"Usual place," Malcolm muttered, and turned away. The hyena daemon clacked her teeth--big sharp yellow teeth in a small head. She was astonishingly ugly. Whatever had robbed her of her right foreleg would have suffered for it, if those teeth had met in its flesh.
Malcolm went to the tables across the room.
"Anything I can get you, gentlemen?" he said, conscious that his voice was shaking a little as it fell into the silent room.
He took orders for two more pints, but before he could leave, one of the drinkers surreptitiously took hold of his sleeve.
"Just mind him," came a whisper from the table. "Watch your step with that man."
Then the man let go and Malcolm took the glasses down to the other end of the bar. Asta, of course, had been looking at nothing else, and since she was a ladybug, the direction of her gaze wasn't obvious.
"I'll go and look in the Terrace Room," said Malcolm to his father, who nodded briefly.
There was no one in the Terrace Room, but there were two empty glasses on the table. He picked them up and whispered to Asta, "What does he look like?"
"Actually, he's sort of friendly and interested, as if he's listening while you're telling him something he wants to know about. There's nothing really wrong about him. It's her...."
"They're one person, en't they? We are!"
"Yeah, course, but..."
There were a few empty glasses in other places around the pub, and Malcolm took his time collecting them.
"There's hardly anyone here," he said to Asta.
"We won't have to stay in the bar, then. Go upstairs and write it down. Something to tell Dr. Relf."
He took the glasses into the kitchen and began to wash them.
"Mum," he said, "there's a man in the bar...." He told her what had happened as he left the priory, again leaving out what the daemon had done on the path. "And now he's here! And Dad looks ever so fed up. And no one else wants to go near him."
"You went and told Sister Benedicta? She'll make sure they're all shut up safe."
"But who is he? What's he do?"
"Goodness knows. If you don't like the look of him, stay away from him."
That was the trouble with his mother: she thought an instruction was an explanation. Well, he'd ask his father later.
"There's hardly anyone in tonight," he said. "Not even Alice."
"I said she needn't bother to stay on, since it was so quiet. If that man makes a habit of coming here, it'll be like this every night. Dad'll have to tell him to stay away."
"But why--"
"Never mind why. Got any homework?"
"Some geometry."
"Well, you might as well eat your supper now and get it over with."
Supper was cauliflower with cheese sauce. Asta perched on the table as a squirrel and toyed with a nut. Malcolm hurried through the meal and burned his mouth, but soothed it with a piece of cold plum pie and cream.
The glasses he'd washed had drained dry, so before going upstairs, he took them back to the bar. There were a few more people in, but the man with the hyena daemon was still sitting on his stool at the counter, and the new arrivals were at the other end, ignoring him.
"Everyone seems to know about him," Asta grumbled. "Except us."
The hyena daemon hadn't moved. She lay there gnawing and licking at the stump of her missing leg, and the man sat still, one elbow on the bar, looking all around with an air of mild and knowing interest.
Then something surprising happened. Malcolm was sure no one else could see: his father was chatting with the newcomers at the other end of the bar, and the men at the tables were playing dominoes. Afire with curiosity, Malcolm couldn't help staring at the man. He was about forty, Malcolm thought, with black hair and bright brown eyes, and all his features were clear and easy to see, as if he was a very well-lit photogram. He was wearing the sort of clothes a traveler might wear, and he might have been handsome, except that there was a kind of vigor and rough mischief about him that that word didn't do justice to. Malcolm couldn't help liking him.
And the man saw him looking, and smiled, and winked.
It was a smile of warmth and complicity. It seemed to say, We know a thing or two, the pair of us..., meaning him and Malcolm. There was knowledge in his expression, and enjoyment. It invited Malcolm into a little conspiracy of acquaintance against the rest of the world, and Malcolm found himself smiling back. Under normal circumstances, Asta would have flown down at once to talk to the daemon, from politeness, even though she was frightening and ugly, but these circumstances weren't normal. So it was just the curious boy and the man with the complicated, attractive face, and Malcolm had to smile in return.
Then it was over. Malcolm left the clean glasses on the bar and turned to go upstairs.
"I can't even remember what he's wearing," he said once the bedroom door was shut.
"Something dark," said Asta.
"D'you think he's a criminal?"
"Bound to be. But she..."
"She's horrible. I've never seen a daemon so different from their person before."
"I wonder if Dr. Relf will know who he is."
"I shouldn't think so. She knows professors and scholars and people like that. He's different."
"And spies. She knows spies."
"I don't s'pose he's a spy. He's too obvious. Anyone would notice a daemon like that."
Malcolm turned to his homework, constructing figures with his ruler and compasses, a task he normally enjoyed, but he couldn't focus on it at all. That smile was still dazzling him.
--
Dr. Relf had never heard of anyone with a daemon that was maimed in that way.
"It must happen, though, occasionally," she said.
Then Malcolm told her what the daemon had done on the path, and that puzzled her even more. Daemons were as keen on privacy as people were, being people themselves, of course.
"Well, it's a puzzle," she said.
"What d'you think it means?"
"Quite right, Malcolm. Treat it like a question for the alethiometer. See if we can work out what it all signifies. What she did on the path was an expression of contempt, wasn't it?"
"Yeah, I thought so."
"For you, who were watching, and for the place where she was--for the priory. Perhaps for the nuns and all the things they represent. Then...a hyena is a scavenger. It feeds on carrion and dead bodies left by other animals, as well as killing prey itself."
"So it's disgusting, but useful too," said Malcolm.
"So it is. I hadn't thought of that. And it laughs."
"Does it?"
"The 'laughing hyena.' Not really a laugh, but a cry that sounds like it."
"Like the crocodile crying tears when it doesn't mean it."
"Hypocritical, you mean?"
"Hypocritical," said Malcolm, relishing the word.
"And the man kept out of sight, you said."
"In the shadow, anyway."
"Tell me about the smile."
"Oh, yes, it was the strangest thing he did. He smiled and winked. No one else saw it. It was as if he was letting me know that he knew something I knew and no one else did. It was a secret between us. But not...You know how that sort of thing could make you feel creepy or dirty or guilty...."
"But it wasn't like that?"
"It was happy, sort of. Really friendly and nice. And I can't hardly believe it now, but I couldn't help sort of liking him."
"But his daemon kept gnawing at her leg," said Asta. "I was watching. It was still raw--the stump, I mean. Sort of bloody."
"What could that mean?" said Malcolm.
"She--he--they're vulnerable, perhaps?" said Dr. Relf. "If she lost another leg, she wouldn't be able to walk at all. What an awful situation."
"He didn't look worried, though. He didn't look as if anything would worry him or frighten him ever."
"Did you feel sorry for his daemon?"
"No," said Malcolm decisively. "I felt glad. She'd be much more danger
ous if she wasn't hurt like that."
"So you're in two minds about this man."
"Exactly."
"But your parents..."
"Mum just said keep away, and didn't say why. Dad obviously hated him being in the bar, but he had no reason to ask him to leave, and the other customers hated him being there too. I asked Dad later, and all he said was that he was a bad man and he wasn't going to let him in the pub again. But he didn't tell me what he'd done, or why he was bad, or anything. I think it was just something he felt."
"Have you seen him since?"
"It was only the day before yesterday. But no."
"Let me see what I can find out," said Dr. Relf. "Now, what about your books this week?"
"The symbolic pictures one was difficult," said Malcolm. "I didn't understand most of it."
"What did you understand?"
"That...things can stand for other things."
"That's the main point. Good. The rest is a matter of detail. No one can remember all the meanings of the alethiometer pictures, so we need the books to be able to read it."
"It's like a secret language."
"Yes, it is."
"Did someone make it up? Or..."
"Or did they discover it? Was that what you were going to say?"
"Yes, it was," he said, a little surprised. "So which is it?"
"That's not so easy. Let's think of another example--something else. You know the theorem of Pythagoras?"
"The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides."
"That's exactly it. And is that true for every example you've tried?"
"Yes."
"And was it true before Pythagoras realized it?"
Malcolm thought. "Yes," he said. "It must have been."
"So he didn't invent it. He discovered it."
"Yes."
"Good. Now let's take one of the alethiometer symbols. The hive, for example, surrounded by bees. One of its meanings is sweetness, and another is light. Can you see why?"
"Honey for the sweetness. And..."
"What are candles made of?"
"Wax! Beeswax!"
"That's right. We don't know who first realized that those meanings were there, but did the similarity, the association, exist before they realized it, or not until then? Did they invent it or discover it?"
Malcolm thought hard.
"That's not quite the same," he said slowly. "Because you can prove Pythagoras's theorem. So you know it must be true. But there's nothing to prove with the beehive. You can see the connection, but you can't prove..."
"All right, put it like this. Suppose the person who made the alethiometer was looking for a symbol to express the ideas of sweetness and light. Could they have chosen just anything? Could they have chosen a sword, for example, or a dolphin?"
Malcolm tried to work it out. "Not really," he said. "You could twist it a lot and make them similar, but..."
"That's right. There's a natural sort of connection with the beehive, but not with the other two."
"Yeah. Yes."
"So was it invented or discovered?"
Malcolm thought hard again, and then smiled.
"Discovered," he said.
"All right. Next let's try this. Can you imagine another world?"
"I think so."
"A world where Pythagoras never existed?"
"Yes."
"Would his theorem be true there as well?"
"Yes. It would be true everywhere."
"Now imagine that world has people like us in it, but no bees. They'd have the experience of sweetness and of light, but how would they symbolize them?"
"Well, they...they'd find some other things. Maybe sugar for the sweetness and something else, maybe the sun, for light."
"Yes, those would work. Let's imagine another world, a different one again, where there are bees but no people. Would there still be a connection between a beehive and sweetness and light?"
"Well, the connection would be...here, in our minds. But not there. If we can think about that other world, we could see a connection, even if there was no one there to see it."
"That's good. Now, we still can't say whether that language you spoke about, the language of symbols, was definitely invented or definitely discovered, but it looks more as if--"
"As if it was discovered," said Malcolm. "But it's still not like Pythagoras's theorem. You can't prove it. It depends on...on..."
"Yes?"
"It depends on people being there to see it. The theorem doesn't."
"That's right!"
"But it's a bit invented as well. Without people to see it, it would just be...it might as well not be there at all."
He sat back, feeling slightly dizzy. Her familiar room was warm, the chair was comfortable, the plate of biscuits was to hand. He felt as if this was the place where he was truly at home, more so than his mother's kitchen or his own bedroom, and he knew he would never say that to anyone but Asta.
"I'll have to go soon," he said.
"You've worked hard."
"Was that work?"
"Yes, I think so. Don't you?"
"I suppose so. Can I see the alethiometer?"
"I'm afraid it has to stay in the library. We've only got the one instrument. But here's a picture you can have."
She took a folded sheet of paper from a drawer in the cabinet and gave it to him. Unfolding it, he found the plan of a large circle with thirty-six divisions around the rim. In each of the little spaces was a picture: an ant, a tree, an anchor, an hourglass....
"There's the beehive," he said.
"Keep it," she told him. "I used it when I was learning them, but I know them now."
"Thank you! I'll learn them too."
"There's a memory trick I'll tell you about another time. Rather than memorize them all for now, you could choose one of them and just think about it. What ideas does it suggest? What could it symbolize?"
"Right, I will. There's--" He stopped. The circle in the diagram, divided into its little sections, reminded him of something.
"There's what?"
"It's sort of like something I saw...."
He described the spangled ring that he'd seen on the night Lord Asriel had come to the Trout. She was interested at once.
"That sounds like a migraine aura," she said. "Do you have bad headaches?"
"No, never."
"Just the aura, then. You'll probably see it again sometime. Did you like the other book? The one about the Silk Road?"
"It's the place I want to go to most in the world."
"One day, perhaps, you will."
--
That evening, someone brought La Belle Sauvage back.
Just as Malcolm finished his supper and took his pudding bowl to the sink, there was a knock on the kitchen door--the door to the garden. No one came to that door as a rule. Malcolm looked at his mother, but she was busy at the stove and he was close to the door, so he opened it a little way.
There stood a man he didn't know, wearing a leather jacket and a wide-brimmed hat, with a blue-and-white-spotted handkerchief around his neck. Something about his clothes, or the way he stood, made Malcolm think: gyptian.
"Are you Malcolm?" the man asked.
"Yes," said Malcolm, and at the same moment his mother said, "Who is it?"
The man stepped forward into the light and took off his hat. He was in late middle age, lean and brown-skinned. His expression was calm and courteous, and his daemon was a very large and beautiful cat.
"Coram van Texel, ma'am," he said. "I've got something for Malcolm, if you'll just excuse him for a few minutes."
"Got something? Got what? Come inside and give it to him here," she said.
"It's a bit big for that," said the gyptian. "It won't take more'n a short while. I need to explain a couple of things."
His mother's badger daemon had left his corner and come to the door, and he and the cat daemon touched noses and exchanged a whispe
r. Then Mrs. Polstead nodded.
"Go on, then," she said.
Malcolm finished drying his hands and went outside with the stranger. It had stopped raining, but the air was saturated with moisture, and the lights through the windows shone on the terrace and the grass with a misty radiance that made everything look as if it was underwater.
The stranger stepped off the terrace and headed towards the river. Malcolm could see the line of the footprints in the wet grass he'd just made coming up.
"You remember Lord Asriel," the stranger said.
"Yes. Is it--"
"He charged me with bringing back your boat, and he said to give you great thanks, and he hopes you'll be pleased with her condition."
As they went beyond the reach of the lights from the windows, the man struck a match and lit a lantern. He adjusted the wick and closed the lens, and a clear beam fell out on the grass ahead and all the way to the little jetty, where La Belle Sauvage was tied up.
Malcolm ran to look. The river was full, holding his beloved canoe higher than usual, and he could see at once that she had been worked on.
"The name--oh, thanks!" he said.
Her name had been painted with great skill in red paint and outlined with a fine line of cream in a way that he would never have managed. It stood out proudly against the green of the boat, which itself...Ignoring the wet grass, he knelt to look closely. Something was different.
"She's been through the hands of the finest boatbuilder on English waters," said Coram van Texel. "Every inch of her has been looked at and strengthened, and that paint on her now is a special anti-fouling paint that has another virtue too. She'll be the slippiest vessel on the Thames, apart from real gyptian boats. She'll go through the water like a hot knife through butter."
Malcolm touched the canoe in wonderment.
"Now let me show you something else," said the visitor. "See those brackets set along the gunwales?"
"What are they for?"
The man reached down into the canoe and pulled up a handful of long, slender hazel sticks. He took one and handed the rest to Malcolm, then he leaned out and slipped one end into a bracket on the far side of the canoe, bent it towards himself, and put the other end in a bracket on the near side. The result was a neat hoop across the canoe.
"You try another," he said, and shone the lantern on the next bracket. After a few tries Malcolm slipped it in. He found that the stick bent with great ease, but that once both ends were fixed, the stick was completely firm and unmoving.
"What are they for?" he said.
"I won't show you now, but under the thwart amidships you'll find a tarpaulin. A special kind made of coal silk. You put all the rods in place and pull the tarpaulin over and you'll be snug and dry, no matter how much rain comes down. There's fixings along the edge, but you can work out how to do them."
La Belle Sauvage Page 15
