The Subtle Knife: Chapters 10-12

Lee Scoresby disembarked at the port in the mouth of the Yenisei River, and found the place in chaos, with fishermen trying to sell their meager catches of unknown kinds of fish to the canning factories; with shipowners angry about the harbor charges the authorities had raised to cope with the floods; and because of the rapidly thawing forest and the disordered behavior of the animals.

It was going to be hard to make his way into the interior along the road, that was certain; for in normal times the road was simply a cleared track of frozen earth, and now that even the permafrost was melting, the surface was a swamp of churned mud.

Not only was the current swift, but the waters were laden with all kinds of debris: tree trunks, brushwood, drowned animals, and once the bloated corpse of a man.

Understanding Hester’s distaste for the filthy mud she had to lope through, Lee scooped her up in his arms and shouldered his pack, following the headman along a forest path to a hut ten long bowshots from the village, in a clearing in the larches.

And we soon discovered what a dangerous place it was: It seemed that there was a strange kind of ghoul or apparition haunting it, something deadly and implacable. My two companions died soon afterward, victims of the Specters, as the things are called.

People here cannot conceive of worlds where dæmons are a silent voice in the mind and no more.

So with my new credentials I could begin to work in this world, where I found myself, for the most part, greatly contented.

But I might search for a thousand years and never find the way back. We were sundered forever.

You see, I was intrigued by that haunted world where the Specters fed on human consciousness.

And as a shaman, I can discover things in the spirit where I cannot go in the body, and I spent much time in trance, exploring that world.

Now, I’d heard that you knew of some object, I didn’t know what it might be, that confers a protection on anyone who holds it. And from what you say, I think it must be this subtle knife.

But she was a seasoned traveler, he should have known that; why was he so damn jumpy?

They reached the port at the river’s mouth to find every hotel, every lodging house, every private room commandeered by soldiers.

The warehouse keeper, busy counting out some spare engine parts to a requisitioning sergeant of the Guard, looked up briefly from his clipboard.

“So we’ll have the balloon right now,” said Lee, “and you can set some men to fill it. And I mean at once. And that includes food, and water, and ballast.’’

As the balloon filled and began to swell up beyond the edge of the warehouse roof, Lee checked the basket and stowed all his equipment with particular care; for in the other world, who knew what turbulence they’d meet?

When the gasbag was full and leaning northward in the buffeting breeze, and the whole apparatus straining against the stout ropes anchoring it down, Lee paid the warehouseman with the last of his gold and helped Grumman into the basket.

Two of the men obeyed, and the balloon lurched up, but the other two had their attention on the soldiers, who were moving quickly around the corner of the building.

Those two men still held their ropes fast around the bollards, and the balloon lurched sickeningly sideways.

The buoyancy of the gasbag was too great, and the men, haul as they might, couldn’t hold it back.

A volley of bullets whistled past the basket, one striking a spark from the suspension ring and making Lee’s hands sting with the impact but none of them did any damage.

By the time they fired their second shot, the balloon was almost out of range, hurtling up into the blue and speeding out over the sea.

Like Iorek Byrnison, Will was a fighter truly enough, so she was prepared to agree with him when he said it would be better not to fight; she knew it wasn’t cowardice that spoke, but strategy.

The door under the little portico was unlocked, and they ran inside to find themselves in a bare circular room with several statues of goddesses in niches around the wall.

The sound of their yelling echoed in the temple and reinforced their wildness; and then came a gunshot, enormously loud, and another, and the screaming took another tone, and then the stairs began to shake as the first ones climbed up.

Someone had been hit, and the scream was of pain this time, and Will looked down to see a tangle of writhing bodies covered in plaster and dust and blood.

Astonished and bewildered, the children on the roof felt all the aggression leave them in a moment, and horrible fear rushed in to take its place.

He was taken aback not so much by her flying as by her astounding gracefulness, the fierce, cold, lovely clarity of her gaze, and by the pale bare limbs, so youthful, and yet so far from being young.

His hand was throbbing badly, and with each throb a little more blood was leaving him.

Lyra’s Scholar, Dr. Malone, was red-eyed from lack of sleep, and her colleague, who’d just returned from Geneva, was impatient to hear more, and skeptical, and preoccupied.

“Why should it happen particularly at that time?” he said. “Why suddenly thirty-five thousand years ago?”
“Oh, who can say? We’re not paleontologists. I don’t know, Oliver, I’m just speculating. Don’t you think it’s at least possible?”

“He said he was from the Special Branch. I thought that was politics or something?”
"Terrorism, subversion, intelligence... all that."

But he seemed to be understanding Sir Charles better than she was, for a flicker of complicity was passing between them, and Oliver came to sit down, too.

And that line of research might even attract defense funding, which as you may know is still plentiful, even today, and certainly isn’t subject to these wearisome application processes.

There is also a boy of roughly the same age—twelve or so—who is wanted in connection with a murder. It’s a moot point whether a child of that age is capable of murder, of course, but he has certainly killed someone.

I can make sure the proper authorities deal with it efficiently and quickly and with no stupid tabloid publicity.

“It was an ultimatum. Do as he says, or close down. And, Oliver, for God’s sake, all those not-so-subtle threats and hints about national security and so on—can’t you see where that would lead?”

They want to find new ways of killing people. And you heard what he said about consciousness: he wants to manipulate it.

Or was it a gun? No, surely, she was being paranoid.

And he hadn’t answered her questions. But if she persisted, she’d make him suspicious, and the important thing now was to get into the lab.

She switched on the detector and then took a floppy disk from her pocket and slipped it into the computer that controlled the Cave.

Within a minute she had begun to manipulate the numbers on the screen, going half by logic, half by guesswork, and half by the program she’d worked on all evening at home; and the complexity of her task was about as baffling as getting three halves to make one whole.

She gathered herself and typed again, and again the answers zipped into being with no discernible pause.

Something had happened, and she was galvanized.

She couldn’t do much about Oliver Payne’s knowledge of the program, but the special hardware was effectively demolished.