CHAPTER FOURTEEN: ONE ALAMO GULCH-1
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Lee Scoresby looked down at the placid o to his left and the green shore to his right, and shaded his eyes to search for human life. It was a day and a night sihey had left the Yenisei."And this is a new world?" he said.
"o those not born in it," said Stanislaus Grumman. "As old as yours or miherwise. What Asriels done has shakehing up, Mr. Scoresby, shaken it more profoundly than its ever been shaken before. These doorways and windows that I spoke of—they open in ued plaow.
Its hard to navigate, but this wind is a fair one."
"New or old, thats a strange world down there," said Lee.
"Yes," said Stanislaus Grumman. "It is a strange world, though no doubt some feel at home there."
"It looks empty," said Lee.
"Not so. Beyond that headland youll find a city that was once powerful ahy. And its still inhabited by the desdants of the merts and nobles who built it, though its fallen on hard times in the past three hundred years."
A few minutes later, as the balloon drifted on, Lee saw first a lighthouse, then the curve of a stone breakwater, theowers and domes and red-brown roofs of a beautiful city around a harbor, with a sumptuous building like an opera house in lush gardens, and wide boulevards with elegant hotels, and little streets where blossom-bearing trees hung over shaded balies.
And Grumman was right; there were people there. But as the balloon drifted closer, Lee was surprised to see that they were children. There was not an adult in sight. And he was even more surprised to see the children had no daemohey were playing on the beach, or running in and out of cafes, or eating and drinking, athering bags full of goods from houses and shops.
And there was a group of boys who were fighting, and a red-haired girl urging them on, and a little boy throwing stoo smash all the windows of a nearby building. It was like a playground the size of a city, with not a teacher in sight; it was a world of children.
But they werent the only presehere. Lee had to rub his eyes when he saw them first, but there was no doubt about it: ns of mist—or something more tenuous than mist—a thiing of the air.... Whatever they were, the city was full of them; they drifted along the boulevards, they entered houses, they clustered in the squares and courtyards. The children moved among them unseeing.
But not uhe farther they drifted over the city, the more Lee could observe the behavior of these forms. And it was clear that some of the children were of io them, and that they followed certain children around: the older children, those who (as far as Lee could see through his telescope) were on the verge of adolesce. There was one boy, a tall thin youth with a shock of black hair, who was so thickly surrounded by the transparent beings that his very outline seemed to shimmer in the air. They were like flies arou. And the boy had no idea of it, though from time to time he would brush his eyes, or shake his head as if to clear his vision.
"What the hell are those things?" said Lee.
The people call them Specters."
"What do they do, exactly?"
"Youve heard of vampires?"
"Oh, in tales."
"The Specters feast as vampires feast on blood, but the Specters food is attention. A scious and informed i in the world. The immaturity of children is less attractive to them."
"Theyre the opposite of those devils at Bolvangar, then."
"On the trary. Both the Oblation Board and the Specters of Indifference are bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innoce is different from experiehe Oblation Board fears and hates Dust, and the Specters feast on it, but its Dust both of them are obsessed by."
"Theyre clustered around that kid down there."
"Hes growing up. Theyll attack him soon, and then his life will bee a blank, indifferent misery. Hes doomed."
"For Petes sake! t we rescue him?"
"No. The Specters would seize us at ohey t touch us up here; all we do is watd fly on."
"But where are the adults? You dont tell me the whole world is full of children alone?"
"Those children are Specter-orphans. There are many gangs of them in this world. They wander about living on what they find when the adults flee. And theres plenty to find, as you see.
They dont starve. It looks as if a multitude of Specters have ihis city, and the adults have goo safety. You notice how few boats there are in the harbor? The children will e to no harm."
"Except for the older ones. Like that poor kid down there."
"Mr. Scoresby, that is the way this world works. And if you want to put ao cruelty and injustice, you must take me farther on. I have a job to do."
"Seems to me—" Lee said, feeling for the words, "seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed. Or is that wrong, Dr.
Grumman? Im only an ignorant aeronaut. Im so damn ignorant I believed it when I was told that shamans had the gift of flight, for example. Yet heres a shaman who hasnt."
"Oh, but I have."
"How dyou make that out?"
The balloon was drifting lower, and the ground was rising. A square stoower rose directly in their path, and Lee dido have noticed.
"I o fly," said Grumman, "so I summoned you, and here I am, flying."
He erfectly aware of the peril they were in, but he held back from implying that the aeronaut wasnt. And in perfect time, Lee Scoresby leaned over the side of the basket and pulled the cord on one of the bags of ballast. The sand flowed out, and the balloon lifted gently to clear the tower by six feet or so. A dozen crows, disturbed, rose g around them.
"I guess you are," said Lee. "You have a strange way about you, Dr. Grumman. You ever spend any time among the witches?"
"Yes," said Grumman. "And among academis, and among spirits. I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it. No doubt there was much more wisdom that I failed tnize. Life is hard, Mr. Scoresby, but we g to it all the same."
"And this journey were on? Is that folly or wisdom?"
"The greatest wisdom I know."
Tell me again what your purpose is. Yoing to find the bearer of this subtle knife, and what then?"
"Tell him what his task is."
"And thats a task that includes proteg Lyra," the aeronaut reminded him.
"It will protect all of us."
They flew on, and sooy was out of sight behind them.
Lee checked his instruments. The pass was still gyrating loosely, but the altimeter was funing accurately, as far as he could judge, and showed them to be floating about a thousa above the seashore and parallel with it. Some way ahead a line of high green hills rose into the haze, and Lee was glad hed provided plenty of ballast.
But when he made his regular s of the horizon, he felt a little check at his heart. Hester felt it too, and flicked up her ears, and turned her head so that one gold-hazel eye rested on his face.
He picked her up, tucked her in the breast of his coat, and opehe telescope again.
No, he wasnt mistaken. Far to the south (if south it was, the dire theyd e from) another balloon was floating in the haze. The heat shimmer and the distance made it impossible to see aails, but the other balloon was larger, and flying higher.
Grumman had seen it too.
"Enemies, Mr. Scoresby?" he said, shading his eyes to peer into the pearly light.
"There t be a doubt. Im uaiher to lose ballast and go higher, to catch the quicker wind, or stay low and be less spicuous. And Im thankful that things not a zeppelin; they could overhaul us in a few hours. No, damn it, Dr. Grumman, Im going higher, because if I was in that balloon Id have seen this one already; and Ill bet they have keen eyesight."
He set Hester down again and leaned out to jettison three bags of ballast. The balloon rose at once, and Lee kept the telescope to his eye.
And a mier he knew for certain theyd been sighted, for there was a stir of movement in the haze, which resolved itself into a line of smoke streaking up and away at an angle from the other balloon; and when it was some distance up, it burst into a flare. It blazed deep red for a moment and then dwindled into a patch of gray smoke, but it was a signal as clear as a to in the night.
" you summon a stiffer breeze, Dr. Grumman?" said Lee. "Id like to make those hills by nightfall."
For they were leaving the shoreline now, and their course was taking them out over a wide bay thirty or forty miles across. A range of hills rose on the far side, and now that hed gained some height, Lee saw that they might more truthfully be called mountains.
He turo Grumman, but found him deep in a trahe shamans eyes were closed, and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead as he rocked gently bad forth. A low rhythmic moaning came from his throat, and his daemon gripped the edge of the basket, equally entranced.
And whether it was the result of gaini or whether it was the shamans spell, a breath did stir the air on Lees face. He looked up to check the gasbag and saw it sway a degree or two, leaning toward the hills.
But the breeze that moved them more swiftly was w oher balloon, too. It was no closer, but her had they left it behind. And as Lee turhe telescope on it again, he saw darker, smaller shapes behind it in the shimmering distahey were grouped purposefully, and being clearer and more solid every minute.
"Zeppelins," he said. "Well, theres no hiding out here."
He tried to make aimate of their distance, and a similar calculation about the hills toward which they were flying. Their speed had certainly picked up now, and the breeze was flig white tips off the waves far below.
Grumman sat resting in a er<q></q> of the basket while his daemon groomed her feathers. His eyes were closed, but Lee knew he was awake.
"The situations like this, Dr. Grumman," he said. "I do not want to be caught aloft by those zeppelins. There aint no defeheyd have us down in a minute. Nor do I want to land ier, by free choice or not; we could float for a while, but they could pick us off with grenades as easy as fishing.
"So I want to reach those hills and make a landing. I see some forest now; we hide among the trees for a spell, maybe a long time.
"And meanwhile the suns going down. We have about three hours to su, by my calculation.
And its hard to say, but I think those zeppelins will have closed on us halfway by that time, and we should have gotten to the far shore of this bay.
"Now, you uand what Im saying. Im going to take us up into those hills and then land, because anything else is certaih. Theyll have made a e now between this ring I showed them and the Skraeling I killed on Nova Zembla, and they aint chasing us this hard to say we left our wallet on the ter.
"So sometime tonight, Dr. Grumman, this flights gonna be over. You ever landed in a balloon?"
"No," said the shaman. "But I trust your skill." "Ill try a as high up that range as I . Its a question of balance, because the farther we go, the closer theyll be behind us. If I land when theyre too close behind, theyll be able to see where we go, but if I take us down too early, we wont find the shelter of those trees. Either way, theres going to be some shooting before long."
Grumman sat impassively, moving a magical token of feathers and beads from one hand to the other in a pattern that Lee could see had some purposeful meaning. His eagle daemons eyes never left the pursuing zeppelins.
An hour went by, and another. Lee chewed an unlit cigar and sipped cold coffee from a tin flask.
The suled lower in the sky behind them, and Lee could see the long shade of evening creep along the shore of the bay and up the lower flanks of the hills ahead while the balloon itself, and the mountaintops, were bathed in gold.
And behind them, almost lost hi the su glare, the little dots of the zeppelins grew larger and firmer. They had already overtakeher balloon and could now be easily seen with the naked eye: four of them in line abreast. And across the wide silence of the bay came the sound of their einy but clear, an insistent mosquito whine.
When they were still a few minutes from making the shore at the foot of the hills, Lee noticed something new in the sky behind the zeppelins. A bank of clouds had been building, and a massive thunderhead reared thousands of feet up into the still-bright upper sky. How had he failed to notice? If a storm was ing, the soohey lahe better.
And then a dark green curtain of rain drifted down and hung from the clouds, and the storm seemed to be chasing the zeppelins as they were chasing Lees balloon, for the rai along toward them from the sea, and as the sun finally vanished, a mighty flash came from the clouds, and several seds later a crash of thunder so loud it shook the very fabric of Lees balloon, and echoed back for a long time from the mountains.
Then came another flash of lightning, and this time the jagged fork struck down direct from the thunderhead at one of the zeppelins. In a moment the gas was alight. A bright flower of flame blossomed against the braise-dark clouds, and the craft drifted down slowly, ablaze like a bea, and floated, still blazing, oer.
Lee let out the breath hed been holding. Grumman was standing beside him, one hand on the suspensi, with lines of exhaustion deep in his face.
"Did y that storm?" said Lee.
Grumman nodded.
The sky was now colored like a tiger; bands of gold alternated with patches and stripes of deepest brown-black, and the pattern ged by the minute, for the gold was fading rapidly as the brownblagulfed it. The sea behind atchwork of black water and phosphorest foam, and the last of the burning zeppelins flames were dwindling into nothing as it sank.
The remaining three, however, were flying on, buffeted hard but keeping to their course. More lightning flashed around them, and as the storm came closer, Lee began to fear for the gas in his own balloon. Orike could have it tumbling to earth in flames, and he didnt suppose the shaman could trol the storm so finely as to avoid that.
&quht, Dr. Grumman," he said. "Im going to ighose zeppelins for now and trate oing us safe into the mountains and on the ground. What I want you to do is sit tight and hold on, and be prepared to jump when I tell you. Ill give you warning, and Ill try to make it as gentle as I , but landing in these ditions is a matter of luck as much as skill."
"I trust you, Mr. Scoresby," said the shaman.
He sat ba a er of the basket while his daemon perched on the suspensi, her claws dug deep in the leather binding.
The wind was blowing them hard now, and the great gasbag swelled and billowed in the gusts. The ropes creaked and strained, but Lee had no fear of their giving way. He let go some more ballast and watched the altimeter closely. In a storm, when the air pressure sank, you had to offset that drop against the altimetric reading, and very often it was a crude rule-of-thumb calculation. Lee ran through the figures, double-checked them, and then released the last of his ballast. The only trol he had now was the gas valve. He couldnt go higher; he could only desd.
He peered ily through the stormy air and made out the great bulk of the hills, dark against the dark sky. From below there came a r, rushing sound, like the crash of surf on a stony beach, but he k was the wind tearing through the leaves orees. So far, already! They were moving faster thahought.
And he shouldnt leave it too long before he brought them down. Lee was too cool by nature te at fate; his manner was to raise an eyebrow and greet it laically. But he couldnt help a flicker of despair now, when the ohing he should do—namely, fly before the storm a blow itself out—was the ohing guarao get them shot down.
He scooped up Hester and tucked her securely into his breast, buttoning the vas coat up close to keep her in. Grumman sat steady and quiet; his daemon, wind-torn, g firmly with her talons deep in the basket rim and her feathers blow.
"Im going to take us down, Dr. Grumman," Lee shouted above the wind. "You should stand and be ready to jump clear. Hold the ring and swing yourself up when I call."
Grumman obeyed. Lee gazed down, ahead, down, ahead, cheg each dim glimpse against the , and blinking the rain out of his eyes; for a sudden squall had brought heavy drops at them like handfuls of gravel, and the drumming they made on the gasbag added to the winds howl and the lash of the leaves below until Lee could hardly evehe thunder.
"Here we go!" he shouted. "You cooked up a fiorm, Mr. Shaman."
He pulled at the gas-valve line and lashed it around a cleat to keep it open. As the gas streamed out of the top, invisible far above, the lower curve of the gasbag withdrew into itself, and a fold, and then another, appeared where there had been a bulging sphere only a minute before.
The basket was tossing and lurg so violently it was hard to tell if they were going down, and the gusts were so sudden and wayward that they might easily have been blown high into the sky without knowing; but after a minute or so Lee felt a sudden snag and khe grapnel had caught on a branch. It was only a temporary check, so the branch had broken, but it showed how close they were.
He shouted, "Fifty feet above the trees—"
The shaman nodded.
Then came another snag, more violent, and the two mehrown hard against the rim of the basket. Lee was used to it and found his bala once, but the force took Grumman by surprise.
However, he didnt lose his grip on the suspensi, and Lee could see him safely poised, ready to swing himself clear.
A moment later came the most jolting shock of all as the grapnel found a branch that held it fast.
The basket tilted at ond a sed later was crashing into the treetops, and amid the lashing of wet leaves and the snapping of twigs and the creak of tormented branche<dfn>藏书网</dfn>s it jolted to a precarious halt.
"Still there, Dr. Grumman?" Lee called, for it was impossible to see anything.
"Still here, Mr. Scoresby."
"Better keep still for a miill we see the situation clearly," said Lee, for they were wildly swaying in the wind, and he could feel the basket settling with little jerks against whatever was holding them up.
There was still a strong sideull from the gasbag, which was now nearly empty, but which as a result was catg the wind like a sail. It crossed Lees mind to cut it loose, but if it didnt fly away altogether, it would hang ireetops like a banner and give their position away; much better to take it in, if they could.
There came anhtning flash, and a sed later the thunder crashed. The storm was nearly overhead. The glare showed Lee an oak trunk, with a great white scar where a branch had been torn away, but torn only partially, for the basket was resting on it he point where it was still attached to the trunk.
"Im going to throw out a rope and climb down," he shouted. "As soon as our feet touch<samp></samp> the ground, we make the plan."
"Ill follow you, Mr. Scoresby," said Grumman. "My daemon tells me the ground is forty feet down."
And Lee was aware of a powerful flutter of wis as the eagle daemoled again on the basket rim.
"She go that far?" he said, surprised, but put that out of his mind and made the rope secure, first to the suspensi and then to the branch, so that even if the basket did fall, it wouldnt fall far.
Then, with Hester secure in his breast, he threw the rest of the rope over and clambered down till he felt solid grouh his feet. The branches grew thick around the trunk; this was a massive tree, a giant of an oak, and Lee muttered a thank-you to it as he tugged on the rope to signal to Grumman that he could desd.
Was there another sound iumult? He listened hard. Yes, the engine of a zeppelin, maybe more than one, some way above. It was impossible to tell how high, or in which dire it was flying; but the sound was there for a minute or so, and then it was gone.
The shaman reached the ground.
"Did you hear it?" said Lee.
"Yes. Going higher, into the mountains, I think. gratulations on landing us safely, Mr. Scoresby."
"We aint finished yet. I want to git that gasbag uhe opy before daybreak, or itll show up our position from miles away. You up to some manual labor, Dr. Grumman?"
Tell me what to do."
"All right. Im going back up the rope, and Ill lower some things down to you. One of thems a tent.
You git that set up while I see what I do up there to hide the balloon."
They labored for a long time, and in peril at one point, when the branch that had been supp the basket finally broke and pitched Lee down with it; but he didnt fall far, sihe gasbag still trailed among the treetops ahe basket suspended.
The fall in fact made cealing the gasbag easier, sihe lower part of it had been pulled down through the opy; and w by flashes of lightning, tugging and wreng and hag, Lee ma the whole body of the balloon down among the lower branches and out of sight.
The wind was still beating the treetops bad forth, but the worst of the rain had passed by the time he decided he could do no more. He clambered down and found that the shaman had not only pitched the tent but had jured a fire into being, and was brewing some coffee.
"This done by magic?" said Lee, soaked and stiff, easing himself down into the tent and taking the mug Grumman handed him.
"No, you thank the Boy Scouts for this," said Grumman. "Do they have Boy Scouts in your world? Be prepared. Of all the ways of starting a fire, the best is dry matches. I ravel without them. We could do worse than this as a campsite, Mr. Scoresby."
"You heard those zeppelins again?"
Grumman held up his hand. Lee listened, and sure enough, there was that engine sound, easier to make out now that the rain had eased a little.
"Theyve beewiow," said Grumman. "They dont know where we are, but they know were here somewhere."
And a mier a flickering glow came from somewhere in the dire the zeppelin had flown. It ..s less bright than lightning, but it ersistent, and Lee k for a flare.
"Best put out the fire, Dr. Grumman," he said, "sorry as I am to do without it. I think that opys thick, but you never know. Im going to sleep now, wet through or not."
"You will be dry by the m," said the shaman.
He took a handful of wet earth and pressed it dowhe flames, aruggled to lie down itle tent and closed his eyes.
He had strange and powerful dreams. At one point he was vinced he had awoken to see the shaman sitting cross-legged, wreathed in flames, and the flames were rapidly ing his flesh to leave only a white skeleton behind, still seated in a mound of glowing ash. Lee looked for Hester in alarm, and found her sleeping, whiever happened, for when he was awake, so was she. So when he found her asleep, his laic, whip-tongued daemon looking so gentle and vulnerable, he was moved by the strangeness of it, and he lay down uneasily beside her, awake in his dream, but really asleep, and he dreamed he lay awake for a long time.
Another dream focused on Grumman, too. Lee seemed to see the shaman shaking a feathertrimmed rattle and anding something to obey him. The something, Lee saw with a touch of nausea, ecter, like the oheyd seen from the balloon. It was tall and nearly invisible, and it invoked such a gut-ing revulsion ihat he nearly woke in terror. But Grumman was direg it fearlessly, and ing to no harm either, because the thing listened closely to him and then drifted upward like a soap bubble until it was lost in the opy.
Then his exhausting night took aurn, for he was in the cockpit of a zeppelin, watg the pilot. In fact, he was sitting in the copilots seat, and they were cruising over the forest, looking down at the wildly tossing treetops, a wild sea of leaf and branch. Then that Specter was in the with them.
Pinioned in his dream, Lee could her move nor cry out, and he suffered the terror of the pilot as the man became aware of what was happening to him.
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