La Belle Sauvage, Page 5

  The host was called Gunnar Hallgrimsson. He was a bachelor, a man of sixty or so, plump and sharp-witted. He was a professor of metaphysical philosophy at the university. His daemon, a robin, stayed on his shoulder and said little.

  One of his guests was a university colleague, Axel Lofgren, professor of experimental theology. He was thin, taciturn but amiable, and his daemon was a ferret. He and Hallgrimsson were old friends, and their habit of teasing each other was usually in full flow after a good dinner, but it was moderated this evening by the presence of the third man, a stranger to them both.

  The visitor was about the same age as Hallgrimsson, but he looked older; certainly his face bore the marks of more experience and trial than did the professor's smooth cheeks and unlined brow. He was a gyptian of the people of Eastern Anglia, a man called Coram van Texel, who had traveled much in the far north. He was lean and of middle height, and his movements were careful, as if he thought he might break something inadvertently, as if he was unused to delicate glasses and fine tableware. His daemon, a large cat with fur of a thousand beautiful autumnal colors, stalked the corners of the study before leaping gracefully to Coram's lap. Ten years after this evening, and again ten years after that, Lyra would marvel at the coloring of that daemon's fur.

  They had just dined. Coram had arrived that day from the north, with a letter of introduction from an acquaintance of Professor Hallgrimsson's, the consul of the witches at the town of Trollesund.

  "You'll take some Tokay?" said Hallgrimsson, sitting down after looking through the window along the rain-swept street, and then pulling the curtains across against the draft.

  "That would be a rare pleasure," said Coram.

  The professor turned to a small table no more than an arm's length from his comfortable chair and poured some golden wine into three glasses.

  "And how is my friend Martin Lanselius?" the professor continued, handing a glass to Coram. "I must say, I never thought he would end up in the diplomatic service of the witches."

  "He's thriving," said Coram. "In fine fettle. He's making a study of their religion."

  "I've often thought the belief systems of the witch clans would reward investigation," said Hallgrimsson, "but my own studies led me elsewhere."

  "Even further into the void," said the professor of experimental theology, taking a glass from his host.

  "You must excuse my friend's absurdities. Your good health, Mr. Van Texel," said Hallgrimsson, taking a sip.

  "And yours, sir. By God, this is fine."

  "I'm glad you think so. There is a wine merchant in Buda-Pesth who sends me a case of it every year."

  "We don't taste it very often," said Lofgren. "Every time I see a bottle, there's less in it than there was before."

  "Oh, nonsense. Now, what can we do for you here in Uppsala, Mr. Van Texel?"

  "Dr. Lanselius told me about the instrument you have, the truth measurer," said the gyptian. "I was hoping to consult it."

  "Ah. Tell me about the nature of your inquiry."

  "My people," said Coram, "the gyptian people, are under threat from various political factions in Brytain. They want to restrict our ancient freedoms and limit the activities we can take part in--buying and selling, for instance. I want to know which of these threats can be dealt with by opposition, which by negotiation, and which can't be dealt with at all. Is that the sort of question your instrument could answer?"

  "In the right hands, yes. Given enough time, I could even make a rough attempt at interpreting it myself."

  "You mean you're not an expert reader?"

  "By no means expert."

  "Then--"

  "Let me show you the instrument, and perhaps you will understand the problem."

  The professor opened a drawer in the little table and brought out a leather box, circular in shape and about the size of the palm of a man's hand, and three fingers deep. Lofgren pulled out a tapestry-covered stool, and Hallgrimsson placed the box on it and lifted the lid.

  Coram leaned forward. In the soft naphtha light, something gleamed richly. The professor adjusted the lampshade so that the light fell full on the stool, and took the instrument out of its box. His short stubby fingers were touching the instrument with what looked to Coram like the tenderness of a lover, as if he thought it was alive.

  It was a clock-shaped device of bright gold, with a crystal face uppermost. At first, Coram could see little but a beautiful complexity, until the professor began to point things out.

  "Around the edge of the dial--you see?--we have thirty-six pictures, each painted on ivory with a single hair. And around the outside we have three little wheels a hundred and twenty degrees apart, like the knobs you use to wind a watch. This is what happens when I turn one."

  Coram leaned closer, and his daemon stepped off his lap and stood on the arm of the chair so that she could see too. As the professor turned the wheel, they saw a slender black hand, like a minute hand, detach itself from the complicated background and move around the dial with a series of clicks. The professor stopped when it was pointing at a tiny picture of the sun.

  "We have three hands," the professor said, "and we point each at a different symbol. If I were framing your question, I would probably include the sun in the three symbols I chose, because it stands, among other things, for kingship and authority, and by association, for the law. The other two"--he turned the other wheels, and the hands moved obediently round the dial--"would depend on which aspect of your question we wanted to deal with first. You mentioned buying and selling. Somewhere in the griffin range of meanings, those actions occur. Why? Because griffins are associated with treasure. I would also guess that the third hand should point to the dolphin, whose primary meaning is water, because your people are water dwellers, no?"

  "That's true. I begin to see."

  "Let's try, then."

  The professor moved the second hand to the griffin and the third to the dolphin.

  "And then this happens," he said.

  A needle so slender that Coram hadn't seen it at all, and of a mid-gray color, began to move, apparently of its own accord, slowly, hesitating, and then swung round very quickly, stopping here and there before moving on again.

  "What's that doing?" said Coram.

  "Giving us the answer."

  "You got to be quick, en't you?"

  "Your mental faculties have to be calm, but alert. I have heard it compared to the way in which a hunter will lie in wait, ready to pull the trigger at any moment, but without any nervous excitement."

  "I understand," said Coram. "I've seen archers in Nippon do something similar."

  "Really? I would like to hear about that. But the mental attitude is only one aspect of the difficulty. Another is this: that each symbol has a very deep range of meanings, and they are only made clear in the books of readings."

  "How many meanings?"

  "Nobody knows. Some have been explored to the depth of a hundred or more, but they show no sign of coming to an end. Perhaps they go on forever."

  "And how were these meanings discovered?" put in Lofgren.

  Coram looked at the professor; he'd thought Lofgren was familiar with the alethiometer, as Hallgrimsson was, and believed in its powers, but there was a tone of skepticism in his question.

  "By contemplation, by meditation, by experiment," said Hallgrimsson.

  "Oh. Well, I believe in experiment," said Lofgren.

  "I'm glad to hear you believe in something," said his friend.

  "These meanings--the relation between them--if they work by kinds of similarity," said Coram, "they could go on a lot past a hundred. There's no end to finding similarities, once you start looking for 'em."

  "But what matters is not the similarities your imagination finds, but the similarities that are implicit in the image, and they are not necessarily the same. I have noticed that the more imaginative readers are often the less successful. Their minds leap to what they think is there rather than waiting with patience. And what
matters most of all is where the chosen meaning comes in the hierarchy of meanings, you see, and for that there is no alternative to the books. That is why the only alethiometers we know about are kept in or by great libraries."

  "How many are there, then?"

  "We think there were six made. We know where five of them are: there is this one in Uppsala, there is one in Bologna, one in Paris, the Magisterium has one in Geneva, and there is one in Oxford."

  "Oxford, eh?"

  "In the Bodleian Library. It is a remarkable story. When the Consistorial Court of Discipline was gathering its power in the last century, the prefect of the court heard of the existence of the Bodleian alethiometer and demanded its surrender. The librarian refused. The convocation of the university, the governing body, ordered him to comply. Instead, what he did was to conceal the instrument in the hollowed-out pages of a work of experimental theology, of which they already had several identical copies, and place it on the open shelves in plain view--but, of course, impossible to find among the million or more volumes in the library. That time the Consistorial Court gave up. Then they came a second time. The prefect sent a body of armed men to the library and threatened the librarian with death if it was not given up. Again the librarian refused, saying that he had not taken up his office in order to give away the contents of the library, and that he had a sacred duty to conserve and protect them for scholarship. The officer in charge ordered his men to arrest the librarian and bring him out into the quadrangle to be shot. The librarian took his place in front of the firing squad and faced the officer for the first time--they had negotiated only by messenger previously, you see--and they recognized each other as old college friends. The officer was abashed, the story says, and would not give the order, and instead stood his men down and went to drink brantwijn with the librarian. The outcome was that the alethiometer remained in the Bodleian Library, where it is still, the librarian retained his position, and the officer was ordered back to Geneva, where shortly afterwards he died, apparently by poison."

  The gyptian gave a long, low whistle.

  "And who reads the Oxford one now?" he said.

  "There is a small body of scholars who have made it their object of study. I have heard there is a woman of great gifts who has made considerable progress in the principles....Ralph? Relph? Something like that."

  "I see," said Coram, sipping his wine and looking closely at the alethiometer. "You said there were six of these, Professor, and then you told me the whereabouts of five of 'em. Where is the sixth?"

  "Well might you ask. No one knows. Well, I daresay somebody knows, but I don't think any scholar knows. Now, if we could come back to your question, Mr. Van Texel: it's a complicated one, but that's not the main problem. The problem is that our leading scholar is not here. He is in Paris, spending a sabbatical term in the Bibliotheque Nationale. I am too slow and clumsy to find my way from one level to another, and to see the connections and estimate where I should look next in the books. I would read it for you if I could, of course."

  "Despite the danger?" said Coram.

  The professor said nothing for a few moments. Then he said, "The danger of..."

  "Of summary execution," said Coram, though he was smiling.

  "Oh, yes. Aha. Well, I think those days are behind us, fortunately."

  "Let's hope so," said Lofgren.

  Coram took another sip of the golden wine and sat back in the chair as if he was contented and comfortable. The fact was that the alethiometer, pretty though it was, had little interest for him, and the question he had posed to Professor Hallgrimsson was a blind: the gyptians were perfectly capable of working out the answer for themselves, and indeed they already had. Coram was up to something else altogether, and now he had to maneuver the conversation towards a different matter.

  "I daresay you have a lot of visitors," he said.

  "Well, I don't know," said the professor. "No more than most universities, I suppose. Of course, we do specialize in one or two areas, and that brings interested scholars from quite some distance. Not only scholars either."

  "Explorers, I expect."

  "Among others, yes. On their way to the Arctic."

  "I wonder if you've met a man called Lord Asriel. He's a friend of my people, a notable explorer in that part of the world."

  "He has been here, but not recently. I did hear..." The professor looked awkward for a second, and then his eagerness overcame his reluctance. "I don't listen to gossip, you understand."

  "Oh, neither do I," said Coram. "Sometimes I overhear it, though."

  "Overhear!" said Lofgren. "That is very good."

  "Yes, I overheard a remarkable story about Lord Asriel not long ago," Hallgrimsson said. "If you have just come from the north, perhaps it won't have reached you yet....It seems that Lord Asriel has been involved in a murder case."

  "Murder?"

  "He had a child with a woman who was married to someone else, and then he killed the woman's husband."

  "Good God!" said Coram, who knew the story well already. "How did that come about?"

  He listened to the professor's version of the tale, which differed only slightly from the one he knew, waiting for the opportunity to steer the conversation the way of his question.

  "And what happened to the child?" he said. "With its mother, I expect?"

  "No. I think the court has custody. For the moment, at any rate. The mother is a remarkably beautiful woman, but not one in whom, shall we say, the flame of motherhood burns very brightly."

  "You speak as if you've met her."

  "Indeed we have," said Hallgrimsson, and if Coram had had to describe his expression, he would have said that the scholar was preening himself just a little. "We have dined with her. She visited us just a month ago."

  "Did she really? And was she off exploring too?"

  "No, she came to consult Axel here. She is a remarkable scholar herself, you know."

  This was the moment.

  "She came to consult you, sir?" said Coram to the experimental theologian.

  Lofgren smiled. Coram noticed that his bony face was actually showing a faint blush.

  "I used to think my old friend here was immune to the charms of the fair sex," said Hallgrimsson. "In years gone by, Mr. Van Texel, he would hardly have noticed that she was a woman. But this time I think the dart of Cupid might actually have penetrated his carapace."

  "I don't blame you, sir," said Coram to Lofgren. "Speaking for myself, I've always found great intelligence in a woman a highly attractive feature. What did she want to consult you about, if I may ask?"

  "Oh, you won't get anything out of him," said Hallgrimsson. "I've tried. Anyone would think he had signed an oath of secrecy."

  "Because you would make a joke of it, you old buffoon," said Lofgren. "She came to ask me about the Rusakov field. Do you know what that is?"

  "No, sir. What is it?"

  "You know what a field is, in natural philosophy?"

  "I've got a vague idea. It's a region where some force applies. Is that it?"

  "That will do. But this field is like no other we know of. Its discoverer, a Muscovite called Rusakov, was investigating the mystery of consciousness--human consciousness--that is, of why something entirely material, such as a human body--including the brain, of course--should be able to generate this impalpable, invisible thing, awareness. Is it material, this consciousness we have? We can't weigh it or measure it. Is it something spiritual, then? Once we use the word spiritual, we don't have to explain anymore, because it belongs to the Church then, and no one can question it. Well, that's no good to a real investigator of nature. I won't go into all the steps Rusakov took, but he finally arrived at the extraordinary idea that consciousness is a perfectly normal property of matter, like mass or anbaric charge; that there is a field of consciousness that pervades the entire universe, and that makes itself apparent most fully--we believe--in human beings. Precisely how is a question that is now being investigated with urgent excite
ment by scientists in every part of the world."

  "Every part of the world, that is, where they are allowed to," said Hallgrimsson. "So you see, Mr. Van Texel, how easily this must attract the attention of the Consistorial Court."

  "I do, sir. It must have shaken the Church to its foundations. And this was what the lady came here to ask about?"

  "It was," said Lofgren. "Mrs. Coulter's interest was unusual in someone who was not a professional scholar. She asked several very perceptive questions about the Rusakov field and human consciousness. I showed her my results, she absorbed everything I could tell her with instant understanding, and then she seemed to lose interest in me, to my sorrow, and started to flatter my colleague here."

  "Had she heard about this wine, then, sir?" said Coram.

  "Ho ho! No, it wasn't the wine, and it wasn't my many personal attractions. She wanted to consult the alethiometer about her daughter, Mr. Van Texel."

  "Her daughter?" said Coram. "You mean the child she had by--"

  "By Lord Asriel," said Hallgrimsson. "Indeed. The very same. She wanted me to use the alethiometer to find out where the child was."

  "She doesn't know?"

  "Oh, no. It--I suppose I mean she--is under the supervision of the courts of law, but of course she could be anywhere. Apparently, it's a matter of some secrecy. And now--remember you are just overhearing this, Mr. Van Texel--the mother has discovered that the child is the subject of a prophecy by the witches. She did not tell us that. We--ahem--overheard it from one of her servants. Mrs. Coulter is very eager to discover more about this, and especially to find out where the child is, so as to take her back into her...I was going to say into her care, but I think it would be more like custody."

  "I see," said Coram. "And what did this prophecy say? Did you happen to overhear that?"

  "No, alas. I believe it was simply that the child was of supreme importance in some way. That is all we heard. And her mother does not know what the prophecy foretells. Yes, a very remarkable woman. But should we now be expecting a call from the agents of the Consistorial Court, Mr. Van Texel?"

  "I hope not. But these are trying times, Professor."

  Coram had asked enough; he had learned what he wanted to. After a few more minutes of conversation, he stood up.