28

The Myriorama

Lyra turned away from the blazing building at once and walked steadily (dowdily, heavily) towards the centre of the city. Her mind carried on half of a dialogue with Pan, urgent and frightened, but none of it showed on her face or in her bearing.

‘I should stop – I should find out if they’re safe – I know I can’t – it would only make it worse for them, apart from anything else – it’s because of me that it happened – whoever set the fire is probably watching to see if anyone runs out, or … I’ll write to them as soon as – I can’t stay here in Smyrna now. Got to get out as soon as possible. Who am I? What was my witch-name? Tatiana … And a patronymic – Tatiana Asrielovna. Maybe that gives too much away. Giorgio … Georgiovna. If only I had a passport in that name – but witches don’t need passports – I’m a witch. A witch disguising herself as a – what was it? – dowdy girl – depressed and dowdy – just so people don’t look at me. Oh God I hope Anita and Bud are all right. Perhaps he’s still at his office and doesn’t know about it – I could go and tell him – but I don’t know where that is … I must be Oakley Street-ish about this. If it was intended for me, then I’d be dangerous for them. What should I do? Get away. But the train doesn’t leave till— Oh, get another train. Where does the next train stop? No trains for Aleppo. There’s one for a place called Seleukeia – Agrippa mentioned that! Go there today and … The Blue Hotel. The City of the Moon. Between Seleukeia and Aleppo. That’s what I’ll do. Maybe first find somewhere quiet and try the new method again … People get their sea-legs and then they stop feeling seasick … Perhaps I could try that. And get together with Malcolm. Yes! But I don’t know where he is – the letter was posted in Bulgaria but he could be anywhere now – he could have been arrested – in prison – he could be dead … Don’t think like that. Oh, Pan, if you’re not at the Blue Hotel I don’t know if I can go any further … Why do dæmons go there? – But I’ve got the princess’s list of names in Aleppo – and that merchant there Bud Schlesinger told me about this morning – what was his name? – Mustafa Bey. Oh, this is horrible. Danger all around … People who want to kill me – even the Master of Jordan only wanted to put me in a smaller room – not kill me – I wonder how Alice is now? Pan, we might not like each other much but at least we’re on the same side – and if they kill me, then you … you won’t survive, in the Blue Hotel or anywhere else – self-preservation, Pan, if only for that – why did you go there? Why there? Did someone kidnap you? Is it a kind of prison camp? Will I have to rescue you? Who’s keeping you captive? The secret commonwealth will have to help – if I get there – if I find Pan – if …’

The one-sided conversation sustained her for part of the way to the station. It was so hard to make herself move slowly, though, to be dull and depressed; every particle of her body wanted to run, to dart across the squares and open spaces, to look all around every second, and she had to keep a firm hold on the image she wanted to project. Being invisible was hard work, and unrewarding, soul-crushing work.

She was passing through a district where a number of temporary camps had been set up for the people displaced from their homes further east. In the next few days, perhaps, these people would be trying to find a passage across the sea to Greece, and perhaps some of them would suffer shipwreck and drown. Children were running about on the stony ground, fathers stood in groups talking or sat smoking in the dust, mothers washed clothes in galvanised buckets or cooked over open fires, and there was a barrier that was invisible and intangible between them and the citizens of Smyrna, because they had no homes; they were like people without dæmons, people missing something essential.

Lyra wanted to stop and ask them about their lives and what had brought them to this state of things, but she had to be invisible, or at least forgettable. Some of the young men glanced at her, but not for long; she felt their flickering attention like the touch of a snake’s tongue, and then it withdrew. She was successfully uninteresting.

At the railway station she tried one counter after another until she found someone who could speak French, which she thought would be safer than English. The train for Seleukeia was a slow one, stopping at what seemed like every station on the way, but that suited her. She bought a ticket and waited on the platform in the late afternoon sun, hoping she was transparent.

There was an hour and a half to wait. She found an empty bench near the cafeteria, and she sat there and kept watch all around while trying to seem invisible. She had one shock as she came to the bench and saw her reflection in the café window: who was this dark-haired stranger in glasses?

Thank you, Anita, she thought.

She bought some food and drink for the journey and sat on the bench. She couldn’t stop her thoughts circling back to the Schlesingers’ apartment building. If Anita hadn’t spotted the fire soon enough … If she hadn’t managed to get out … Thoughts that didn’t bear thinking kept crowding in and shouldering aside her pretended passivity.

A train came in, and disgorged a platform-full of travellers. Among them were several families who looked only a little better off than the people she’d seen in the camp and on the streets: mothers in heavy clothing and headscarves, children carrying toys or torn shopping bags or sometimes younger brothers or sisters, old men harassed and exhausted, carrying suitcases or even cardboard boxes containing clothes. She remembered the riverboat docking in Prague and the refugees getting off. Would any of these people make it that far?

And why was the cause of this great movement of people not reported in Brytain? She had never heard of anything like it. Did the press and the politicians think that it would have no effect on her country? Where were these desperate people hoping to get to, anyway?

She mustn’t ask. Mustn’t show any interest at all. Her only hope of getting to the city of the dæmons and finding Pan was to hold her tongue and restrain every instinct of curiosity.

So she watched as the newcomers gathered their possessions and slowly dispersed. Perhaps they’d make for the port. Perhaps they’d find a shelter in one of the camps. They might have a little more money than the people she’d seen shipwrecked, which had allowed them to take the train; they might find somewhere affordable to lodge. Before very long they had all left the station, and then Lyra found the platform getting busier with people from Smyrna itself, commuting home after their day’s work. When the Seleukeia train came in, it filled up quickly with these commuters. She realised that if she wanted a seat she’d better move quickly, and hurried to get on board, and found one just in time.

It was a corner seat. She made herself small and insignificant. The first person to sit next to her was a heavy man in a Homburg hat who looked at her curiously as he set his bulging briefcase down beside him. It was only when his mongoose-dæmon whispered in his ear, curling herself around his neck and peering myopically at Lyra, that he realised that something was wrong. He said something sharply in Turkish.

‘Pardon,’ Lyra murmured, sticking to French. ‘Excusez-moi.’

If she had been a child, her dæmon would be a puppy abjectly wagging his tail and trying to appease this big important powerful man. That was the mood she tried to project. He wasn’t happy about it, but as the only result of moving away from her would be that he’d have to stand, he remained in his seat and turned away in extravagant distaste.

No one else seemed to notice, or else they were all too tired to care. The train steamed slowly from one suburban station to the next, and then out of the city and through a series of country towns and villages, the carriage gradually emptying as it went. The heavy man with the bulging briefcase said something as he stood up to leave, half to her, half to the other people nearby, but again no one took any notice.

After an hour or so the towns and villages thinned out, and the train gathered speed a little. The evening was advancing; the sun had vanished behind the mountains, the temperature in the compartment was falling, and when the conductor came through to inspect tickets, he first had to light the gas lamps before he could see.

The carriage consisted of a number of separate compartments linked by a corridor along one side. In Lyra’s compartment, once the commuters had all got off, there were three other travellers, and in the new light of the gas lamp she studied them without looking directly. There was a woman in her thirties with a pale-looking child of six or so, and an elderly man with a moustache and heavy-lidded eyes, wearing an immaculate light grey suit and a red fez. His dæmon was a small and elegant ferret.

The man was reading an Anatolian newspaper, but not long after the conductor had lit the lamp he folded the paper with great care and set it on the seat between himself and Lyra. The little boy was watching him solemnly, thumb in mouth, head leaning against his mother’s shoulder. When the old man folded his hands in his lap and closed his eyes, the child turned to stare at Lyra, sleepy, puzzled, troubled. His mouse-dæmon kept up a whispering conversation with the mother’s pigeon-dæmon, the two of them flicking glances at Lyra and looking away again. The woman herself was thin, drawn, poorly dressed, and seemed worn down by anxiety. They had one small suitcase, battered and clumsily repaired, on the rack above them.

Time went past. The daylight vanished, and the world outside the compartment narrowed to the reflection of the little space itself in the window. Lyra began to feel hungry, and opened the bag of honey-cakes she’d bought on the station. Seeing the child gazing at them with obvious desire, she held out the bag to him, and then to his mother, who flinched as if in fear; but they were both hungry, and when Lyra smiled and gestured to say, ‘Please take one,’ first the little boy and then his mother slowly reached in and took one out.

The woman murmured a phrase of thanks almost too quietly to be heard, and nudged the boy, who whispered the same words.

They ate the honey-cakes at once, and it was clear to Lyra that it was the first food they’d had for some time. The elderly man had opened his eyes, and he was watching the little transaction with serious and considered approval. Lyra held out the bag to him, and after a brief interval of surprise he took a cake, and unfolded a snow-white handkerchief and laid it across his lap.

He said to Lyra a sentence or two in Anatolian, obviously in appreciation, but all she could do in response was to say, ‘Excusez-moi, monsieur, mais je ne parle pas votre langue.’

He inclined his head, smiled with dignified courtesy, and ate the cake in several small bites. ‘That was a most delicious honey-cake,’ he said in French. ‘Very kind of you.’

There were two left in the bag. Lyra was still hungry, but she had some bread and cheese too, so she offered the cakes to the mother and her child. The boy was keen, but anxious, and the woman at first tried to refuse; but Lyra said in French, ‘Please take them. I bought far too many for myself. Please do!’

The man translated her words, and finally the woman nodded, and let the boy have one; but she wouldn’t take the last for herself.

The man had an attaché case of brown leather, and he opened it and took out a vacuum flask. It was the sort that had two cups as part of the top, and he unscrewed them both and set them on the case next to him, where his ferret-dæmon held them steady as he filled them with hot coffee. He offered the first cup to the mother, who refused, though she seemed to want it; and then to the child, who shook his head, doubtful; and then to Lyra, who took it gratefully. It was intensely sweet.

And that reminded her of the bottle of carbonated orange drink that she’d bought at the station. She found it and offered it to the child. He smiled, but looked up to his mother, who smiled too and nodded her thanks; and Lyra unscrewed the top and handed it to him.

‘Are you travelling a long way, mademoiselle?’ the old man said. His French was flawless.

‘A very long way,’ Lyra said, ‘but on this train, only to Seleukeia.’

‘Do you know that city?’

‘No. I shan’t be there long.’

‘Perhaps that would be wise. I understand that civil order is somewhat disturbed there. You are not French, I think, mademoiselle?’

‘You’re right. I come from further north.’

‘You are travelling a long way from your homeland.’

‘Yes, I am. But it’s a journey I have to make.’

‘I hesitate to ask, and if I am being impolite I most sincerely beg your pardon, but it seems to me that you are one of the women of the far north, those known as the witches.’

He used the word sorcières. Lyra, intensely wary, looked at him directly, but could see only courteous interest.

‘That is true, monsieur,’ she said.

‘I admire your courage in coming so readily among the lands of the south. I am emboldened to speak like this because I travelled a great deal myself at one time, and many years ago I was so lucky as to fall in love with a witch from the far north. We were very happy, and I was very young.’

‘Such encounters do happen,’ she said, ‘but in the nature of things, they cannot last.’

‘Nevertheless, I learned a good deal. I learned a certain amount about myself, which was no doubt useful. My witch, if I may call her that, came from Sakhalin, in the far east of Russia. May I know the name of your homeland?’

‘In Russian it’s called Novy Kievsk. We have our own name, which I’m not allowed to pronounce away from there. It is a small island, and we love it fiercely.’

‘May I ask what has brought you to travel among us?’

‘The queen of my clan has fallen sick, and the only cure for her disease is a plant that grows near the Caspian Sea. Perhaps you are wondering why I am not flying there. The fact is that I was attacked in St Petersburg and my cloud-pine was burnt. My dæmon flew home to tell my sisters what had happened, and I am travelling like this, across the earth, slowly.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘I hope your journey is successful, and that you return with the cure for your queen’s malady.’

‘That is kind of you, monsieur. Are you travelling to the end of this line?’

‘Merely as far as Antalya. My home is there. I am retired, but I still retain an interest in some business affairs in Smyrna.’

The child had been watching them with the sort of exhaustion that is beyond sleep. Lyra realised that he was ill: how had she not seen that before? His face was pale and gaunt, the skin around his eyes dark and drawn. He needed to sleep more than anything else in the world, but his body wouldn’t let him. He still held the half-empty bottle of orange drink, and his mother took it from his limp fingers and screwed the top on.

The old man said, ‘I am going to tell this little fellow a story.’ He reached into an inner pocket of his silk jacket and took out a pack of cards. They were narrower than ordinary playing cards, and when he laid one down on the attaché case on his knees, facing the child, Lyra saw that it showed a picture of a landscape.

Something jogged her memory, and she was back in that smoky cellar in Prague, with the magician telling her about cards and pictures …

The card showed a road running from one side to the other, and beyond the road a stretch of open water, a river or a lake, with a sailing boat on it. Beyond the water was part of an island where a castle stood on a wooded hill. On the road, two soldiers in scarlet uniforms were riding splendid horses.

The old man began to speak, describing the scene or naming the soldiers or explaining where they were going. The little boy, leaning in to his mother’s side, watched with those exhausted eyes.

The man laid another picture card next to the first. The two landscapes fitted together perfectly: the road moved on, and on this card a path led away towards a house standing among trees at the edge of the water. Evidently the soldiers turned off the road and went to knock at the door of the house, where a farmer’s wife gave them some water from the well beside the path. As he mentioned each event, each little object, the old man touched a silver pencil to the card, precisely showing where it was. The little boy peered closer, blinking as if he found it hard to see.

Then the old man spread out the rest of the cards in his hands, face down, and offered them to the boy, asking him to take one. He did, and the old man laid it next to the last. As before, the picture seamlessly continued the landscape of the previous one, and Lyra saw that the whole pack must be like that, and it must be possible to put them together in an uncountable number of ways. This time the picture showed a ruined tower, with the road running across as ever in front of it, and the lake continuing behind. The soldiers were tired, so they went into the tower and tied up their horses before lying down to sleep. But flying over the tower was a large bird – there it was – a gigantic bird – a bird so huge that it flew down and seized one of the horses in each claw, and took them up into the sky.

So Lyra judged to be what was happening, from the way the old man mimed the bird’s flight and uttered the terrified neighing of the captured horses. Even the mother was listening closely, wide-eyed like her son. The soldiers woke up. One was about to fire his rifle at the bird, but the other held him back because the horses would certainly die if the bird dropped them. So they set off on foot to follow the bird, and the story went on.

Lyra leaned back, attending to the old man’s voice without understanding it, but happy to guess and watch the expressions come and go on the faces of the boy and his mother, and gradually enliven them both, bringing a flush of warmth to their sallow cheeks, brightening their eyes.

The old man’s voice was melodious and comforting. Lyra found herself slipping backwards into slumber, into the easy sleep of her childhood, with Alice’s voice, not so musical but soft and low, telling her a story about this doll or that picture as her eyes fell heavily, softly, closed.

When she woke up it was some hours later. She was alone in the compartment, and the train was steaming steadily up a gradient among mountains, as she could see through the window: a starlit panorama of bleak rocks and cliffs and ravines.

After a moment’s slow confusion she suddenly thought: The alethiometer! She flung open her rucksack, plunged her hand inside, and found the familiar heavy roundness in its velvet bag. But there was something else, on her lap: a little pasteboard box with a bright label saying MYRIORAMA. It was the old man’s pack of picture-cards. He had left it for her.

The light from the gas lamp was inconstant, flaring briefly before sinking to a faint flicker and then rising again. Lyra stood up and looked at it closely, but there was no means of turning it up or down. There must be a problem with the supply. She sat down again and took out the cards, and in one of the flares of light she noticed something, some words written on the back of one of the cards, in an elegant hand in pencil. They were in French:

Dear young lady,

Please take my advice and be very careful when you reach Seleukeia. These are difficult times. It would be best if you did not even cast a shadow.

With my most earnest wishes for your well-being.

It wasn’t signed, but she remembered the silver pencil he’d been using to point out details in the pictures. She sat there troubled and lonely in the inconstant gaslight, unable to sleep any more. She found her bread and cheese and ate a little, thinking it might strengthen her. Then she took out Malcolm’s last letter and re-read it, but it brought her little comfort.

She put it back and reached for the alethiometer again. She wasn’t intending to read it, or to use the new method: just to hold something familiar and be comforted by it. The light was too poor to see the symbols clearly in any case. She held the instrument on her lap and thought about the new method. All the time she was trying to resist the temptation to try it there and then. She would look for Malcolm, of course, but with no idea where to start, and it would be fruitless, and leave her sickened and weak. So she shouldn’t do it. And anyway, what was she thinking of, intending to look for Malcolm? It was Pan she should look for.

She gathered the little cards together with an automatic hand. That was the phrase that came to her, as if her hand were purely mechanical, not alive at all, as if the messages from her skin and her nerves were changes in the anbaric current along a copper wire, not anything conscious. With that vision of her body as something dead and mechanical came a sense of limitless desolation. She felt not only as if she were dead now, but that she’d always been dead, and had only dreamed of being alive, and that there was no life in the dream either: it was only the meaningless and indifferent jostling of particles in her brain, nothing more.

But that little chain of ideas provoked a spasm of reaction, and she thought, No! That’s a lie! That’s a slander! I don’t believe it!

Except that she did believe it, just then, and it was killing her.

She made a helpless movement with her hands – her automatic hands – which disturbed the little cards in her lap and sent some of them falling to the floor of the carriage. She leaned down to pick them up. The first one she found showed a woman, alone, crossing a bridge. She was carrying a basket, and was herself wrapped up in a shawl against a cold day. She was looking out of the picture as if directly at Lyra, who saw her with a little jar of self-recognition. She set the card down on the dusty seat beside her, and picked up another at random and set it beside the first.

This one showed a number of travellers walking along beside some packhorses. They were going in the same direction as the woman, from left to right, and the bundles on the animals’ backs were large and heavy-looking. Make them camels instead of horses, sweep away the trees and replace them with a sandy desert, and they could be a camel train on the Silk Road.

As faintly as a bell tolling just once a mile away on a summer evening, as tenuous as the fragrance of a single flower borne indoors through an open window, there came to Lyra the notion that the secret commonwealth was involved in this.

She picked up one more card. It was one of those the old man had come to in his story, the one with the farmhouse and the well among the trees. She saw what she hadn’t seen before: there were roses growing over an archway outside the door.

She thought: I could choose to believe in the secret commonwealth. I don’t have to be sceptical about it. If free will exists, and I have it, I can choose that. I’ll try one more.

She shuffled the cards and then cut them and turned over the one on the top. She laid it next to the last. It showed a young man, a knapsack on his back, walking towards the packhorses and the woman with the basket. To the uninflected eye, he probably looked no more like Malcolm than the woman with the basket resembled her, but that didn’t matter.

The train began to slow down. The whistle blew, and a lonely sound it made, which Lyra seemed to hear echoing among the mountains. There was a French poem she used to know, about a horn blowing in a forest … There were isolated lights on the slopes, and then more lights, lit buildings and streets: they were coming into a station.

Lyra gathered all the cards together and put them with the alethiometer in her rucksack.

The train came to a halt. The name of the station, painted on a board, was not one she recognised; at all events it wasn’t Seleukeia; and it didn’t seem to be a large place, but the platform was crowded. It was packed with soldiers.

She moved further into the corner and held her rucksack on her lap.