But she must fulfill this destiny in ignorance of what she is doing, because only in her ignorance can we be saved. Do you understand that, Farder Coram?”
“And what will you pay?”
“What are the intentions of the Tartars with regard to Kamchatka?”
He dropped the reindeer leg in the dirt and slumped on all fours to the gate.
“Paid work.”
“The witches have talked about this child for centuries past,” said the consul.
“The alethiometer told me, but I never said. It was the crucible.”
It was hardly surprising to find philosophers using the symbolism of their time to interpret knowledge that came from a mysterious source. But, you know, they havent been used seriously for two centuries or so.”
“Yes, I have; and fought one, too, though not by myself, thank God. We must be ready to treat with him, John. Hell ask a lot, Ive no doubt, and be surly and difficult to manage; but we must have him.”
“No good.”
“Strangers,” said the bear.
The old gyptian had to shake his head. “No,” he said, “I dont know any more.
“lorek Byrnison!”
“This is the one!” she said. “I tested em all, and this is it, Im sure. But it wont fly for me.”
“Fighting, in all probability,” said Farder Coram. “Were moving north until we find a place where theyve taken some children captive. When we find it, well have to fight to get the children free; and then well bring them back.”
“May I ask a question? Without the books of symbols, how do you read it?”
“But how did you recognize her as being that particular child? And what did you mean about the beings who pass between the worlds? Im at a loss to understand you, Dr. Lanselius, for all that I judge youre an honest man....”
“I hope you find success,” he said, and stood on his doorstep in the piercing cold to watch them up the little street.
“lorek Byrnison,” said Farder Coram again. “May I speak to you?”
But shes a strange innocent creature, and I wouldnt have her harmed for the world. How she comes to read that instrument I couldnt guess, but I believe her when she talks of it. Why, Dr. Lanselius? What do you know about her?”
“That is wise of you,” he said. “Where did you obtain this one?”
“Yes, she did. But then she is a witch, and you are not. I cant give you all of it, because I need it to contact her, but this will be enough. Look after it.”
Then he looked strangely at Farder Coram, and back at Lyra.
“What kind of work is that for a panserbjorn?”
John Faa had been supervising the unloading of the ship, and was keen to hear about the witch consuls words, and even keener to learn of the bear.
Then Farder Coram took Lyra to the best outfitters in town and bought her some proper cold-weather clothing. They bought a parka made of reindeer skin, because reindeer hair is hollow and insulates well; and the hood was lined with wolverine fur, because that sheds the ice that forms when you breathe. They bought underclothing and boot liners of reindeer calf skin, and silk gloves to go inside big fur mittens. The boots and mittens were made of skin from the reindeers forelegs, because that is extra tough, and the boots were soled with the skin of the bearded seal, which is as tough as walrus hide, but lighter.
“What do they pay you at the sledge depot?”
“They are said to originate in the city of Prague,” said the consul. “The Scholar who invented the first alethiometer was apparently trying to discover a way of measuring the influences of the planets, according to the ideas of astrology. He intended to make a device that would respond to the idea of Mars or Venus as a compass responds to the idea of North. In that he failed, but the mechanism he invented was clearly responding to something, even if no one knew what it was.”
“No,” said Farder Coram, “Im unable to say that I do.”
Lyra, intrigued and eager to fly, held it above her head and jumped, and ran about in the snow trying to be a witch. The consul turned to Farder Coram and said: “Do you realize who this child is?”
“The dolphin, one of its deep-down meanings is playing, sort of like being playful,” she explained. “I know its the fifteenth because it stopped fifteen times and it just got clear at that level but nowhere else. And the helmet means war, and both together they mean pretend to go to war but not be serious. And the baby means—it means difficult—itd be too hard for them to attack it, and the anchor says why, because theyd be stretched out as tight as an anchor rope.
With all that on, and a silk muffler around her neck and a woollen cap over her ears and the big hood pulled forward, she was uncomfortably warm; but they were going to much colder regions than this.
“Yeah!” said Lyra, always ready to show off, and she took the alethiometer and hurried out. She was eager to see cloud-pine, because the witches used it for flying, and shed never seen any before.
Lyra could see why he was saying this: he didnt want Dr. Lanselius to know of Lyras power. But she could also see something Farder Coram couldnt, which was the agitation of Dr. Lanseliuss daemon, and she knew at once that it was no good to pretend.
He unfolded it and held it up with great care, gazing at the face like a Scholar gazing at a rare manuscript.
“I am employed.”
Dr. Lanselius nodded.
Then he reared up massively, ten feet or more high, as if to show how mighty he was, to remind them how useless the gate would be as a barrier, and he spoke to them from that height.
“Oh, we must. And what of your witch?” “Well, shes a long way off, and a clan queen now,” said Farder Coram. “I did hope it might be possible for a message to reach her, but it would take too long to wait for a reply.” “Ah, well. Now let me tell you what Ive found, old friend.” For John Faa had been fidgeting with impatience to tell them something. He had met a prospector on the quayside, a New Dane from the country of Texas, and this man had a balloon, of all things.
“Remarkable,” he said. “I am very grateful. I shall not forget that.”
Buildings and pictures were designed to be read like books. Everything stood for something else; if you had the right dictionary, you could read Nature itself.
“And her mother is Mrs. Coulter, of the Oblation Board.”
“Think what we might do with the help of an aeronaut, Farder Coram!” said John Faa, rubbing his great hands together. “Ive engaged him to sign up with us.
The two men stood by the window and watched as she kicked her way through the snow, Pantalaimon bouncing beside her as a hare, to stand in front of the wooden shed, head down, manipulating the alethiometer. After a few seconds she reached forward and unhesitatingly picked out one of the many sprays of pine and held it up.
Silence from the bear; and then he dropped the ragged bone and lifted the jar to his muzzle again, drinking the powerful spirits like water.
Lanselius, do you know who made them?”
The bartender looked as if he was going to ask something more, but the bear lurched toward him suddenly and the man shut the door in alarm. The bear hooked a claw through the handle of the jar and lifted it to his mouth. Lyra could smell the tang of the raw spirits that splashed out.
“I dont know what to offer you, lorek Byrnison. If gold is desirable to you, we have gold.”
“Im Farder Coram, from the gyptian people of Eastern Anglia. And this little girl is Lyra Belacqua.”
His voice was so deep it seemed to shake the earth. The rank smell that came from his body was almost overpowering.
The bear dropped on all fours again. It was very hard to detect any expressive tones in his voice, whether of irony or anger, because it was so deep and so flat.
“I mend broken machinery and articles of iron. I lift heavy objects.”
“Yes, I will,” she said. “Thank you.”
Seems to me we struck lucky a coming here.”
“Well? Who are you?”
“Theyre going to pretend to attack it, but theyre not really going to, because its too far away and theyd be too stretched out,” she said.
That wasnt hard. Lyra turned the hands to the camel, which meant Asia, which meant Tartars; to the cornucopia, for Kamchatka, where there were gold mines; and to the ant, which meant activity, which meant purpose and intention. Then she sat still, letting her mind hold the three levels of meaning together in focus, and relaxed for the answer, which came almost at once. The long needle trembled on the dolphin, the helmet, the baby, and the anchor, dancing between them and onto the crucible in a complicated pattern that Lyras eyes followed without hesitation, but which was incomprehensible to the two men.
“What do you do at the sledge depot?” Farder Coram asked.
Farder Coram stood by the gate and called:
“Because they live so close to the place where the veil between the worlds is thin, they hear immortal whispers from time to time, in the voices of those beings who pass between the worlds. And they have spoken of a child such as this, who has a great destiny that can only be fulfilled elsewhere—not in this world, but far beyond. Without this child, we shall all die. So the witches say.
Finally they bought a waterproof cape that enveloped her completely, made of semitransparent seal intestine.
Lyra felt her skin shiver all over. She would have thought a question like that, which was almost an insult, would enrage the great creature beyond reason, and she wondered at Farder Corams courage in asking it. lorek Byrnison put down his jar and came close to the gate to peer at the old mans face. Farder Coram didnt flinch.
A pitted alley beside it led to a sheet-metal gate into a rear yard, where a lean-to shed stood crazily over a floor of frozen mud. Dim yellow light through the rear window of the bar showed a vast pale form crouching upright and gnawing at a haunch of meat which it held in both hands. Lyra had an impression of bloodstained muzzle and face, small malevolent black eyes, and an immensity of dirty matted yellowish fur. As it gnawed, hideous growling, crunching, sucking noises came from it.
Could you tell which is hers?”
So she said, “Actually, I can read it,” speaking half to Dr. Lanselius and half to Farder Coram, and it wasthe consul who responded.
And she tucked it into her purse beside the alethiometer. Farder Coram touched the spray of pine as if for luck, and on his face was an expression Lyra had never seen before: almost a longing. The consul showed them to the door, where he shook hands with Farder Coram, and shook Lyras hand too.
He took the spray and broke off a twig for her.
But before the consul could answer, the door opened and Lyra came in bearing a little branch of pine.
“What shall I ask?” said Lyra.
“Well go to him this very evening,” he said. “Have you ever spoken to such a creature, Farder Coram?”
After swallowing several times, the bear put the jar down and turned back to gnaw his haunch of meat, heedless of Farder Coram and Lyra, it seemed; but then he spoke again.
“I know the people you are seeking, the child cutters,” the bear said. “They left town the day before yesterday to go north with more children. No one will tell you about them; they pretend not to see, because the child cutters bring money and business. Now, I dont like the child cutters, so I shall answer you politely. I stay here and drink spirits because the men here took my armor away, and without that, I can hunt seals but I cant go to war; and I am an armored bear; war is the sea I swim in and the air I breathe. The men of this town gave me spirits and let me drink till I was asleep, and then they took my armor away from me. If I knew where they keep it, I would tear down the town to get it back. If you want my service, the price is this: get me back my armor. Do that, and I shall serve you in your campaign, either until I am dead or until you have a victory. The price is my armor. I want it back, and then I shall never need spirits again.”
He handed the instrument back to Lyra, and added:
“Whos that?” he said.
“And apart from that?”
The expedition hed been hoping to join had failed for lack of funds even before it had left Amsterdam, so he was stranded.
Dr. Lanselius nodded.
“I expect he was testing you, child. But you done right to be polite, being as we cant be sure what he knows already. And that was a useful tip about the bear. I dont know how we would a heard otherwise.”
Lyras heart was thumping hard, because something in the bears presence made her feel close to coldness, danger, brutal power, but a power controlled by intelligence; and not a human intelligence, nothing like a human, because of course bears had no daemons. This strange hulking presence gnawing its meat was like nothing she had ever imagined, and she felt a profound admiration and pity for the lonely creature.
“What work are you offering?”
“What do you want?”
“Shes the daughter of Lord Asriel,” said Farder Coram.
“No, the great pity is that although Lyra possesses the alethiometer itself, theres no means of reading it whatsoever,” he said. “Its just as much of a mystery as the pools of ink the Hindus use for reading the future. And the nearest book of readings I know of is in the Abbey of St. Johann at Heidelberg.”
“My keep here in meat and spirits.”
“Luckier still if we had a clear idea of where we were going,” said Farder Coram, but nothing could damp John Faas pleasure in being on campaign once more.
“The Master of Jordan College in Oxford gave it to me,” she said. “Dr.
The consul said, “Well, Lyra, that is remarkable. You are lucky to have an instrument like that, and I wish you well with it. I would like to give you something to take away with you....”
The bear stopped eating. As far as they could tell, he was looking at them directly, but it was impossible to read any expression on his face.
“And where did they get the symbols from?”
“What it means is that she must be free to make mistakes. We must hope that she does not, but we cant guide her. I am glad to have seen this child before I die.”
“Did she really fly with this?” Lyra said.
“We want to offer you employment, lorek Byrnison.”
“Oh, this was in the seventeenth century. Symbols and emblems were everywhere.
When it had completed the movements several times, Lyra looked up. She blinked once or twice as if she were coming out of a trance.
“Would you tell me how you read that?”
Behind the bear, the door of the bar opened a little way and a man put down a large earthenware jar before looking up to peer at them.
The old man nodded.
“I just make my mind go clear and then its sort of like looking down into water. You got to let your eyes find the right level, because thats the only one thats in focus. Something like that,” she said.
She fished inelegantly in the oilskin pouch and handed him the velvet package.
“Forgive me for asking, lorek Byrnison,” said Farder Coram, “but you could live a free proud life on the ice hunting seals and walruses, or you could go to war and win great prizes. What ties you to Trollesund and Einarssons Bar?”
“How exquisite!” he said. “I have seen one other example, but it was not so fine as this. And do you possess the books of readings?”
Lyra looked at Farder Coram, wanting to say yes but waiting for his approval.
“No,” Lyra began, but before she could say any more, Farder Coram was speaking.
“I wonder if I might ask to see you do it?” he said.
“Could I ask you for one more demonstration?” he said. “If you look out of this window, youll see a shed with forty or more sprays of cloud-pine hanging on the wall. One of them has been used by Serafina Pekkala, and the others have not.
“He knew the answer about the Tartars before I did,” Lyra told Farder Coram.
I just see it all like that, you see.”
They found their way to the depot, which was a couple of concrete warehouses in a scrubby area of waste ground where thin weeds grew between gray rocks and pools of icy mud. A surly man in an office told them that they could find the bear off duty at six, but theyd have to be quick, because he usually went straight to the yard behind Einarssons Bar, where they gave him drink.
After darkness had fallen, and when the stores and equipment had all been safely unloaded and stood in waiting on the quay, Farder Coram and Lyra walked along the waterfront and looked for Einarssons Bar. They found it easily enough: a crude concrete shed with a red neon sign flashing irregularly over the door and the sound of loud voices through the condensation-frosted windows.
