Chapter Twelve Resonating Lodestone
Twelve
Resonating Lodestone
Away from the gryphons and back in their quarters, Malcolm said at once, “It is hers, isn’t it? I don’t know why I’m asking, actually. Of course it’s hers. It’s the same one I stole from Gerard Bonneville.”
He laid it on the table, next to his lodestone, and lifted back the cloth. Pan peered at it hungrily, trembling, touching it here and there.
“Yes,” he whispered. “What can have happened?”
“Someone stole it, and then smashed it up. Or dropped it from a height. That’s all we can tell.”
“It keeps being stolen,” said Pan. “A gryphon must have stolen it from Lyra. But we better not say ‘steal.’ They seem to think they have a right to all the gold that exists. But how on earth can you mend it?”
Malcolm was turning it round in his hands, looking at it from every angle.
It was crushed and cracked and twisted, and there was no way of knowing what pieces were missing.
An expert reader of the instrument would see it with horror, and imagine that it would never work again; a clockmaker would see it as a technical problem, and have the tools to take it apart and put things straight, but might not be able to imagine its function. What could Malcolm do?
“Look! Words,” said Pan, as a line of handwriting appeared on the lodestone.
Malcolm put down the alethiometer and read:
OS to MP
Polstead, where the hell are you? What are you doing? Reply as soon as you’ve read this.
The Magisterium has discovered something we had not suspected. At various points on the earth there exist anomalous features that seem to function like openings or doorways into spaces not otherwise contiguous. The Barnard-Stokes hypothesis might be applicable here.
There are seventeen of these places known about and listed, and another eight suspected but not examined.
The Magisterium is aware of the implications of this phenomenon for the foundations of their theology.
Until recently only three people knew about them: the discoverer, Hugo Beamish, a geographer in the employment of the Magisterium, whose whereabouts are now unknown; the Magisterial President, Marcel Delamare; and a Colonel Wolfgang Schreiber, who is charged by Delamare to find these things and destroy them.
So far he has succeeded in doing that with three of them, by thermobaric explosion.
The third explosion, in a forested part of eastern Belgium, was fortuitously witnessed by an OS agent, who subsequently investigated and managed to acquire the papers from which Colonel Schreiber was working.
It doesn’t look good for Schreiber, but they won’t be so careless again.
Now tell me where the hell you are and what you’re doing.
Godwin
Malcolm said to Pan, “I’ll come back to the alethiometer later. Better answer this.”
Pan crouched down close and peered at the instrument from every angle, while Malcolm wrote:
MP to OS
Sorry. I was interrupted. I am at the summit of Mount Damāvand, which as far as I remember is near the southern edge of the Caspian Sea.
I am a captive, and escape looks very difficult.
My captors are the subjects of Queen Shahrnavāz, whose realm extends as far east as Sinkiang, and possibly further.
They think I am valuable to them, and will guard me fiercely.
By chance they’ve come into the possession of an alethiometer, broken almost beyond repair.
And they want me to repair it. Then, I hope, they will let us leave.
Please tell me all you know about the Magisterium plan. I think I know a little about these openings.
Polstead
OS to MP
Openings listed and verified by Beamish (those marked * destroyed by Schreiber). Precise details of location too long to transcribe now, but available if necessary.
Switzerland*
French Alps
Italian Alps*
Belgium*
Normandy
North Wales
Spanish Pyrenees
Tunisia
Madagascar
Yemen
Azerbaijan
Muscovy, Velikhi Novgorod region
Mongolia, Yolyn Am region
Java, Bandung region
Alaska, Brooks Range region
Brazil, S?o Paulo region
Australia, Gibson Desert
Listed by Beamish but not verified:
Karelia region
Lop Nor/Karamakan
Morocco/Atlas Mountains
Haiti
Nippon, Hokkaido region
Jordan, Petra region
Sweden, Falun region
Crete
Lot of time on your hands, Polstead? Let me know when you feel like moving on. Oh, and find out about the alkahest.
Godwin
MP to OS
Alkahest? Never heard of it. Will inquire when time allows.
Captive with me by chance is Pantalaimon, the daemon of Lyra Silvertongue.
You know I can separate from my daemon; Lyra and Pan have the same faculty.
Ten or eleven years ago, he tells me, he and Lyra made a journey to the far north, in the course of which they encountered various “openings” of the sort you describe (let’s call them that).
They are formed by human action, though possibly some occur naturally.
You are correct about the Barnard-Stokes idea.
The openings lead to other worlds, other universes.
There seems to be an infinity of such worlds.
Naturally the Magisterium would want to close as many openings as it could find.
Doubtless Beamish’s list is the result of great effort on his part, but I guess there are many more he didn’t find.
Please let me know as much as you can about the Lop Nor one. I think that is the source of the rose material.
Also about Colonel Schreiber’s attempts to destroy them. What effect did thermobaric explosive have? Did they close up completely?
Also about the Magisterium’s reaction to the theft of Schreiber’s papers.
I shall be able to move on as soon as I have repaired the broken alethiometer.
It is made of gold; the Queen and her subjects are obsessed by that metal.
To be precise, rendered insane by desire for it.
Her palace is built at the very summit of this mountain, and there is absolutely no access except from the sky.
They flew me and Pan here, and they will have to fly us out, or keep us here forever.
As for Lyra Silvertongue, I last heard of her in Aleppo, but I know she is traveling east, with the aim of reaching a certain point in the Karamakan desert, possibly the Lop Nor place on Beamish’s list.
Polstead
OS to MP
Thermobaric explosive partially successful at best. Can’t destroy opening entirely—leaves small ragged gaps in the air—but does make it impossible for human being to pass through.
Given that locations are generally difficult of access, little danger of discovery.
Magisterium now working on improved & more powerful version of bomb, or better way of directing force of explosion.
President intensely determined to make this work, also set up task force under Schreiber to work on closing all known openings.
You said “formed by human action”—more information needed. Also about this Queen Shahrnavāz.
All you know, and soon.
DO NOT LET THIS DISTRACT YOU FROM YOUR MAIN TASK.
Godwin
“Later,” said Malcolm, and turned back to the alethiometer.
He turned it around and looked at it dispassionately.
“What I’m going to do is take it apart first and see what’s missing.
The case doesn’t actually matter as far as I know—it’s the mechanism that’s important when it comes to reading it, but since the parts inside aren’t made of gold, they won’t mean much to the gryphons.
I could do something with the gold of the case, and make a separate box to hold the workings safe till I can get it back to Lyra. ”
“You think we’ll find her?”
“Don’t you?”
“Well…I hope we will.”
“Hold on to that. Now, let’s see what’s missing.
The glass, obviously. I don’t think it was smashed, though.
Someone’s unscrewed it, because the frame’s just not there, and there are no broken bits of glass.
It was crushed like this after the glass was taken out.
The frame was screwed to the rim, here…Well, that’s interesting. ”
“What?”
“It screws up counterclockwise. See the way the thread goes, there?” He pointed, and Pan looked closely.
“The first contact I had with Hannah Relf involved a carved wooden acorn that unscrewed like this, backwards. I saw her unscrew it and I knew it was meant to be for her, because otherwise she’d have tried to do it the other way, counterclockwise.
And this is the same…Did Lyra ever open it up to look inside it? ”
“No. It would never have occurred to us.”
The golden case was crushed so out of shape that it looked as if it had been held tightly in a mighty claw. Malcolm turned it round and round, looking for any other clues.
“The dial’s cracked,” said Pan.
The thirty-six symbols around the outer rim of the dial, whose meanings he and Lyra had pondered for so many hours, had been painted with a brush so small it might as well have been a single hair.
Seeing them not through the glass for the first time, but with the naked eye, Pan and Malcolm both wondered at the exquisite precision of the work.
Each symbol was painted on a rectangular slip of ivory held in place by a slender golden frame.
They were all there, but a great crack had split the entire face in half, and two of the hands were badly bent.
“The needle!” said Pan. “It’s not there.”
“You know it much better than I do. Remind me what the needle looked like.”
“Very slender, with a sharp point. Different color from the hands, and it moved independently. Has it fallen off the axle thing in the middle? The spindle?”
“That’s called the arbor. I can’t see it anywhere.”
Malcolm lifted the instrument and carefully turned it around, listening for anything loose inside it. There was nothing to hear.
“It must have fallen out when they took the glass off,” said Pan.
“The needle wasn’t gold, was it?”