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

by Philip Pullman

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Yes, a lot. But he gave me some painkillers. Now tell me about Lyra.”

  “I’m not sure you’d recognize her now. She’s got short dark hair and glasses.”

  Malcolm tried to imagine this dark-haired girl wearing glasses, without success. “Could anyone have followed her to your apartment?” he said.

  “You mean, was that why they bombed it?” said Bud. “Because they thought she was there? I doubt it. In the first place, we weren’t followed when we left the café. In the second place, they know where I live anyway: there’s no secret about that. For the most part the agencies leave each other alone, apart from the usual secret-service attentions. Bombing, arson—they’re not the local style. I’m worried about what happened to her after she took the train to Seleukeia.”

  “What was she going to do there? Did she tell you?”

  “Well, she had a strange idea….It’s the kind of thing anyone might think was crazy, but somehow as she spoke about it…In the desert between Aleppo and Seleukeia there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of empty towns and villages. Dead towns, that’s what they call them. Nothing there but stones and lizards and snakes.

  “And in one of those dead cities, well: this is what they say. Dæmons live there. Just dæmons. Lyra heard a story about it, oh, way back, in England, from some old guy on a boat. And she met an old woman here in Smyrna called Princess Cantacuzino, who told her about it as well. And Lyra was going to go there and look for her dæmon.”

  “You don’t sound as if you believe it.”

  Schlesinger drank some of his tea and then said, “Well, I had no idea. But the princess is an interesting woman; there was a huge scandal about her years ago. If she ever writes her memoirs, there’s a bestseller in it. Anyway, her dæmon had left her, like Lyra’s had. If Lyra gets as far as Seleukeia—”

  “What do you mean, if she gets that far?”

  “I mean, these are bad times, Mal. You’ve seen the numbers of people fleeing from the trouble further east? The Turks have been mobilizing their army in response. They expect trouble, and so do I. That young woman’s moving right into the thick of it. And as I say, if she makes it to Seleukeia, she’ll still have to travel on somehow to this Blue Hotel. What’ll you do when you find her?”

  “Travel together. We’re going further east, to where the roses come from.”

  “On behalf of Oakley Street?”

  “Well, yes. Of course.”

  “Don’t try and tell us that’s all it is,” said Anita. “You’re in love with her.”

  Malcolm felt a great weariness oppress his heart. It must have shown in his expression, because she went on, “Sorry. Ignore that. None of my business.”

  “One day I’ll write my memoirs. But listen: before he died, Cartwright said something about the men from the mountains who attacked the research station. He said they were funded by something called TP. Ever heard of that?”

  Bud blew out his cheeks. “Thuringia Petroleum,” he said. “Bad guys.”

  “Potash,” said Anita. “Not Petroleum.”

  “Damn, that’s right: Potash. Anita wrote a piece about them.”

  “It wasn’t published,” Anita continued. “The editor was nervous about it. It’s a very old company. They’ve been digging up potash in Thuringia for centuries. They used to supply companies that made fertilizer, explosives, chemical stuff, generally. But about twenty years ago TP began to diversify into manufacturing as well, because that’s where the profit was. Arms and pharmaceuticals, mainly. They’re enormous, Malcolm, and they used to loathe publicity, but markets don’t work like that, and they’re having to adapt to new ways of doing things. They had a big success with a painkiller called treptizam, made a lot of money, and put it all into research. They’re privately owned, no shareholders demanding dividends. And they’ve got good scientists. What are you looking at?”

  Malcolm had reached uncomfortably into his pocket to take out a little bottle of pills. “Treptizam,” he read.

  “There you are,” said Bud. “The name of every product they make contains the letters T and P. And Cartwright thought they were funding the terrorists? The men from the mountains?”

  “He saw the initials on the trucks they came in.”

  “They’re after the roses.”

  “Of course they are. That explains a lot. Anita, could I see that story of yours? I’d like to read about the background.”

  She shook her head. “Most of my files went up with the apartment,” she said. “All that work.”

  “Could that have been the reason for bombing the place?”

  She looked at Bud. He nodded reluctantly. “One of them,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry. But for now I’d better follow Lyra’s trail.”

  “I told Lyra to seek out a guy in Aleppo called Mustafa Bey. He’s a merchant. He knows everyone and everything. It’s likely that she’ll go to him first if she gets there. I would. Anyway, you’ll find him at Marletto’s Café.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Bud bought Malcolm some clothes to replace the blood-soaked ones, and a stick to help him walk, and went with him to the railway station, where he was going to take the express for Aleppo.

  “What’ll you do with the safe house?” Malcolm asked.

  “The police are there already. Someone reported the sound of the shots. We got out just in time, but we won’t be able to use it again. It’ll all be in my report to Oakley Street.”

  “Thanks, Bud. I owe you a lot.”

  “Say hello to Lyra, if…”

  “I’ll do that.”

  As the train left, Malcolm settled himself painfully in the air-conditioned comfort and took out the battered copy of Jahan and Rukhsana from Hassall’s rucksack, in an attempt to take his mind off the pain in his hip.

  The poem told the story of two lovers and their attempts to defeat Rukhsana’s uncle, the sorcerer Kourash, and gain possession of a garden where precious roses grew. It was highly episodic; the story had many turns and byways, and brought in every kind of fabulous creature and outlandish situation. At one point Jahan had to harness a winged horse and fly to the moon to rescue Rukhsana, who had been imprisoned by the Queen of the Night, and at another Rukhsana used a forbidden amulet to overcome the threats of the fire fiend Razvani, and further elaborations followed each adventure, like little vortices of consequence spinning away from the main flow. In Malcolm’s view the story was almost insufferable, but the whole thing was redeemed by the poet’s rapturous descriptions of the rose garden itself, and the physical world as a whole, and of the pleasures of the senses that were enjoyed by those who reached it in a state of knowledge.

  “Either it means something,” Malcolm said to Asta, “or it means nothing.”

  “My bet is on something,” she said.

  They were alone in the compartment. The train was due to stop in an hour’s time.

  “Why?” he said.

  “Because Hassall wouldn’t have burdened himself with it unless it meant something.”

  “Maybe it only meant something close and personal to him, and there’s no other significance.”

  “But we need to know about him. It’s important to know why he valued that poem.”

  “Maybe it’s not the poem so much as this particular book. This edition. Even this copy.”

  “As a code book…”

  “Something like that.”

  If two people each had a copy of the same book, they could send messages to each other by looking for the word they wanted and writing the page number, the line number, and the number of the word in the line, and if the book was unknown to anyone else, the code was practically unbreakable.

  Alternatively, the particular copy could itself carry a message if the letters or words wanted were indicated in some w
ay, by a pencil dot or something similar. The trouble with that method was that the message was equally readable by the enemy, if it fell into their hands. It was hardly secret at all. Malcolm had spent some time looking for such marks, and several times had thought he’d found some, only to conclude that they were flaws in the cheap coarse paper rather than anything intended.

  “Delamare is Lyra’s uncle,” said Asta.

  “So what?”

  Sometimes he could be very slow. “Kourash is Rukhsana’s uncle. He’s trying to capture a rose garden.”

  “Oh! I see. But who’s Jahan?”

  “Oh, really, Mal.”

  “They’re lovers.”

  “It’s the essence of the situation that matters.”

  “It’s a coincidence.”

  “Well,” she said, “if you say so. But you were looking for a reason to find this book important.”

  “No. I already think it’s important. I was looking for a good reason why. An accidental coincidence or two is just not convincing.”

  “On its own. But when there are lots of them…”

  “You’re playing devil’s advocate.”

  “There’s a good reason for the devil’s advocate. You have to be skeptical.”

  “I thought you were being credulous.”

  They were fencing. They often did, with him arguing X and her arguing Y, and then in a flash they’d change sides and argue the opposite, and eventually something would emerge that made sense to them both.

  “That place she’s looking for,” Asta said, “that dead town: Why d’you think dæmons live there? Is there somewhere like that in the poem?”

  “Damn it, actually there is. Rukhsana’s shadow is stolen, and she has to get it back from the land of the zarghuls.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Devils who eat shadows.”

  “Does she get it back?”

  “Yes, but not without sacrificing something else…”

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “And I suppose…,” he began.

  “What?”

  “There’s a passage in which Rukhsana is captured by the enchantress Shahzada, the Queen of the Night, and Jahan rescues her….”

  “Go on.”

  “The thing is that he tricks her by tying her silk sash in a clever knot that she can’t undo, and while she’s trying to do that, he and Rukhsana escape.”

  He waited. Then she said, “Oh! The fairy of the Thames and the box she couldn’t open!”

  “Diania. Yes, the same kind of thing.”

  “Mal, this is…”

  “Very similar. I can’t deny that.”

  “But what does it mean, for things like that to turn up? It might be just a matter of temperament whether you find it meaningful.”

  “That would make it meaningless,” he pointed out. “Shouldn’t it be true whether you believe in it or not?”

  “Maybe refusing to see is the mistake. Maybe we should make a commitment. Decide. What happens at the end of the poem?”

  “They find the garden and defeat the sorcerer and get married.”

  “And live happily ever after…Mal, what are we going to do? Believe it, or not? Does it mean what it seems to mean? And what does mean mean anyway?”

  “Well, that’s easier,” he said. “The meaning of something is its connection to something else. To us, in particular.”

  The train was slowing down as it moved through the outskirts of a town on the coast.

  “It wasn’t going to stop here, was it?” said Asta.

  “No. It might just be slowing down because they’re working on the next track or something.”

  But it wasn’t that. The train slowed down even further, and entered the station at a crawl. In the fading afternoon light Malcolm and Asta could see a dozen or so men and women gathered around a platform from which someone had been giving a speech, or perhaps saying a ceremonial farewell. A man in a dark suit and a wing-collared shirt was stepping down, hands were being shaken, embraces bestowed. Clearly he was someone important enough for the railway company to change their schedules for. A porter in the background picked up two suitcases and came to put them on the train.

  Malcolm tried to move, because his leg was stiffening, but the pain was relentless. He couldn’t even stand up.

  “Lie down,” said Asta.

  The train began to move once more, and Malcolm felt a great resignation settle over him like falling snow. The strength was draining out of him minute by minute. Maybe he’d never move again. His body was failing, and the sensation drew him back twenty years to that dreadful mausoleum in the flood where he’d had to go to the very edge of his strength to save Alice from Gerard Bonneville….Alice would know what to do now. He whispered her name, and Asta heard and tried to respond, but she was dazed with pain as well, and when he fainted, so did she. The ticket inspector found her unconscious on his breast. A pool of blood was gathering on the floor.

  Alice Lonsdale was sorting some linen, putting aside those sheets and pillowcases that could be mended, and tearing up for dusters and cleaning rags those beyond help, when Mr. Cawson the Steward opened the door and came in.

  “Alice,” he said, “the Master wants to see you.” He looked serious, but then he never looked lighthearted.

  “What’s he want me for?” said Alice.

  “He’s seeing all of us. Collections for servants, I expect.”

  Collections was the term for an annual meeting between student and tutor at which the student’s progress was assessed.

  “Has he seen you yet?” said Alice, hanging up her apron.

  “Not yet. You heard anything from young Lyra?”

  “No, and I’m worried sick, I don’t mind saying.”

  “She seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. The Master’s in the Bursar’s office, because they’re redecorating his.”

  Alice had no particular anxiety about seeing the Master, though she had never cared for him, and since hearing how he’d treated Lyra, she detested him thoroughly. She knew she did her job well, and had enlarged the duties she’d originally been engaged to carry out to such an extent that in the Bursar’s view, and in the Steward’s, and certainly in that of the old Master too, she was essential to the smooth running of the college. In fact, two or three other colleges had taken the revolutionary step of appointing housekeepers of their own, in imitation, thus breaking a centuries-old Oxford habit of employing only male senior servants.

  So she was confident that whatever Dr. Hammond wanted to see her about, it wouldn’t be dissatisfaction with her work. In any case, that would have been a matter for the Domestic Bursar, not the Master. Curious.

  She knocked on the door of the Bursar’s secretary, Janet, and went in. Janet’s dæmon, a squirrel, immediately scampered across to greet Ben, Alice’s dæmon, and Alice felt a little shiver of apprehension, without knowing why. Janet, a slight, pretty woman in her thirties, was looking anxious, and kept glancing at the Bursar’s office door. She put her finger to her lips.

  Alice came closer. “What’s going on?” she said quietly.

  Janet whispered, “He’s got a couple of men with him from the CCD. He hasn’t said they are, but you can tell.”

  “Who else has he seen?”

  “No one.”

  “I thought he was seeing all the servants.”

  “No, that’s what he told me to tell Mr. Cawson. Alice, do be—”

  The office door opened. The Master stood there himself, with a bland smile of welcome.

  “Mrs. Lonsdale,” he said. “Thank you so much for coming. Janet, could we have some coffee?”

  “Of course, sir,” she said, more startled than Alice, more nervous.

  “Do come in,” said Dr. Hammond. “I hope I’m not disturbing your w
ork, but I thought we might have a chat.”

  Alice went in as he held the door. There were two men in there with him, as Janet had said, both seated. Neither of them stood up, or smiled, or offered to shake hands. Alice could project a beam (that was how she thought of it) of intense coldness when she wanted to, and she did then. The men didn’t move or change their expressions, but she knew the beam had reached its target.

  She sat down in the third chair in front of the desk, between the two strangers. Alice was slim, she could move with great elegance, she was not beautiful—she would never be that, nor pretty, nor conventionally attractive—but she could embody an intense sexuality. Malcolm knew that. She let it show now, just to disconcert them. The Master went behind his desk and sat down, making a meaningless remark about the weather. Still Alice hadn’t said a word.

  “Mrs. Lonsdale,” Hammond said, having settled himself, “these two gentlemen are from a government agency concerned with matters of security. They have a few questions to ask, and I thought it would be better all round for the college if it happened quietly here in my presence. I hope everything is well with you?”

  “Mr. Cawson told me you were seeing all the servants. He said it was just an internal matter. Domestic. He obviously didn’t know about these two policemen.”

  “Not policemen, Mrs. Lonsdale. Civil servants, perhaps? And as I say, I thought it best to maintain a certain discretion.”

  “In case I wouldn’t come if I heard they were here?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you know where your duty lies, Mrs. Lonsdale. Mr. Manton, would you like to begin?”

  The older of the two men was sitting on Alice’s left. She looked at him just once, and saw a blandly good-looking face, a neat gray suit and a striped tie, and the body of a man too interested in weight lifting. His dæmon was a wolf.

  “Mrs. Lonsdale,” he said. “My name is Captain Manton. I—”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said. “Captain isn’t a name; it’s a rank. Captain in what, anyway? You look like a secret policeman. Is that what you are?”

  As she spoke to him, she looked directly at the Master. He returned her gaze with no expression at all.