Chapter Thirty-Four The Alkahest at Work
Thirty-Four
The Alkahest at Work
After a day’s travel over sand and gravel, Pan was following Olivier Bonneville and his horse through some rough grassland that led gradually down towards the trees where the red building stood.
He could see the distant scarlet roof quite clearly, and whenever he passed a shrub or a small tree he scrambled up to get a better view, but the roof was still the only part he could see.
A path through the grass was gradually becoming easier to follow.
People and animals had trodden this way, maybe for many years, maybe for centuries.
Bonneville seemed easier in his mind now that their goal was visible, or so it seemed to Pan; he even tried to encourage the horse into a trot, though the horse would have nothing to do with it.
When they stopped for a drink, just before the trees really began, Pan decided to make himself known.
He ran through the branches to the tree nearest to where Bonneville had stopped, and called out, “Hey! You! Bonneville! I want to talk to you.”
Bonneville started with surprise and looked all around.
“Up here,” said Pan.
“You!”
“Yes, it is.”
“You fucking polecat. Where is she?”
“No idea. If she’s ahead, she’ll have gone into the building. If she’s behind us, she won’t. That’s all I can tell you.”
“What do you want?”
“Well, I want to stop you killing her, for one thing.”
“I’m not going to kill her,” Bonneville muttered.
“Speak up!”
“I said I’m not going to kill her. But Delamare might, and he’s not far behind us.”
“The Magisterium man. Your uncle.”
Bonneville’s head snapped up again. His face was pale and angry. “Better not get close to me,” he said.
“Oh, I won’t hurt you.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that.”
He shook the reins, and the horse trudged on. Pan followed through the branches. The trees were close enough now to make that easy enough.
“What does Delamare want?” he called to Bonneville.
“He wants to kill her, and he wants to blow something up. Both at the same time would suit him very well.”
“And if you don’t want to kill Lyra, what do you want?”
“She’s got my father’s alethiometer. I want it back. Then I’ll leave her alone and forget about her.”
“No, you won’t. She’s your sister.”
Bonneville slumped a little in the saddle. “How do you know that?” he said quietly.
“I thought it was common knowledge. What I’d like to know is how you heard of it.”
Bonneville rode on, saying nothing for over a minute. Then he said, “What’s in the red building?”
“I don’t know. I think Lyra might think…”
“What? What might she think?”
“It’s a doorway to another world. We’ve seen them before.”
He scoffed. “Think I’m stupid?”
“Well, no, but you do stupid things. Impulsive things. You should stop and consider. Didn’t you read your uncle’s sermon? I don’t suppose you were there to hear it. He certainly believes in doorways to other worlds. He thinks they’re the way evil comes into this one.”
“Well, you weren’t there either. How d’you know that?”
“Must have read it in some newspaper.”
Bonneville rode on. The horse was finding the going harder now; branches hung low over the path, and Bonneville sometimes had to lift them out of the way before they could pass.
After a minute or so he said, “Common knowledge, is it? About Lyra?”
“No. She certainly doesn’t know. If you want the truth, I heard it from your daemon when you were asleep.”
“Bastard.”
His daemon was perching as still as stone behind him.
“Do you remember your mother? Mrs. Coulter?” Pan said.
“No. She was probably in it with her brother. Inventing lies…”
Pan, whose memories of the woman were bright and terrifying still, was tempted to tell Bonneville everything he knew, but he held back.
The horse stopped suddenly. Bonneville, who wasn’t expecting that, almost fell from the saddle. “Can you hear that?” he said.
Pan turned his head one way and then the other to locate whatever sound Bonneville had heard. There was a light wind rustling the leaves, and some sort of small bird was singing not far away, but it was a different sound that Bonneville had heard, and after a few moments Pan heard it too.
“An engine,” he said. “From back there, the way we came.”
“Delamare and his bomb. Fuck. Can you see the red roof? How far is it?”
Pan leapt higher up the willow tree and called down, “Close. Another few minutes, no more.”
“Right. We’ll push on as quick as we can. That engine’s laboring—he’s finding it hard going. We’ll get there before he does.”
He shook the reins. The horse slouched forward.
Bonneville was urging it hard, but the horse was stubbornly unwilling to be urged.
Pan leapt from tree to tree—easy now that they were closer—and thought of telling Bonneville to leave the horse and go forward on foot, because they were only a matter of minutes away from the building.
The trees grew too thickly for them to see anything below the scarlet roof, but Pan had the impression of immensity, and of silence too, a silence in which the air-cooled engine of whatever sort of truck or armored car was following them kept snarling closer and closer.
Finally he leapt down as the horse passed below, and clung to Bonneville’s jacket for safety.
“What are you doing?” cried Bonneville, squirming in the saddle.
“Shut up and get down. Leave the horse to block the path and do the rest on foot. We’re nearly there.”
Bonneville’s daemon raised her one useful wing in protest, but said nothing as she clung to his shoulder.
He clambered down awkwardly, the horse moving a step or two as he set his foot on the ground, but he recovered and lurched forward, hitching his rucksack over his shoulder.
The horse had already discovered some palatable grass beside the path and didn’t seem inclined to move away from it; Bonneville gave it a pat on the neck as he followed Pan towards the red glow through the trees ahead.
Less than a minute later they came to the flagstone area in front of the flight of steps up to the portico. Pan had had the idea that there would be guards, but his memory of Strauss’s journal was hazy, and there was no one there now.
Again they stopped to listen for Delamare’s engine.
“It’s closer,” said Bonneville.
“Hurry up, then. Open the door.”
Pan sprang to the top of the steps and looked at the twin columns, whose red paint was peeling, and at the edge of the tiled roof above as Bonneville ran up after him.
The sound of the engine came clearly through the trees now: Pan expected to see it at any moment.
Bonneville turned the handle, and was as surprised as Malcolm had been when it turned so easily.
“Quick,” he said, and Pan darted past his legs and into the great hall.
They closed the door at once and looked around.
Pan was searching for a way out: Bonneville was just amazed.
Pan saw the door at the other end of the great dim hall and ran towards it, the scratching of his claws on the wooden floor loud in the enormous silence.
Halfway across, he stopped and turned. Bonneville hadn’t moved; he stood staring all around and above as if struck by a revelation.
There was a painting of some sort on the walls, and perhaps Bonneville was looking at that.
“Come on!” Pan said, as loud as he dared. The vehicle following them had arrived on the flagstone forecourt: the driver gave a little burst of the throttle, and then the engine cut out and fell silent. Bonneville came to his senses and began to run, following Pan towards the other door.
And when Pan was nearly there, with Bonneville close behind, the door opened behind them. Light fell in, and the figure of Marcel Delamare stood silhouetted in the entrance.
—
Lyra and Malcolm stood and watched as the old couple came out of the front door. Malcolm was eager to fight in their defense—she could tell by the tension in his stance—but she squeezed his hand and knew he wouldn’t be foolish; he’d be cut down in a moment.
Old Mr. Butler leaned towards her and said quietly, “You will tell them, won’t you?”
“Everything,” she said. “Everything we’ve seen.”
Mrs. Butler smiled nervously and clutched her bag of knitting as they left. They couldn’t march, so the soldiers had to adapt themselves to their pace as they moved away from the lakeshore and out of sight around a corner.
Malcolm was looking at Lyra. “What next?” he said.
“I don’t want to go too far away from the doorway. You know, the opening. If Pan had come through, I know he’d wait for me somewhere nearby. I just don’t want to be somewhere else when he does come.”
“Good idea. Let’s go back. And what were you going to say about the alkahest? You’d just seen what it was?”
“Yes! It is the universal solvent, just as it says in the encyclopedia. The destroyer of bonds. Look at what’s happening here—all the old ways and habits that brought people together, like bartering and trading—just dissolved.
Wiped away by new ways people don’t fully understand.
The new roads that go who knows where but just tear up the rose gardens and knock down perfectly good houses. And—”
“What about the daemon sickness? Is it responsible for that too?”