The Book of Dust, Volume 1

by Philip Pullman

  “This is Lord Nugent,” Papadimitriou continued. “And this is our guest, Dr. Hannah Relf.”

  Hannah had never seen them before, but Malcolm would have recognized the three men as the ones who had come to the Trout and asked about the priory.

  “What will you drink, Dr. Relf?” said Al-Kaisy.

  “Wine, thank you. White wine.”

  “We’ll eat very soon,” said Papadimitriou. “I don’t want to waste any time. For our purposes this evening, Hannah, this is Oakley Street. Lord Nugent is the director, and Adnan is his deputy. Everyone here is part of Oakley Street, and knows about you. What we have to do is explain a complicated situation, and then ask you to do something.”

  “I see,” she said. “Well, I shall listen with great interest.”

  “Shall we sit at the table?” said Al-Kaisy. “Then we can talk without interrupting ourselves to move.”

  “Very good idea,” said Papadimitriou.

  “This way,” Al-Kaisy said, and led them into a small dining room. The table was set with cold meats and salads so no one would have to fetch and carry food from the kitchen.

  “I know it’s a cold night,” said Yasmin Al-Kaisy, “but this will be quicker, and some of us have to catch a train. Please help yourself.”

  “As this is Oakley Street,” said Papadimitriou, “I suggest that Lord Nugent speaks first. Hannah, you know, of course, that he was the lord chancellor.”

  “But here I am the director of Oakley Street,” said Lord Nugent. He was very tall and thin, and his voice was very deep. His lemur dæmon sprang to an empty chair next to him as he continued. “Dr. Relf, we’ve been relying on your readings of the alethiometer for a couple of years now. We’re grateful for that. You’ll have realized that there are other alethiometrists working for us.”

  “Well, no, I didn’t realize that,” said Hannah. “I realized very little.”

  “Readers in Uppsala and in Bologna were also providing their specialized advice. The instrument in Geneva is in the hands of the Magisterium, and the Paris people are sympathetic to that cause. The Oxford alethiometer is the only other one we know of.”

  “Since we’re now Oakley Street,” said Hannah, “may I ask you this: Is there another Oakley Street agent among the Oxford readers?”

  “No, there isn’t. The other Oxford readers are honest scholars with sound academic reasons for using the instrument.”

  “Unless one of them is an agent of the Magisterium,” said Yasmin Al-Kaisy.

  She didn’t smile, but Lord Nugent did.

  “Unless, of course, that,” he said. “So far, things have remained in a sort of balance. But last week the reader in Bologna was murdered, and her alethiometer was stolen. We can only assume it would soon have been on its way to Geneva.”

  “It would have been on its way?”

  “A very quick-witted agent of ours was able to deal with the murderer and capture the instrument. It’s in that box under the lamp.”

  Hannah turned to look. On a side table under a naphtha lamp lay a battered wooden box, certainly the right size to contain the instrument she knew. She longed to get up at once and examine this one, and Papadimitriou could tell.

  “You can see it after dinner,” he said. “As far as we can tell, it hasn’t been damaged by its adventures, but you’ll be able to tell us for sure.”

  She felt breathless. Rather than trust her voice, she took a sip of wine and looked back to Lord Nugent.

  “What we would like, Dr. Relf,” he said, “is your agreement to a proposition. It comes at a cost, so you might need to think about it. And certainly we shall answer any questions you have. Here it is: we would be very glad if you would put your academic work aside and read the alethiometer for us full-time. You would use this instrument. It would be in your care. No one else, of course, would know. You must tell us what problems that would cause you, and of course the decision is entirely yours, but first I’ll ask Adnan to say a word about the background and why this matters.”

  “Before you do, Dr. Al-Kaisy,” Hannah said, “I want to ask a question. Perhaps you were going to answer it anyway, but here goes. Lord Nugent just now referred to the Magisterium in a way that made it clear that it was the enemy, and I know that the Consistorial Court of Discipline has been responsible for various…um…unfriendly things, such as killing the poor man who was my insulator. And there’s a revolting organization called the League of St. Alexander now poisoning relations between children and their teachers in various schools. I assume these things are all connected, and I’m glad to fight them. But who are we? What is Oakley Street part of? What’s the cause that I’ve been supporting in my work for Oakley Street? It sounds hopelessly naive and stupid when I put it like that, but I’ve been working…well, I’ve been working blind for the past few years. I’ve assumed that I was on the right side. How could anyone be so ignorant? Well, I could. I find it quite easy. I hope you can make it clear, Dr. Al-Kaisy. But, as I say, perhaps you were going to anyway.”

  “I hope I was,” he said, “but now I shall take extra care.” His dæmon, the desert fox, moved to the other side of his chair, from where she could see Hannah, and settled herself neatly. “Oakley Street is a secret agency of government. We were set up with the express purpose of frustrating the work of the agencies you mentioned and several others too. We were created in 1933, just before the Swiss War, when it seemed likely that Brytain would be defeated by the Magisterium’s armed forces. As it turned out, we weren’t, and some of the credit for our survival belongs to the Office for Special Inquiry, which later became known informally as Oakley Street. Its purpose was to defend democracy in this country, first of all. Then to defend the principles of freedom of thought and expression. We were lucky in our monarchy, I have to say. King Richard was a strong supporter of our activities; the director of Oakley Street is always a Privy Counselor, and the old king had a passionate interest in what we were doing and why. King Michael, perhaps rather less so…But the present king seems to share his grandfather’s interest and has been very helpful in ways that haven’t been made public.”

  “What does Parliament know about Oakley Street?”

  “Very little. Our activities are funded—not very well—out of the general defense fund, through the Cabinet Office. There is a group of MPs, government backbenchers who are passionately pro-Magisterium—I’m sure you would know some of their names—who suspect that something like Oakley Street exists, and would love to expose it and destroy it and put a stop to everything we do. This is a deep and uncomfortable paradox, which will not have escaped you: we can only defend democracy by being undemocratic. Every secret service knows this paradox. Some are more comfortable with it than others.”

  “Yes,” said Hannah. “It is a paradox. And it is uncomfortable. To go back to the instrument from Bologna for a moment: presumably it’s really a possession of Bologna University?”

  “It was,” said Lord Nugent.

  “Surely it still is? Legally? Morally?”

  “I daresay,” said Lord Nugent. “Like Adnan’s democratic paradox, this is another ethical problem. The governing body of the university there is now in the hands of a pro-Geneva faction. Our reader was working for us in secret, as you are, and we suspect she was found out and killed on the orders of that very faction. They’d discovered what she was doing, and they killed her for it, and if our agent hadn’t managed to step in at once, this instrument would now be in Geneva, helping our enemies.”

  “Good grief,” said Hannah.

  She took a sip of her wine and looked clearly at the four others: Nugent, lean and subtle; Yasmin Al-Kaisy, elegant and warmly interested at the same time; Adnan Al-Kaisy, dark-eyed, sympathetic; and Papadimitriou, cool, curious, fierce.

  “So, for the moment, the Bologna instrument counts as the spoils of war,” Al-Kaisy went on after a pause.

  “And this is a war? We’re fighting a war?” said Hannah. “A secret war?”

  “Yes, it is,” said
Nugent. “And we’re asking you to take a more prominent part. We’re quite aware of all the implications.”

  “Implications…”

  “About your safety, and so on. The last person to do what we’d like you to do was killed, after all. Yes, we see that as clearly as you do. Her position was considerably more exposed than yours will be, mind you. She was in what was effectively an enemy stronghold. We can make sure that you are protected.”

  “And you’d need me to do this—what, full-time?”

  “Remind my colleagues what you do at the moment,” said Papadimitriou.

  Yasmin Al-Kaisy was putting a glass bowl of some fragrant ice in front of each of them.

  “Thank you,” said Hannah. “This looks delicious. Well, I do two things. In the small amount of time I have with the Bodleian alethiometer, I’m supposed to be working, like the other members of the group, on one of the symbol ranges of the instrument. My particular symbol is the hourglass. There are twelve of us in the group, and each of us takes one symbol to study, and we meet regularly to compare notes. I have five hours with the instrument each week.

  “That’s what I do on the surface, so to speak. Officially. But as you know, I also work for Oakley Street. When they—you—send me a specific question to answer, I work on that, taking time out of my five hours. But if I make no progress with my official—my proper—research, I’ll be asked to leave the group and let someone else have my alethiometer time. As it is, I’m one of the slowest because of the work I do for you. And that’s…It’s galling.”

  “It must be,” said Al-Kaisy. “But in that case—I mean, if you are known to be slow—it wouldn’t be surprising if, say, you voluntarily gave up your five hours with the Bodleian alethiometer….”

  “And said that it was too difficult, you mean? And gave up my research?” Hannah dropped the spoon beside her bowl. “Well, no, that would be possible. And the humiliation—well, no doubt I could put up with that. But I have a career….”

  She picked up the spoon again, dropped it once more. She looked at Papadimitriou.

  “Professor, you can see what this would mean!” she said, and Jesper, expressing her indignation, bristled all over. “You’re asking me to do something that led the last person to do it to her death. Simultaneously you’d like me to sabotage my career by seeming to give up a course of research because it was too difficult for me. That’s…well, both together…it’s unreasonable, isn’t it?”

  Papadimitriou pushed his untouched ice aside.

  “Yes, it is,” he said. “War asks many people to do unreasonable things. And make no mistake, we are at war. Hannah, there is no one else who could do this. I know all the Oxford alethiometer group. Frankly—well, covertly—I have been following the group’s reports. Your colleagues are diligent and well informed and skillful, but the only one to work with a real degree of insight into the symbols is you. You may be the slowest; you are also, by a long way, the best. Don’t worry about your career.”

  And, of course, Hannah immediately felt ashamed. But there was nothing she thought she could say. She ate a spoonful of ice.

  “As for the danger,” said Lord Nugent, “I won’t deny it. If it becomes known what you’re doing—especially that you have the Bologna instrument—you will be at some risk. I shall see to it that someone will be watching. We were watching the Bologna reader, which is how we were able to deal with the matter so quickly once it was…once it was too late, of course. But there we were stretched. Here we would not be. You wouldn’t be aware of the protection, but it would be there.”

  “And you would know,” said Al-Kaisy, “that you were making a great contribution to the progress of this war, this secret war. You know who the enemy is, so you know what we’re fighting. Remember what is at stake. The right we have to speak and think freely, to pursue research into any subject under the sun—all that would be destroyed. That is worth fighting for, don’t you agree?”

  “Of course I agree,” said Hannah fiercely. “You don’t have to persuade me of something so obvious. What else would I believe? Of course I believe that.”

  She pushed her ice away.

  “We realize that very well,” said Nugent. “And of course the position we’re putting you in is profoundly uncomfortable. Why don’t we finish this delicious dessert, and then you can see the instrument from Bologna. I’d be very interested to hear what you make of it.”

  “How many alethiometers are there?” asked Yasmin Al-Kaisy. “I suppose I should know, but I don’t.”

  Papadimitriou spoke for Hannah, who took back her ice and ate a spoonful. “Five, as far as we know. There are rumors of a sixth, but…”

  “Why can’t we make another?”

  “Hannah could tell us more fully, but I think it’s to do with the alloy of which the hands or the needles are made. But the instrument itself is only part of the matter. Each one forms a unity with its reader. Neither is complete, when it comes to working, without the other.”

  “Which is one of the very mysteries we have to solve,” said Al-Kaisy.

  Lord Nugent got up from the table and brought the little box with the battered corners over to Hannah. It looked like rosewood; a painted design on the top was only just recognizable as a coat of arms.

  She lifted the lid and looked at the alethiometer closely before lifting it out of its nest of maroon velvet and setting it on the white tablecloth. It was deeper than the Bodleian instrument, but the golden case was equally worn with handling, and glowed in the lamplight with as much intensity and fire. The thirty-six symbols arranged in their places around the dial were more simply painted, and only in black on white enamel and not in brilliant colors on ivory, as the Bodleian’s were; but they looked less like decoration and more like essential qualities. Behind the hands and the needle, an engraving of the sun in splendor occupied the center of the dial.

  Hannah felt her hands moving towards it, as if to the face of a lover. The Bodleian alethiometer was beautiful and ornate, and what she felt about it was great respect and even awe. This one was workmanlike, but it suited her in some inexpressible way. It welcomed her hands as if they were the very ones that had worn down the golden case over centuries and smoothed away the knurling of the wheels. As soon as she felt it, she wanted to be alone with it; she wanted to spend hours and days in its company; she wanted it never to be more than an arm’s length away.

  She let her mind slip into the state of relaxed attention in which she could feel the first ten or twelve layers of meaning below each symbol, and turned one of the hands to the baby, one of whose functions was to stand for the person making the inquiry. The second she turned to the beehive—in this case standing for productive work. The third she set to the apple, locking its meaning in her mind onto the level that stood for a general inquiry of any sort. With the books she could have asked her question more precisely, but this would have to do: Should she accept this challenge or not?

  Immediately the needle began to swing round and round, and Hannah counted six revolutions before it settled firmly on the marionette. The sixth level of the marionette range, in a simple reading like this, stood for affirmation: yes, she should.

  She looked up, breathed deeply, and blinked as she came out of her slight trance. They were all watching her.

  “Yes, I’ll do it,” she said.

  There was no mistaking the relief and pleasure that came into their expressions. Even Papadimitriou smiled like a young boy given a present. What Hannah didn’t tell them was that her hands on the instrument felt instantly at home and at work in a way that they never had with the Oxford alethiometer.

  And almost in the same moment she saw the problem.

  “But…,” she said.

  “Yes?” said Papadimitriou.

  “I can do what I do with the Bodleian alethiometer only because the library has all the books that deal with the deeper layers of the symbol ranges. From memory I can work about a dozen layers deep, but not much more than that. If I’m goi
ng to leave the group, I won’t be able to use the books without making it obvious that I have access to another alethiometer. And without the books, I won’t be any use to you.”

  The others looked at Papadimitriou. From somewhere the smell of coffee was drifting.

  Papadimitriou said, “On the face of it, that does present a problem. But books are easier to duplicate than alethiometers. I shall make it my business to find as many as you need.”

  “If it becomes known that you’re in the market for such books,” said Al-Kaisy, “people will put two and two together. A missing alethiometer here, a scholar keenly seeking to acquire certain books there…”

  “It won’t be this there,” said Papadimitriou. “It’ll be several different theres. Don’t worry about it.”

  “We can put out some green paper,” said Nugent, accepting a cup of coffee from Yasmin Al-Kaisy.

  “Green paper?” said Hannah.

  “False rumors. In the early days of Oakley Street, plans for that sort of thing were often sketched out on green paper. We still use the term. We can suggest that we’ve found the one missing instrument. Or that we’ve succeeded in making another, or several more. Green paper is sometimes very useful.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Hannah. “Can I be practical again?”

  “Please do.”

  “I shall need an income. If I go back to teaching, which of course I could do, it would give me little time to work for Oakley Street.”

  “Leave that to me,” said Lord Nugent. “An uncle you didn’t know very well…a legacy—something like that. We haven’t got much money, but we can certainly keep you from starvation.”

  “I hope you can,” said Hannah.

  She realized that her hands had not left the alethiometer since she’d first touched it. Self-consciously, she took them away and sipped her coffee.

  “Practical arrangements,” said Yasmin Al-Kaisy. “More practical arrangements. Have you got a safe at your house?”

  “No,” Hannah said, and couldn’t keep a slight laugh from her voice. “I’ve got nothing valuable.”