"You see, Dr. Grumman, it seemed to me, from the way the little girl described it, that Lord Asriel just brandished this severed head packed in ice at the scholars there and frightened them so much with it they didnt look closely.
"Dr. Grumman," he said. "My names Lee Scoresby. Im from the country of Texas, and Im an aeronaut by profession. If youd let me sit and talk a spell, Ill tell you what brings me here. I am right,aint I? You are Dr. Stanislaus Grumman, of the Berlin Academy?"
"So with my new credentials I could begin to work in this world, where I found myself, for the most part, greatly contented. I missed some things about my own world, to be sure. Are you a married man, Mr. Scoresby? No? Well, I was; and I loved my wife dearly, as I loved my son, my only child, a little boy not yet one year old when I wandered out of my world. I missed them terribly.
"I hope they had sense enough to build the village high, then," she said, hopping ashore.
Thats what made me suspect you might still be alive. And clearly, sir, you have a kind of specialist knowledge of this business. Ive been hearing about you all along the Arctic seaboard, about how you had your skull pierced, about how your subject of study seems to vary between digging on the ocean bed and gazing at the northern lights, about how you suddenly appeared, like as it might be out of nowhere, about ten, twelve years ago, and thats all mighty interesting. But somethings drawn me here, Dr. Grumman, beyond simple curiosity. Im concerned about the child.
Lee replied, and they moved through half a dozen languages before finding one in which they could talk.
"Well, there are strange winds blowing through the world now, sir."
Suddenly Lee felt a shiver go down his back, and Hester stiffened in his arms, for they saw that they had been watched all the time. From among the dried flowers and the pine sprays a bright yellow eye looked out. It was a daemon, and as Lee watched, she turned her head and delicately took a spray of pine in her powerful beak and drew it across the space like a curtain.
On the morning of the third day, Lee steered the little craft up a creek that joined the main stream, flowing down from a line of low hills that should have been deep under snow but now were patched and streaked with brown. Soon the stream was flowing between low pines and spruce, and after a few miles they came to a large round rock, the height of a house, where Lee drew in to the bank and tied up.
"Very well," said Grumman, "Ill begin. My name, as I told you, is Parry, and I was not born in this world. Lord Asriel is not the first by any means to travel between the worlds, though hes the first to open the way so spectacularly. In my own world I was a soldier and then an explorer. Twelve years ago I was accompanying an expedition to a place in my world that corresponds with your Beringland. My companions had other intentions, but I was looking for something Id heard about from old legends: a rent in the fabric of the world, a hole that had appeared between our universe and another. Well, some of my companions got lost. In searching for them, I and two others walked through this hole, this doorway, without even seeing it, and left our world altogether. At first we didnt realize what had happened. We walked on till we found a town, and then there was no mistaking it: we were in a different world.
The headman stopped outside the wood-framed, skin-covered hut. The place was decorated with boar tusks and the antlers of elk and reindeer, but they werent merely hunting trophies, for they had been hung with dried flowers and carefully plaited sprays of pine, as if for some ritualistic purpose.
"I am seeking a man called Grumman," Lee said. "I heard tell he was a kinsman of yours by adoption. He may have acquired another name, but the man is European."
"I am a shaman. I can do many things you dont understand. Sit down, Mr. Scoresby. Be calm. Ill tell you what you need to know."
"So here I came. And I discovered a marvel as soon as I did, Mr. Scoresby, for worlds differ greatly, and in this world I saw my daemon for the first tune. Yes, I hadnt known of Sayan Kotor here till I entered yours. People here cannot conceive of worlds where daemons are a silent voice in the mind and no more. Can you imagine my astonishment, in turn, at learning that part of my own nature was female, and bird-formed, and beautiful?
sick."
"So we had no choice but to stay in that new world. And we soon discovered what a dangerous place it was. It seemed that there was a strange kind of ghoul or apparition haunting it, something deadly and implacable. My two companions died soon afterward, victims of the Specters, as the things are called.
Standing in the doorway, gaunt, blazing-eyed, was a man dressed in skins and furs. His black hair was streaked with gray, his jaw jutted strongly, and his osprey daemon sat glaring on his fist.
"Follow me," said the headman.
was better informed than the Academicians, and I had no difficulty in gaining membership.
And he opened his hand. In the palm lay something that Lee could see but not understand. He saw
It was going to be hard to make his way into the interior along the road, that was certain; for in normal times the road was simply a cleared track of frozen earth, and now that even the permafrost was melting, the surface was a swamp of churned mud.
The other villagers fell aside respectfully. Understanding Hesters distaste for the filthy mud she had to lope through, Lee scooped her up in his arms and shouldered his pack, following the headman along a forest path to a hut ten long bowshots from the village, in a clearing in the larches.
"I made my way to Berlin under the name of Grumman. I told no one about my origins; it was my secret. I presented a thesis to the Academy, and defended it in debate, which is their method. I
An old Siberian Tartar, his eyes almost lost in the wrinkles around them, laid his bow down beside it. His wolverine dasmon twitched her nose at Hester, who flicked an ear in response, and then the headman spoke.
He was heading for the village of Grummans tribe. For guidance he had only his memory of having flown over the country some years before, but that memory was good, and he had little difficulty
"There was a landing stage here," he said to Hester. "Remember the old seal hunter in Nova Zembla who told us about it? It must be six feet under now."
I think shes important, and so do the witches. If theres anything you know about her and about whats going on, Id like you to tell me. As I said, somethings given me the conviction that you can, which is why Im here.
"Well, try as we might, we could not find that first doorway again. Wed come through it in a blizzard. You are an old Arctic hand—youknow what that means.
"Most kind, sir," said Lee, and carried out the wooden bench himself while Grumman went to the stove and poured the scalding drink into two tin cups. His accent was not German, to Lees ears, but English, of England. The Director of the Observatory had been right.
He made slow progress at first. Not only was the current swift, but the waters were laden with all kinds of debris: tree trunks, brushwood, drowned animals, and once the bloated corpse of a man.
As for Hester, she sat taciturn in the bow, her long ears flat against her skinny back and her eyes narrowed. He was used to her silence, and she to his. They spoke when they needed to.
He had to pilot carefully and keep the little engine beating hard to make any headway.
Pleasure, and relief, Lee felt Hester think.
No more than half an hour later he laid his pack down beside the wooden house of the village headman and turned to salute the little crowd that had gathered. He used the gesture universal in the north to signify friendship, and laid his rifle down at his feet.
"My respects to you and your tribe," Lee said. "I have some smokeweed, which is not worthy, but I would be honored to present it to you."
"We have been expecting you," he said again. "You have come to take Dr. Grumman to the other world."
So Lee put his balloon and equipment into storage and with his dwindling gold hired a boat with a gas engine. He bought several tanks of fuel and some stores, and set off up the swollen river.
Lee sat again, holding the ring, running his fingers over it again and again.
Lees eyebrows rose, but he merely said, "As you say, sir. Is he here?"
"Well," he said, "Im shaken, sir. I think I need to hear what you can tell me."
"Indeed. The sun is warm, I think. Youll find a bench inside my hut. If you help me bring it out, we can sit in this agreeable light and talk out here. I have some coffee, if you would care to share it."
"But how—" said Lee, lifting the beloved thing from Grummans palm. "I dont understand how you can have—did you—how did you get this? I aint seen this thing for forty years."
"But unless Im mistaken, sir, I heard the village headman say that I had come to take you to another world. Did I get it wrong, or is that truly what he said? And one more question for you, sir:
He found himself standing. Hester was trembling, standing upright, ears pricked. The osprey had moved without Lees noticing between him and Grumman, defending her man, but Lee wasnt going to attack. He felt undone; he felt like a child again, and his voice was tight and shaky as he said, "Where did you get that?"
The headman bowed three times and withdrew, leaving Lee alone with the shaman-academic hed come to find.
"Ah," said the headman, "we have been waiting for you."
"So with Sayan Kotor beside me, I wandered through the northern lands, and I learned a good deal from the peoples of the Arctic, like my good friends in the village down there. What they told me of this world filled some gaps in the knowledge Id acquired in mine, and I began to see the answer to many mysteries.
What was that name he called you by? Was that some kind of tribal name, some magicians title?"
"You must speak to him with respect," the headman said quietly. "He is a shaman. And his heart is
"Take it," said Grumman, or Parry. "Its work is done. It summoned you. Now I dont need it."
When they were seated, Hester narrow-eyed and impassive beside Lee and the great osprey daemon glaring into the full sun, Lee began. He started with his meeting at Trollesund with John Faa, lord of the gyptians, and told how they recruited lorek Byrnison the bear and journeyed to Bolvangar, and rescued Lyra and the other children; and then he spoke of what hed learned both from Lyra and from Serafina Pekkala in the balloon as they flew toward Svalbard.
"I know a great deal about this world now, Mr. Scoresby. I know, for example, about Dust. I see from your expression that you have heard the term. It is frightening your theologians to death, but they are the ones who frighten me. 1 know what Lord Asriel is doing, and I know why, and thats why I summoned you here. I am going to help him, you see, because the task hes undertaken is the greatest in human history. The greatest in thirty-five thousand years of human history, Mr.
The headman nodded in appreciation, and one of his wives received the bundle Lee removed from his pack.
The headman called out in his own tongue, addressing the man by the name the old seal hunter had told him: Jopari. A moment later the door opened.
in finding the right course among the swift-running streams, even though some of the banks had vanished under the milky-brown floodwaters. The temperature had disturbed the insects, and a cloud of midges made every outline hazy. Lee smeared his face and hands with jimsonweed ointment and smoked a succession of pungent cigars, which kept the worst at bay.
Scoresby.
"The result was that I found their world an abominable place, and I couldnt wait to leave it. The way back to my own world was barred forever. But there were other doorways into other worlds, and a little searching found the way into this.
"However, my work absorbed me. I sought other forms of knowledge; I was initiated into the skull cult; I became a shaman. And I have made some useful discoveries. I have found a way of making an ointment from bloodmoss, for example, that preserves all the virtues of the fresh plant.
a ring of silver and turquoise, a Navajo design; he saw it clearly and he recognized it as his own mothers. He knew its weight and the smoothness of the stone and the way the silversmith had folded the metal over more closely at the corner where the stone was chipped, and he knew how the chipped corner had worn smooth, because he had run his fingers over it many, many times, years and years ago in his boyhood in the sagelands of his native country.
"Yes," said the shaman. "And youre from Texas, you say. The winds have blown you a long way from your homeland, Mr. Scoresby."
The rest of the villagers, gathered in the thin steaming sunlight on the muddy ground in the middle of the houses, couldnt understand the words, but they saw the headmans pleasure.
The headman nodded several times.
But I might search for a thousand years and never find the way back. We were sundered forever.
Lee Scoresby disembarked at the port in the mouth of the Yenisei River, and found the place in chaos, with fishermen trying to sell their meager catches of unknown kinds of fish to the canning factories; with shipowners angry about the harbor charges the authorities had raised to cope with the floods; and with hunters and fur trappers drifting into town unable to work because of the rapidly thawing forest and the disordered behavior of the animals.
Grumman smiled briefly, and said, "The name he used is my own true name, John Parry. Yes, you have come to take me to the other world. And as for what brought you here, I think youll find it was this."
