Someone in this world with the same initials must have stood here idly and done exactly the same.
Dr. Malone looked at Lyras desperate frown and clenched fists, at the bruises on her cheek and her leg, and said, "Dear me, child, calm down."
A chill ran down her back, and mouse-shaped Pantalaimon shivered in her pocket. She shook herself; there were mysteries enough without imagining more.
"How old are you, William?"
"Whats that?" she said.
A powerful-looking man in his sixties, wearing a beautifully tailored linen suit and holding a Panama hat, stood on the gallery above and looked down over the iron railing.
So now, knowing the sort of world he lived in, he went into a stationery shop and bought a ballpoint, a pad of paper, and a clipboard. Schools often sent groups of pupils off to do a shopping survey, or something of the sort, and if he seemed to be on a project like that he wouldnt look as if he was at a loose end.
What in the world could that mean? Lyra came out of the focused calm she shared with the alethiometer and drifted back to the present moment to find herself no longer alone. Gazing into the next case was an elderly man in a pale suit, who smelled sweet. He reminded her of someone, but she couldnt think who.
"I got to go," she said. "Thank you for offering, but I better not. Anyway, I got to go now because Im meeting someone. My friend," she added. "Who Im staying with."
"Oh. Yes. Someone Id been relying on to back our funding application withdrew his support. I dont suppose it was that unexpected, anyway."
"Its a matter of public record, actually. Look, why dont you come into the office and—"
His heart thudded, because there was a picture of his own mother. Holding a baby. Him.
"Oh, I see. What was it you wanted? ... Archaeology? ... Here we are."
"Hello? I want to speak to Mr. Perkins."
"And I got to find out about Dust," Lyra explained. "Because the Church people in my world, right, theyre frightened of Dust because they think its original sin. So its very important. And my father... No," she said passionately, and stamped her foot. "Thats not what I meant to say. Im doing it all wrong."
And it did now. What it said was: You must concern yourself with the boy. Your task is to help him find his father. Put your mind to that.
"Yes."
She was more puzzled by this man than by anyone shed met for a long time. On the one hand he was kind and friendly and very clean and smartly dressed, but on the other hand Pantalaimon, inside her pocket, was plucking at her attention and begging her to be careful, because he was half-remembering something too; and from somewhere she sensed, not a smell, but the idea of a smell, and it was the smell of dung, of putrefaction. She was reminded of lofur Raknisons palace, where the air was perfumed but the floor was thick with filth.
The reporter had written a standard tearful-wife-waiting-in-anguish-for-news story, which Will found disappointingly short of actual facts. There was a brief paragraph saying that John Parry had had a successful career in the Royal Marines and had left to specialize in organizing geographical and scientific expeditions, and that was all.
"What am I interested in?" she said. "Oh, all sorts of things, really. Those skulls I got interested in just now, when I saw them there. I shouldnt think anyone would want that done. Its horrible."
"Yes, of course," he said kindly. "Well, it was nice talking to you. Bye-bye, Lizzie."
And then she came across something that made her think of the alethiometer again. In an old glass case with a black-painted wooden frame there were a number of human skulls, and some of them had holes in them: some at the front, some on the side, some on the top. The one in the center had two.
"I could find out.... What school are you from?"
"William Parry. Excuse me for calling. Its about my father, Mr. John Parry. You send money every three months from my father to my mothers bank account."
* * * Meanwhile, Lyra was looking for somewhere quiet to consult the alethiometer. In her own Oxford there would have been a dozen places within five minutes walk, but this Oxford was so disconcertingly different, with patches of poignant familiarity right next to the downright outlandish: why had they painted those yellow lines on the road? What were those little white patches dotting every sidewalk? (In her own world, they had never heard of chewing gum.) What could those red and green lights mean at the corner of the road? It was all much harder to read than the alethiometer.
"What?"
"Who are you?" the woman said at last.
This was just what the northern Tartars did. And what Stanislaus Grumman had had done to himself, according to the Jordan Scholars whod known him. Lyra looked around quickly, saw no one nearby, and took out the alethiometer.
He had been watching Lyra for some minutes. He had moved along the gallery above as she moved about below, and when she stood still by the case of skulls, he watched her closely, taking in all of her: her rough, untidy hair, the bruise on her cheek, the new clothes, her bare neck arched over the alethiometer, her bare legs.
"Why am I listening to you?" she went on. "I must be crazy. The fact is, this is the only place in the world where youd get the answer you want, and theyre about to close us down. What youre talking about, your Dust, sounds like something weve been investigating for a while now, and what you say about the skulls in the museum gave me a turn, because... oh, no, this is just too much. Im too tired. I want to listen to you, believe me, but not now, please. Did I say they were going to close us down? Ive got a week to put together a proposal to the funding committee, but we havent got a hope in hell..."
"From somewhere else," said Lyra, more carefully. "Not here."
As she stood concentrating in the dusty light that filtered through the glass roof and slanted down past the upper galleries, she didnt notice that she was being watched.
"Is she in hospital or something?"
"Who?"
This was like home again. She felt Pan, in her pocket, enjoying it.
Then he wandered along, pretending to be making notes, and kept his eyes open for the public library.
He chose a view of the city, and wrote: "DEAR MUM, I AM SAFE AND WELL, AND I WILL SEE YOU AGAIN SOON. I HOPE EVERYTHING IS ALL RIGHT. I LOVE YOU. WlLL." Then he addressed it and bought a stamp and held the card close to him for a minute before dropping it in the mailbox.
"Dr. Lister," she said.
The second story was dated six weeks later. It said briefly that the expedition had reached the North American Arctic Survey Station at Noatak in Alaska.
The third was dated two months after that. It said that there had been no reply to signals from the Survey Station, and that John Parry and his companions were presumed missing.
"Its not quite as simple as that. I cant really give out private information about a client unless Im sure the client would want me to. And Id need some proof of who you were, anyway."
"Well, I want to know where my father is, please. Is he alive or dead?"
"Bye," she said.
It was a small room, crowded with tottering piles of papers and books, and the whiteboards on the walls were covered in figures and equations. Tacked to the back of the door was a design that looked Chinese. Through an open doorway Lyra could see another room, where some kind of complicated anbaric machinery stood in silence.
"No, its in Hampshire. My class is doing a sort of residential field trip. Kind of environmental study research skills."
"I got a message for someone on the second floor," she said.
Lyra made nothing of that. She knocked, and a womans voice said, "Come in."
"Lizzie. Hello, Lizzie. Im Charles. Do you go to school in Oxford?"
Wearily Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.
The woman blinked. She was in her late thirties, Lyra supposed, perhaps a little older than Mrs.
She soon found the door the alethiometer had told her about. The sign on it said DARK MATTER RESEARCH UNIT, and under it someone had scribbled R.I.P. Another hand had added in pencil DIRECTOR: LAZARUS.
Perhaps there was a Lyra.
He handed back the rolls of microfilm and asked the librarian, "Do you know the address of the Institute of Archaeology, please?"
"Where are you going?" he said.
Inside the building Lyra found a wide desk at the foot of the stairs, with a porter behind it.
"You might not call it that. Its elementary particles. In my world the Scholars call it Rusakov Particles, but normally they call it Dust. They dont show up easily, but they come out of space and fix on people. Not children so much, though. Mostly on grownups. And something I only found out today—I was in that museum down the road and there was some old skulls with holes in their heads, like the Tartars make, and there was a lot more Dust around them than around this other one that hadnt got that sort of hole in it. Whens the Bronze Age?"
"Lyra Silvertongue," she answered. "Whats your name?"
"No," Will said. It would be too risky; the lawyer might have heard by then that he was wanted by the police. He thought quickly and went on. "Ive got to catch a bus to Nottingham, and I dont want to miss it. But what I want to know, you can tell me over the phone, cant you? All I want to know is, is my father alive, and if he is, where I can find him. You can tell me that, cant you?"
She folded the velvet around the alethiometer and thrust it into the rucksack out of sight. Then she stood and looked around for the building where her Scholar would be found, and set off toward it, feeling awkward and defiant.
Coulter, with short black hair and red cheeks. She wore a white coat open over a green shirt and those blue canvas trousers so many people wore in this world.
What he wanted above all was to speak to his mother. He had to stop himself from dialing Mrs.
But (this was the strangest thing) they all looked fully alive. These creatures moved about cheerfully enough, for all the world as though they were human, and Lyra had to concede that human was what they probably were, and that their daemons were inside them as Wills was.
"No, I wouldnt enjoy it myself, but I promise you it does happen. I could take you to meet someone whos done it," he said, looking so friendly and helpful that she was very nearly tempted.
She broke off and rubbed her eyes, which were red with tiredness.
He looked at her carefully, but he was no match for the bland and vacuous docility Lyra could command when she wanted to; and finally he nodded and went back to his newspaper.
After wandering about for an hour, taking the measure of this mock-Oxford, she felt hungry and bought a bar of chocolate with her twenty-pound note. The shopkeeper looked at her oddly, but he was from the Indies and didnt understand her accent, perhaps, although she asked very clearly. With the change she bought an apple from the Covered Market, which was much more like the proper Oxford, and walked up toward the park. There she found herself outside a grand building, a real Oxford-looking building that didnt exist in her world at all, though it wouldnt have looked out of place. She sat on the grass outside to eat, and regarded the building approvingly.
"St. Peters," said Will.
Each month, he found, was on a separate roll of microfilm. He threaded each in turn into the projector, scrolled through to find the stories, and read them with fierce attention. The first story told of the departure of an expedition to the north of Alaska. The expedition was sponsored by the Institute of Archaeology at Oxford University, and it was going to survey an area in which they hoped to find evidence of early human settlements. It was accompanied by John Parry, late of the Royal Marines, a professional explorer.
"My mothers told me some things, yes."
"Yeah, but this is something he needs right now. He just sent for it. Its not a thing actually, its something I need to tell him."
"Well, I can tell you something, but not much and not right now, and Id rather not do it over the phone. Im seeing a client in five minutes. Can you find your way to my office at about half past two?"
"Oh, somewhere else," the woman said. "I see. Well, I think I see."
These rooms, the walls of this corridor, were all flat and bare and plain in a way Lyra thought belonged to poverty, not to the scholarship and splendor of Oxford; and yet the brick walls were smoothly painted, and the doors were of heavy wood and the banisters were of polished steel, so they were costly. It was just another way in which this world was strange.
She discovered that it was a museum. The doors were open, and inside she found stuffed animals and fossil skeletons and cases of minerals, just like the Royal Geological Museum shed visited with Mrs. Coulter in her London. At the back of the great iron-and-glass hall was the entrance to another part of the museum, and because it was nearly deserted, she went through and looked around. The alethiometer was still the most urgent thing on her mind, but in this second chamber she found herself surrounded by things she knew well: there were showcases filled with Arctic clothing, just like her own furs; with sledges and walrus-ivory carvings and seal-hunting harpoons; with a thousand and one jumbled trophies and relics and objects of magic and tools and weapons, and not only from the Arctic, as she saw, but from every part of this world Well, how strange. Those caribou-skin furs were exactly the same as hers, but theyd tied the traces on that sledge completely wrong. But here was a photogram showing some Samoyed hunters, the very doubles of the ones whod caught Lyra and sold her to Bolvangar. Look! They were the same men! And even that rope had frayed and been reknotted in precisely the same spot, and she knew it intimately, having been tied up in that very sledge for several agonizing hours.... What were these mysteries? Was there only one world after all, which spent its time dreaming of others?
"Who are you?" she said.
"Well, he was leading an expedition, and it just disappeared. About ten years ago. Maybe more."
He seemed nice enough, and he certainly smelled nice. He was closer now. His hand brushed hers as he leaned across the case.
"The Bronze Age? Goodness, I dont know; about five thousand years ago," she said.
"Its Chinese. The symbols of the I Ching. Dyou know what that is? Do they have that in your world?"
"Hippies, you know, people like that. Actually, youre far too young to remember hippies. They say its more effective than taking drugs."
"Twelve. I want to know about him."
"As I say, its a matter of public record. There were several newspaper stories at the time. You know he was an explorer?"
For her part, Lyra was a little surprised to find that the Scholar she sought was female, but the alethiometer hadnt said a man, and this was a strange world, after all. The woman was sitting at an engine that displayed figures and shapes on a small glass screen, in front of which all the letters of the alphabet had been laid out on grimy little blocks in an ivory tray. The Scholar tapped one, and the screen became blank.
Will found the library easily enough, where the reference librarian was perfectly prepared to believe that he was doing some research for a school geography project and helped him find the bound copies of The Times index for the year of his birth, which was when his father had disappeared. Will sat down to look through them. Sure enough, there were several references to John Parry, in connection with an archaeological expedition.
Lyra had put the alethiometer in her rucksack and was wondering how she could get away. She still hadnt asked it the main question, and now this old man was having a conversation with her.
"I cant. Im going to Nottingham."
"Well ... that wouldnt be confidential. Unfortunately, I cant tell you anyway, because I dont know."
"Just visiting? Well, youve chosen a wonderful place to look at. What are you specially interested in?"
Will copied down the address and phone number, and since it was safe to admit he didnt know Oxford, asked where to find it. It wasnt far away. He thanked the librarian and set off.
"Ah, well, they got it wrong then, when they wrote that label. That skull with the two holes in it is thirty-three thousand years old."
This process, it said in spidery writing on a card, was called trepanning. The card also said that all the holes had been made during the owners lifetimes, because the bone had healed and grown smooth around the edge. One, however, hadnt: the hole had been made by a bronze arrowhead which was still in it, and its edges were sharp and broken, so you could tell it was different.
There was a brief series of articles following that one, describing the parties that had set out fruitlessly to look for them, the search flights over the Bering Sea, the reaction of the Institute of Archaeology, interviews with relatives....
"Dust? What are you talking about?"
On the second floor she found a long corridor, where one door was open to an empty lecture hall and another to a smaller room where two Scholars stood discussing something at a blackboard.
She wasnt sure how to answer. "No," she said.
She blinked. She was genuinely startled. Will had appeared out of nowhere in order to help her; surely that was obvious. The idea that she had come all this way in order to help him took her breath away.
"No, Im ... Im in Oxford."
"Where?"
Lyra, absorbed, was learning strange things. These skulls were unimaginably old; the cards in the case said simply BRONZE AGE, but the alethiometer, which never lied, said that the man whose skull it was had lived 33,254 years before the present day, and that he had been a sorcerer, and that the hole had been made to let the gods into his head. And then the alethiometer, in the casualway it sometimes had of answering a question Lyra hadnt asked, added that there was a good deal more Dust around the trepanned skulls than around the one with the arrowhead.
"On your own?"
The alethiometer didnt tell Lyra peoples names, of course. She had read the name Dr. Lister off a pigeonhole on the wall behind him, because if you pretend you know someone, theyre more likely to let you in. In some ways Lyra knew Wills world better than he did.
It didnt take him long to hide. Will could vanish easily enough, because he was good at it; he was even proud of his skill. Like Serafina Pekkala on the ship, he simply made himself part of the background.
Will thought carefully.
"Youre looking at the trepanned skulls?" he said. "What strange things people do to themselves."
There was no other mention in the index, and Will got up from the microfilm reader baffled.
As soon as Lyra had gone her way, Will found a pay phone and dialed the number of the lawyers office on the letter he held.
But then out came that little dark tongue point, as quick as a snakes, flick-moisten, and she shook her head.
Once she was outside the museum, she turned in to the park, which she knew as a field for cricket and other sports, and found a quiet spot under some trees and tried the alethiometer again.
"Well, write to me, or get your mother to write, and Ill let you know what I can. But you must understand, I cant do very much over the phone."
"Lyra Silver—"
"No, where dyou come from? What are you? How do you know things like this?"
"Yes..."
He became aware of her staring at him, and looked up with a smile.
"Im going to make some coffee," she said/"If I dont, Ill fall asleep. Youll have some too?"
"I want you to tell me about Dust," said Lyra, having looked around to make sure they were alone.
"The far north. Alaska, I think. You can look it up in the public library. Why dont you—"
Lyra stood, stubborn and puzzled, waiting for her to recover.
A minute went by, and then a mans voice said, "Hello. This is Alan Perkins. Who am I speaking to?"
She yawned again.
She stopped then, because Dr. Malone looked as if she was about to faint. The high color left her cheeks completely; she put one hand to her breast while the other clutched the arm of her chair, and her jaw dropped.
"Yes, I suppose so. All right. But can you tell me where he disappeared?"
It was midmorning, and he was in the main shopping street, where buses shouldered their way through crowds of pedestrians. He began to realize how exposed he was; for it was a weekday, when a child of his age should have been in school. Where could he go?
The other way in which this Oxford differed from hers was in the vast numbers of people swarming on every sidewalk, in and out of every building; people of every sort, women dressed like men, Africans, even a group of Tartars meekly following their leader, all neatly dressed and hung about with little black cases. She glared at them fearfully at first, because they had no daemons, and in her world they would have been regarded as ghasts, or worse.
"The money comes from a family trust. He left instructions to pay it until he told me to stop. 1 havent heard from him from that day to this. What it boils down to is that hes... well, I suppose hes vanished. Thats why I cant answer your question."
"What was the first unexpected thing that happened today?" Lyra said.
"Mm," she said expressionlessly. "Dyou know, people still do that?" "Yeah," she said.
At Lyras question the woman ran a hand through her hair and said, "Well, youre the second unexpected thing thats happened today. Im Dr. Mary Malone. What do you want?"
"Whos calling, please?"
He shook out the breast-pocket handkerchief and mopped his forehead, and then made for the stairs.
"Wait, wait, wait. You come from where?"
His gray hair was brushed neatly back from his smooth, tanned, barely wrinkled forehead. His eyes were large, dark and long-lashed and intense, and every minute or so his sharp, dark-pointed tongue peeped out at the corner of his lips and flicked across them moistly. The snowy handkerchief in his breast pocket was scented with some heavy cologne like those hothouse plants so rich you can smell the decay at their roots.
"Thats not in Oxford, is it?"
"Thank you," she said blandly, and put it in the little pocket on the back of her rucksack before leaving. She felt he was watching her all the way out.
"No," he said. "But shes not in very good health. She cant tell me very much, and I want to know."
Lyra shut the door behind her. Mindful of what the alethiometer had told her, she tried hard not to do what she normally would have done, and she told the truth.
"Vanished? Just... lost?"
"I come from another world," she began. "And in that world theres an Oxford like this, only different, and thats where I come from. And—"
"Just a moment, please..."
But here were St. Johns College gates, which she and Roger had once climbed after dark to plant fireworks in the flower beds; and that particular worn stone at the corner of Catte Street—there were the initials SP that Simon Parslow had scratched, the very same ones! Shed seen him do it!
But the alethiometer still hadnt finished. The needle twitched again, and she read: Do not lie to the Scholar.
"Something like that. Look, can you tell me or not?"
She yawned widely.
"Yes, I see. Where are you now? Are you at home?"
"Makes you wonder, doesnt it? No anesthetic, no disinfectant, probably done with stone tools.
"No."
"Yes ... Has your mother ... is she ... does she know youre phoning me?"
"Oh, just in case, heres my name and address," he said, handing her a card. "Just in case you want to know more about things like this."
The woman was looking at her wide-eyed.
Coopers number, because if he heard his mothers voice, it would be very hard not to go back to her, and that would put both of them in danger. But he could send her a postcard.
They must have been tough, mustnt they? I dont think Ive seen you here before. I come here quite a lot. Whats your name?" "Lizzie," she said comfortably.
"And your mothers not well, you say?"
She focused her mind on the central skull and asked: What sort of person did this skull belong to, and why did they have those holes made in it?
There must be some more information somewhere else; but where could he go next? And if he took too long searching for it, hed be traced....
"Yes, I understand, but can you just tell me whether hes alive or dead?"
She filled an electric kettle, and while she spooned instant coffee into two mugs Lyra stared at the Chinese pattern on the back of the door.
"Its in connection with Mr. John Parry. Im his son."
Lyra looked at her narrow-eyed, in case she was being sarcastic. She said: "There are some things the same and some that are different, thats all. I dont know everything about my world. Maybe they got this Ching thing there too."
There might be a Simon Parslow in this world.
This time she asked where she could find a Scholar who knew about Dust. The answer she got was simple: it directed her to a certain room in the tall square building behind her. In fact, the answer was so straightforward, and came so abruptly, that Lyra was sure the alethiometer had more to say: she was beginning to sense now that it had moods, like a person, and to know when it wanted to tell her more.
But at that point Wills money ran out, and he didnt have any more change. The dial tone purred in his ear. He put the phone down and looked around.
"I know you know about it. I can prove it. You got to tell me."
"Dr. Listers on the third floor. If youve got something for him, you can leave it here and Ill let him know."
