His Dark Materials Omnibus (29 page)

“They’ll take us to the Gobblers,” she whispered.

The word
severed
came to their mind. Horrible fear filled Lyra’s body, and Pantalaimon nestled close against her.

“I’ll fight,” he said.

“So will I. I’ll
kill
them.”

“So will Iorek when he finds out. He’ll crush them to death.”

“How far are we from Bolvangar?”

Pantalaimon didn’t know, but he thought it was less than a day’s ride.

After they had been driving along for such a time that Lyra’s body was in torment from cramp, the pace slackened a little, and someone roughly pulled off the hood.

She looked up at a broad Asiatic face, under a wolverine hood, lit by flickering lamplight. His black eyes showed a glint of satisfaction, especially when Pantalaimon slid out of Lyra’s anorak to bare his white ermine teeth in a hiss. The man’s dæmon, a big heavy wolverine, snarled back, but Pantalaimon didn’t flinch.

The man hauled Lyra up to a sitting position and propped her against the side of the sledge. She kept falling sideways because her hands were still tied behind her, and so he tied her feet together instead and released her hands.

Through the snow that was falling and the thick fog she saw how powerful this man was, and the sledge driver too, how balanced in the sledge, how much at home in this land in a way the gyptians weren’t.

The man spoke, but of course she understood nothing. He tried a different language with the same result. Then he tried English.

“You name?”

Pantalaimon bristled warningly, and she knew what he meant at once.
So these men didn’t know who she was! They hadn’t kidnapped her because of her connection with Mrs. Coulter; so perhaps they weren’t in the pay of the Gobblers after all.

“Lizzie Brooks,” she said.

“Lissie Broogs,” he said after her. “We take you nice place. Nice peoples.”

“Who are you?”

“Samoyed peoples. Hunters.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Nice place. Nice peoples. You have
panserbjørne?”

“For protection.”

“No good! Ha, ha, bear no good! We got you anyway!” He laughed loudly. Lyra controlled herself and said nothing.

“Who those peoples?” the man asked next, pointing back the way they had come.

“Traders.”

“Traders … What they trade?”

“Fur, spirits,” she said. “Smokeleaf.”

“They sell smokeleaf, buy furs?”

“Yes.”

He said something to his companion, who spoke back briefly. All the time the sledge was speeding onward, and Lyra pulled herself up more comfortably to try and see where they were heading; but the snow was falling thickly, and the sky was dark, and presently she became too cold to peer out any longer, and lay down. She and Pantalaimon could feel each other’s thoughts, and tried to keep calm, but the thought of John Faa dead … And what had happened to Farder Coram? And would Iorek manage to kill the other Samoyeds? And would they ever manage to track her down?

For the first time, she began to feel a little sorry for herself.

After a long time, the man shook her by the shoulder and handed her a strip of dried reindeer meat to chew. It was rank and tough, but she was hungry, and there was nourishment in it. After chewing it, she felt a little better. She slipped her hand slowly into her furs till she was sure the alethiometer was still there, and then carefully withdrew the spy-fly tin and slipped it down into her fur boot. Pantalaimon crept in as a mouse and pushed it as far down as he could, tucking it under the bottom of her reindeer-skin legging.

When that was done, she closed her eyes. Fear had made her exhausted, and soon she slipped uneasily into sleep.

She woke up when the motion of the sledge changed. It was suddenly
smoother, and when she opened her eyes there were passing lights dazzling above her, so bright she had to pull the hood further over her head before peering out again. She was horribly stiff and cold, but she managed to pull herself upright enough to see that the sledge was driving swiftly between a row of high poles, each carrying a glaring anbaric light. As she got her bearings, they passed through an open metal gate at the end of the avenue of lights and into a wide open space like an empty marketplace or an arena for some game or sport. It was perfectly flat and smooth and white, and about a hundred yards across. Around the edge ran a high metal fence.

At the far end of this arena the sledge halted. They were outside a low building, or a range of low buildings, over which the snow lay deeply. It was hard to tell, but she had the impression that tunnels connected one part of the buildings with another, tunnels humped under the snow. At one side a stout metal mast had a familiar look, though she couldn’t say what it reminded her of.

Before she could take much more in, the man in the sledge cut through the cord around her ankles, and hauled her out roughly while the driver shouted at the dogs to make them still. A door opened in the building a few yards away, and an anbaric light came on overhead, swiveling to find them, like a searchlight.

Lyra’s captor thrust her forward like a trophy, without letting go, and said something. The figure in the padded coal-silk anorak answered in the same language, and Lyra saw his features: he was not a Samoyed or a Tartar. He could have been a Jordan Scholar. He looked at her, and particularly at Pantalaimon.

The Samoyed spoke again, and the man from Bolvangar said to Lyra, “You speak English?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Does your dæmon always take that form?”

Of all the unexpected questions! Lyra could only gape. But Pantalaimon answered it in his own fashion by becoming a falcon, and launching himself from her shoulder at the man’s dæmon, a large marmot, which struck up at Pantalaimon with a swift movement and spat as he circled past on swift wings.

“I see,” said the man in a tone of satisfaction, as Pantalaimon returned to Lyra’s shoulder.

The Samoyed men were looking expectant, and the man from Bolvangar nodded and took off a mitten to reach into a pocket. He took out a drawstring purse and counted out a dozen heavy coins into the hunter’s hand.

The two men checked the money, and then stowed it carefully, each man
taking half. Without a backward glance they got in the sledge, and the driver cracked the whip and shouted to the dogs; and they sped away across the wide white arena and into the avenue of lights, gathering speed until they vanished into the dark beyond.

The man was opening the door again.

“Come in quickly,” he said. “It’s warm and comfortable. Don’t stand out in the cold. What is your name?”

His voice was an English one, without any accent Lyra could name. He sounded like the sort of people she had met at Mrs. Coulter’s: smart and educated and important.

“Lizzie Brooks,” she said.

“Come in, Lizzie. We’ll look after you here, don’t worry.”

He was colder than she was, even though she’d been outside for far longer; he was impatient to be in the warm again. She decided to play slow and dim-witted and reluctant, and dragged her feet as she stepped over the high threshold into the building.

There were two doors, with a wide space between them so that not too much warm air escaped. Once they were through the inner doorway, Lyra found herself sweltering in what seemed unbearable heat, and had to pull open her furs and push back her hood.

They were in a space about eight feet square, with corridors to the right and left, and in front of her the sort of reception desk you might see in a hospital. Everything was brilliantly lit, with the glint of shiny white surfaces and stainless steel. There was the smell of food in the air, familiar food, bacon and coffee, and under it a faint perpetual hospital-medical smell; and coming from the walls all around was a slight humming sound, almost too low to hear, the sort of sound you had to get used to or go mad.

Pantalaimon at her ear, a goldfinch now, whispered, “Be stupid and dim. Be really slow and stupid.”

Adults were looking down at her: the man who’d brought her in, another man wearing a white coat, a woman in a nurse’s uniform.

“English,” the first man was saying. “Traders, apparently.”

“Usual hunters? Usual story?”

“Same tribe, as far as I could tell. Sister Clara, could you take little, umm, and see to her?”

“Certainly, Doctor. Come with me, dear,” said the nurse, and Lyra obediently followed.

They went along a short corridor with doors on the right and a canteen on
the left, from which came a clatter of knives and forks, and voices, and more cooking smells. The nurse was about as old as Mrs. Coulter, Lyra guessed, with a brisk, blank, sensible air; she would be able to stitch a wound or change a bandage, but never to tell a story. Her dæmon (and Lyra had a moment of strange chill when she noticed) was a little white trotting dog (and after a moment she had no idea why it had chilled her).

“What’s your name, dear?” said the nurse, opening a heavy door.

“Lizzie.”

“Just Lizzie?”

“Lizzie Brooks.”

“And how old are you?”

“Eleven.”

Lyra had been told that she was small for her age, whatever that meant. It had never affected her sense of her own importance, but she realized that she could use the fact now to make Lizzie shy and nervous and insignificant, and shrank a little as she went into the room.

She was half expecting questions about where she had come from and how she had arrived, and she was preparing answers; but it wasn’t only imagination the nurse lacked, it was curiosity as well. Bolvangar might have been on the outskirts of London, and children might have been arriving all the time, for all the interest Sister Clara seemed to show. Her pert neat little dæmon trotted along at her heels just as brisk and blank as she was.

In the room they entered there was a couch and a table and two chairs and a filing cabinet, and a glass cupboard with medicines and bandages, and a wash basin. As soon as they were inside, the nurse took Lyra’s outer coat off and dropped it on the shiny floor.

“Off with the rest, dear,” she said. “We’ll have a quick little look to see you’re nice and healthy, no frostbite or sniffles, and then we’ll find some nice clean clothes. We’ll pop you in the shower, too,” she added, for Lyra had not changed or washed for days, and in the enveloping warmth, that was becoming more and more evident.

Pantalaimon fluttered in protest, but Lyra quelled him with a scowl. He settled on the couch as one by one all Lyra’s clothes came off, to her resentment and shame; but she still had the presence of mind to conceal it and act dull-witted and compliant.

“And the money belt, Lizzie,” said the nurse, and untied it herself with strong fingers. She went to drop it on the pile with Lyra’s other clothes, but stopped, feeling the edge of the alethiometer.

“What’s this?” she said, and unbuttoned the oilcloth.

“Just a sort of toy,” said Lyra. “It’s mine.”

“Yes, we won’t take it away from you, dear,” said Sister Clara, unfolding the black velvet. “That’s pretty, isn’t it, like a compass. Into the shower with you,” she went on, putting the alethiometer down and whisking back a coal-silk curtain in the corner.

Lyra reluctantly slipped under the warm water and soaped herself while Pantalaimon perched on the curtain rail. They were both conscious that he mustn’t be too lively, for the dæmons of dull people were dull themselves. When she was washed and dry, the nurse took her temperature and looked into her eyes and ears and throat, and then measured her height and put her on some scales before writing a note on a clipboard. Then she gave Lyra some pajamas and a dressing gown. They were clean, and of good quality, like Tony Makarios’s anorak, but again there was a secondhand air about them. Lyra felt very uneasy.

“These en’t mine,” she said.

“No, dear. Your clothes need a good wash.”

“Am I going to get my own ones back?”

“I expect so. Yes, of course.”

“What is this place?”

“It’s called the Experimental Station.”

That wasn’t an answer, and whereas Lyra would have pointed that out and asked for more information, she didn’t think Lizzie Brooks would; so she assented dumbly in the dressing and said no more.

“I want my toy back,” she said stubbornly when she was dressed.

“Take it, dear,” said the nurse. “Wouldn’t you rather have a nice woolly bear, though? Or a pretty doll?”

She opened a drawer where some soft toys lay like dead things. Lyra made herself stand and pretend to consider for several seconds before picking out a rag doll with big vacant eyes. She had never had a doll, but she knew what to do, and pressed it absently to her chest.

“What about my money belt?” she said. “I like to keep my toy in there.”

“Go on, then, dear,” said Sister Clara, who was filling in a form on pink paper.

Lyra hitched up her unfamiliar skirt and tied the oilskin pouch around her waist.

“What about my coat and boots?” she said. “And my mittens and things?”

“We’ll have them cleaned for you,” said the nurse automatically.

Then a telephone buzzed, and while the nurse answered it, Lyra stooped quickly to recover the other tin, the one containing the spy-fly, and put it in the pouch with the alethiometer.

“Come along, Lizzie,” said the nurse, putting the receiver down. “We’ll go and find you something to eat. I expect you’re hungry.”

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.