Chapter Twelve Resonating Lodestone #3
HM gov’t passed Corporate Indemnity Act. Building corporations, etc., no longer to be held liable for damage caused by products or activities.
News from Geneva: Magisterium holding conference on the regulation of doctrine so Delamare can put his stamp on what we should all believe.
Maybe also his big announcement about war.
HMG to send representative Bishop of Kensington to assure Mag.
of support. Unctuous toady. Rumor that Gottfried Brande, well-known novelist and philosopher, will attend and speak.
Godwin
—
“Monsieur le Président, why?”
“Because what he says here in Geneva we can contain. If he says it elsewhere, we cannot.”
Marcel Delamare was walking under the plane trees in a park beside the lake with his private secretary, a Luxembourgeois diplomat and priest called Matthieu Crespin, whose little snake daemon was listening closely.
“Brande is a menace,” the secretary said flatly. “He will do us nothing but harm.”
“It’s not in his power to do us harm. He has no organization, his academic standing has dwindled to nothing, he has no followers.”
“No followers! He has thousands—probably hundreds of thousands. Young people everywhere—”
“No,” said Delamare. “They are not followers. They are fans.”
“If he’s so unimportant, why invite him?”
“We didn’t invite him. He announced that he was coming, and believe me, Matthieu, it would have caused far more problems to turn him away.
You will meet him at the railway station this afternoon and show him every courtesy.
The obvious place for him in the program would be on the discussion panel about doctrine and social responsibility, but he would regard that as an insult and demand an event to himself, so that is what he shall have.
He can speak at four o’clock on Thursday afternoon, in the Chapel of the Sacred Presence.
Announce it as a rare opportunity to hear one of the most prominent thinkers of the present day, and leave it at that. ”
“But, Monsieur le Président, what about your speech? The casus belli speech?”
“It’s not quite time. There are two alliances I want to secure before I announce it. Besides, I think it needs a different context, a single occasion free of distractions.”
“But what’s Professor Brande going to speak about? Do we know?”
“It makes very little difference, because, as I say, we shall be able to contain it. You know how a silencer works? Like that.”
“Hmm. As you wish, Monsieur Delamare.”
“Make sure he’s comfortably lodged. He will want to see me for a personal interview, which will, with the deepest regrets, be impossible. Ask about his return ticket, and make sure there’s a car to take him to the station. Every courtesy, Matthieu.”
“Monsieur le Président, of course. But again, may I ask why? What possible benefit can his presence…?”
“Oh, we shall learn something from it. There is always something to learn.”
—
“Leila Pervani,” said Abdel Ionides. “Well, we were lovers, for too little time. In Alexandria…Colleagues also. I was mathematician, she particle physicist. You know the expression coup de foudre?”
“Yes,” said Lyra. “It was like that, was it?”
They were facing each other across the table in the little compartment of the autobus de luxe.
Asta was crouching sphinx-like beside the window, with Ionides’s gecko daemon on the glass above her.
The amber-shaded anbaric lamp on the bulkhead illuminated the damage to Ionides’s face, and showed clearly how long it would take him to recover; no doubt, thought Lyra, it wasn’t showing her to advantage either.
Ionides said, “Entirely. Immediately. Intellectually as well as everything else. We speak all night about her research, and then we go to bed, and then we speak about mine. For six months nothing else existed. She was investigating new way of examining the Rusakov field experimentally. I was interested in the mathematics, but I found myself at the limits of that discipline. The only way I could go further was phenomenologically, more or less. Surprising, you see.”
“Er…Yes. And Dust?”
“Dust is not the field but the particle associated with the field. Different ways of studying the same thing. Except…More complex than that. Everything is more complex, except things that are simpler.”
“Did your research and hers complement each other?”
“Yes, completely. As if it been intended to happen. How could she have been working on the very same thing, so near, in the very same institution?”
“It’s forbidden to study Dust in some places. Did that affect the way you worked?”
“Of course. We had to be careful. She was using expensive equipment—she had to make explanations to justify the time for this experiment or that one. As for me, I was already suspicious person. Some papers I wrote were withdrawn by order of the authorities; I had to swear not to touch that subject.”
“So it was dangerous for you both.”
“Yes, and in small society, small institution, like university, full of gossip, full of curiosity…”
“I can imagine.”
“But our talks together…It was like two people climbing a mountain no one ever climbed before, roped together. We climb so far, so high, no one else could ever understand.”
“What happened?”
“How much detail you want?”
“Lots, later. But now just the main story.”
“All right. The university invent a scandal about her. I defend her, and they dismissed me. The authorities were going to put her in prison, but she escaped from Egypt and went who knows where. She had to leave her work, of course, her team, her research—all finish. As for me, I could see what would happen next: accusations of heresy, trial, lies, prison, and maybe worse. So I go to the harbor and find a ship in need of a cook and next day I sail away to Palermo. Easier for me to carry on research than for her. No laboratory, no instruments, no team, just me and pencil and paper. I leave my name behind and become Abdel Ionides, interpreter, guide, beggar, spy, minor criminal, et cetera.”
“What happened to her, though? Why was she in the nuncio’s house?”
“You know one time you ask me about the men from the mountains?”
“One time? It was only this morning. But yes, I did.”
“She is with them. At first when I heard this I thought it was impossible, could not be true, a fundamental error. But she is. I had to think: What does she gain from them? Has she gone mad? Remember, she is highly trained, greatly gifted physicist. To do her work she need all the things she left behind in Alexandria. The men from the mountains are the worst kind of fanatics; her research is abominable to them as much as it is to the Magisterium. Also I know her very well; we shared everything. We were lovers. She is passionate about physics, not interested at all in politics and religious argument. If they knew—if the men from the mountains could see into her mind they would kill her at once. Then I thought: Maybe she is hiding in the one place they would not look. No university or respectable academic body would ever hire her after Alexandria; she could never do science again. Maybe a rich company like Thuringia Potash with big research department, but maybe not even them. So what does she do? She will want to be close to the matter of Dust, more than anything else. So she gets close to those who want to destroy it.”
“Dangerous.”
“Almost insane. But you see her just now, in that prison cell. She seem insane to you?”
“No. She was shocked to see you, but completely sane and in control.”
Ionides’s gecko daemon said from the window-glass, “Darab has not changed.”
“Darab is her daemon,” Ionides explained.
“And when you saw her, saw Leila—were you glad?” said Lyra.
“What you think, Miss Silver? I was afraid for her.”
“When did you know she was a friend of the men from the mountains?”
“Two years ago. Maybe three. First I think it is impossible, but then I think more, and I know why. Not because she agree with them, but for the same reason I enter your employment, Miss Silver.”
“What on earth do you mean by that?”
“It was the best way to get to Karamakan. Also something we spoke about once—you had a word—alkahest.”
Lyra sat back and closed her eyes. She felt as if the day had been too long, and she’d had enough of it.
The comfortable seat that would soon fold out into a bed, the gentle light on the table, the dark night outside through which they were speeding so smoothly—they all urged her almost irresistibly to sleep.
She made herself sit up and take a deep breath.
“Well, you’d better explain,” she said.
But before Ionides could say anything, there was a knock on the compartment door and a voice said, “Dinner, Your Majesty Queen. With compliments of Mustafa Bey. I enter, please?”
“Yes, come in,” she said, and Ionides moved aside to make room for the attendant to lean past him and place a tray on the table. Shashlik, bread, salad; two plates, two glasses, a bottle of wine, and a jug of water. And Lyra realized how hungry she was, as well as how tired.
“Eat first,” she said. “Explain later.”
—
But she was too tired to stay awake, and she fell asleep almost as soon as the attendant took the dinner tray away.
Ionides spread a blanket over her and went to his seat.
Somewhere among mountains the bus stopped to refuel.
Lyra heard the driver’s voice, footsteps on asphalt, a quiet conversation; one or two passengers got off and gathered their luggage from the attendant.
In the state between waking and dreaming, Lyra noticed that Asta was sleeping on the pillow next to her.
The bus set off again; Lyra fell back into sleep.