His Dark Materials Omnibus (118 page)

The people themselves, closer now, had begun to notice, too, and were pointing and holding one another’s arms for reassurance.

The only bright things in the whole landscape were the brilliant red-and-yellow and electric blue of the dragonflies, and their little riders, and Will and Lyra, and Pantalaimon, who was hovering kestrel-shaped close above.

They were close to the first of the people now, and it was clear: they were all ghosts. Will and Lyra took a step toward each other, but there was nothing to fear, for the ghosts were far more afraid of them and were hanging back, unwilling to approach.

Will called out, “Don’t be afraid. We’re not going to hurt you. Where are you going?”

They looked at the oldest man among them, as if he were their guide.

“We’re going where all the others go,” he said. “Seems as if I know, but I can’t remember learning it. Seems as if it’s along the road. We’ll know it when we get there.”

“Mama,” said a child, “why’s it getting dark in the daytime?”

“Hush, dear, don’t fret,” the mother said. “Can’t make anything better by fretting. We’re dead, I expect.”

“But where are we going?” the child said. “I don’t want to be dead, Mama!”

“We’re going to see Grandpa,” the mother said desperately.

But the child wouldn’t be consoled and wept bitterly. Others in the group looked at the mother with sympathy or annoyance, but there was nothing they could do to help, and they all walked on disconsolately through the fading landscape as the child’s thin cries went on, and on, and on.

The Chevalier Tialys had spoken to Salmakia before skimming ahead, and Will and Lyra watched the dragonfly with eyes greedy for its brightness and vigor as it got smaller and smaller. The Lady flew down and perched her insect on Will’s hand.

“The Chevalier has gone to see what’s ahead,” she said. “We think the landscape is fading because these people are forgetting it. The farther they go away from their homes, the darker it will get.”

“But why d’you think they’re moving?” Lyra said. “If I was a ghost I’d want to stay in the places I knew, not wander along and get lost.”

“They feel unhappy there,” Will said, guessing. “It’s where they’ve just died. They’re afraid of it.”

“No, they’re pulled onward by something,” said the Lady. “Some instinct is drawing them down the road.”

And indeed the ghosts were moving more purposefully now that they were out of sight of their own village. The sky was as dark as if a mighty storm were threatening, but there was none of the electric tension that comes ahead of a storm. The ghosts walked on steadily, and the road ran straight ahead across a landscape that was almost featureless.

From time to time one of them would glance at Will or Lyra, or at the brilliant dragonfly and its rider, as if they were curious. Finally the oldest man said:

“You, you boy and girl. You ain’t dead. You ain’t ghosts. What you coming along here for?”

“We came through by accident,” Lyra told him before Will could speak. “I don’t know how it happened. We were trying to escape from those men, and we just seemed to find ourselves here.”

“How will you know when you’ve got to the place where you’ve got to go?” said Will.

“I expect we’ll be told,” said the ghost confidently. “They’ll separate out the sinners and the righteous, I dare say. It’s no good praying now. It’s too late for
that. You should have done that when you were alive. No use now.”

It was quite clear which group he expected to be in, and quite clear, too, that he thought it wouldn’t be a big one. The other ghosts heard him uneasily, but he was all the guidance they had, so they followed without arguing.

And on they walked, trudging in silence under a sky that had finally darkened to a dull iron gray and remained there without getting any darker. The living ones found themselves looking to their left and right, above and below, for anything that was bright or lively or joyful, and they were always disappointed until a little spark appeared ahead and raced toward them through the air. It was the Chevalier, and Salmakia urged her dragonfly ahead to meet him, with a cry of pleasure.

They conferred and sped back to the children.

“There’s a town ahead,” said Tialys. “It looks like a refugee camp, but it’s obviously been there for centuries or more. And I think there’s a sea or a lake beyond it, but that’s covered in mist. I could hear the cries of birds. And there are hundreds of people arriving every minute, from every direction, people like these—ghosts …”

The ghosts themselves listened as he spoke, though without much curiosity. They seemed to have settled into a dull trance, and Lyra wanted to shake them, to urge them to struggle and wake up and look around for a way out.

“How are we going to help these people, Will?” she said.

He couldn’t even guess. As they moved on, they could see a movement on the horizon to the left and right, and ahead of them a dirty-colored smoke was rising slowly to add its darkness to the dismal air. The movement was people, or ghosts: in lines or pairs or groups or alone, but all empty-handed, hundreds and thousands of men and women and children were drifting over the plain toward the source of the smoke.

The ground was sloping downward now, and becoming more and more like a rubbish dump. The air was heavy and full of smoke, and of other smells besides: acrid chemicals, decaying vegetable matter, sewage. And the farther down they went, the worse it got. There was not a patch of clean soil in sight, and the only plants growing anywhere were rank weeds and coarse grayish grass.

Ahead of them, above the water, was the mist. It rose like a cliff to merge with the gloomy sky, and from somewhere inside it came those bird cries that Tialys had referred to.

Between the waste heaps and the mist, there lay the first town of the dead.

Here and there, fires had been lit among the ruins. The town was a jumble, with no streets, no squares, and no open spaces except where a building had fallen. A few churches or public buildings still stood above the rest, though their roofs were holed or their walls cracked, and in one case a whole portico had crumpled onto its columns. Between the shells of the stone buildings, a mazy clutter of shacks and shanties had been put together out of lengths of roofing timber, beaten-out petrol cans or biscuit tins, torn plastic sheeting, scraps of plywood or hard-board.

The ghosts who had come with them were hurrying toward the town, and from every direction came more of them, so many that they looked like the grains of sand that trickle toward the hole of an hourglass. The ghosts walked straight into the squalid confusion of the town, as if they knew exactly where they were going, and Lyra and Will were about to follow them; but then they were stopped.

A figure stepped out of a patched-up doorway and said, “Wait, wait.”

A dim light was glowing behind him, and it wasn’t easy to make out his features; but they knew he wasn’t a ghost. He was like them, alive. He was a thin man who could have been any age, dressed in a drab and tattered business suit, and he was holding a pencil and a sheaf of papers held together with a clip. The building he’d stepped out of had the look of a customs post on a rarely visited frontier.

“What is this place?” said Will. “And why can’t we go in?”

“You’re not dead,” said the man wearily. “You have to wait in the holding area. Go farther along the road to the left and give these papers to the official at the gate.”

“But excuse me, sir,” said Lyra, “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how can we have come this far if we en’t dead? Because this
is
the world of the dead, isn’t it?”

“It’s a suburb of the world of the dead. Sometimes the living come here by mistake, but they have to wait in the holding area before they can go on.”

“Wait for how long?”

“Until they die.”

Will felt his head swim. He could see Lyra was about to argue, and before she could speak, he said, “Can you just explain what happens then? I mean, these ghosts who come here, do they stay in this town forever?”

“No, no,” said the official. “This is just a port of transit. They go on beyond here by boat.”

“Where to?” said Will.

“That’s not something I can tell you,” said the man, and a bitter smile pulled his mouth down at the corners. “You must move along, please. You must go to the holding area.”

Will took the papers the man was holding out, and then held Lyra’s arm and urged her away.

The dragonflies were flying sluggishly now, and Tialys explained that they needed to rest; so they perched on Will’s rucksack, and Lyra let the spies sit on her shoulders. Pantalaimon, leopard-shaped, looked up at them jealously, but he said nothing. They moved along the track, skirting the wretched shanties and the pools of sewage, and watching the never-ending stream of ghosts arriving and passing without hindrance into the town itself.

“We’ve got to get over the water, like the rest of them,” said Will. “And maybe the people in this holding place will tell us how. They don’t seem to be angry anyway, or dangerous. It’s strange. And these papers …”

They were simply scraps of paper torn from a notebook, with random words scribbled in pencil and crossed out. It was as if these people were playing a game, and waiting to see when the travelers would challenge them or give in and laugh. And yet it all looked so real.

It was getting darker and colder, and time was hard to keep track of. Lyra thought they walked for half an hour, or maybe it was twice as long; the look of the place didn’t change. Finally they reached a little wooden shack like the one they’d stopped at earlier, where a dim bulb glowed on a bare wire over the door.

As they approached, a man dressed much like the other one came out holding a piece of bread and butter in one hand, and without a word looked at their papers and nodded.

He handed them back and was about to go inside when Will said, “Excuse me, where do we go now?”

“Go and find somewhere to stay,” said the man, not unkindly. “Just ask. Everybody’s waiting, same as you.”

He turned away and shut his door against the cold, and the travelers turned down into the heart of the shanty town where the living people had to stay.

It was very much like the main town: shabby little huts, repaired a dozen times, patched with scraps of plastic or corrugated iron, leaning crazily against each other over muddy alleyways. At some places, an anbaric cable looped down from a bracket and provided enough feeble current to power a naked lightbulb or two, strung out over the nearby huts. Most of what light there was, however, came from the fires. Their smoky glow flickered redly over the scraps and tatters of building material, as if they were the last remaining flames of a great conflagration, staying alive out of pure malice.

But as Will and Lyra and the Gallivespians came closer and saw more detail, they picked out many more figures sitting in the darkness by themselves, or leaning against the walls, or gathered in small groups, talking quietly.

“Why aren’t those people inside?” said Lyra. “It’s cold.”

“They’re not people,” said the Lady Salmakia. “They’re not even ghosts. They’re something else, but I don’t know what.”

The travelers came to the first group of shacks, which were lit by one of those big weak anbaric bulbs on a cable swinging slightly in the cold wind, and Will put his hand on the knife at his belt. There was a group of those people-shaped things outside, crouching on their heels and rolling dice, and when the children came near, they stood up: five of them, all men, their faces in shadow and their clothes shabby, all silent.

“What is the name of this town?” said Will.

There was no reply. Some of them took a step backward, and all five moved a little closer together, as if
they
were afraid. Lyra felt her skin crawling, and all the tiny hairs on her arms standing on end, though she couldn’t have said why. Inside her shirt Pantalaimon was shivering and whispering, “No, no, Lyra, no, go away, let’s go back, please …”

The “people” made no move, and finally Will shrugged and said, “Well, good evening to you anyway,” and moved on. They met a similar response from all the other figures they spoke to, and all the time their apprehension grew.

“Will, are they Specters?” Lyra said quietly. “Are we grown up enough to see Specters now?”

“I don’t think so. If we were, they’d attack us, but they seem to be afraid themselves. I don’t know what they are.”

A door opened, and light spilled out on the muddy ground. A man—a real man, a human being—stood in the doorway, watching them approach. The little cluster of figures around the door moved back a step or two, as if out of respect, and they saw the man’s face: stolid, harmless, and mild.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Travelers,” said Will. “We don’t know where we are. What is this town?”

“This is the holding area,” said the man. “Have you traveled far?”

“A long way, yes, and we’re tired,” said Will. “Could we buy some food and pay for shelter?”