modern human beings first appeared. I mean, you know, our remote aors, but people no different from us, really...."
"Its Dust," said Lyra authoritatively. "Thats what it is."
"But, you see, you t say this sort of thing in a funding application if you want to be taken seriously. It does not make se ot exist. Its impossible, and if it isnt impossible, its irrelevant, and if it isher of those things, its embarrassing."
"I want to see the Cave," said Lyra.
She stood up.
Dr. Malone was running her hands through her hair and blinking hard to keep her tired eyes clear.
"Well, I t see why not," she said. "We might not have a Cave tomorrow. e along through."
She led Lyra into the other room. It was larger, and crowded with anbaric equipment.
"This is it. Over there," she said, pointing to a s that was glowing ay gray. "Thats where the detector is, behind all that wiring. To see the Shadows, you have to be linked up to some electrodes. Like for measuring brain waves."
"I want to try it," said Lyra.
"You wont see anything. Anyway, Im tired. Its too plicated."
"Please! I know what Im doing!"
"Do you, now? I wish I did. No, for heavens sake. This is an expensive, difficult stific experiment. You t e charging in here and expect to have a go as if it were a pinball mae.... Where do you e from, anyway? Shouldnt you be at school? How did you find your way in here?"
And she rubbed her eyes again, as if she was only just waking up.
Lyra was trembling. Tell the truth, she thought. "I found my way in with this," she said, and took out the alethiometer.
"What in the world is that? A pass?"
Lyra let her take it. Dr. Malones eyes widened as she felt the weight "Dear Lord, its made of gold. Where oh—"
"I think it does what your Cave does. Thats what I want to find out. If I answer a question truly," said Lyra desperately, "something you know the ao and I dont, I try your Cave then?"
"What, are we into fortuelling now? What is this thing?"
"Please! Just ask me a question!"
Dr. Malone shrugged. "Oh, all right," she said. Tell me ... tell me what I was doing before I took up this business."
Eagerly Lyra took the alethiometer from her and turhe winding wheels. She could feel her mind reag for the right pictures even before the hands were pointing at them, and she sehe longer needle twitg to respond. As it began to swing around the dial, her eyes followed it, watg, calculating, seeing down the long s of meaning to the level where the truth lay.
Then she blinked and sighed and came out of her temporary trance.
"You used to be a nun," she said. "I wouldnt have guessed that. Nuns are supposed to stay in their vents forever. But you stopped believing in church things and they let you leave. This ent like my world at all, not a bit."
Dr. Malo down in a chair by the puter, staring.
Lyra said, "Thats true, ent it?"
"Yes. And you found out from that..."
"From my alethiometer. It works by Dust, I think. I came all this way to find out more about Dust, and it told me to e to you. So I re your dark matter must be the same thing. Now I try your Cave?"
Dr. Malone shook her head, but not to say no, just out of helplessness. She spread her hands. "Very well," she said. "I think Im dreaming. I might as well carry on."
She swung around in her chair and pressed several switches, bringing arical hum and the sound of a puters cooling fan into the air; and at the sound of them, Lyra gave a little muffled gasp. It was because the sound in that room was the same sound shed heard in that dreadful glittering chamber at Bolvangar, where the silver guillotine had nearly parted her and Pantalaimon. She felt him quiver in her pocket, aly squeezed him for reassurance.
But Dr. Malone hadnt noticed; she was too busy adjusting switches and tapping the letters in another of those ivory trays. As she did, the s ged color, and some small letters and figures appeared on it.
"Now you sit down," she said, and pulled out a chair for Lyra. Then she opened ajar and said, "I o put some gel on your skin to help the electrical tact. It washes off easily. Hold still, now."
Dr. Maloook six wires, eading in a flat pad, and attached them to various places on Lyras head. Lyra sat determinedly still, but she was breathing quickly, and her heart was beating hard.
"All right, youre all hooked up," said Dr. Malone. "The rooms full of Shadows. The universe is full of Shadows, e to that. But this is the only way we see them, when you make yourbbr>９９lｉｂ?</abbr> miy and look at the s. Off you go."
Lyra looked. The glass was dark and blank. She saw her own refle dimly, but that was all. As an experiment she pretehat she was reading the alethiometer, and imagined herself asking:
What does this woman know about Dust? What questions is she asking?
She mentally moved the alethiometers hands around the dial, and as she did, the s began to flicker. Astonished, she came out of her tration, and the flicker died. She didnt notice the ripple of excitement that made Dr. Malo up: she frowned and sat forward and began to trate again.
This time the response came instantaneously. A stream of dang lights, for all the world like the shimmering curtains of the aurora, blazed across the s. They took up patterns that were held for a moment only to break apart and fain, in different shapes, or different colors; they looped and swayed, they sprayed apart, they burst into showers of radiahat suddenly swerved this way or that like a flock of birds ging dire in the sky. And as Lyra watched, she felt the same sense, as of trembling on the brink of uanding, that she remembered from the time when she was beginning to read the alethiometer.
She asked another question: Is this Dust? Is it the same thing making these patterns and moving the needle of the alethiometer?
The answer came in more loops and swirls of light. She guessed it meahen ahought occurred to her, and she turo speak to Dr. Malone, and saw her open-mouthed, hand to her head.
"What?" she said.
The s faded. Dr. Malone blinked.
"What is it?" Lyra said again.
"Oh—youve just put on the best display Ive ever seen, thats all," said Dr. Malone. "What were you doing? What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking you could get it clearer than this," Lyra said.
"Clearer? Thats the clearest its ever been!"
"But what does it mean? you read it?"
"Well," said Dr. Malone, "you dont read it in the sense of reading a message; it doesnt work like that. Whats happening is that the Shadows are responding to the attention that you pay them.
Thats revolutionary enough; its our scioushat they respond to, you see."
"No," Lyra explained, "what I mean is, those colors and shapes up there. They could do other things, those Shadows. They could make any shapes you wahey could make pictures if you wahem to. Look."
And she turned bad focused her mind again, but this time she preteo herself that the s was the alethiometer, with all thirty-six symbols laid out around the edge. She khem so well now that her fingers automatically twisted in her lap as she moved the imaginary hands to point at the dle (for uanding), the alpha and omega (for language), and the ant (for diligence), and framed the question:
What would these people have to do in order to uand the language of the Shadows?
The s respo>?9９lib.</a>nded as quickly as thought itself, and out of the welter of lines and flashes a series of pictures formed with perfect clarity: passes, alpha and omega again, lightning, angel. Each picture flashed up a different number of times, and then came a different three:
camel, garden, moon.
Lyra saw their meanings clearly, and unfocused her mind to explain. This time, wheurned around, she saw that Dr. Malone was sitting ba her chair, white-faced, clutg the edge of the table.
"What it says," Lyra told her, "its saying in my language, right—the language of pictures. Like the alethiometer. But what it says is that it could use ordinary language too, words, if you fixed it up like that. You could fix this so it put words on the s. But youd need a lot of careful figuring with hat was die passes, see. And the lightni anbaric—I mearic power, more of that. And the ahats all about messages. Theres things it wants to say. But when it went on to that sed bit... it meant Asia, almost the farthest east but not quite. I dunno what try that would be—a, maybe. And theres a way they have in that try of talking to Dust, I mean Shadows, same as you got here and I got with the—I got with pictures, only their way uses sticks. I think it meant that picture on the door, but I didnt uand it, really. I thought when I first saw it there was something important about it, only I didnt know what. So there must be lots of ways of talking to Shadows."
Dr. Malone was breathless.
"The I g," she said. "Yes, its ese. A form of divination—fortuelling, really.... And, yes, they use sticks. Its only up there for decoration," she said, as if to reassure Lyra that she didnt really believe in it. "Youre tellihat when people sult the I g, theyre getting in touch with Shadow particles? With dark matter?"
"Yeah," said Lyra. Theres lots of ways, like I said. I hadnt realized before. I thought there was only one."
"Those pictures on the s ..." Dr. Malone began.
Lyra felt a flicker of a thought at the edge of her mind, and turo the s. She had hardly begun to formulate a question when more pictures flashed up, succeeding each other so quickly that Dr. Malone could hardly follow them; but Lyra knew what they were saying, and turned back to her.
"It says that youre important, too," she told the stist. "It says you got something important to do. I dunno what, but it wouldnt say that unless it was true. So you probably ought to get it using words, so you uand what it says."
Dr. Malone was silent. Then she said, "All right, where do you e from?"
Lyra twisted her mouth. She realized that Dr. Malone, who until now had acted out of exhaustion and despair, would never normally have shown her work to a strange child who turned up from nowhere, and that she was beginning tret it. But Lyra had to tell the truth.
"I e from another world," she said. "Its true. I came through to this one. I was... I had to run away, because people in my world were chasio kill me. And the alethiometer es from ... from the same place. The Master of Jordan College gave it me. In my Oxford theres a Jordan College, but there ent one here. I looked. And I found out how to read the alethiometer by myself. I got a way of making my mind go blank, and I just see what the pictures mean straightaway. Just like you said about... doubts and mysteries and that. So when I looked at the Cave, I dohe same thing, and it works just the same way, so my Dust and your Shadows are the same, too. So..."
Dr. Malone was fully awake now. Lyra picked up the alethiometer and folded its velvet cloth over it, like a mother proteg her child, before putting it ba her rucksack.
"So anyway," she said, "you could make this s so it could talk to you in words, if you wanted.
Then you could talk to the Shadows like I talk to the alethiometer. But what I want to know is, why do the people in my world hate it? Dust, I mean, Shadows. Dark matter. They want to destroy it. They think its evil. But I think what they do is evil. I seen them do it. So what is it, Shadows? Is it good or evil, or what?"
Dr. Malone rubbed her fad turned her cheeks red again.
"Everything about this is embarrassing" she said. "Dyou know how embarrassing it is to mention good and evil in a stific laboratory? Have you any idea? One of the reasons I became a stist was not to have to think about that kind of thing."
"You got to think about it," said Lyra severely. "You t iigate Shadows, Dust, whatever it is, without thinking about that kind of thing, good and evil and such. And it said you got to, remember. You t refuse. Whehey going to close this place down?"
"The funding ittee decides at the end of the week.... Why?"
"Cause you got tonight, then," said Lyra. "You could fix this ehing to put words on the s instead of pictures like I made. You could do that easy. Then you could show em, and theyd have to give you the moo carry on. And you could find out all about Dust, or Shadows, and tell me. You see," she went on a little haughtily, like a duchess describing an unsatisfactory housemaid, "the alethiometer woly tell me what I o know. But you could find out for me. Else I could probably do that g thing, with the sticks. But pictures are easier to work.
I think so, anyway. Im going to take this off now," she added, and pulled at the electrodes on her head.
Dr. Malone gave her a tissue to wipe off the gel, and folded up the wires.
"So yoing?" she said. "Well, youve given me a strange hour, thats no mistake."
"Are you going to make it do words?" Lyra said, gathering up her rucksack.
"Its about as much use as pleting the funding application, I daresay," said Dr. Malone. "No, listen. I want you to e baorrow. you do that? About the same time? I want you to show someone else."
Lyra narrowed her eyes. Was this a trap?
"Well, all right," she said. "But remember, theres things I o know."
"Yes. Of course. You will e?"
"Yes," said Lyra. "If I say I will, I will. I could help you, I expect."
And she left. The porter at the desk looked up briefly and the back to his paper.
"The Nuniatak dig," said the archaeologist, swinging his chair around. "Youre the sed person in a month to ask me about that."
"Who was the other one?" said Will, on his guard at once.
"I think he was a journalist. Im not sure."
"Why did he want to know about it?" he said.
"In e with one of the men who disappeared on that trip. It was the height of the cold war when the expedition vanished. Star Wars. Youre probably too young to remember that. The Ameris and the Russians were building enormous radar installations all across the Arctic....
Anyway, what I do for you?"
"Well," said Will, trying to keep calm, "I was just trying to find out about that expedition, really.
For a school project about prehistoric people. And I read about this expedition that disappeared, and I got curious."
"Well, youre not the only one, as you see. There was a big to-do about it at the time. I looked it all up for the journalist. It reliminary survey, not a pr. You t do a dig till you know whether its worth spending time on it, so this group went out to look at a number of sites and make a report. Half a dozen blokes altogether. Sometimes on an expedition like this you bine forces with people from another discipline—you know, geologists or whatever—to split the cost. They look at their stuff and we look at ours. In this case there hysicist oeam. I think he was looking at high-level atmospheric particles. The aurora, you know, the northern lights. He had balloons with radio transmitters, apparently.
"And there was another man with them. An ex-Marine, a sort of professional explorer. They were going up into some fairly wild territory, and polar bears are always a danger in the Arctic.
Archaeologists deal with some things, but were not traio shoot, and someone who do that and navigate and make camp and do all the sort of survival stuff is very useful.
"But then they all vahey kept in radio tact with a local survey station, but one day the signal didnt e, and nothing more was heard. Thered been a buzzard, but that was nothing unusual. The search expedition found their last camp more or less intact, though the bears had eaten their stores. But there was no sign of the people whatsoever.
"And thats all I tell you, Im afraid."
"Yes," said Will. "Thank you. Umm ... that journalist," he went on, stopping at the door. "You said he was ied in one of the men. Whie was it?"
"The explorer type. A man called Parry."
"What did he look like? The journalist, I mean?"
"What dyou want to know that for?"
"Because ..." Will couldnt think of a plausible reason. He shouldnt have asked. "No reason. I just wondered."
"As far as I remember, he was a big blond man. Very pale hair."
&quht, thanks," Will said, and turo go.
The man watched him leave the room, saying nothing, frowning a little. Will saw him reach for the phone, ahe building quickly.
He found he was shaking. The journalist, so called, was one of the men whod e to his house: a tall man with such fair hair that he seemed to have no eyebrows or eyelashes. He wasnt the one Will had knocked dowairs: he was the one whod appeared at the door of the living room as Will ran down and jumped over the body.
But he wasnt a journalist.
There was a large museum nearby. Will went in, holding his clipboard as if he were w, and sat down in a gallery hung with paintings. He was trembling hard and feeling sick, because pressing at him was the knowledge that hed killed someohat he was a murderer. Hed kept it at bay till now, but it was closing iaken away the mans life.
He sat still for half an hour, and it was one of the worst half-hours hed ever spent. People came a, looking at the paintings, talking in quiet voices, ign him; a gallery attendant stood in the doorway for a few minutes, hands behind his back, and then slowly moved away; and Will wrestled with the horror of what hed done, and didnt move a muscle.
Gradually he grew calmer. Hed been defending his mother. They were frightening her; giveate she was in, they were perseg her. He had a right to defend his home. His father would have wanted him to do that. He did it because it was the good thing to do. He did it to stop them from stealing the greeher case. He did it so he could find his father; and didnt he have a right to do that? All his childish games came ba, with himself and his father resg each other from <bdo></bdo>avalanches hting pirates. Well, now it was real. Ill find you, he said in his mind. Just help me and Ill find you, and well look after Mum, and everythingll be all right....
And after all, he had somewhere to hide now, somewhere so safe no one would ever find him. And the papers from the case (which he still hadnt had time to read) were safe too, uhe mattress in Cittagazze.
Finally he noticed people moving more purposefully, and all in the same dire. They were leaving, because the attendant was telling them that the museum would close in ten minutes. Will gathered himself a. He found his way to the High Street, where the lawyers office was, and wondered about going to see him, despite what hed said earlier. The man had sounded friendly enough....
But as he made up his mind to cross the street and go iopped suddenly.
The tall man with the pale eyebrows was getting out of a car.
Will turned aside at once, casually, and looked in the window of the jewelers shop beside him. He saw the mans refle look around, settle the knot of his tie, and go into the lawyers office. As soon as hed gone in, Will moved away, his heart thudding again. There wasnt anywhere safe. He drifted toward the uy library and waited for Lyra.
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