Philip Pullman - The Subtle Knife

«I know who could tell you more,» said the seal hunter. «Up the mountain they have an observatory belonging to the Imperial Muscovite Academy. They'd be able to tell you. I know he went up there more than once.»

«What d'you want to know for, anyway, Lee?» said Sam Cansino.

«He owes me some money,» said Lee Scoresby.

This explanation was so satisfying that it stopped their curiosity at once. The conversation turned to the topic on everyone's lips: the catastrophic changes taking place around them, which no one could see.

«The fishermen,» said the seal hunter, «they say you can sail right up into that new world.»

«There's a new world?» said Lee.

«As soon as this damn fog clears we'll see right into it,» the seal hunter told them confidently. «When it first happened, I was out in my kayak and looking north, just by chance. I'll never forget what I saw. Instead of the earth curving down over the horizon, it went straight on. I could see forever, and as far as I could see, there was land and shoreline, mountains, harbors, green trees, and fields of corn, forever into the sky. I tell you, friends, that was something worth toiling fifty years to see, a sight like that. I would have paddled up the sky into that calm sea without a backward glance; but then came the fog….»

«Ain't never seen a fog like this,» grumbled Sam Cansino. «Reckon it's set in for a month, maybe more. But you're out of luck if you want money from Stanislaus Grumman, Lee; the man's dead.»

«Ah! I got his Tartar name!» said the seal hunter. «I just remembered what they called him during the drilling. It sounded like Jopari.»

«Jopari? That's no kind of name I've ever heard of,» said Lee. «Might be Nipponese, I suppose. Well, if I want my money, maybe I can chase up his heirs and assigns. Or maybe the Berlin Academy can square the debt. I'll go ask at the observatory, see if they have an address I can apply to.»

The observatory was some distance to the north, and Lee Scoresby hired a dog sledge and driver. It wasn't easy to find someone willing to risk the journey in the fog, but Lee was persuasive, or his money was; and eventually an old Tartar from the Ob region agreed to take him there, after a lengthy bout of haggling.

The driver didn't rely on a compass, or he would have found it impossible. He navigated by other signs — his Arctic fox daemon for one, who sat at the front of the sledge keenly scenting the way. Lee, who carried his compass everywhere, had realized already that the earth's magnetic field was as disturbed as everything else.

The old driver said, as they stopped to brew coffee, «This happen before, this thing.»

«What, the sky opening? That happened before?»

«Many thousand generation. My people remember. All long time ago, many thousand generation.»

«What do they say about it?»

«Sky fall open, and spirits move between this world and that world. All the lands move. The ice melt, then freeze again. The spirits close up the hole after a while. Seal it up. But witches say the sky is thin there, behind the northern lights.»

«What's going to happen, Umaq?»

«Same thing as before. Make all same again. But only after big trouble, big war. Spirit war.»

The driver wouldn't tell him any more, and soon they moved on, tracking slowly over undulations and hollows and past outcrops of dim rock, dark through the pallid fog, until the old man said: «Observatory up there. You walk now. Path too crooked for sledge. You want go back, I wait here.»

«Yeah, I want to go back when I've finished, Umaq. You make yourself a fire, my friend, and sit and rest a spell. I'll be three, four hours maybe.»

Lee Scoresby set off, with Hester tucked into the breast of his coat, and after half an hour's stiff climb found a clump of buildings suddenly above him as if they'd just been placed there by a giant hand. But the effect was only due to a momentary lifting of the fog, and after a minute it closed in again. He saw the great dome of the main observatory, a smaller one a little way off, and between them a group of administration buildings and domestic quarters. No lights showed, because the windows were blacked out permanently so as not to spoil the darkness for their telescopes.

A few minutes after he arrived, Lee was talking to a group of astronomers eager to learn what news he could bring them, for there are few natural philosophers as frustrated as astronomers in a fog. He told them about everything he'd seen, and once that topic had been thoroughly dealt with, he asked about Stanislaus Grumman The astronomers hadn't had a visitor in weeks, and they were keen to talk.

«Grumman? Yes, I'll tell you something about him,» said the Director. «He was an Englishman, in spite of his name. I remember —»

«Surely not,» said his deputy. «He was a member of the Imperial German Academy. I met him in Berlin. I was sure he was German.»

«No, I think you'll find he was English. His command of that language was immaculate, anyway,» said the Director.

«But I agree, he was certainly a member of the Berlin Academy. He was a geologist —»

«No, no, you're wrong,» said someone else. «He did look at the earth, but not as a geologist. I had a long talk with him once. I suppose you'd call him a paleo-archaeologist.»

They were sitting, five of them, around a table in the room that served as their common room, living and dining room, bar, recreation room, and more or less everything else. Two of them were Muscovites, one was a Pole, one a Yoruba, and one a Skraeling. Lee Scoresby sensed that the little community was glad to have a visitor, if only because he introduced a change of conversation. The Pole had been the last to speak, and then the Yoruba interrupted:

«What do you mean, a paleo-archaeologist? Archaeologists already study what's old; why do you need to put another word meaning 'old' in front of it?»

«His field of study went back much further than you'd expect, that's all. He was looking for remains of civilizations from twenty, thirty thousand years ago,» the Pole replied.

«Nonsense!» said the Director. «Utter nonsense! The man was pulling your leg. Civilizations thirty thousand years old? Ha! Where is the evidence?»

«Under the ice,» said the Pole. «That's the point. According to Grumman, the earth's magnetic field changed dramatically at various times in the past, and the earth's axis actually moved, too, so that temperate areas became ice-bound.»

«How?» said one of the Muscovites.

«Oh, he had some complex theory. The point was, any evidence there might have been for very early civilizations was long since buried under the ice. He claimed to have some pho-tograms of unusual rock formations.»

«Ha! Is that all?» said the Director.

«I'm only reporting, I'm not defending him,» said the Pole.

«How long had you known Grumman, gentlemen?» Lee Scoresby asked.

«Well, let me see,» said the Director. «It was seven years ago I met him for the first time.»

«He made a name for himself a year or two before that, with his paper on the variations in the magnetic pole,» said the Yoruba. «But he came out of nowhere. I mean, no one had known him as a student or seen any of his previous work….» They talked on for a while, contributing reminiscences and offering suggestions as to what might have become of Grumman, though most of them thought he was probably dead. While the Pole went to brew some more coffee, Lee's hare daemon, Hester, said to him quietly: «Check out the Skraeling, Lee.»

The Skraeling had spoken very little. Lee had thought he was naturally taciturn, but prompted by Hester, he casually glanced across during the next break in the conversation to see the man's daemon, a snowy owl, glaring at him with bright orange eyes. Well, that was what owls looked like, and they did stare; but Hester was right, and there was a hostility and suspicion in the daemon that the man's face showed nothing of.