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

by Philip Pullman

  As they reached the great mahogany doors that opened onto White Hall, the young man finally found something to say. “Can I—er—could I perhaps call a taxi for you, Mrs. Godwin?”

  “Kind of you, but I think I’ll walk part of the way,” she said, and shook the young man’s hand. “I wouldn’t tie yourself too closely to the Office of the Private Purse if I were you,” she added.

  “Really?”

  “Your chief is cutting off the branch he’s sitting on, and he’ll take the whole office down with him. That’s an educated guess. Cultivate some alternative sources of power. Always a wise precaution. Good day.”

  She left and walked up White Hall a little way before turning into the War Office and asking a porter to take a message to Mr. Carberry. She wrote a few lines on one of her cards and handed it to the man before leaving and making her way down to the gardens on the Embankment that faced the river. It was a clear bright day, with big dazzling clouds moving busily across the blue sky, and the air felt almost sparkling. Glenys found a bench near the statue of some long-dead statesman and sat down to enjoy the river. The tide was high; a string of barges pulled by a sturdy little tug was moving upstream, carrying a cargo of coal.

  “What will we do?” said her dæmon.

  “Oh, we’ll flourish. It’ll be like the old days.”

  “When we were young and full of energy.”

  “We’re wilier now.”

  “Slower.”

  “Cleverer.”

  “More easily damaged.”

  “We’ll have to put up with that. Here’s Martin.”

  Martin Carberry was a Permanent Secretary at the War Office and an old friend of Oakley Street. Glenys stood up to greet him, and by unspoken agreement and long habit they began to stroll along together to talk.

  “Can’t stay long,” Carberry said. “Meeting with the Muscovite Naval Attaché at twelve. What’s up?”

  “They’re closing us down. I’ve just been with Newman. Apparently we’re counter-modern. Of course we’ll survive, but we’ll have to go a little undergroundish. What I want to know now, quite urgently, is what the new High Council in Geneva is up to. I gather the chief man’s coming here in a couple of days.”

  “Apparently so. There’s talk of a memorandum of understanding, which will change the way we work with them. What they’re up to—well, they’re assembling a large strike force in Eastern Europe. That’s what the Muscovite chap’s coming here to talk about, not surprisingly. There’s been a lot of diplomatic activity in the Levant—Persia too—and further east.”

  “We’ve been aware of that, but our own resources are stretched, as you can imagine. If you had to put a fiver on it, what would you say this strike force was being set up to do?”

  “To invade Central Asia. There’s talk of a source of valuable chemicals or minerals or something in a desert in the middle of some howling wilderness, and it’s a matter of strategic importance for the Magisterium not to let anyone else get at it before they do. There’s a very strong commercial interest as well. Pharmaceuticals, mainly. It’s all a bit blurred, to tell you the truth. Reports rely too much on rumor, or gossip, or old wives’ tales. Our interest at the moment lies in keeping the peace with Geneva. We haven’t yet been asked to contribute the Brigade of Guards, or even some secondhand water cannons, but no doubt we’d regard it favorably if we were.”

  “They can’t invade anywhere without an excuse. What’ll it be, d’you think?”

  “That’s what all the diplomacy’s about. I heard that there is or was some sort of science place—a research institute or something—at the edge of the desert concerned. There were scientists from various countries working there, including ours, and they’ve been under pressure from local fanatics, of whom there are not a few, and the casus belli will probably be a confected sense of outrage that innocent scholars have been brutally treated by bandits or terrorists, and the Magisterium’s natural desire to rescue them.”

  “What are the local politics?”

  “Confused. The desert and the moving lake—”

  “A moving lake?”

  “It’s called Lop Nor. Really an immense area of salt marshes and shallow lakes where earth movements and changes in the climate play Old Harry with the geography. Anyway, national borders are flexible, or changeable, or negotiable. There is a king who claims to rule there, but he’s really a vassal of the empire of Cathay, which is as much as to say that it depends on the current state of the emperor’s health whether Peking feels like exercising power or not. What’s Oakley Street’s interest in this?”

  “There’s something going on there, and we need to know about it. Now that we’ve been officially disrecognized—”

  “Lovely word.”

  “A coinage of Newman’s, I think. Anyway, now that we’ve ceased to exist, I want to cover as many angles as I can reach while I still can.”

  “Of course. But you’ve got a contingency plan? You must have seen this coming?”

  “Oh, yes. This just adds another layer of difficulty. But this government will fall in the end.”

  “Very sanguine. Glenys, if I need to contact you at any point—”

  “A note chez Isabelle will always find me.”

  “Right. Well, good luck.”

  They shook hands and parted. Isabelle was an elderly woman who had been an agent herself until arthritis had forced her to retire. She now ran a restaurant in Soho often used as an informal post office by people in the trade of intelligence.

  Glenys walked along the Embankment. There was a tourist boat moving slowly past, with a loudspeakered voice pointing out the sights. The sun shone on the river, on the arches of Waterloo Bridge, on the distant dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

  Carberry had confirmed much of what she’d already suspected. The Magisterium under its new President was intent on capturing and possessing the source of this rose oil, and was willing to muster an army and take it several thousand miles to do so. Anyone who was in the way could expect to be crushed without mercy.

  “Pharmaceuticals,” said Godwin.

  “Thuringia Potash,” said her dæmon.

  “Must be.”

  “They’re enormous.”

  “Well, Polstead will know what to do,” said Godwin, and anyone who didn’t know her would have heard nothing in her voice but boundless confidence and certainty.

  * * *

  * * *

  The doorman at the New Danish consulate in Smyrna said, “Mr. Schlesinger is busy. He cannot see you now.”

  Malcolm knew the procedure. He took a small-denomination banknote from his pocket and picked up a paper clip from the desk.

  “And this is my card,” he said.

  He clipped the card to the banknote, which vanished at once into the doorman’s pocket.

  “Two minutes, sir,” the man said, and set off up the stairs.

  It was a tall building on a narrow street near the ancient bazaar. Malcolm had been here twice before, but this was a new doorman, and something about the district had changed. People were watchful now; an air of casual well-being had vanished. The cafés were largely empty.

  He heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to greet the consul, but Bud shook his head, set his finger to his lips, and came down to meet him.

  A warm handshake, and Schlesinger nodded towards the door.

  “Not safe?” said Malcolm quietly as they walked along the street.

  “Listening wires everywhere. How are you, Mal?”

  “Fine. But you look a wreck. What’s been happening?”

  “The apartment was firebombed.”

  “No! Is Anita all right?”

  “Got out just in time. But she lost a lot of work, and—well, there’s not much left. You found Lyra yet?”

  “Have you seen her?”
/>   Schlesinger told him how he’d first seen Lyra in the café, and recognized her from the photogram.

  “Anita helped her change her appearance a little. But…she went out before the place was bombed, and we never saw her again. I say we never did, but I’ve asked around, and it seems she went to a nearby café and read a letter, which would have been the one from you that I passed on, and then went to the railroad station and caught a train towards the east, but not the fast Aleppo train. One that stops everywhere and crawls to…I think Seleukeia is the final stop, near the border. That’s the last I’ve managed to find out.”

  “And she still hadn’t found her dæmon?”

  “No. She had this idea he was in one of the dead towns outside Aleppo. But listen, Malcolm, something else has just come up. This is urgent. I’m going to take you to see a man called Ted Cartwright. Just up here.” Malcolm was aware that Bud was checking in all directions, and he did the same, seeing no one. Schlesinger turned into an alley and unlocked a shabby green door. When they were inside, he locked it again, and said, “He’s in poor shape, and I don’t think he’s got long. Up the stairs.”

  As Malcolm followed, he tried to place the name Ted Cartwright. He knew he’d heard it before: someone had spoken it, in a Swedish accent, and there’d been a penciled scrawl on tattered paper….Then he had it.

  “Tashbulak?” he said. “The director of the research station?”

  “Yup. He arrived yesterday, after God knows what sort of journey. This is a safe house, and we’ve arranged a nurse and a stenographer…but you need to hear it from his own lips. Here we are.”

  Another door, another lock, and they were inside a small, neat studio flat. A young woman in a dark blue uniform was taking the temperature of a man lying on the single bed. He was covered in nothing but a sheet. His eyes were closed, and he was sweating, and emaciated, and his face was blistered with sunburn. His thrush dæmon clung to the padded headboard, dusty and weary. Asta jumped up beside her, and they whispered together.

  “Is he any better?” asked Bud quietly.

  The nurse shook her head.

  “Dr. Cartwright?” said Malcolm.

  The man opened his eyes, which were red-rimmed and bloodshot. They flickered constantly without focusing on anything, and Malcolm wasn’t sure if Cartwright could see him at all.

  The nurse put her thermometer away, made a note on a chart, and stood up to let Malcolm have her chair. She went across to a table where boxes of pills and other medical supplies were neatly stacked. Malcolm sat down and said, “Dr. Cartwright, I’m a friend of your colleague Lucy Arnold, in Oxford. My name is Malcolm Polstead. Can you hear me clearly?”

  “Yes,” came in a hoarse whisper. “Can’t see much, though.”

  “You’re the director of the research station at Tashbulak?”

  “Was. Destroyed now. Had to escape.”

  “Can you tell me about your colleagues Dr. Strauss and Roderick Hassall?”

  A deep sigh, ending in a shuddering moan. Then Cartwright took another breath and said, “Did he get back? Hassall?”

  “Yes. With his notes. They were immensely helpful. What was this place they were investigating? The red building?”

  “No idea. It was where the roses came from. They insisted on going into the desert. I shouldn’t have let them. But they were desperate; we were all desperate. The men from the mountains…Shortly after I sent Hassall home…Simurgh…”

  His voice faded. From behind him Schlesinger whispered to Malcolm, “What was that last word?”

  “Tell you in a minute….Dr. Cartwright? Are you still awake?”

  “The men from the mountains…they had modern arms.”

  “What sort of arms?”

  “Up-to-date machine guns, pickup trucks, all new and plentiful.”

  “Who was funding them? Do you know?”

  Cartwright tried to cough, but couldn’t summon the strength to clear his throat fully. Malcolm could see how it hurt him, and said, “Take your time.”

  He was aware that behind him Bud had turned to talk to the nurse, but his attention was focused on Cartwright, who was gesturing, asking for help to sit up. Malcolm put his arm around the man’s back to lift him up, feeling how hot he was, and how light, and again Cartwright tried to cough, racked with wheezing, hacking efforts that seemed to strain his very skeleton.

  Malcolm half turned round to ask Bud or the nurse to bring another pillow or a cushion.

  There was no one there.

  “Bud?” he said.

  Then he realized that Bud was there, on the floor, unconscious, his owl dæmon lying on his chest. The nurse had vanished.

  He let Cartwright down gently and darted to Bud, and saw a syringe next to him on the carpet. An empty vial lay on the table.

  Malcolm flung open the door and ran to the stairs. The nurse was already at the bottom, and she turned to look up at him, and there was a pistol in her hand. He hadn’t noticed how young she was.

  “Mal—” began Asta, but she fired.

  Malcolm felt a crippling blow, but couldn’t tell where he’d been hit, and he fell at once and slid tumbling down the stairs to lie half-stunned at the foot, where the nurse had been standing a moment before. He pushed himself up and then saw what she was doing.

  “No! Don’t do it!” he cried, and tried to scramble over to her.

  She was standing inside the front door, holding the pistol under her chin. Her nightingale dæmon was shrieking with fear and fluttering at her face, but her eyes were clear and wide and blazing with righteousness. Then she pulled the trigger. Blood, bone, and brain exploded against the door, the wall, the ceiling.

  Malcolm sank to the floor. A crowd of sensations was gathering around him, among which he could smell yesterday’s cooking, and see sunlight glowing on the blood against the faded green paint of the door, and hear a ringing in his ears from the gunshot and the distant howling of wild dogs and a liquid trickle from the nurse’s blood as the last pulsing of her heart forced it out of her shattered head, and the soft voice of his dæmon whispering next to him.

  And pain. There it was. A throb of it, then another and another, and then one long, deep, focused, and brutal assault on his right hip.

  He felt it, and found his hand wet with blood. It was soon going to hurt a lot more, but there was Bud to see to. Could he get back up the stairs?

  He didn’t try to stand, but hauled himself across the wooden floor and then up, step by step, with his arms and his left leg.

  “Mal, don’t force it,” said Asta faintly. “You’re bleeding a lot.”

  “See if Bud’s all right. That’s all.”

  He managed to stand up on the landing and made it into the sickroom. Bud was still lying unconscious, but he was breathing clearly. Malcolm turned to Cartwright, and had to sit down on the edge of the bed. His leg was rapidly stiffening.

  “Help me up,” Cartwright whispered, and Malcolm tried to pull him upright, with some difficulty, and leant him against the headboard. His dæmon fell clumsily on to his shoulder.

  “The nurse—” Malcolm began, but Cartwright shook his head, which set off another bout of coughing.

  “Too late,” he managed to say. “She’s paid by them too. She’s been giving me drugs. Making me talk. And just now, poison…”

  “Being paid—you mean, by the men from the mountains?” Malcolm was baffled.

  “No, no. No. Them too. All part of the big medical—” More coughing, and retching too. A dribble of bile left his lips and fell from his chin.

  Malcolm mopped it with the sheet and said quietly, urgently, “The big medical…?”

  “TP.”

  It meant nothing to Malcolm. “TP?” he repeated.

  “Pharmaceut…funding. TP. Company lettering on their trucks…”

  Cartwright’s e
yes closed. His chest heaved, the breath rattling in his throat. Then his entire body clenched and relaxed, and he was dead. His dæmon drifted into invisible particles and melted into the air.

  Malcolm felt the strength drain out of his body as the pain in his hip grew more insistent. He should look at the wound; he should attend to Schlesinger; he should report to Oakley Street. He had never felt the desire to go to sleep so powerful and urgent.

  “Asta, keep me awake,” he said.

  “Malcolm? Is that you?” came a blurred voice from the floor.

  “Bud! You OK?”

  “What happened?”

  Schlesinger’s dæmon was standing groggily and stretching her wings as Bud struggled to sit up.

  “The nurse drugged you. Cartwright’s dead. She was drugging him.”

  “What the hell!…Malcolm, you’re bleeding. Stay there, don’t move.”

  “She injected you with something while I had my back turned. Then she ran downstairs and I ran after her, like a fool, and she shot me before killing herself.”

  Bud was holding on to the end of the bed. Whatever drug the nurse had injected into him was short-acting, because Malcolm could see the clarity returning to his friend’s face second by second. He was looking at Malcolm’s blood-soaked trouser leg.

  “All right,” he said. “First thing we do is get you out of here and call a doctor. We’ll go out the back way through the bazaar. Can you walk at all?”

  “Stiffly and slowly. You’ll have to help me.”

  Bud stood up and shook his head to clear it. “Come on, then,” he said. “Oh, here, put this on. It’ll hide the blood.”

  He opened a wardrobe and took out a long raincoat, and helped Malcolm put it on.

  “Ready when you are,” Malcolm said.

  * * *

  * * *

  A couple of hours later, after a doctor Bud trusted had examined and dressed Malcolm’s wound, they sat with Anita, drinking tea in the consulate, where they were staying while their apartment was being rebuilt.

  “What did the doctor say?” said Anita.

  “The bullet clipped the hip bone but didn’t break it. Could have been much worse.”