At that point Atal came along to see what she was doing.
Can you see sraf now? she said.
No, but I can see other things, Mary said, and tried to show her.
Atal was interested, but politely, not with the sense of discovery that was animating Mary, and presently the zalif tired of looking through the small pieces of lacquer and settled down on the grass to maintain her wheels and claws. Sometimes the mulefa would groom each other’s claws, out of pure sociability, and once or twice Atal had invited Mary to attend to hers. Mary, in turn, let Atal tidy her hair, enjoying how the soft trunk lifted it and let it fall, stroking and massaging her scalp.
She sensed that Atal wanted this now, so she put down the two pieces of lacquer and ran her hands over the astonishing smoothness of Atal’s claws, that surface smoother and slicker than Teflon that rested on the lower rim of the central hole and served as a bearing when the wheel turned. The contours matched exactly, of course, and as Mary ran her hands around the inside of the wheel, she could feel no difference in texture: it was as if the mulefa and the seedpod really were one creature, which by a miracle could disassemble itself and put itself together again.
Atal was soothed, and so was Mary, by this contact. Her friend was young and unmarried, and there were no young males in this group, so she would have to marry a zalif from outside; but contact wasn’t easy, and sometimes Mary thought that Atal was anxious about her future. So she didn’t begrudge the time she spent with her, and now she was happy to clean the wheel holes of all the dust and grime that accumulated there, and smooth the fragrant oil gently over her friend’s claws while Atal’s trunk lifted and straightened her hair.
When Atal had had enough, she set herself on the wheels again and moved away to help with the evening meal. Mary turned back to her lacquer, and almost at once she made her discovery.
She held the two plates a hand span apart so that they showed that clear, bright image she’d seen before, but something had happened.
As she looked through, she saw a swarm of golden sparkles surrounding the form of Atal. They were only visible through one small part of the lacquer, and then Mary realized why: at that point she had touched the surface of it with her oily fingers.
Atal! she called. Quick! Come back!
Atal turned and wheeled back.
Let me take a little oil, Mary said, just enough to put on the lacquer.
Atal willingly let her run her fingers around the wheel holes again, and watched curiously as Mary coated one of the pieces with a film of the clear, sweet substance.
Then she pressed the plates together and moved them around to spread the oil evenly, and held them a hand span apart once more.
And when she looked through, everything was changed. She could see Shadows. If she’d been in the Jordan College Retiring Room when Lord Asriel had projected the photograms he’d made with the special emulsion, she would have recognized the effect. Everywhere she looked she could see gold, just as Atal had described it: sparkles of light, floating and drifting and sometimes moving in a current of purpose. Among it all was the world she could see with the naked eye, the grass, the river, the trees; but wherever she saw a conscious being, one of the mulefa, the light was thicker and more full of movement. It didn’t obscure their shapes in any way; if anything it made them clearer.
I didn’t know it was beautiful, Mary said to Atal.
Why, of course it is, her friend replied. It is strange to think that you couldn’t see it. Look at the little one …
She indicated one of the small children playing in the long grass, leaping clumsily after grasshoppers, suddenly stopping to examine a leaf, falling over, scrambling up again to rush and tell his mother something, being distracted again by a piece of stick, trying to pick it up, finding ants on his trunk and hooting with agitation. There was a golden haze around him, as there was around the shelters, the fishing nets, the evening fire: stronger than theirs, though not by much. But unlike theirs it was full of little swirling currents of intention that eddied and broke off and drifted about, to disappear as new ones were born.
Around his mother, on the other hand, the golden sparkles were much stronger, and the currents they moved in were more settled and powerful. She was preparing food, spreading flour on a flat stone, making the thin bread like chapatis or tortillas, watching her child at the same time; and the Shadows, or the sraf, or the Dust, that bathed her looked like the very image of responsibility and wise care.
So at last you can see, said Atal. Well, now you must come with me.
Mary looked at her friend in puzzlement. Atal’s tone was strange: it was as if she were saying, Finally you’re ready; we’ve been waiting; now things must change.
And others were appearing, from over the brow of the hill, from out of their shelters, from along the river: members of the group, but strangers, too, mulefa who were new to her, and who looked curiously toward where she was standing. The sound of their wheels on the hard-packed earth was low and steady.
Where must I go? Mary said. Why are they all coming here?
Don’t worry, said Atal, come with me, we shall not hurt you.
It seemed to have been long planned, this meeting, for they all knew where to go and what to expect. There was a low mound at the edge of the village that was regular in shape and packed with hard earth, with ramps at each end, and the crowd—fifty or so at least, Mary estimated—was moving toward it. The smoke of the cooking fires hung in the evening air, and the setting sun spread its own kind of hazy gold over everything. Mary was aware of the smell of roasting corn, and the warm smell of the mulefa themselves—part oil, part warm flesh, a sweet horselike smell.
Atal urged her toward the mound.
Mary said, What is happening? Tell me!
No, no … Not me. Sattamax will speak …
Mary didn’t know the name Sattamax, and the zalif whom Atal indicated was a stranger to her. He was older than anyone she’d seen so far: at the base of his trunk was a scatter of white hairs, and he moved stiffly, as if he had arthritis. The others all moved with care around him, and when Mary stole a glance through the lacquer glass, she saw why: the old zalif’s Shadow cloud was so rich and complex that Mary herself felt respect, even though she knew so little of what it meant.
When Sattamax was ready to speak, the rest of the crowd fell silent. Mary stood close to the mound, with Atal nearby for reassurance; but she sensed all their eyes on her and felt as if she were a new girl at school.
Sattamax began to speak. His voice was deep, the tones rich and varied, the gestures of his trunk low and graceful.
We have all come together to greet the stranger Mary. Those of us who know her have reason to be grateful for her activities since she arrived among us. We have waited until she had some command of our language. With the help of many of us, but especially the zalif Atal, the stranger Mary can now understand us.
But there was another thing she had to understand, and that was sraf. She knew about it, but she could not see it as we can, until she made an instrument to look through.
And now she has succeeded, she is ready to learn more about what she must do to help us.
Mary, come here and join me.
She felt dizzy, self-conscious, bemused, but she did as she had to and stepped up beside the old zalif. She thought she had better speak, so she began:
You have all made me feel I am a friend. You are kind and hospitable. I came from a world where life is very different, but some of us are aware of sraf, as you are, and I’m grateful for your help in making this glass, through which I can see it. If there is any way in which I can help you, I will be glad to do it.
She spoke more awkwardly than she did with Atal, and she was afraid she hadn’t made her meaning clear. It was hard to know where to face when you had to gesture as well as speak, but they seemed to understand.
Sattamax said, It is good to hear you speak. We hope you will be able to help us. If not, I cannot see how we will survive. The tualapi will k
ill us all. There are more of them than there ever were, and their numbers are increasing every year. Something has gone wrong with the world. For most of the thirty-three thousand years that there have been mulefa, we have taken care of the earth. Everything balanced. The trees prospered, the grazers were healthy, and even if once in a while the tualapi came, our numbers and theirs remained constant.
But three hundred years ago the trees began to sicken. We watched them anxiously and tended them with care and still we found them producing fewer seedpods, and dropping their leaves out of season, and some of them died outright, which had never been known. All our memory could not find a cause for this.
To be sure, the process was slow, but so is the rhythm of our lives. We did not know that until you came. We have seen butterflies and birds, but they have no sraf. You do, strange as you seem; but you are swift and immediate, like birds, like butterflies. You realize there is a need for something to help you see sraf and instantly, out of the materials we have known for thousands of years, you put together an instrument to do so. Beside us, you think and act with the speed of a bird. That is how it seems, which is how we know that our rhythm seems slow to you.
But that fact is our hope. You can see things that we cannot, you can see connections and possibilities and alternatives that are invisible to us, just as sraf was invisible to you. And while we cannot see a way to survive, we hope that you may. We hope that you will go swiftly to the cause of the trees’ sickness and find a cure; we hope you will invent a means of dealing with the tualapi, who are so numerous and so powerful.
And we hope you can do so soon, or we shall all die.
There was a murmur of agreement and approval from the crowd. They were all looking at Mary, and she felt more than ever like the new pupil at a school where they had high expectations of her. She also felt a strange flattery: the idea of herself as swift and darting and birdlike was new and pleasant, because she had always thought of herself as dogged and plodding. But along with that came the feeling that they’d got it terribly wrong, if they saw her like that; they didn’t understand at all; she couldn’t possibly fulfill this desperate hope of theirs.
But equally, she must. They were waiting.
Sattamax, she said, mulefa, you put your trust in me and I shall do my best. You have been kind and your life is good and beautiful and I will try very hard to help you, and now I have seen sraf, I know what it is that I am doing. Thank you for trusting me.
They nodded and murmured and stroked her with their trunks as she stepped down. She was daunted by what she had agreed to do.
At that very moment in the world of Cittàgazze, the assassin-priest Father Gomez was making his way up a rough track in the mountains between the twisted trunks of olive trees. The evening light slanted through the silvery leaves and the air was full of the noise of crickets and cicadas.
Ahead of him he could see a little farmhouse sheltered among vines, where a goat bleated and a spring trickled down through the gray rocks. There was an old man attending to some task beside the house, and an old woman leading the goat toward a stool and a bucket.
In the village some way behind, they had told him that the woman he was following had passed this way, and that she’d talked of going up into the mountains; perhaps this old couple had seen her. At least there might be cheese and olives to buy, and springwater to drink. Father Gomez was quite used to living frugally, and there was plenty of time.
18
O that it were possible we might
But hold some two days conference with the dead …
• JOHN WEBSTER •
THE SUBURBS Of THE DEAD
Lyra was awake before dawn, with Pantalaimon shivering at her breast, and she got up to walk about and warm herself up as the gray light seeped into the sky. She had never known such silence, not even in the snow-blanketed Arctic; there was not a stir of wind, and the sea was so still that not the tiniest ripple broke on the sand; the world seemed suspended between breathing in and breathing out.
Will lay curled up fast asleep, with his head on the rucksack to protect the knife. The cloak had fallen off his shoulder, and she tucked it around him, pretending that she was taking care to avoid his dæmon, and that she had the form of a cat, curled up just as he was. She must be here somewhere, Lyra thought.
Carrying the still sleepy Pantalaimon, she walked away from Will and sat down on the slope of a sand dune a little way off, so their voices wouldn’t wake him.
“Those little people,” Pantalaimon said.
“I don’t like ’em,” said Lyra decisively. “I think we should get away from ’em as soon as we can. I reckon if we trap ’em in a net or something, Will can cut through and close up and that’s it, we’ll be free.”
“We haven’t got a net,” he said, “or something. Anyway, I bet they’re cleverer than that. He’s watching us now.”
Pantalaimon was a hawk as he said that, and his eyes were keener than hers. The darkness of the sky was turning minute by minute into the palest ethereal blue, and as she looked across the sand, the first edge of the sun just cleared the rim of the sea, dazzling her. Because she was on the slope of the dune, the light reached her a few seconds before it touched the beach, and she watched it flow around her and along toward Will; and then she saw the hand-high figure of the Chevalier Tialys, standing by Will’s head, clear and wide awake and watching them.
“The thing is,” said Lyra, “they can’t make us do what they want. They got to follow us. I bet they’re fed up.”
“If they got hold of us,” said Pantalaimon, meaning him and Lyra, “and got their stings ready to stick in us, Will’d have to do what they said.”
Lyra thought about it. She remembered vividly the horrible scream of pain from Mrs. Coulter, the eye-rolling convulsions, the ghastly, lolling drool of the golden monkey as the poison entered her bloodstream … And that was only a scratch, as her mother had recently been reminded elsewhere. Will would have to give in and do what they wanted.
“Suppose they thought he wouldn’t, though,” she said, “suppose they thought he was so coldhearted he’d just watch us die. Maybe he better make ’em think that, if he can.”
She had brought the alethiometer with her, and now that it was light enough to see, she took the beloved instrument out and laid it on its black velvet cloth in her lap. Little by little, Lyra drifted into that trance in which the many layers of meaning were clear to her, and where she could sense intricate webs of connectedness between them all. As her fingers found the symbols, her mind found the words: How can we get rid of the spies?
Then the needle began to dart this way and that, almost too fast to see, and some part of Lyra’s awareness counted the swings and the stops and saw at once the meaning of what the movement said.
It told her: Do not try, because your lives depend on them.
That was a surprise, and not a happy one. But she went on and asked: How can we get to the land of the dead?
The answer came: Go down. Follow the knife. Go onward. Follow the knife.
And finally she asked hesitantly, half-ashamed: Is this the right thing to do?
Yes, said the alethiometer instantly. Yes.
She sighed, coming out of her trance, and tucked the hair behind her ears, feeling the first warmth of the sun on her face and shoulders. There were sounds in the world now, too: insects were stirring, and a very slight breeze was rustling the dry grass stems growing higher up the dune.
She put the alethiometer away and wandered back to Will, with Pantalaimon as large as he could make himself and lion-shaped, in the hope of daunting the Gallivespians.
The man was using his lodestone apparatus, and when he’d finished, Lyra said:
“You been talking to Lord Asriel?”
“To his representative,” said Tialys.
“We en’t going.”
“That’s what I told him.”
“What did he say?”
“That was for my ears, not yours.”
/>
“Suit yourself,” she said. “Are you married to that lady?”
“No. We are colleagues.”
“Have you got any children?”
“No.”
Tialys continued to pack the lodestone resonator away, and as he did so, the Lady Salmakia woke up nearby, sitting up graceful and slow from the little hollow she’d made in the soft sand. The dragonflies were still asleep, tethered with cobweb-thin cord, their wings damp with dew.
“Are there big people on your world, or are they all small like you?” Lyra said.
“We know how to deal with big people,” Tialys replied, not very helpfully, and went to talk quietly to the Lady. They spoke too softly for Lyra to hear, but she enjoyed watching them sip dewdrops from the marram grass to refresh themselves. Water must be different for them, she thought to Pantalaimon: imagine drops the size of your fist! They’d be hard to get into; they’d have a sort of elastic rind, like a balloon.
By this time Will was waking, too, wearily. The first thing he did was to look for the Gallivespians, who looked back at once, fully focused on him.
He looked away and found Lyra.
“I want to tell you something,” she said. “Come over here, away from—”
“If you go away from us,” said Tialys’s clear voice, “you must leave the knife. If you won’t leave the knife, you must talk to each other here.”
“Can’t we be private?” Lyra said indignantly. “We don’t want you listening to what we say!”
“Then go away, but leave the knife.”
There was no one else nearby, after all, and certainly the Gallivespians wouldn’t be able to use it. Will rummaged in the rucksack for the water bottle and a couple of biscuits, and handing one to Lyra, he went with her up the slope of the dune.
“I asked the alethiometer,” she told him, “and it said we shouldn’t try and escape from the little people, because they were going to save our lives. So maybe we’re stuck with ’em.”
“Have you told them what we’re going to do?”
“No! And I won’t, either. ’Cause they’ll only tell Lord Asriel on that speaking-fiddle and he’d go there and stop us—so we got to just go, and not talk about it in front of them.”
His Dark Materials Omnibus Page 88