Chapter Twenty-Six The Hard Problem
Twenty-Six
The Hard Problem
Lyra drifted out of a dream in which she was waking up with Pan, and woke to find herself still murmuring to him.
They had been talking about Malcolm, and Pan had been telling her that the witch Tilda Vasara had asked him whether Lyra was in love with Malcolm, or maybe it was whether he was in love with her, and the witch was about to say something more; but then she found herself awake.
She didn’t move, and she kept her eyes closed.
There were voices all around—witch voices, gryphon voices, Malcolm’s voice.
It sounded like a crowded marketplace or a meeting in a public square.
Other sounds went on underneath: gulls, breaking waves on the rocks below the headland, wind in the grass.
She should get up. But Malcolm must have covered her with the rest of his coat, because she was snug and warm, even though the ground was hard under her.
She heard a cat purr, and opened her eyes to see Asta close by.
“What’s happening?” she said.
Asta said, “Malcolm’s talking to Gulya and the prince. There are more gryphons and witches arriving and flying off every minute.”
Lyra looked around. “Is it private?” she said.
Asta knew what she meant and said, “I’ll keep watch. Those bushes are thick.”
Lyra rolled over and stood up slowly. She was completely hidden. She went into the bushes and made herself comfortable and then joined Asta again, and tried to tidy her hair and brush her skirt clear of leaves and twigs, with Asta picking off the bits she couldn’t see.
She didn’t want to join the others just yet. She was trying to capture some of the essence of the dream before it faded completely. She sat down, and Asta joined her.
“Lyra,” she said, “how’s Pan going to recognize your imagination when he finds it?”
“I don’t know. It’s a metaphor.”
“Well, I know that. But it worked, didn’t it? It made you think he was looking for something that had vanished. So you followed him.”
“Because I thought he might have been right. Something was missing.”
“What did you feel was missing?”
“A…certainty about the world. A sort of sense that fundamentally it was true and reliable and just there. A sense that we belonged there too. Belonged in the physical world. Whatever that sense was, I’d had it once, and I didn’t have it anymore.”
“Maybe ‘imagination’ was the wrong word.”
“No, it was exactly the right word. People who think imagination is just making things up, they’re just wrong.
Even angels are wrong. Imagination is seeing things properly, real things, seeing them fully in all their contexts with all their connections in place, all the things they mean around them… The secret commonwealth.”
“I’m still not sure what that is.”
“It’s probably the same thing. I’m hungry.”
She stood up, and at the same moment Malcolm appeared.
She felt she was seeing him for the first time.
He was happy, and he looked as if he were the center of a field of energy so intense it could almost be seen.
He looked as if this was what he’d wanted to do all his life, that he’d spent a childhood and a youth and a young manhood preparing for this activity and this purpose.
“There’s something I have to do before anything else,” he said.
“Don’t move.” He reached into his rucksack and drew out something wrapped in a silk cloth.
“I’m doing this for three reasons. One, for the gryphons; they expect something of the sort.
Two, for you. You know they asked me to repair your alethiometer, the one that was stolen from you at the Blue Hotel.
I’ve got what’s left of it, and one day we’ll repair it properly, but I couldn’t repair the case; it was twisted and torn, and I thought the best thing to do was make it into this. ”
He folded back the cloth to show the circlet he’d made. It was braided like hazel twigs, or like flower stalks, with little buds along its length. She drew in her breath. He raised it and placed it around her head in the way the witches wore their coronets of wildflowers. It fitted perfectly.
She could hardly speak, but she managed, “The gryphons expect…?”
“They really believe all the gold in the world belongs to them, but they can make exceptions for other kings and queens. And I told them you were a princess, so it should come back to you. And they agreed. If they see you wearing it, they’ll give you the same respect they give me.”
“Do they think you’re a prince?”
“Better than a prince. I’m an artificer from the land of gold.”
She touched the delicate circle. “And what was the third reason you made it?”
“For me. Now let’s go and plan our journey to the desert.”
Lyra took a deep breath.
“Malcolm—”
“Yes?”
She reached for his hand, and he took hers gently, knowing it was the left, the wounded one. He raised it to his lips, like a favored artificer acknowledging a princess, and then she returned the gesture, like a princess acknowledging an equal.
Then they stepped out from the little corner among the rocks, and she found an army gathering.
—
Olivier Bonneville thought quickly and pointed to the alethiometer, and said, “You see, Monsieur le Président? I found it, and I was on my way to join your—”
“Enough,” said Delamare. “Brigadier, would you leave us, please?”
The brigadier, who understood very little of what was happening, saluted and left with a smart click of heels.
When the door was shut, Delamare pulled his chair closer to the desk and fixed Bonneville with a look that would have made a basilisk avert its eyes and shift its feet uneasily. Bonneville met it with baffled innocence.
“Boy,” said Delamare, “you have caused me serious delay. I need that alethiometer in the hands of an honest and competent reader. Dr. Lacroix is with me, and will take charge of that instrument from now on.”
“Lacroix? Seriously? He’s—”
“You will be taken to Geneva, under arrest, and kept in custody pending trial until I return.”
“You’re not going to return.”
“What d’you mean by that?”
“I mean, you’re going to die out here, in this barren wilderness. You’ll never see Geneva again.”
“If Dr. Lacroix discovers that the instrument has been damaged in any way, your punishment will be even more severe. In a moment I shall call the brigadier and have you returned to your—”
“Brigadier! He’s a sergeant-major at most. And damage—me? The alethiometer? Listen, I’m serious, Monsieur Delamare. This is a dangerous place for you.”
“Where is that girl?”
“In trouble.”
“I said where.”
Bonneville felt very tired. He reached for the alethiometer, but Delamare took it out of his reach.
“I need it,” Bonneville said. “If you want an answer now, let me have it. Lacroix can give you an answer next week. A vague one. Let me have it.”
“You don’t look well, Olivier. I think you need a long period of rest, well away from the strains of theft and flight and refuge and betrayal. Just tell me where she is, and don’t pretend you haven’t looked for her.”
Bonneville’s eyes brimmed with tears. That had worked once before, with Delamare, and it nearly did now.
“Monsieur Delamare, just let me look at the alethiometer, just for five minutes, and I guarantee you I’ll find out exactly where she is.”
“Where are the books you stole? Did you bring them with you?”
“The new method—”
“I don’t trust it.”
“Please, monsieur, it works. It makes me sick, but it works.”
The boy looked worse than Delamare had ever seen him: ghastly pale, thin, his eyes bloodshot and the lids puffy, his hair filthy and uncombed. His hands were trembling, and he smelled bad. His daemon, too, looked disheveled and subdued as she clutched his shoulder.
“You do it here, in front of me, now,” Delamare said.
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
Delamare pushed the instrument across the desk. Bonneville took it with both hands and drew his chair closer. He bent over it, but that put his head directly under the bare anbaric bulb overhead, and threw the dial into shadow.
“I can’t see…If I could sit there instead…”
He spoke humbly, pleading. Delamare pushed against the desk, but it was bolted to the floor. He stood up and changed places with the boy, and his own daemon, leaning close, whispered, “You’re letting him take charge. Don’t give in to anything else.”
Delamare ignored her and sat down in the other chair, realizing that yes, this was a place of less power, and it did make him look like a supplicant. But not for long, he assured himself.
Bonneville took a deep breath and gazed closely at the instrument before turning one of the wheels.
As he gazed, and before he touched a wheel, the needle crept slowly around the dial, and stopped.
He moved a wheel, and another, and then adjusted them, turning the alethiometer round and comparing that view with the first, and moved one of the hands again, and then moved it back.
He looked like someone pretending to consult an alethiometer, having seen it done in a play, perhaps, concerned more with his own performance than with whatever it could tell him; unconvincing, anyway.
“What are you doing?” said Delamare sharply.
Bonneville sighed heavily and closed his eyes. “Please,” he said.
“Get on.”
The boy opened his eyes and looked around.
The office was sparsely furnished, but full of files and papers, and the walls were covered in maps and charts.
A large photogram of some kind of politician hung over the desk.
In the corner by the window there was a small washbasin, and that was where Bonneville’s eyes rested for a moment before turning back.
“Yes,” he said hoarsely, and then swallowed hard. “I’m getting on, I’m doing that.”