His Dark Materials 01 - The Golden Compass Page 22

  She was half expecting questions about where she had come from and how she had arrived, and she was preparing answers; but it wasn't only imagination the nurse lacked, it was curiosity as well. Bolvangar might have been on the outskirts of London, and children might have been arriving all the time, for all the interest Sister Clara seemed to show. Her pert neat little daemon trotted along at her heels just as brisk and blank as she was.

  In the room they entered there was a couch and a table and two chairs and a filing cabinet, and a glass cupboard with medicines and bandages, and a wash basin. As soon as they were inside, the nurse took Lyra's outer coat off and dropped it on the shiny floor.

  "Off with the rest, dear," she said. "We'll have a quick little look to see you're nice and healthy, no frostbite or sniffles, and then we'll find some nice clean clothes. We'll pop you in the shower, too," she added, for Lyra had not changed or washed for days, and in the enveloping warmth, that was becoming more and more evident.

  Pantalaimon fluttered in protest, but Lyra quelled him with a scowl. He settled on the couch as one by one all Lyra's clothes came off, to her resentment and shame; but she still had the presence of mind to conceal it and act dull-witted and compliant.

  "And the money belt, Lizzie," said the nurse, and untied it herself with strong fingers. She went to drop it on the pile with Lyra's other clothes, but stopped, feeling the edge of the alethiometer.

  "What's this?" she said, and unbuttoned the oilcloth.

  "Just a sort of toy," said Lyra. "It's mine."

  "Yes, we won't take it away from you, dear," said Sister Clara, unfolding the black velvet. "That's pretty, isn't it, like a compass. Into the shower with you," she went on, putting the alethiometer down and whisking back a coal-silk curtain in the corner.

  Lyra reluctantly slipped under the warm water and soaped herself while Pantalaimon perched on the curtain rail. They were both conscious that he mustn't be too lively, for the daemons of dull people were dull themselves. When she was washed and dry, the nurse took her temperature and looked into her eyes and ears and throat, and then measured her height and put her on some scales before writing a note on a clipboard. Then she gave Lyra some pajamas and a dressing gown. They were clean, and of good quality, like Tony Makarios's anorak, but again there was a secondhand air about them. Lyra felt very uneasy.

  "These en't mine," she said.

  "No, dear. Your clothes need a good wash."

  "Am I going to get my own ones back?"

  "I expect so. Yes, of course."

  "What is this place?"

  "It's called the Experimental Station."

  That wasn't an answer, and whereas Lyra would have pointed that out and asked for more information, she didn't think Lizzie Brooks would; so she assented dumbly in the dressing and said no more.

  "I want my toy back," she said stubbornly when she was dressed.

  "Take it, dear," said the nurse. "Wouldn't you rather have a nice woolly bear, though? Or a pretty doll?"

  She opened a drawer where some soft toys lay like dead things. Lyra made herself stand and pretend to consider for several seconds before picking out a rag doll with big vacant eyes. She had never had a doll, but she knew what to do, and pressed it absently to her chest.

  "What about my money belt?" she said. "I like to keep my toy in there."

  "Go on, then, dear," said Sister Clara, who was filling in a form on pink paper.

  Lyra hitched up her unfamiliar skirt and tied the oilskin pouch around her waist.

  "What about my coat and boots?" she said. "And my mittens and things?"

  "We'll have them cleaned for you," said the nurse automatically.

  Then a telephone buzzed, and while the nurse answered it, Lyra stooped quickly to recover the other tin, the one containing the spy-fly, and put it in the pouch with the alethiometer.

  "Come along, Lizzie," said the nurse, putting the receiver down. "We'll go and find you something to eat. I expect you're hungry."

  She followed Sister Clara to the canteen, where a dozen round white tables were covered in crumbs and the sticky rings where drinks had been carelessly put down. Dirty plates and cutlery were stacked on a steel trolley. There were no windows, so to give an illusion of light and space one wall was covered in a huge photogram showing a tropical beach, with bright blue sky and white sand and coconut palms.

  The man who had brought her in was collecting a tray from a serving hatch.

  "Eat up," he said.

  There was no need to starve, so she ate the stew and mashed potatoes with relish. There was a bowl of tinned peaches and ice cream to follow. As she ate, the man and the nurse talked quietly at another table, and when she had finished, the nurse brought her a glass of warm milk and took the tray away.

  The man came to sit down opposite. His daemon, the marmot, was not blank and incurious as the nurse's dog had been, but sat politely on his shoulder watching and listening.

  "Now, Lizzie," he said. "Have you eaten enough?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  "I'd like you to tell me where you come from. Can you do that?"

  "London," she said.

  "And what are you doing so far north?"

  "With my father," she mumbled. She kept her eyes down, avoiding the gaze of the marmot, and trying to look as if she was on the verge of tears.

  "With your father? I see. And what's he doing in this part of the world?"

  "Trading. We come with a load of New Danish smokeleaf and we was buying furs."

  "And was your father by himself?"

  "No. There was my uncles and all, and some other men," she said vaguely, not knowing what the Samoyed hunter had told him.

  "Why did he bring you on a journey like this, Lizzie?"

  " 'Cause two years ago he brung my brother and he says he'll bring me next, only he never. So I kept asking him, and then he did."

  "And how old are you?"

  "Eleven."

  "Good, good. Well, Lizzie, you're a lucky little girl. Those huntsmen who found you brought you to the best place you could be."

  "They never found me," she said doubtfully. "There was a fight. There was lots of 'em and they had arrows...."

  "Oh, I don't think so. I think you must have wandered away from your father's party and got lost. Those huntsmen found you on your own and brought you straight here. That's what happened, Lizzie."

  "I saw a fight," she said. "They was shooting arrows and that....I want my dad," she said more loudly, and felt herself beginning to cry.

  "Well, you're quite safe here until he comes," said the doctor.

  "But I saw them shooting arrows!"

  "Ah, you thought you did. That often happens in the intense cold, Lizzie. You fall asleep and have bad dreams and you can't remember what's true and what isn't. That wasn't a fight, don't worry. Your father is safe and sound and he'll be looking for you now and soon he'll come here because this is the only place for hundreds of miles, you know, and what a surprise he'll have to find you safe and sound! Now Sister Clara will take you along to the dormitory where you'll meet some other little girls and boys who got lost in the wilderness just like you. Off you go. We'll have another little talk in the morning."

  Lyra stood up, clutching her doll, and Pantalaimon hopped onto her shoulder as the nurse opened the door to lead them out.

  More corridors, and Lyra was tired by now, so sleepy she kept yawning and could hardly lift her feet in the woolly slippers they'd given her. Pantalaimon was drooping, and he had to change to a mouse and settle inside her dressing-gown pocket. Lyra had the impression of a row of beds, children's faces, a pillow, and then she was asleep.

  Someone was shaking her. The first thing she did was to feel at her waist, and both tins were still there, still safe; so she tried to open her eyes, but oh, it was hard; she had never felt so sleepy.

  "Wake up! Wake up!"

  It was a whisper in more than one voice. With a huge effort, as if she were pushing a boulder up a slope, Lyra forced h
erself to wake up.

  In the dim light from a very low-powered anbaric bulb over the doorway she saw three other girls clustered around her. It wasn't easy to see, because her eyes were slow to focus, but they seemed about her own age, and they were speaking English.

  "She's awake."

  "They gave her sleeping pills. Must've..."

  "What's your name?"

  "Lizzie," Lyra mumbled.

  "Is there a load more new kids coming?" demanded one of the girls.

  "Dunno. Just me."

  "Where'd they get you then?"

  Lyra struggled to sit up. She didn't remember taking a sleeping pill, but there might well have been something in the drink she'd had. Her head felt full of eiderdown, and there was a faint pain throbbing behind her eyes.

  "Where is this place?"

  "Middle of nowhere. They don't tell us."

  "They usually bring more'n one kid at a time...."

  "What do they do?" Lyra managed to ask, gathering her doped wits as Pantalaimon stirred into wakefulness with her.

  "We dunno," said the girl who was doing most of the talking. She was a tall, red-haired girl with quick twitchy movements and a strong London accent. "They sort of measure us and do these tests and that—"

  "They measure Dust," said another girl, friendly and plump and dark-haired.

  "You don't know," said the first girl.

  "They do," said the third, a subdued-looking child cuddling her rabbit daemon. "I heard 'em talking."

  "Then they take us away one by one and that's all we know. No one comes back," said the redhead.

  "There's this boy, right," said the plump girl, "he reckons—"

  "Don't tell her that!" said the redhead. "Not yet."

  "Is there boys here as well?" said Lyra.

  "Yeah. There's lots of us. There's about thirty, I reckon."

  "More'n that," said the plump girl. "More like forty."

  "Except they keep taking us away," said the redhead. "They usually start off with bringing a whole bunch here, and then there's a lot of us, and one by one they all disappear."

  "They're Gobblers," said the plump girl. "You know Gobblers. We was all scared of 'em till we was caught...."

  Lyra was gradually coming more and more awake. The other girls' daemons, apart from the rabbit, were close by listening at the door, and no one spoke above a whisper. Lyra asked their names. The red-haired girl was Annie, the dark plump one Bella, the thin one Martha. They didn't know the names of the boys, because the two sexes were kept apart for most of the time. They weren't treated badly.

  "It's all right here," said Bella. "There's not much to do, except they give us tests and make us do exercises and then they measure us and take our temperature and stuff. It's just boring really."

  "Except when Mrs. Coulter comes," said Annie.

  Lyra had to stop herself crying out, and Pantalaimon fluttered his wings so sharply that the other girls noticed.

  "He's nervous," said Lyra, soothing him. "They must've gave us some sleeping pills, like you said, 'cause we're all dozy. Who's Mrs. Coulter?"

  "She's the one who trapped us, most of us, anyway," said Martha. "They all talk about her, the other kids. When she comes, you know there's going to be kids disappearing."

  "She likes watching the kids, when they take us away, she likes seeing what they do to us. This boy Simon, he reckons they kill us, and Mrs. Coulter watches."

  "They kill us?" said Lyra, shuddering.

  "Must do. 'Cause no one comes back."

  "They're always going on about daemons too," said Bella. "Weighing them and measuring them and all..."

  "They touch your daemons?"

  "No! God! They put scales there and your daemon has to get on them and change, and they make notes and take pictures. And they put you in this cabinet and measure Dust, all the time, they never stop measuring Dust."

  "What dust?" said Lyra.

  "We dunno," said Annie. "Just something from space. Not real dust. If you en't got any Dust, that's good. But everyone gets Dust in the end."

  "You know what I heard Simon say?" said Bella. "He said that the Tartars make holes in their skulls to let the Dust in."

  "Yeah, he'd know," said Annie scornfully. "I think I'll ask Mrs. Coulter when she comes."

  "You wouldn't dare!" said Martha admiringly.

  "I would."

  "When's she coming?" said Lyra.

  "The day after tomorrow," said Annie.

  A cold drench of terror went down Lyra's spine, and Pantalaimon crept very close. She had one day in which to find Roger and discover whatever she could about this place, and either escape or be rescued; and if all the gyptians had been killed, who would help the children stay alive in the icy wilderness?

  The other girls went on talking, but Lyra and Pantalaimon nestled down deep in the bed and tried to get warm, knowing that for hundreds of miles all around her little bed there was nothing but fear.

  Fifteen

  The Daemon Cages

  It wasn't Lyra's way to brood; she was a sanguine and practical child, and besides, she wasn't imaginative. No one with much imagination would have thought seriously that it was possible to come all this way and rescue her friend Roger; or, having thought it, an imaginative child would immediately have come up with several ways in which it was impossible. Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.

  So now that she was in the hands of the Oblation Board, Lyra didn't fret herself into terror about what had happened to the gyptians. They were all good fighters, and even though Pantalaimon said he'd seen John Faa shot, he might have been mistaken; or if he wasn't mistaken, John Faa might not have been seriously hurt. It had been bad luck that she'd fallen into the hands of the Samoyeds, but the gyptians would be along soon to rescue her, and if they couldn't manage it, nothing would stop Iorek Byrnison from getting her out; and then they'd fly to Svalbard in Lee Scoresby's balloon and rescue Lord Asriel.

  In her mind, it was as easy as that.

  So next morning, when she awoke in the dormitory, she was curious and ready to deal with whatever the day would bring. And eager to see Roger—in particular, eager to see him before he saw her.

  She didn't have long to wait. The children in their different dormitories were woken at half-past seven by the nurses who looked after them. They washed and dressed and went with the others to the canteen for breakfast.

  And there was Roger.

  He was sitting with five other boys at a table just inside the door. The line for the hatch went right past them, and she was able to pretend to drop a handkerchief and crouch to pick it up, bending low next to his chair, so that Pantalaimon could speak to Roger's daemon Salcilia.

  She was a chaffinch, and she fluttered so wildly that Pantalaimon had to be a cat and leap at her, pinning her down to whisper. Such brisk fights or scuffles between children's daemons were common, luckily, and no one took much notice, but Roger went pale at once. Lyra had never seen anyone so white. He looked up at the blank haughty stare she gave him, and the color flooded back into his cheeks as he brimmed over with hope, excitement, and joy; and only Pantalaimon, shaking Salcilia firmly, was able to keep Roger from shouting out and leaping up to greet his best friend, his comrade in arms, his Lyra.

  But he saw how she looked away disdainfully, and he followed her example faithfully, as he'd done in a hundred Oxford battles and campaigns. No one must know, of course, because they were both in deadly danger. She rolled her eyes at her new friends, and they collected their trays of cornflakes and toast and sat together, an instant gang, excluding everyone else in order to gossip about them.

  You can't keep a large group of children in one place for long without giving them plenty to do, and in some ways Bolvangar was run like a school, with timetabled activities such as gymnastics and "art." Boys and girls were kept separate except for breaks and mealtimes, so it
wasn't until midmorning, after an hour and a half of sewing directed by one of the nurses, that Lyra had the chance to talk to Roger. But it had to look natural; that was the difficulty. All the children there were more or less at the same age, and it was the age when most boys talk to boys and girls to girls, each making a conspicuous point of ignoring the opposite sex.

  She found her chance in the canteen again, when the children came in for a drink and a biscuit. Lyra sent Pantalaimon, as a fly, to talk to Salcilia on the wall next to their table while she and Roger kept quietly in their separate groups. It was difficult to talk while your daemon's attention was somewhere else, so Lyra pretended to look glum and rebellious as she sipped her milk with the other girls. Half her thoughts were with the tiny buzz of talk between the daemons, and she wasn't really listening, but at one point she heard another girl with bright blond hair say a name that made her sit up.

  It was the name of Tony Makarios. As Lyra's attention snapped toward that, Pantalaimon had to slow down his whispered conversation with Roger's daemon, and both children listened to what the girl was saying.

  "No, I know why they took him," she said, as heads clustered close nearby. "It was because his daemon didn't change. They thought he was older than he looked, or summing, and he weren't really a young kid. But really his daemon never changed very often because Tony hisself never thought much about anything. I seen her change. She was called Ratter..."

  "Why are they so interested in daemons?" said Lyra.

  "No one knows," said the blond girl.

  "I know," said one boy who'd been listening. "What they do is kill your daemon and then see if you die."

  "Well, how come they do it over and over with different kids?" said someone. "They'd only need to do it once, wouldn't they?"

  "I know what they do," said the first girl.

  She had everyone's attention now. But because they didn't want to let the staff know what they were talking about, they had to adopt a strange, half-careless, indifferent manner, while listening with passionate curiosity.

  "How?" said someone.

  "'Cause I was with him when they came for him. We was in the linen room," she said.