She followed Sister Clara to the canteen, where a dozen round white tables were covered in crumbs and the sticky rings where drinks had been carelessly put down. Dirty plates and cutlery were stacked on a steel trolley. There were no windows, so to give an illusion of light and space one wall was covered in a huge photogram showing a tropical beach, with bright blue sky and white sand and coconut palms.
The man who had brought her in was collecting a tray from a serving hatch.
“Eat up,” he said.
There was no need to starve, so she ate the stew and mashed potatoes with relish. There was a bowl of tinned peaches and ice cream to follow. As she ate, the man and the nurse talked quietly at another table, and when she had finished, the nurse brought her a glass of warm milk and took the tray away.
The man came to sit down opposite. His dæmon, the marmot, was not blank and incurious as the nurse’s dog had been, but sat politely on his shoulder watching and listening.
“Now, Lizzie,” he said. “Have you eaten enough?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I’d like you to tell me where you come from. Can you do that?”
“London,” she said.
“And what are you doing so far north?”
“With my father,” she mumbled. She kept her eyes down, avoiding the gaze of the marmot, and trying to look as if she was on the verge of tears.
“With your father? I see. And what’s he doing in this part of the world?”
“Trading. We come with a load of New Danish smokeleaf and we was buying furs.”
“And was your father by himself?”
“No. There was my uncles and all, and some other men,” she said vaguely, not knowing what the Samoyed hunter had told him.
“Why did he bring you on a journey like this, Lizzie?”
“ ’Cause two years ago he brung my brother and he says he’ll bring me next, only he never. So I kept asking him, and then he did.”
“And how old are you?”
“Eleven.”
“Good, good. Well, Lizzie, you’re a lucky little girl. Those huntsmen who found you brought you to the best place you could be.”
“They never found me,” she said doubtfully. “There was a fight. There was lots of ’em and they had arrows.…”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I think you must have wandered away from your father’s party and got lost. Those huntsmen found you on your own and brought you straight here. That’s what happened, Lizzie.”
“I saw a fight,” she said. “They was shooting arrows and that.… I want my dad,” she said more loudly, and felt herself beginning to cry.
“Well, you’re quite safe here until he comes,” said the doctor.
“But I saw them shooting arrows!”
“Ah, you thought you did. That often happens in the intense cold, Lizzie. You fall asleep and have bad dreams and you can’t remember what’s true and what isn’t. That wasn’t a fight, don’t worry. Your father is safe and sound and he’ll be looking for you now and soon he’ll come here because this is the only place for hundreds of miles, you know, and what a surprise he’ll have to find you safe and sound! Now Sister Clara will take you along to the dormitory where you’ll meet some other little girls and boys who got lost in the wilderness just like you. Off you go. We’ll have another little talk in the morning.”
Lyra stood up, clutching her doll, and Pantalaimon hopped onto her shoulder as the nurse opened the door to lead them out.
More corridors, and Lyra was tired by now, so sleepy she kept yawning and could hardly lift her feet in the woolly slippers they’d given her. Pantalaimon was drooping, and he had to change to a mouse and settle inside her dressinggown pocket. Lyra had the impression of a row of beds, children’s faces, a pillow, and then she was asleep.
Someone was shaking her. The first thing she did was to feel at her waist, and both tins were still there, still safe; so she tried to open her eyes, but oh, it was hard; she had never felt so sleepy.
“Wake up! Wake up!”
It was a whisper in more than one voice. With a huge effort, as if she were pushing a boulder up a slope, Lyra forced herself to wake up.
In the dim light from a very low-powered anbaric bulb over the doorway she saw three other girls clustered around her. It wasn’t easy to see, because her eyes were slow to focus, but they seemed about her own age, and they were speaking English.
“She’s awake.”
“They gave her sleeping pills. Must’ve …”
“What’s your name?”
“Lizzie,” Lyra mumbled.
“Is there a load more new kids coming?” demanded one of the girls.
“Dunno. Just me.”
“Where’d they get you then?”
Lyra struggled to sit up. She didn’t remember taking a sleeping pill, but there might well have been something in the drink she’d had. Her head felt full of eiderdown, and there was a faint pain throbbing behind her eyes.
“Where is this place?”
“Middle of nowhere. They don’t tell us.”
“They usually bring more’n one kid at a time.…”
“What do they do?” Lyra managed to ask, gathering her doped wits as Pantalaimon stirred into wakefulness with her.
“We dunno,” said the girl who was doing most of the talking. She was a tall, red-haired girl with quick twitchy movements and a strong London accent. “They sort of measure us and do these tests and that—”
“They measure Dust,” said another girl, friendly and plump and dark-haired.
“You don’t know,” said the first girl.
“They do,” said the third, a subdued-looking child cuddling her rabbit dæmon. “I heard ’em talking.”
“Then they take us away one by one and that’s all we know. No one comes back,” said the redhead.
“There’s this boy, right,” said the plump girl, “he reckons—”
“Don’t tell her that!” said the redhead. “Not yet.”
“Is there boys here as well?” said Lyra.
“Yeah. There’s lots of us. There’s about thirty, I reckon.”
“More’n that,” said the plump girl. “More like forty.”
“Except they keep taking us away,” said the redhead. “They usually start off with bringing a whole bunch here, and then there’s a lot of us, and one by one they all disappear.”
“They’re Gobblers,” said the plump girl. “You know Gobblers. We was all scared of ’em till we was caught.…”
Lyra was gradually coming more and more awake. The other girls’ dæmons, apart from the rabbit, were close by listening at the door, and no one spoke above a whisper. Lyra asked their names. The red-haired girl was Annie, the dark plump one Bella, the thin one Martha. They didn’t know the names of the boys, because the two sexes were kept apart for most of the time. They weren’t treated badly.
“It’s all right here,” said Bella. “There’s not much to do, except they give us tests and make us do exercises and then they measure us and take our temperature and stuff. It’s just boring really.”
“Except when Mrs. Coulter comes,” said Annie.
Lyra had to stop herself crying out, and Pantalaimon fluttered his wings so sharply that the other girls noticed.
“He’s nervous,” said Lyra, soothing him. “They must’ve gave us some sleeping pills, like you said, ’cause we’re all dozy. Who’s Mrs. Coulter?”
“She’s the one who trapped us, most of us, anyway,” said Martha. “They all talk about her, the other kids. When she comes, you know there’s going to be kids disappearing.”
“She likes watching the kids, when they take us away, she likes seeing what they do to us. This boy Simon, he reckons they kill us, and Mrs. Coulter watches.”
“They kill us?” said Lyra, shuddering.
“Must do. ’Cause no one comes back.”
“They’re always going on about dæmons too,” said Bella. “Weighing them and measuring them and all …”
“T
hey touch your dæmons?”
“No! God! They put scales there and your dæmon has to get on them and change, and they make notes and take pictures. And they put you in this cabinet and measure Dust, all the time, they never stop measuring Dust.”
“What dust?” said Lyra.
“We dunno,” said Annie. “Just something from space. Not real dust. If you en’t got any Dust, that’s good. But everyone gets Dust in the end.”
“You know what I heard Simon say?” said Bella. “He said that the Tartars make holes in their skulls to let the Dust in.”
“Yeah, he’d know,” said Annie scornfully. “I think I’ll ask Mrs. Coulter when she comes.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” said Martha admiringly.
“I would.”
“When’s she coming?” said Lyra.
“The day after tomorrow,” said Annie.
A cold drench of terror went down Lyra’s spine, and Pantalaimon crept very close. She had one day in which to find Roger and discover whatever she could about this place, and either escape or be rescued; and if all the gyptians had been killed, who would help the children stay alive in the icy wilderness?
The other girls went on talking, but Lyra and Pantalaimon nestled down deep in the bed and tried to get warm, knowing that for hundreds of miles all around her little bed there was nothing but fear.
15
THE DÆMON CAGES
It wasn’t Lyra’s way to brood; she was a sanguine and practical child, and besides, she wasn’t imaginative. No one with much imagination would have thought seriously that it was possible to come all this way and rescue her friend Roger; or, having thought it, an imaginative child would immediately have come up with several ways in which it was impossible. Being a practiced liar doesn’t mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it’s that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.
So now that she was in the hands of the Oblation Board, Lyra didn’t fret herself into terror about what had happened to the gyptians. They were all good fighters, and even though Pantalaimon said he’d seen John Faa shot, he might have been mistaken; or if he wasn’t mistaken, John Faa might not have been seriously hurt. It had been bad luck that she’d fallen into the hands of the Samoyeds, but the gyptians would be along soon to rescue her, and if they couldn’t manage it, nothing would stop Iorek Byrnison from getting her out; and then they’d fly to Svalbard in Lee Scoresby’s balloon and rescue Lord Asriel.
In her mind, it was as easy as that.
So next morning, when she awoke in the dormitory, she was curious and ready to deal with whatever the day would bring. And eager to see Roger—in particular, eager to see him before he saw her.
She didn’t have long to wait. The children in their different dormitories were woken at half-past seven by the nurses who looked after them. They washed and dressed and went with the others to the canteen for breakfast.
And there was Roger.
He was sitting with five other boys at a table just inside the door. The line for the hatch went right past them, and she was able to pretend to drop a handkerchief and crouch to pick it up, bending low next to his chair, so that Pantalaimon could speak to Roger’s dæmon Salcilia.
She was a chaffinch, and she fluttered so wildly that Pantalaimon had to be a cat and leap at her, pinning her down to whisper. Such brisk fights or scuffles between children’s dæmons were common, luckily, and no one took much notice, but Roger went pale at once. Lyra had never seen anyone so white. He looked up at the blank haughty stare she gave him, and the color flooded back into his cheeks as he brimmed over with hope, excitement, and joy; and only Pantalaimon, shaking Salcilia firmly, was able to keep Roger from shouting out and leaping up to greet his best friend, his comrade in arms, his Lyra.
But he saw how she looked away disdainfully, and he followed her example faithfully, as he’d done in a hundred Oxford battles and campaigns. No one must know, of course, because they were both in deadly danger. She rolled her eyes at her new friends, and they collected their trays of cornflakes and toast and sat together, an instant gang, excluding everyone else in order to gossip about them.
You can’t keep a large group of children in one place for long without giving them plenty to do, and in some ways Bolvangar was run like a school, with timetabled activities such as gymnastics and “art.” Boys and girls were kept separate except for breaks and mealtimes, so it wasn’t until midmorning, after an hour and a half of sewing directed by one of the nurses, that Lyra had the chance to talk to Roger. But it had to look natural; that was the difficulty. All the children there were more or less at the same age, and it was the age when most boys talk to boys and girls to girls, each making a conspicuous point of ignoring the opposite sex.
She found her chance in the canteen again, when the children came in for a drink and a biscuit. Lyra sent Pantalaimon, as a fly, to talk to Salcilia on the wall next to their table while she and Roger kept quietly in their separate groups. It was difficult to talk while your dæmon’s attention was somewhere else, so Lyra pretended to look glum and rebellious as she sipped her milk with the other girls. Half her thoughts were with the tiny buzz of talk between the dæmons, and she wasn’t really listening, but at one point she heard another girl with bright blond hair say a name that made her sit up.
It was the name of Tony Makarios. As Lyra’s attention snapped toward that, Pantalaimon had to slow down his whispered conversation with Roger’s dæmon, and both children listened to what the girl was saying.
“No, I know why they took him,” she said, as heads clustered close nearby. “It was because his dæmon didn’t change. They thought he was older than he looked, or summing, and he weren’t really a young kid. But really his dæmon never changed very often because Tony hisself never thought much about anything. I seen her change. She was called Ratter …”
“Why are they so interested in dæmons?” said Lyra.
“No one knows,” said the blond girl.
“I know,” said one boy who’d been listening. “What they do is kill your dæmon and then see if you die.”
“Well, how come they do it over and over with different kids?” said someone. “They’d only need to do it once, wouldn’t they?”
“I know what they do,” said the first girl.
She had everyone’s attention now. But because they didn’t want to let the staff know what they were talking about, they had to adopt a strange, half-careless, indifferent manner, while listening with passionate curiosity.
“How?” said someone.
“ ’Cause I was with him when they came for him. We was in the linen room,” she said.
She was blushing hotly. If she was expecting jeers and teasing, they didn’t come. All the children were subdued, and no one even smiled.
The girl went on: “We was keeping quiet and then the nurse came in, the one with the soft voice. And she says, Come on, Tony, I know you’re there, come on, we won’t hurt you.… And he says, What’s going to happen? And she says, We just put you to sleep, and then we do a little operation, and then you wake up safe and sound. But Tony didn’t believe her. He says—”
“The holes!” said someone. “They make a hole in your head like the Tartars! I bet!”
“Shut up! What else did the nurse say?” someone else put in. By this time, a dozen or more children were clustered around her table, their dæmons as desperate to know as they were, all wide-eyed and tense.
The blond girl went on: “Tony wanted to know what they was gonna do with Ratter, see. And the nurse says, Well, she’s going to sleep too, just like when you do. And Tony says, You’re gonna kill her, en’t yer? I know you are. We all know that’s what happens. And the nurse says, No, of course not. It’s just a little operation. Just a little cut. It won’t even hurt, but we put you to sleep to make sure.”
All the room had gone quiet now. The nurse who’d been supervising had left for a moment, and the hatch to the kitchen was shut so no on
e could hear from there.
“What sort of cut?” said a boy, his voice quiet and frightened. “Did she say what sort of cut?”
“She just said, It’s something to make you more grown up. She said everyone had to have it, that’s why grownups’ dæmons don’t change like ours do. So they have a cut to make them one shape forever, and that’s how you get grown up.”
“But—”
“Does that mean—”
“What, all grownups’ve had this cut?”
“What about—”
Suddenly all the voices stopped as if they themselves had been cut, and all eyes turned to the door. Sister Clara stood there, bland and mild and matter-of-fact, and beside her was a man in a white coat whom Lyra hadn’t seen before.
“Bridget McGinn,” he said.
The blond girl stood up trembling. Her squirrel dæmon clutched her breast.
“Yes, sir?” she said, her voice hardly audible.
“Finish your drink and come with Sister Clara,” he said. “The rest of you run along and go to your classes.”
Obediently the children stacked their mugs on the stainless-steel trolley before leaving in silence. No one looked at Bridget McGinn except Lyra, and she saw the blond girl’s face vivid with fear.
The rest of that morning was spent in exercise. There was a small gymnasium at the station, because it was hard to exercise outside during the long polar night, and each group of children took turns to play in there, under the supervision of a nurse. They had to form teams and throw balls around, and at first Lyra, who had never in her life played at anything like this, was at a loss what to do. But she was quick and athletic, and a natural leader, and soon found herself enjoying it. The shouts of the children, the shrieks and hoots of the dæmons, filled the little gymnasium and soon banished fearful thoughts; which of course was exactly what the exercise was intended to do.
At lunchtime, when the children were lining up once again in the canteen, Lyra felt Pantalaimon give a chirrup of recognition, and turned to find Billy Costa standing just behind her.
“Roger told me you was here,” he muttered.
“Your brother’s coming, and John Faa and a whole band of gyptians,” she said. “They’re going to take you home.”
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