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 was sure by now that they werent going to perform the operation on her yet, and sure too that her disguise as Lizzie Brooks was secure; so she risked a question.
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.
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.
“Theyd only need to do it once, wouldnt they?”
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 childrens daemons 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.
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.
“What about—”
“But—”
“Ah, were making different measurements today. Stand on the metal plate—oh, slip your shoes off first. Hold your daemon, if you like. Look forward, thats it, stare at the little green light. Good girl...”
“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.
During the first part of the afternoon, Lyra and four other girls were tested for Dust. The doctors didnt 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.
“Why are they so interested in daemons?” said Lyra.
“Ah, its a different sort of dust. You cant see it with your ordinary eyesight. Its a special dust. Now clench your fist— thats right. Good. Now if you feel around in there, youll find a sort of handle thing—got that? Take hold of that, theres a good girl. Now can you put your other hand over this way—
“One of the other girls, I dont know her name. She said we was all over Dust. I ent dusty, at least I dont think I am. I had a shower yesterday.”
“How far can you crawl in the ceiling?”
All the room had gone quiet now. The nurse whod been supervising had left for a moment, and the hatch to the kitchen was shut so no one could hear from there.
Something flashed. The doctor made her face the other way and then to left and right, and each time something clicked and flashed.
“I dunno. We just went in a little way. We reckoned when it was time we could hide up there, but theyd probably find us.”
But he saw how she looked away disdainfully, and he followed her example faithfully, as hed 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.
“Roger told me you was here,” he muttered.
“Theyre going to take you home.”
“No one knows,” said the blond girl.
“No, I know why they took him,” she said, as heads clustered close nearby. “It was because his daemon didnt change. They thought he was older than he looked, or summing, and he werent really a young kid. But really his daemon never changed very often because Tony hisself never thought much about anything. I seen her change. She was called Ratter...”
“I found a hiding place,” he said.
“The holes!” said someone. “They make a hole in your head like the Tartars! I bet!”
“Your brothers coming, and John Faa and a whole band of gyptians,” she said.
The rest ofthat 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 daemons, filled the little gymnasium and soon banished fearful thoughts; which of course was exactly what the exercise was intended to do.
Pantalaimon, in his most tense and wary wildcat form, prowled with lightning-eyed suspicion around the apparatus, continually returning to rub himself against Lyra.
“Thats fine. Now come over to this machine and put your hand into the tube.
Well, thought Lyra, theres an idea.
“What sort of cut?” said a boy, his voice quiet and frightened. “Did she say what sort of cut?”
The blond girl went on: “Tony wanted to know what they was gonna do with Ratter, see. And the nurse says, Well, shes going to sleep too, just like when you do.
In her mind, it was as easy as that.
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 youre there, come on, we wont hurt you....And he says, Whats 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 didnt believe her. He says—”
“What? Where?”
“Bridget McGinn,” he said.
“What, all grownupsve had this cut?”
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.
“Does that mean—”
“Who told you about Dust?”
“I know,” said one boy whod been listening. “What they do is kill your daemon and then see if you die.”
“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?”
“Listen, children,” he said. “Listen carefully. Every so often we have to have a fire drill. Its very important that we all get dressed properly and make our way outside without any panic. So were going to have a practice fire drill this afternoon. When the bell, rings you must stop whatever youre doing and do what the nearest grownup says. Remember where they take you. Thats the place you must go to if theres a real fire.”
“I was measured yesterday,” Lyra said.
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 hadnt seen before.
She didnt 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.
“What are you measuring?” she said. “Is it Dust?”
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.
“She just said, Its something to make you more grown up. She said everyone had to have it, thats why grownups daemons dont change like ours do. So they have a cut to make them one shape forever, and thats how you get grown up.”
rest it on this brass globe. Good. Fine. Now youll feel a slight tingling, nothing to worry about, its just a slight anbaric current....”
“And you got to call me Lizzie,” Lyra said, “never Lyra. And you got to tell me everything you know, right.”
“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 daemons as desperate to know as they were, all wide-eyed and tense.
And there was Roger.
“I saw that,” Roger said, “and I thought the others might be like it, so I lifted em, and theyre all loose. They just lift up. Me and this boy tried it one night in our dormitory, before they took him away. Theres a space up there and you can crawl inside....”
Nothing to harm you, I promise. Straighten your fingers. Thats it.”
She was blushing hotly. If she was expecting jeers and teasing, they didnt come. All the children were subdued, and no one even smiled.
“ Cause I was with him when they came for him. We was in the linen room,” she said.
Lyra saw it not as a hiding place but as a highway. It was the best thing shed heard since shed arrived. But before they could talk any more, a doctor banged on a table with a spoon and began to speak.
It was difficult to talk while your daemons 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 daemons, and she wasnt really listening, but at one point she heard another girl with bright blond hair say a name that made her sit up.
And Tony says, Youre gonna kill her, ent yer? 1 know you are. We all know thats what happens. And the nurse says, No, of course not. Its just a little operation. Just a little cut. It wont even hurt, but we put you to sleep to make sure.
“Finish your drink and come with Sister Clara,” he said. “The rest of you run along and go to your classes.”
“How?” said someone.
You cant 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 wasnt 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.
“I know what they do,” said the first girl.
“Yes, sir?” she said, her voice hardly audible.
So now that she was in the hands of the Oblation Board, Lyra didnt fret herself into terror about what had happened to the gyptians. They were all good fighters, and even though Pantalaimon said hed seen John Faa shot, he might have been mistaken; or if he wasnt mistaken, John Faa might not have been seriously hurt. It had been bad luck that shed fallen into the hands of the Samoyeds, but the gyptians would be along soon to rescue her, and if they couldnt manage it, nothing would stop lorek Byrnison from getting her out; and then theyd fly to Svalbard in Lee Scoresbys balloon and rescue Lord Asriel.
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 girls face vivid with fear.
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 Rogers daemon Salcilia.
He nearly cried aloud with joy, but subdued the cry into a cough.
She had everyones attention now. But because they didnt 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.
It was the name of Tony Makarios. As Lyras attention snapped toward that, Pantalaimon had to slow down his whispered conversation with Rogers daemon, and both children listened to what the girl was saying.
“Well, how come they do it over and over with different kids?” said someone.
It wasnt Lyras way to brood; she was a sanguine and practical child, and besides, she wasnt 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 doesnt mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; its that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.
The blond girl stood up trembling. Her squirrel daemon clutched her breast.
