"They got special magic, or something. Theyre greedy, they live off the poor people," said the girl. "The poor people do all the work, and the Guild men just live there for nothing."
"Your friend, he ain afraid of Specters?"
"She helped us!" Pantalaimon said. "Dr. Malone got in their way. Shes on our side, not theirs."
"Just friends of my father," she said.
But the flap he had to lift was at the other end, and she got to the revolving door before he could come out and catch her.
"Your granny don know nothing," said a boy. "She got a beard, your granny. Shes a goat, all right."
"No! They run away like everyone else," said the girl.
The chauffeur coughed gently and slowed the car down.
"That ain true," said another boy. They came from the stars."
Theres a bruise on your cheek, and another on your leg—has someone been knocking you about?"
"I made some inquiries too," he said. "An anthropologist friend of mine tells me that theyve got several others in the collection, as well as the ones on display. Some of them are very old indeed.
"Nothing difficult," he said, smiling. "Come and sit down, Lyra."
"Shouldnt have come," he said severely.
"Some of it"
"And theyre here, all around us now?"
"No, I wont," she said demurely, a good little girl doing what she was told.
She left them to rescue their boats and pedal back to the beach, and went inside to make some coffee and see if Will was awake. But he was still asleep, with the cat curled up at his feet, and Lyra was impatient to see her Scholar again. So she wrote a note and left it on the floor by his bedside, and took her rucksack and went off to look for the window.
She stood, ready to run, and saw a large, dark blue car gliding silently to the pavement beside her. She was braced to dart in either direction, but thecars rear window rolled down, and there looking out was a face she recognized.
But she had seen a young man up there. She was convinced of it. And there was something in the way these children spoke; as a practiced liar, she knew liars when she met them, and they were lying about something.
"Whats their address?"
"Are you staying in Oxford, Lyra? Where are you staying?"
"Youre interested in that sort of thing, are you? Science, and so on?"
"Yeah," she said, twisting to see out of the rear window. There was no sign of the pale-haired man. Shed gotten away! And hed never find her now that she was safe in a powerful car with a rich man like this. She felt a little hiccup of triumph.
"Yeah. The engine with the screen ... Yes, all that."
She said nothing. She was feeling more and more uneasy. She looked at Dr. Malone, whose face was tight and unhappy.
"Yes, quite. Do you understand it?"
"Oh, I see. How did you find Dr. Malone?"
So did they, and they were on their feet in a moment to stop her from running out but somehow Dr. Malone was in the way, and the sergeant tripped and fell, blocking the way of the inspector. It gave Lyra time to dart out, slam the door shut behind her, and run full tilt for the stairs.
"But what is going on?”
"Shouldnt you be at school today?"
A womans voice spoke from the corridor outside: "Dr. Malone? Have you seen the child?"
"Come in, Lyra," said Sergeant Clifford again. "Its all right. This is Inspector Walters."
"No," said Lyra.
She cried out in fear and turned herself around, hurling her little weight against the heavy glass, willing it to turn, and got it to move just in time to avoid the grasp of the porter, who then got in the way of the pale-haired man, so Lyra could dash out and away before they got through.
"But there ent anyone in the tower now?" Lyra said. "No grownups?"
"Not in the same way. He can do some things better, but that engine with the words on the screen —he hasnt got one of those."
"Dark matter?" he was saying. "How fascinating! I saw something about that in The Times this morning. The universe is full of this mysterious stuff, and nobody knows what it is! And your friend
"There ain no one in the tower. Thats haunted, that place," said a boy. "Thats why the cat came from there. We ain gonna go in there, all right. Ain no kids gonna go in there. Thats scary."
So she crept out of her hiding place and ran back across the grass, out through the garden gate, into the open spaces of the Banbury Road again; and once again she dodged across, and once again tires squealed on the road; and then she was running up Norham Gardens, a quiet tree-lined road of tall Victorian houses near the park.
"You know the Torre degU Angeli," said a boy. "The stone tower, right. Well it belongs to the Guild, and theres a secret place in there. The Guild, theyre men who know all kind of things.
"Yeah," said the girl. She reached out a hand and grabbed a fistful of air, crowing, "I got one now!"
"The what?" said Lyra.
If she said Oxford, theyd easily be able to check. But she couldnt say another world, either.
The woman in the corridor was young and dressed very smartly, and she tried to smile when Lyra came out, but her eyes remained hard and suspicious.
"Up Summertown," she said, "please."
"Lizzie," said the old man from the museum. "How nice to see you again. Can I give you a lift anywhere?"
"Winchester," she said.
It was going more easily now, she thought. She began to relax into it and lie more fluently.
"I just came here to see Dr. Malone," Lyra said.
That sort of question deserved a blank stare, which it got. He wasnt disconcerted. His pale eyes looked briefly at the young woman, and then back to Lyra.
"I dont know! They didnt know your name, but I knew who they meant—"
The way she took led her through the little square theyd come to the night before. But it was empty now, and the sunlight dusted the front of the ancient tower and showed up the blurred carvings beside the doorway: humanlike figures with folded wings, their features eroded by centuries of weather, but somehow in their stillness expressing power and compassion and intellectual force.
"Well, sort of, but I knew what to expect"
"It is! This is what happened, all right: this Guild man hundreds of years ago was taking some metal apart. Lead. He was going to make it into gold. And he cut it and cut it smaller and smaller till he came to the smallest piece he could get There ain nothing smaller than that. So small you couldn see it, even. But he cut that, too, and inside the smallest little bit there was all the Specters packed in, twisted over and folded up so tight they took up no space at all. But once he cut it, bam! They whooshed out, and they been here ever since. Thats what my papa said."
They looked up at the great oak door on its ornate black hinges. The half-dozen steps up to it were deeply worn, and the door itself stood slightly open. There was nothing to stop Lyra from going in except her own fear.
"Maybe Specters," Lyra said.
"Because of your father?"
Two men in white coats came out of a door, and she bumped into them. Suddenly Pantalaimon was a crow, shrieking and flapping, and he startled them so much they fell back and she pulled free of their hands and raced down the last flight of stairs into the lobby just as the porter put the phone down and lumbered along behind his counter calling out "Oy! Stop there! You!"
"All right," said the porter, turning back. "She says go on up. Mind you dont go anywhere else."
Lyra thought this young woman had a nerve, acting as if it were her own laboratory, but she nodded meekly. That was the moment when she first felt a twinge of regret. She knew she shouldnt be here; she knew what the alethiometer wanted her to do, and it was not this. She stood doubtfully in the doorway.
"Angels," said Pantalaimon, now a cricket on Lyras shoulder.
"I dont know exactly what its called. I can find it easy, but I cant remember the name of the street."
"Whats the Guild?" Lyra persisted.
She stopped to gain her breath. There was a tall hedge in front of one of the gardens, with a low wall at its foot, and she sat there tucked closely in under the privet.
Neanderthal, you know."
"Will ent afraid of anything," Lyra said. "Norm I. What you scared of cats for?"
"Yeah. Sometimes," she added.
"No grownups in the city at all!"
"Yeah. Physics, especially."
"Youve been in the wars, havent you, Lyra?" said the inspector. "How did you get those bruises?
"How do they know I came to see you?"
"They wouldn dare, all right."
And she stopped. She knew at once shed made a horrible mistake.
"Oh, just up past these shops. I can walk from there," said Lyra. "Thank you."
"Yeah, thats what I heard too," Lyra said, with no idea what he was talking about.
Philosophy, alchemy, all kind of things they know. And they were the ones who let the Specters in."
"Yeah," said one boy, but another said, "No, they came a long time ago. Hundreds of years."
She tiptoed to the top of the steps and looked through the opening. A dark stone-flagged hall was all she could see, and not much of that; but Pantalaimon was fluttering anxiously on her shoulder, just as he had when theyd played the trick on the skulls in the crypt at Jordan College, andshe was a little wiser now. This was a bad place. She ran down the steps and out of the square, making for the bright sunlight of the palm tree boulevard. And as soon as she was sure there was no one looking, she went straight across to the window and through into Wills Oxford.
"Is there any Guild men in the tower now?" said Lyra.
There was no need for her to be so anxious, thought Lyra, but perhaps she wasnt used to danger.
At the top of the stairs, though, she had a surprise, because just as she passed a door with a symbol indicating woman on it, it opened and there was Dr. Malone silently beckoning her in.
"Your fathers looking into dark matter, then?"
"Shall we go in?"
"What sort of questions?" she said.
She realized he meant Pantalaimon in his leopard shape, and shook her head innocently.
"You going to be a scientist when you grow up?"
"And she showed you what she was working on, did she?"
And behind her, the lift doors were opening, and the pale-haired man was running out so fast, so strong— And the door wouldnt turn! Pantalaimon shrieked at her: they were pushing the wrong side!
"No! They said this was something angeli" he insisted. "Bet thats angels."
The driver was wearing a peaked cap. Everything about the car was smooth and soft and powerful, and the smell of the old mans cologne was strong in the enclosed space. The car pulled out from the pavement and moved away with no noise at all.
She said, "Lyra, theres someone else in the lab—police officers or something. They know you came
"Well, here we are in Summertown," said the old man. "Where would you like to be dropped?"
"So what have you been up to, Lizzie?" the old man said. "Did you find out more about those skulls?"
"The Guild men ain afraid to go in there," said another.
These people were dangerous; theyd want to know more at once. She thought of the only other name she knew of in this world: the place Will had come from.
"And were you surprised at what Dr. Malone showed you?"
"You must have been dreaming," she said. "Theres all kinds of things look different in the moonlight. But me and Will, we dont have Specters where we come from, so we dont know much about em."
"And theres always been Specters in this world?" said Lyra.
Into a garden, over a fence, through some bushes— Pantalaimon skimming overhead, a swift, calling to her which way to go; crouching down behind a coal bunker as the pale mans footsteps came racing past, and she couldnt hear him panting, he was so fast, and so fit; and Pantalaimon said, "Back now! Go back to the road—"
"What you going to do with that cat?"
"What friend?" said Lyra, alarmed. Had she told him about Will too?
"Oh. Yes. Shes very well, thank you."
"Yeah. Whats your name?"
"Where you come from?"
"If you cant see em, youre safe," said a boy. "You see em, you know they can get you. Thats what my pa said, then they got him."
"Where dyou come from, Lyra?" said Inspector Walters.
"Yeah. Cause hes doing the same kind of work."
She entered, puzzled. This wasnt the laboratory, it was a washroom, and Dr. Malone was agitated.
"Yes."
"Can you really take the bad luck away?"
Turn left into South Parade, and pull up on the right, could you, Allan," said the old man.
"Hello, Lyra," said the man. "Ive been hearing all about you from Dr. Malone here. Id like to ask you a few questions, if thats all right."
is on the track of it, is she?"
In the room already there was a tall powerful man with white eyebrows. Lyra knew what Scholars looked like, and neither of these two was a Scholar.
"They came because of the Guild," said the third.
Three boys and a girl were splashing across the sunlit harbor in a couple of pedal boats, racing toward the steps. As they saw Lyra, they slowed for a moment, but then the race took hold of them again. The winners crashed into the steps so hard that one of themfell into the water, and then he tried to climb into the other craft and tipped that over, too, and then they all splashed about together as if the fear of the night before had never happened. They were younger than
"What does she do? Is she an archaeologist?"
"Cause my fathers a physicist, and he knows her."
"Yes," Dr. Malone called. "I was just showing her where the washroom is..."
"The friend youre staying with."
But she hadnt got time to berate herself, because Pantalaimon fluttered to her shoulder, and then said, "Look out—behind—" and immediately changed to a cricket again and dived into her pocket.
most of the children by the tower, Lyra thought, and she joined them in the water, with Pantalaimon as a little silver fish glittering beside her. She never found it hard to talk to other children, and soon they were gathered around her, sitting in pools of water on the warm stone, their shirts drying quickly in the sun. Poor Pantalaimon had to creep into her pocket again, frogshaped in the cool damp cotton.
"They cant hurt you," one of the boys said. "So we cant hurt them, all right."
And suddenly she remembered: little Paolo had mentioned that he and Angelica had an elder brother, Tullio, who was in the city too, and Angelica had hushed him.... Could the young man shed seen have been their brother?
to see me yesterday—I dont know what theyre after, but I dont like it Whats going on?"
"And what are you going to do later on, Lizzie? Are you going in for physics too?" , "I might," said Lyra. "It depends."
"Yes, he—"
Lyra woke early to find the morning quiet and warm, as if the city never had any other weather than this calm summer. She slipped out of bed and downstairs, and hearing some childrens voices out on the water, went to see what they were doing.
"Has he got as far as Dr. Malone?"
And he opened the door and moved up to make room beside him. Pantalaimon nipped her breast through the thin cotton, but she got in at once, clutching the rucksack, and the man leaned across her and pulled the door shut.
"Is Will staying with your friends as well?"
"With some people," she said. "Just friends."
"Hello," she said. "Youre Lyra, are you?"
"You look as if youre in a hurry," he said. "Where dyou want to go?"
"You dont know about cats?" the oldest boy said incredulously. "Cats, they got the devil in them, all right. You got to kill every cat you see. They bite you and put the devil in you too. And what was you doing with that big pard?"
"Yes. She knows a lot about it."
The porter turned to his telephone, and Lyra watched pityingly as he pressed the buttons and spoke into it. They didnt even give him a proper lodge to sit in, like a real Oxford college, just a big wooden counter, as if it was a shop.
"I know. That too ..."
Forty minutes later she was inside the physics building once more, arguing with the porter; but this time she had a trump card "You just ask Dr. Malone," she said sweetly. "Thats all you got to do, ask her. Shell tell you."
"Oh. Well, I can lie to them. Thats easy."
"Do you go to school, Lyra?"
"Very good, sir," said the chauffeur.
"Oh, Pan," she said, "I shouldnt have said that about Will. I shouldve been more careful—"
"Im Sergeant Clifford. Come along in."
"Oh ... shes a physicist. She studies dark matter," said Lyra, still not quite in control. In this world it was harder to tell lies than shed thought. And something else was nagging at her. this old man was familiar in some long-lost way, and she just couldnt place it.
He pushed a chair toward her. Lyra sat down carefully, and heard the door close itself. Dr. Malone was standing nearby. Pantalaimon, cricket-formed in Lyras breast pocket, was agitated; she could feel him against her breast, and hoped the tremor didnt show. She thought to him to keep still.
"They never!" said the girl. "My granny said they came because people were bad, and God sent them to punish us."
"Who are these people?"
Across the road, ignoring the cars, the brakes, the squeal of tires; into this gap between tall buildings, and then another road, with cars from both directions. But she was quick, dodging bicycles, always with the pale-haired man just behind her—oh, he was frightening!
"And hows your friend?"
