Philip Pullman - The Subtle Knife

«What in the world is that? A compass?»

Lyra let her take it. Dr. Malone's eyes widened as she felt the weight

«Dear Lord, it's made of gold. Where on earth —»

«I think it does what your Cave does. That's what I want to find out. If I can answer a question truly,» said Lyra desperately, «something you know the answer to and I don't, can I try your Cave then?»

«What, are we into fortune-telling now? What is this thing?»

«Please! Just ask me a question!»

Dr. Malone shrugged. «Oh, all right,» she said. «Tell me … tell me what I was doing before I took up this business.»

Eagerly Lyra took the alethiometer from her and turned the winding wheels. She could feel her mind reaching for the right pictures even before the hands were pointing at them, and she sensed the longer needle twitching to respond. As it began to swing around the dial, her eyes followed it, watching, calculating, seeing down the long chains of meaning to the level where the truth lay.

Then she blinked and sighed and came out of her temporary trance.

«You used to be a nun,» she said. «I wouldn't have guessed that. Nuns are supposed to stay in their convents forever. But you stopped believing in church things and they let you leave. This en't like my world at all, not a bit.»

Dr. Malone sat down in a chair by the computer, staring.

Lyra said, «That's true, en't it?»

«Yes. And you found out from that…»

«From my alethiometer. It works by Dust, I think. I came all this way to find out more about Dust, and it told me to come to you. So I reckon your dark matter must be the same thing. Now can I try your Cave?»

Dr. Malone shook her head, but not to say no, just out of helplessness. She spread her hands. «Very well,» she said. «I think I'm dreaming. I might as well carry on.»

She swung around in her chair and pressed several switches, bringing an electrical hum and the sound of a computer's cooling fan into the air; and at the sound of them, Lyra gave a little muffled gasp. It was because the sound in that room was the same sound she'd heard in that dreadful glittering chamber at Bolvangar, where the silver guillotine had nearly parted her and Pantalaimon. She felt him quiver in her pocket, and gently squeezed him for reassurance.

But Dr. Malone hadn't noticed; she was too busy adjusting switches and tapping the letters in another of those ivory trays. As she did, the screen changed color, and some small letters and figures appeared on it.

«Now you sit down,» she said, and pulled out a chair for Lyra. Then she opened ajar and said, «I need to put some gel on your skin to help the electrical contact. It washes off easily. Hold still, now.»

Dr. Malone took six wires, each ending in a flat pad, and attached them to various places on Lyra's head. Lyra sat determinedly still, but she was breathing quickly, and her heart was beating hard.

«All right, you're all hooked up,» said Dr. Malone. «The room's full of Shadows. The universe is full of Shadows, come to that. But this is the only way we can see them, when you make your mind empty and look at the screen. Off you go.»

Lyra looked. The glass was dark and blank. She saw her own reflection dimly, but that was all. As an experiment she pretended that she was reading the alethiometer, and imagined herself asking: What does this woman know about Dust? What questions is she asking?

She mentally moved the alethiometer's hands around the dial, and as she did, the screen began to flicker. Astonished, she came out of her concentration, and the flicker died. She didn't notice the ripple of excitement that made Dr. Malone sit up: she frowned and sat forward and began to concentrate again.

This time the response came instantaneously. A stream of dancing lights, for all the world like the shimmering curtains of the aurora, blazed across the screen. They took up patterns that were held for a moment only to break apart and form again, in different shapes, or different colors; they looped and swayed, they sprayed apart, they burst into showers of radiance that suddenly swerved this way or that like a flock of birds changing direction in the sky. And as Lyra watched, she felt the same sense, as of trembling on the brink of understanding, that she remembered from the time when she was beginning to read the alethiometer.

She asked another question: Is this Dust? Is it the same thing making these patterns and moving the needle of the alethiometer?

The answer came in more loops and swirls of light. She guessed it meant yes. Then another thought occurred to her, and she turned to speak to Dr. Malone, and saw her open-mouthed, hand to her head.

«What?» she said.

The screen faded. Dr. Malone blinked.

«What is it?» Lyra said again.

«Oh — you've just put on the best display I've ever seen, that's all,» said Dr. Malone. «What were you doing? What were you thinking?»

«I was thinking you could get it clearer than this,» Lyra said.

«Clearer? That's the clearest it's ever been!»

«But what does it mean? Can you read it?»

«Well,» said Dr. Malone, «you don't read it in the sense of reading a message; it doesn't work like that. What's happening is that the Shadows are responding to the attention that you pay them. That's revolutionary enough; it's our consciousness that they respond to, you see.»

«No,» Lyra explained, «what I mean is, those colors and shapes up there. They could do other things, those Shadows. They could make any shapes you wanted. They could make pictures if you wanted them to. Look.»

And she turned back and focused her mind again, but this time she pretended to herself that the screen was the alethiometer, with all thirty-six symbols laid out around the edge. She knew them so well now that her fingers automatically twisted in her lap as she moved the imaginary hands to point at the candle (for understanding), the alpha and omega (for language), and the ant (for diligence), and framed the question:

What would these people have to do in order to understand the language of the Shadows?

The screen responded as quickly as thought itself, and out of the welter of lines and flashes a series of pictures formed with perfect clarity: compasses, alpha and omega again, lightning, angel. Each picture flashed up a different number of times, and then came a different three: camel, garden, moon.

Lyra saw their meanings clearly, and unfocused her mind to explain. This time, when she turned around, she saw that Dr. Malone was sitting back in her chair, white-faced, clutching the edge of the table.

«What it says,» Lyra told her, «it's saying in my language, right — the language of pictures. Like the alethiometer. But what it says is that it could use ordinary language too, words, if you fixed it up like that. You could fix this so it put words on the screen. But you'd need a lot of careful figuring with numbers — that was die compasses, see. And the lightning meant anbaric — I mean, electric power, more of that. And the angel — that's all about messages. There's things it wants to say. But when it went on to that second bit… it meant Asia, almost the farthest east but not quite. I dunno what country that would be — China, maybe. And there's a way they have in that country of talking to Dust, I mean Shadows, same as you got here and I got with the — I got with pictures, only their way uses sticks. I think it meant that picture on the door, but I didn't understand it, really. I thought when I first saw it there was something important about it, only I didn't know what. So there must be lots of ways of talking to Shadows.»

Dr. Malone was breathless.

«The I Ching,» she said. «Yes, it's Chinese. A form of divination — fortune-telling, really…. And, yes, they use sticks. It's only up there for decoration,» she said, as if to reassure Lyra that she didn't really believe in it. «You're telling me that when people consult the I Ching, they're getting in touch with Shadow particles? With dark matter?»