Chapter Eighteen Noli Me Tangere #2
“Well, we should demand that he does!” said Von Landsberg. “This is intolerable.”
“And these treaties and agreements and so on…” said Professor Seidel.
“All part of a complicated diplomatic dance. He’s gathering support, which means the guarantee of arms and troops.”
“But why are other governments agreeing to this? How do they benefit?”
“By being part of a great movement. By securing the blessing of the greatest religious authority. By giving their populations a cause to cheer for and something to hate,” the Dean said. His eyes were blazing darkly; Professor Seidel found him hard to look at.
“But a war must have an enemy,” said Parmentier. “A state. A nation makes war on a nation, not a nameless something in the desert. What is the nation in this case?”
“Well, it would be Cathay, or that region known as Sinkiang,” said Morschach. “But he’s not calling it a war, he’s calling it a campaign. The object is not to force another nation to surrender, but to destroy this…thing.”
“What is this thing, though?”
“A place, or a building,” said the Dean. “That’s all anyone knows. But no doubt we shall hear some carefully crafted rumors and exaggerated stories in the press before very long. Agitation and propaganda.”
“What view of this campaign does the empire of Cathay take, do we know?” said the professor. “It would count as an invasion of their territory, wouldn’t it?”
“Cathay is a profound mystery,” said Morschach.
“All we have is rumor, and I doubt whether any nation has more than that. Rumors that the Golden Emperor is in poor health, that he’s died, that he’s been transported bodily into heaven, that he’s been deposed and replaced by a mechanical figure controlled by an evil spirit—in short, what Cathay does or thinks is not predictable.
But I daresay they’re interested in what might be about to happen in their western regions. ”
“But what are we going to do about it now?” demanded Von Landsberg.
“That depends on the precise form of the relationship between the President and the Council,” said the Dean, “and that is something that’s never been made clear.
Is it our function to support the President in everything he says and does, with no opportunity to discuss it or veto it?
And now without being told anything about this—this campaign, we are to be assailed from every side by questions from journalists, politicians, academics, the general public, with no idea what the answers should be?
It’s intolerable. Really quite intolerable. ”
“When is he going to make this announcement?” said Parmentier.
“On Sunday, I’ve heard,” said Morschach. “At the Celebration of the Last Supper. He’ll preach a sermon calling on all faithful nations to join the campaign.”
“As you say, Jean-Paul,” said Professor Seidel to the Dean, “this is intolerable. We’ll have to stop him.”
“We should call an emergency meeting of the whole Council,” said Von Landsberg.
“How?” said Parmentier.
“Well—contact every member and summon them to Geneva!”
“Have you got a list of names and addresses?” said the priest. “Because I haven’t. I suspect the only list is with the President.”
“I know a few, but some of the members I’d never known before,” said Professor Seidel. “And in any case he directly forbade us to speak to one another. I’m sure this meeting is against the rules.”
There was a short silence.
“How did we allow ourselves to be put in this absurd position?” said the Dean.
“We’ll just have to go and see him ourselves. Do it now,” said Von Landsberg, bristling like his badger daemon.
“He’s in Paris,” said the banker.
“Well, tomorrow, then. When he comes back.”
“The structural problem,” said the Dean, “the basic problem, is one of information. There are things going on that we know about, but only indirectly. Or by rumor. Take this soldier with the explosives.”
“What’s that?” said Von Landsberg. “Explosives?”
“Some officer of the Guard, acting on his own, set off a bomb or grenade in the forest above Les Diablerets. Someone died or disappeared. No one seems to know anything about it. Or show any interest, come to that.”
“I think I heard about that,” said Von Landsberg. “Man called Schneider, or Schreiber, maybe. Or Steiner. Might be a simple accident.”
“Has it anything to do with our current preoccupation?” said the banker.
“Only that it’s something else we’re kept in the dark about,” said the Dean.
“It’s not the first time decisions have been made without consulting us,” said Von Landsberg. “There was that odd affair of the daemon that didn’t die when what’s-his-name, the German professor, had a heart attack. We weren’t informed about the decision to publish the professor’s lecture.”
“Which will be redacted almost to the point of incoherence,” said Professor Seidel. “It was a strange business altogether.”
“Which is exactly why we should know about these things. I think we should confront the President right away. Well? Who’s with me?”
“I wonder,” said Morschach, “whether there’s a touch of instability, as you might say, in our President’s mental outlook. His mother, I hear, is in a home for the unstable—”
“Oh, gossip, gossip,” said Professor Seidel.
“Nevertheless, I think it would be wiser,” said Morschach, “now that we’ve aired our concerns to ourselves, not to confront him at once but to spend a few days in discreet investigation, and meet again when we’ll all know a little more.”
“And carefully,” said Professor Seidel. “Caution. Discretion.”
They agreed to meet for dinner at Morschach’s bank the following week, cautiously and discreetly, as if in a casual way, or by chance.
—
Lyra had booked a cabin on the ferry. Ionides said he would rather sleep on deck and keep watch, though there was no sign of the men who’d followed them from the post office, or any other threat.
The journey to Krasnovodsk would take forty-eight hours, so there was time for Lyra to wash and change and then sit down at the little table under the porthole and unfasten the package Mustafa Bey had forwarded.
The first thing she found was a card that said:
In great haste. If this ever reaches you, I shall be in prison or dead. Use a pencil. Glenys Godwin, Oakley Street.
Asta read it too while Lyra unwrapped the paper of the inner parcel. Inside it she found a flat piece of stone, darkish green in color, a little bigger than the palm of her hand. One side was smooth but not shiny, the other rougher, but only slightly.
“I’ve seen one of these,” Asta said. “Malcolm had something like it. Someone gave it to him, but I don’t know why.
He was just beginning to examine it when Mr. Ionides came, and I saw Malcolm hide it from him, but I was dozing, so I didn’t watch.
” She looked at the note again. “ ‘Use a pencil,’ ” she read aloud. “Have you got a pencil?”
“In the rucksack somewhere…” Lyra fumbled and found it. It was blunt, but it made a mark on the smooth side of the stone. She drew a line and looked at it. “Now what?” she said.
“She wouldn’t send you this if it was just something to make notes on,” Asta pointed out. “You could use paper for that. It must be—”
“Look! It’s fading.”
As they looked, the line seemed to fade into the surface of the stone.
Lyra wrote her name: Lyra Silvertongue. The pencil moved well over the surface.
“What were you going to say?” she said.
“Just that it must have some other purpose. Look, it’s fading again.”
The letters slowly became fainter until they disappeared. Then something different happened: a mark appeared by itself, and moved over the surface, leaving a trail behind it, like writing. It was writing.
It said: Lyra? Is that you?
Lyra was so startled that she dropped the pencil, and Asta leapt down to pick it up, and sprang up again, and Lyra took it with a trembling hand.
As soon as the pencil was out of her mouth, Asta said, “That’s Malcolm’s writing!”
And Lyra remembered the elegant italic in the letter that had reached her in the Fens. It was the same.
Her heart was beating. She could hardly hold the pencil. But she wrote: Where is Oakley Street?
And the answer came:
Oakley Street is not in Chelsea.
She wrote: That’s true as far as it goes.
And it replied: It goes as far as the Embankment. Lyra, is that really you? Where are you?
On a ferry from Baku to Krasnovodsk. Where are you?
Captive on a great mountain called Damāvand. Pan is with me.
Lyra felt faint. Her fingers loosened and the pencil fell again—she leaned back in the chair—her heart was beating so hard it hurt her throat.
Asta recovered the pencil once more, and Lyra took it, shaking so much she could hardly form the letters:
And Asta is here with me.
A wave of emotion swept up through her body from her feet to the hair on her head. What emotion it was she couldn’t have named: it was enough to feel its power and its inexorable authority. It left her limp and helpless.
Are you both well? Both safe?
Yes, yes
How did you get the stone?
Mustafa Bey sent it—forwarded it—Malcolm, is it really you? Am I dreaming?
Really me.
Captive? You mean a prisoner?
Not exactly. A guest, but under guard. Gryphons.
And where?
Damāvand is at the southern end of the Caspian Sea. Would you like to speak to Pan?
Yes, oh yes, but not like this. It’s enough to know he’s with you. Is he?
Yes, he’s safe and well. He’s watching and reading as we talk.
So’s Asta. Oh, I long to—I don’t know what—tell Pan that I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.
He knows. So is he.
She had to stop for a few moments before she could go on.
She wrote: And—gryphons? Really?
This is the palace of their queen Shahrnavāz. They desire gold above everything, and I’m working on an alethiometer for her. She won’t let me go till I’ve finished.
Where did that come from? Is it mine?
It might be. Pan thinks it is.
A gryphon stole it from me—is it badly broken?