The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials 1)

“Why them three symbols?”

“Because I thought the serpent was cunning, like a spy ought to be, and the crucible could mean like knowledge, what you kind of distill, and the beehive was hard work, like bees are always working hard; so out of the hard work and the cunning comes the knowledge, see, and that's the spy's job; and I pointed to them and I thought the question in my mind, and the needle stopped at death….D'you think that could be really working, Farder Coram?”

“It's working all right, Lyra. What we don't know is whether we're reading it right. That's a subtle art. I wonder if—”

Before he could finish his sentence, there was an urgent knock at the door, and a young gyptian man came in.

“Beg pardon, Farder Coram, there's Jacob Huismans just come back, and he's sore wounded.”

“He was with Benjamin de Ruyter,” said Farder Coram. “What's happened?”

“He won't speak,” said the young man. “You better come, Farder Coram, 'cause he won't last long, he's a bleeding inside.”

Farder Coram and Lyra exchanged a look of alarm and wonderment, but only for a second, and then Farder Coram was hobbling out on his sticks as fast as he could manage, with his daemon padding ahead of him. Lyra came too, hopping with impatience.

The young man led them to a boat tied up at the sugar-beet jetty, where a woman in a red flannel apron held open the door for them. Seeing her suspicious glance at Lyra, Farder Coram said, “It's important the girl hears what Jacob's got to say, mistress.”

So the woman let them in and stood back, with her squirrel daemon perched silent on the wooden clock. On a bunk under a patchwork coverlet lay a man whose white face was damp with sweat and whose eyes were glazed.

“I've sent for the physician, Farder Coram,” said the woman shakily. “Please don't agitate him. He's in an agony of pain. He come in off Peter Hawker's boat just a few minutes ago.”

“Where's Peter now?”

“He's a tying up. It was him said I had to send for you.”

“Quite right. Now, Jacob, can ye hear me?”

Jacob's eyes rolled to look at Farder Coram sitting on the opposite bunk, a foot or two away.

“Hello, Farder Coram,” he murmured.

Lyra looked at his daemon. She was a ferret, and she lay very still beside his head, curled up but not asleep, for her eyes were open and glazed like his.

“What happened?” said Farder Coram.

“Benjamin's dead,” came the answer. “He's dead, and Gerard's captured.”

His voice was hoarse and his breath was shallow. When he stopped speaking, his daemon uncurled painfully and licked his cheek, and taking strength from that he went on:

“We was breaking into the Ministry of Theology, because Benjamin had heard from one of the Gobblers we caught that the headquarters was there, that's where all the orders was coming from….”

He stopped again.

“You captured some Gobblers?” said Farder Coram.

Jacob nodded, and cast his eyes at his daemon. It was unusual for daemons to speak to humans other than their own, but it happened sometimes, and she spoke now.

“We caught three Gobblers in Clerkenwell and made them tell us who they were working for and where the orders came from and so on. They didn't know where the kids were being taken, except it was north to Lapland….”

She had to stop and pant briefly, her little chest fluttering, before she could go on.

“And so them Gobblers told us about the Ministry of Theology and Lord Boreal. Benjamin said him and Gerard Hook should break into the Ministry and Frans Broekman and Tom Mendham should go and find out about Lord Boreal.”

“Did they do that?”

“We don't know. They never came back. Farder Coram, it were like everything we did, they knew about before we did it, and for all we know Frans and Tom were swallowed alive as soon as they got near Lord Boreal.”

“Come back to Benjamin,” said Farder Coram, hearing Jacob's breathing getting harsher and seeing his eyes close in pain.

Jacob's daemon gave a little mew of anxiety and love, and the woman took a step or two closer, her hands to her mouth; but she didn't speak, and the daemon went on faintly:

“Benjamin and Gerard and us went to the Ministry at White Hall and found a little side door, it not being fiercely guarded, and we stayed on watch outside while they unfastened the lock and went in. They hadn't been in but a minute when we heard a cry of fear, and Benjamin's daemon came a flying out and beckoned to us for help and flew in again, and we took our knife and ran in after her; only the place was dark, and full of wild forms and sounds that were confusing in their frightful movements; and we cast about, but there was a commotion above, and a fearful cry, and Benjamin and his daemon fell from a high staircase above us, his daemon a tugging and a fluttering to hold him up, but all in vain, for they crashed on the stone floor and both perished in a moment.

“And we couldn't see anything of Gerard, but there was a howl from above in his voice and we were too terrified and stunned to move, and then an arrow shot down at our shoulder and pierced deep down within….”

The daemon's voice was fainter, and a groan came from the wounded man. Farder Coram leaned forward and gently pulled back the counterpane, and there protruding from Jacob's shoulder was the feathered end of an arrow in a mass

of clotted blood. The shaft and the head were so deep in the poor man's chest that only six inches or so remained above the skin. Lyra felt faint.

There was the sound of feet and voices outside on the jetty.

Farder Coram sat up and said, “Here's the physician, Jacob. We'll leave you now. We'll have a longer talk when you're feeling better.”

He clasped the woman's shoulder on the way out. Lyra stuck close to him on the jetty, because there was a crowd gathering already, whispering and pointing. Farder Coram gave orders for Peter Hawker to go at once to John Faa, and then said:

“Lyra, as soon as we know whether Jacob's going to live or die, we must have another talk about that alethiometer. You go and occupy yourself elsewhere, child; we'll send for you.”

Lyra wandered away on her own, and went to the reedy bank to sit and throw mud into the water. She knew one thing: she was not pleased or proud to be able to read the alethiometer— she was afraid. Whatever power was making that needle swing and stop, it knew things like an intelligent being.

“I reckon it's a spirit,” Lyra said, and for a moment she was tempted to throw the little thing into the middle of the fen.

“I'd see a spirit if there was one in there,” said Pantalaimon. “Like that old ghost in Godstow. I saw that when you didn't.”

“There's more than one kind of spirit,” said Lyra reprovingly. “You can't see all of 'em. Anyway, what about those old dead Scholars without their heads? I saw them, remember.”

“That was only a night-ghast.”

“It was not. They were proper spirits all right, and you know it. But whatever spirits's moving this blooming needle en't that sort of spirit.”

“It might not be a spirit,” said Pantalaimon stubbornly.

“Well, what else could it be?”

“It might be…it might be elementary particles.” She scoffed.

“It could be!” he insisted. “You remember that photomill they got at Gabriel? Well, then.”

At Gabriel College there was a very holy object kept on the high altar of the oratory, covered (now Lyra thought about it) with a black velvet cloth, like the one around the alethiometer. She had seen it when she accompanied the Librarian of Jordan to a service there. At the height of the invocation the Intercessor lifted the cloth to reveal in the dimness a glass dome inside which there was something too distant to see, until he pulled a string attached to a shutter above, letting a ray of sunlight through to strike the dome exactly. Then it became clear: a little thing like a weathervane, with four sails black on one side and white on the other, that began to whirl around as the light struck it. It illustrated a moral lesson, the Intercessor explained, and went on to explain what that was. Five minutes later Lyra had forgotten the moral, but she hadn't forgotten the little whirling vanes in the ray of dusty light. They were delightful whatever they meant, and all done by the power of photons, said the Librarian as they walked home to Jordan.

So perhaps Pantalaimon was right. If elementary particles could push a photomill around, no doubt they could make light work of a needle; but it still troubled her.