His Dark Materials Omnibus (31 page)

“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 one 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.”

He nearly cried aloud with joy, but subdued the cry into a cough.

“And you got to call me Lizzie,” Lyra said, “
never
Lyra. And you got to tell me everything you know, right.”

They sat together, with Roger close by. It was easier to do this at lunchtime, when children spent more time coming and going between the tables and the counter, where bland-looking adults served equally bland food. Under the clatter of knives and forks and plates Billy and Roger both told her as much as they knew. Billy had heard from a nurse that children who had had the operation were often taken to hostels further south, which might explain how Tony Makarios came to be wandering in the wild. But Roger had something even more interesting to tell her.

“I found a hiding place,” he said.

“What? Where?”

“See that picture …” He meant the big photogram of the tropical beach. “If you look in the top right corner, you see that ceiling panel?”

The ceiling consisted of large rectangular panels set in a framework of metal strips, and the corner of the panel above the picture had lifted slightly.

“I saw that,” Roger said, “and I thought the others might be like it, so I lifted ’em, and they’re all loose. They just lift up. Me and this boy tried it one night in our dormitory, before they took him away. There’s a space up there and you can crawl inside.…”

“How far can you crawl in the ceiling?”

“I dunno. We just went in a little way. We reckoned when it was time we could hide up there, but they’d probably find us.”

Lyra saw it not as a hiding place but as a highway. It was the best thing she’d heard since she’d arrived. But before they could talk any more, a doctor banged on a table with a spoon and began to speak.

“Listen, children,” he said. “Listen carefully. Every so often we have to have a fire drill. It’s very important that we all get dressed properly and make our way outside without any panic. So we’re going to have a practice fire drill this afternoon. When the bell rings, you must stop whatever you’re doing and do what the nearest grownup says. Remember where they take you. That’s the place you must go to if there’s a real fire.”

Well, thought Lyra, there’s an idea.

During the first part of the afternoon, Lyra and four other girls were tested for Dust. The doctors didn’t say that was what they were doing, but it was easy to guess. They were taken one by one to a laboratory, and of course this made
them all very frightened; how cruel it would be, Lyra thought, if she perished without striking a blow at them! But they were not going to do that operation just yet, it seemed.

“We want to make some measurements,” the doctor explained. It was hard to tell the difference between these people: all the men looked similar in their white coats and with their clipboards and pencils, and the women resembled one another too, the uniforms and their strange bland calm manner making them all look like sisters.

“I was measured yesterday,” Lyra said.

“Ah, we’re making different measurements today. Stand on the metal plate—oh, slip your shoes off first. Hold your dæmon, if you like. Look forward, that’s it, stare at the little green light. Good girl …”

Something flashed. The doctor made her face the other way and then to left and right, and each time something clicked and flashed.

“That’s fine. Now come over to this machine and put your hand into the tube. Nothing to harm you, I promise. Straighten your fingers. That’s it.”

“What are you measuring?” she said. “Is it Dust?”

“Who told you about Dust?”

“One of the other girls, I don’t know her name. She said we was all over Dust. I en’t dusty, at least I don’t think I am. I had a shower yesterday.”

“Ah, it’s a different sort of dust. You can’t see it with your ordinary eyesight. It’s a special dust. Now clench your fist—that’s right. Good. Now if you feel around in there, you’ll find a sort of handle thing—got that? Take hold of that, there’s a good girl. Now can you put your other hand over this way—rest it on this brass globe. Good. Fine. Now you’ll feel a slight tingling, nothing to worry about, it’s just a slight anbaric current.…”

Pantalaimon, in his most tense and wary wildcat form, prowled with lightning-eyed suspicion around the apparatus, continually returning to rub himself against Lyra.

She was sure by now that they weren’t going to perform the operation on her yet, and sure too that her disguise as Lizzie Brooks was secure; so she risked a question.

“Why do you cut people’s dæmons away?”

“What? Who’s been talking to you about that?”

“This girl, I dunno her name. She said you cut people’s dæmons away.”

“Nonsense …”

He was agitated, though. She went on:

“ ’Cause you take people out one by one and they never come back. And some people reckon you just kill ’em, and other people say different, and this girl told me you cut—”

“It’s not true at all. When we take children out, it’s because it’s time for them to move on to another place. They’re growing up. I’m afraid your friend is alarming herself. Nothing of the sort! Don’t even think about it. Who is your friend?”

“I only come here yesterday, I don’t know anyone’s name.”

“What does she look like?”

“I forget. I think she had sort of brown hair … light brown, maybe … I dunno.”

The doctor went to speak quietly to the nurse. As the two of them conferred, Lyra watched their dæmons. This nurse’s was a pretty bird, just as neat and incurious as Sister Clara’s dog, and the doctor’s was a large heavy moth. Neither moved. They were awake, for the bird’s eyes were bright and the moth’s feelers waved languidly, but they weren’t animated, as she would have expected them to be. Perhaps they weren’t really anxious or curious at all.

Presently the doctor came back and they went on with the examination, weighing her and Pantalaimon separately, looking at her from behind a special screen, measuring her heartbeat, placing her under a little nozzle that hissed and gave off a smell like fresh air.

In the middle of one of the tests, a loud bell began to ring and kept ringing.

“The fire alarm,” said the doctor, sighing. “Very well. Lizzie, follow Sister Betty.”

“But all their outdoor clothes are down in the dormitory building, Doctor. She can’t go outside like this. Should we go there first, do you think?”

He was annoyed at having his experiments interrupted, and snapped his fingers in irritation.

“I suppose this is just the sort of thing the practice is meant to show up,” he said. “What a nuisance.”

“When I came yesterday,” Lyra said helpfully, “Sister Clara put my other clothes in a cupboard in that first room where she looked at me. The one next door. I could wear them.”

“Good idea!” said the nurse. “Quick, then.”

With a secret glee, Lyra hurried there behind the nurse and retrieved her proper furs and leggings and boots, and pulled them on quickly while the nurse dressed herself in coal silk.

Then they hurried out. In the wide arena in front of the main group of
buildings, a hundred or so people, adults and children, were milling about: some in excitement, some in irritation, many just bewildered.

“See?” one adult was saying. “It’s worth doing this to find out what chaos we’d be in with a real fire.”

Someone was blowing a whistle and waving his arms, but no one was taking much notice. Lyra saw Roger and beckoned. Roger tugged Billy Costa’s arm and soon all three of them were together in a maelstrom of running children.

“No one’ll notice if we take a look around,” said Lyra. “It’ll take ’em ages to count everyone, and we can say we just followed someone else and got lost.”

They waited till most of the grownups were looking the other way, and then Lyra scooped up some snow and rammed it into a loose powdery snowball, and hurled it at random into the crowd. In a moment all the children were doing it, and the air was full of flying snow. Screams of laughter covered completely the shouts of the adults trying to regain control, and then the three children were around the corner and out of sight.

The snow was so thick that they couldn’t move quickly, but it didn’t seem to matter; no one was following. Lyra and the others scrambled over the curved roof of one of the tunnels, and found themselves in a strange moonscape of regular hummocks and hollows, all swathed in white under the black sky and lit by reflections from the lights around the arena.

“What we looking for?” said Billy.

“Dunno. Just looking,” said Lyra, and led the way to a squat, square building a little apart from the rest, with a low-powered anbaric light at the corner.

The hubbub from behind was as loud as ever, but more distant. Clearly the children were making the most of their freedom, and Lyra hoped they’d keep it up for as long as they could. She moved around the edge of the square building, looking for a window. The roof was only seven feet or so off the ground, and unlike the other buildings, it had no roofed tunnel to connect it with the rest of the station.

There was no window, but there was a door. A notice above it said
ENTRY STRICTLY FORBIDDEN
in red letters.

Lyra set her hand on it to try, but before she could turn the handle, Roger said:

“Look! A bird! Or—”

His
or
was an exclamation of doubt, because the creature swooping down from the black sky was no bird at all: it was someone Lyra had seen before.

“The witch’s dæmon!”

The goose beat his great wings, raising a flurry of snow as he landed.

“Greetings, Lyra,” he said. “I followed you here, though you didn’t see me. I have been waiting for you to come out into the open. What is happening?”

She told him quickly.

“Where are the gyptians?” she said. “Is John Faa safe? Did they fight off the Samoyeds?”

“Most of them are safe. John Faa is wounded, though not severely. The men who took you were hunters and raiders who often prey on parties of travelers, and alone they can travel more quickly than a large party. The gyptians are still a day’s journey away.”

The two boys were staring in fear at the goose dæmon and at Lyra’s familiar manner with him, because of course they’d never seen a dæmon without his human before, and they knew little about witches.