The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2)

by Philip Pullman

  “That’s when the CCD got their foothold in this country. It all changed then to what we got now—a government what dun’t trust the people, and a people that’s afraid of the government, each side spying on the other. The CCD faction can’t arrest as many people as hate it, and the people en’t got the organization to move agin the CCD. Sort of a stalemate. But it’s worse’n that. The other side’s got an energy that our side en’t got. Comes from their certainty about being right. If you got that certainty, you’ll be willing to do anything to bring about the end you want. It’s the oldest human problem, Lyra, an’ it’s the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can’t. Evil has nothing to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it’d have to become evil to do ’em.”

  “But…” Lyra wanted to object to that but didn’t know where to start. “But what about when the gyptians and the witches and Mr. Scoresby and Iorek Byrnison destroyed Bolvangar? Wasn’t that an example of good beating evil?”

  “Yes, it was. A small victory—all right, a big victory, thinking of all them kids we rescued and took back home. That was a big victory. But not a final one. The CCD is stronger than ever, the Magisterium is full of vigor, and little agencies like Oakley Street are starved of funds and run by old people whose best days are long behind ’em.”

  He sipped the last of his beer.

  “But what d’you want to do, Lyra?” he went on. “What’ve you got in mind?”

  “I didn’t know until I had a dream. Not long ago I dreamed I was playing with a dæmon, and she wasn’t mine, but we loved each other so much….Sorry.” She had to swallow hard and brush her eyes. “I knew what I had to do when I woke up. I had to go to the desert of Karamakan and go into a building there because I might find that dæmon again and…I don’t know why. But I have to find Pan first, because you can’t go in without a dæmon and…”

  She was losing the thread of her own story, not least because she had hardly expressed it to herself before she began to explain it to Farder Coram. And now she could see he was getting tired.

  “I’d better go,” she said.

  “Yes, I can’t stay awake all day like I used to. Come back this evening and I’ll be refreshed, and I’ll have a couple of ideas for you.”

  She kissed him again and carried the tray back to Ma Costa’s boat.

  * * *

  * * *

  Ma Costa didn’t travel much these days; the family had a mooring near the Byanzaal, and as she said to Lyra, it was likely to be her last. She was happy cultivating vegetables and a few flowers on the patch of ground next to the mooring, and happy, she said, to give Lyra a bunk for as long as she needed to stay. She could cook, if she liked.

  “Old Giorgio told me you en’t a bad cook,” Ma had said. “Except for stewed eels, that is.”

  “What was wrong with my stewed eels?” said Lyra, a little indignant. “He never told me there was anything wrong with them.”

  “Well, you watch me next time I cook ’em, and learn. Mind you, it takes a lifetime to know how to do ’em proper.”

  “What’s the secret?”

  “You gotta cut them on the diagonal. You wun’t think it made any difference, but it does.”

  She went out with her basket. Lyra went to sit on the cabin roof and watched the boat mother make her way along the bank towards the great Byanzaal, with its thatched roof and the marketplace beside it. The canopies of the market stalls were of many colors, the brightest things by far in the gray landscape, where the horizon had to be guessed at in the fading wintry light.

  But even if I passed a lifetime here and learnt to stew eels properly, this isn’t my home and it never will be, she thought. I found that out long ago.

  It was deeply tiring, not knowing how long she’d be here, or how she’d know it was safe to leave, and knowing only that she didn’t belong. She stood up wearily, thinking that she might go below and close her eyes; but before she could move, a small boat came along the canal, punted by a boy of about fourteen whose duck dæmon paddled busily beside it. He was moving the boat with skill and power, and as soon as he saw Lyra, he let the punt pole drag in the water to slow down, and swung it left to bring himself in next to the Costas’ boat. The duck dæmon flapped her wings and hopped aboard.

  “You Miss Silvertongue?” the boy called up.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He fumbled in the breast of his water-green jacket. “Got a letter for you,” he said, and handed it up.

  “Thanks.”

  She took it and turned it over to read the address: “Miss L. Silvertongue, c/o Coram van Texel,” and Coram or someone had crossed out his name and written in “Mme. Costa, Persian Queen.” The envelope was made of heavy, expensive paper, and the address was typed.

  She realized that the boy was waiting. Then she realized what he was waiting for, and gave him a small coin.

  “Toss you for double or quits,” he said.

  “Too late now,” she said. “I’ve got the letter.”

  “Worth a try,” he said, and dropped it in his pocket before speeding away, moving his punt so fast it actually had a bow wave.

  The envelope was too beautiful to tear, so she went below and slit it open with a kitchen knife. She sat at the galley table to read the letter.

  The paper was headed Durham College, Oxford, but the printed address was crossed out. She didn’t know what that could mean, but the letter was signed Malcolm P. She was curious to see his handwriting, and glad to find that it was graceful, strong, and legible. He’d written with a fountain pen in blue-black ink.

  Dear Lyra,

  I heard from Dick Orchard about your predicament, and where you’ve gone. You couldn’t do better than take refuge in the Fens, and Coram van Texel is the best person to advise you about what to do next. Ask him about Oakley Street. Hannah and I were going to tell you about it, but circumstances have overtaken us.

  Bill the porter at Jordan tells me that the gossip in the college is that you were arrested by the CCD, and that you’ve vanished into the prison system. The servants are furious about this, and blame the Master. There’s talk of a strike, which would be a Jordan College first, though since that wouldn’t bring you back I don’t think it will happen; but the Master will find his relations with the staff more than a little strained.

  In the meantime, the best thing you can do is learn as much as you can about every aspect of Oakley Street matters that old Coram van Texel can teach you. We’ve only just begun to talk about important things, you and I, but I sense that you know through the alethiometer, and maybe from other experiences as well, that there are more ways than one, more than two, of seeing things and perceiving their meanings.

  What’s so important about the Central Asian connection that came with the death of poor Roderick Hassall is that it seems to turn on this very point.

  Give my greetings to Coram, and tell him what you need to about Hassall, and about Karamakan. That’s where I shall be going next.

  Finally, please forgive the slightly pompous tone of this letter. I know I give that impression, and I wish I didn’t.

  Hannah is writing to you too, and she’d love to hear how you are. A letter in gyptian hands will make its way safely and quickly to its destination, but I have no idea how.

  With warm friendship,

  Malcolm P.

  She read it quickly, and then again slowly. She blushed at his remark about pomposity, because she had thought that—in the time before, that is to say, not since the murder by the river. The Malcolm she was getting to know now wasn’t pompous in the least.

  Ma Costa was out at the market, so Lyra had the Persian Queen to herself. She tore a page from her notebook and started to write.

  Dear Malcolm,

&n
bsp; Thank you for your letter. I’m safe here for the moment, but

  She stopped. She had no idea what to say next, or how to talk to him at all, in fact. She stood up, went out to the stern, looked around, ran her hands along the tiller, breathed the chilly air deeply into her lungs, and went in again.

  She continued:

  I know I’ll have to move on soon. I must find Pan. I’m going to follow every clue, no matter how absurd or unlikely. Like Dr. Strauss’s diary when he heard about the place called the Blue Hotel. A sort of refuge, I suppose. I’ve decided to head for that and see what happens. I must find him because unless

  She stopped, having crossed that out, and rested her head on her clenched fist. This was like talking into a void. After a minute she picked up the pen again.

  If I find him there, we’ll go on to Karamakan and try and cross the desert and find that red building. The thing is that when I first read about it in Dr. Strauss’s account, I thought about it a lot and it affected me like one of those dreams that stay with you for hours after you wake up. It was familiar, but I had no idea why. I think I know something about it, but it’s lost and I can’t reach it. I probably need to dream about it again.

  Maybe I’ll see you there.

  If I don’t come back, I just want to say thank you for taking care of me in the flood when I was a baby. I wish memories went further back in our lives than they do so that I could recall all of it, because the only thing I remember is little trees with lights in them and being very happy. But of course that might have been a dream too. I wish I hope one day we’ll be able to talk and I can explain all the things that led up to me coming here. I don’t understand it all myself. But Pan thought something had stolen my imagination. That’s why he left, to go and look for it. Maybe you could understand what he meant by that and why it was almost too hard to bear.

  Malcolm, please give my love to Hannah and to Alice. And remember me to Dick Orchard. Oh, and to your parents. I’ve known them for such a little time but I liked them so much. It would be

  She crossed out those three words and wrote instead:

  I wish

  before crossing that out too. Finally she wrote:

  I’m very glad we made friends.

  Yours,

  Lyra

  Before she could regret writing it, she sealed it in an envelope she found in a galley drawer and addressed it to Dr. Malcolm Polstead, Durham College, Oxford. She left it propped against the salt pot and went out again.

  She was restless. There was nothing to settle to, nothing purposeful to do; she was tired, and yet she couldn’t keep still. She wandered along the canal banks, aware of the curious stares of the boat people and the particular way the young men were looking at her. The canals and the Byanplaats were as busy as ever, and soon she became uncomfortable with the sense that so many eyes were on her. Those young men: if Pan had been with her, she’d have been able to stare them back just as boldly, as she’d done a hundred times in the past, or even better, ignore them completely. She knew that they were less self-assured than they looked, and that she could disconcert them in several ways, but knowing that she could do it wasn’t the same as being able to do it just then. She was nervous of everything, and it was horrible. She wanted to hide.

  Defeated, she turned back to the Persian Queen and lay down on her bunk. Quite soon she was asleep.

  * * *

  * * *

  Pantalaimon, meanwhile, was sleeping too, but intermittently; he would wake up suddenly and remember where he was, and then lie listening to the thudding of the engine, and the groaning and creaking of the old schooner’s timbers, and the splash of the waves only inches away through the hull, before sinking again into a shallow slumber.

  He woke up out of a dream to hear a scratchy kind of whisper close by, and knew at once that it was the voice of a ghost. He closed his eyes tighter and pulled himself even further into the darkness of the hold, but the whispers went on. It wasn’t one, it was several, and they wanted something from him, but they couldn’t say it clearly.

  “I’m just dreaming,” he whispered. “Go away, go away.”

  The ghosts pressed around him closely, their voices hissing and scratching under the restless dash of the waves.

  “Don’t come so near,” he said. “Get back.”

  Then he realized that they weren’t threatening: they were desperate for the little warmth they could feel from his body. He felt an oceanic pity for these poor chilly phantoms, and tried to peer through his closed eyelids to see their faces clearly; but there was nothing clear about them. The sea had worn them smooth and vague. He still didn’t know if he was awake or asleep.

  Then he heard the sound of a bolt being slid open. Every pale blank ghost face looked up at once, and then, as a beam of anbaric light stabbed down into the murk, they all vanished, as if they’d never been. Pan crouched deeper into the shadows and held his breath. Now he was awake; there was no doubt about that; he had to open his eyes.

  There was a ladder, and a man was clambering down it—two men. Rain came pelting in with them, splashing and streaming off their oilskins and sou’westers. The first man held a torch, and the second man reached up and swung the hatch cover closed above them. One of the men was the sailor he’d seen the night before, watching from the rail while the captain and the mate stole the propeller.

  The first man hung the torch on a nail. The battery was running low, so the light was dim and inconstant, but Pan could see the two of them turning over the boxes and sacks that had been tossed carelessly down into the hold. Most of the boxes seemed to be empty, but then they came across one that clinked with the sound of bottles.

  “Ah,” said the first man, and tore off the cardboard lid. “Oh, shit, look at this. Typical.” He held up a bottle of tomato ketchup.

  “Here’s some spuds,” said the other man, opening a sack. “He can make us some chips, at least. I don’t know, though….” The potatoes he was taking out had all grown lengthy pallid shoots, and some of them were rotten.

  “They’ll do,” said the first man. “Fry ’em in diesel and you’ll never taste the difference. And here’s some sauerkraut, look. And some tinned wurst. A feast, mate.”

  “Don’t go back up yet, though,” said the other. “Let ’em wait. Stay out the rain and have a smoke.”

  “Good idea,” said the first man, and they piled a couple of flour sacks against the bulkhead, settled down on them, and dragged out their pipes and smokeleaf. Their dæmons, a rat and a sparrow, came out of the necks of their oilskins and grubbed around by their feet, looking for scraps of anything tasty.

  “What’s the old man going to do with that bloody propeller?” said one of the men when he’d got his pipe alight. “As soon as the harbormaster spots it, he’ll call the cops.”

  “Who is the harbormaster at Cuxhaven?”

  “Old Hessenmüller. Nosy swine.”

  “Flint’ll probably try and offload it on Borkum first. That breaker’s yard across from the lighthouse.”

  “What kind of cargo does he think we’ll pick up in Cuxhaven anyway?”

  “Not cargo. Passengers.”

  “Piss off! Who’d pay to sail on this filthy old wreck?”

  “I heard him talking, him and Herman. These are a special sort of passengers.”

  “What’s special about them?”

  “They en’t got no passports, no papers, nothing like that.”

  “Money? They got any money?”

  “No, they en’t got that either.”

  “Then what’s in it for the old man?”

  “He’s got a deal with some big farmer in Essex. There’s more and more people coming up the rivers from the south, I don’t know, Turkey or somewhere. There’s no work for ’em in Germany, but this farmer reckons he likes the idea of a bunch o
f workers he doesn’t have to pay. Well, I suppose he has to feed ’em and give ’em somewhere to sleep, but no wages, sod that for a lark. Slaves, basically. They won’t be able to get away because if they en’t got papers…”

  “We’re running slaves now?”

  “I don’t like it either. But whatever happens, he’ll do all right, Hans Flint. He always does.”

  “Mad bowlegged bastard.”

  They smoked in silence for a few minutes more, and then the first man knocked out his pipe and stamped the ashes deep into the bilgewater slopping to and fro.

  “Come on,” he said, “get some spuds, and I’ll see if I can find some beer. If there’s any left.”

  “Tell you what,” said the other. “I’m sick of this. Soon as I get me pay, I’m going to scarper.”

  “Don’t blame yer. Course, Flint’ll hold out till he’s sold the propeller, and then till he’s got his fee from the farmer, and he’ll go on holding out time and time again. Remember old Gustav? He scarpered in the end without the pay he was owed. Just gave up and buggered off.”

  He shoved the hatch cover up, and the two of them climbed out into the rain, leaving Pan in the dark and the cold and the solitude. Even the ghosts left him alone; perhaps they were dreams after all.