The Rose Field, page 29
“Very good, Miss Silver,” said Ionides. “Now we get away before they can cross back.”
They turned down the nearest street out of the square, and then turned right into a smaller street, and then left into another busy shopping street, where a bus was pulling into a stop.
“Let’s get on,” said Lyra.
So they did, together with three other people. Ionides asked the driver something, and paid for them both, and then they found seats near the door.
“Queen Silver, you very lucky,” he said. “You know where this is going? The Marine Passenger Terminal.”
“Couldn’t be better,” she said.
“You still got your package from the post?”
“Of course.”
As the bus pulled away, she and Ionides, and Asta, and the gecko dæmon all looked around to see if there was anyone who might have been following them, but there was no one who looked in the slightest bit suspicious.
Lyra took out the little package, with its string and sealing wax. She was intensely curious.
“You know who send it?” said Ionides.
“No idea. It’s addressed to the queen, so I suppose it can only be Mustafa Bey, really.”
She looked closely at the impression on the sealing wax, and then compared it with the mark he’d made with his ring on her laissez-passer. It was the same: two Arabic letters elegantly entwined.
“Same, huh?”
“Yes. I’ll have to break the seal to open it, but that’s the point, I suppose. Pity. It’s so neatly done.”
The bus was moving through the heavy traffic. Lyra cracked the sealing wax and peeled it away, and found a complicated knot in the string underneath it. As she prized one strand away from another with her nails, Ionides watched the street, and the passengers who got on, and the buildings nearby, and the progress she was making.
“You want to cut it?” he said.
“No. Might need the string. Nearly got it.”
“Malcolm would keep it too,” said Asta.
The last loop in the knot came undone, and she pulled it apart and tucked the string in her shirt pocket. She unfolded the brown paper and found another package inside, which had been addressed to Miss Lyra Silvertongue, c/o Mustafa Bey, Marletto’s Café, Aleppo.
The bus came to a halt. Four passengers got off, and three got on. Lyra found a note with the inner package, marked in red ink with Mustafa Bey’s seal:
Your Majesty, Whoever sent this package to you in my care is a person of great ingenuity and faith, which I trust will be rewarded when you open it. I hope your journey to Baku was comfortable. With solemn regards, Mustafa Bey
“I must write him a report,” Lyra said. “As soon as we’re safely on the ferry.”
The inner package was sealed with tape, not sealing wax, and the address was written in heavy black ink. There was no return address. Something about the way it had been wrapped and addressed made Lyra think it had been done in haste. It took her so long to peel back the tape that the bus came to a halt before she had unwrapped the paper, and Ionides said quietly, “Better put it away. This is the ferry terminal.”
The other passengers were all getting to their feet and gathering their possessions. Several of them seemed to be going to the ferry, because they had suitcases or rucksacks, and there was a mother with two small children who had to edge her way towards the door carrying a folded pushchair as well as a heavy case. A man offered to help carry the case, but she shook her head nervously. One of the children was crying, and the man spoke again, and the mother, anxious and flustered, unwillingly let him carry the pushchair. The passengers behind were jostling impatiently; the driver was looking back to see what the holdup was; Lyra tucked the package into her rucksack and sat back to wait till they could move.
Two minutes later all the other passengers had left, and Lyra and Asta and Ionides were standing outside the terminal of the Transcaspian Modern Ferry Company, and the unopened package lay safely in her rucksack.
Eighteen
Noli Me Tangere
Olivier Bonneville, nursing his injured dæmon and his badly injured pride, was still captive in the nuncio’s house in Aleppo. Or so he thought: in fact, the nuncio would have been delighted if the wretched boy cleared off altogether. But it suited Bonneville to have a good reason not to risk liberty for a while, so he stayed in his comfortable room and ate his three meals a day and spent most of his time with the alethiometer.
What he learned was intriguing in many ways. Firstly, the girl had left Aleppo and was traveling eastwards. But something was confusing the new method, or else it was proving itself unable to deal with perspective in more than three dimensions, or else he was simply incapable of reading it just then; but the last possibility was so absurd that he put it out of his mind, and remembered the copy of Spiridion Trepka’s Alethiometrica Explicata, which he’d stolen from the library of the Priory of St. Jerome before leaving Geneva.
With its help he was able to read the instrument without feeling sick. Trepka was limited and shallow but accurate as far as he went, and although Bonneville’s technique was a little rusty, he was able to follow Lyra’s journey with Trepka’s aid more comfortably than he could with the new method. Perhaps his sense of balance had been disturbed when the girl kicked him, or perhaps his dæmon’s broken wing had a psychological component; yes, that was it. The new method would come into its own when her wing had healed. In the meantime, he knew where Lyra was, though there was something confusing…Never mind for now.
Secondly, he turned his attention to Geneva and the Magisterium. He’d followed the politics of the new Supreme Council as much as the new method had let him, and he was glad to have a chance to explore it more fully without having to vomit. Delamare was gathering power to himself with the utmost skill and delicacy; hardly anyone outside the Council had been aware of the way the authority of the President had softly and silently grown, and the Council was so pleased with the way things were now done, the efficiency, the smooth and effortless inevitability, that every member was behind him. It helped that he was rewarding each of them tactfully: a new oratory here, funds for a period of study leave in a Mediterranean resort there, silent understanding for a family embarrassment somewhere else. Bonneville couldn’t perceive all the details, but he understood very clearly how things were developing.
It was galling in a way: the circumstances he could see prevailing in Geneva were exactly the sort of setting in which he and his particular talents could have prospered brilliantly. Once he had got the measure of the different personalities who made up the Council, Bonneville put the old Alethiometrica Explicata away and set to with the new method.
Tentatively, just a little at a time, dipping a toe, withdrawing the moment his perception began to waver and disturb his balance, he looked at one after another of the individuals under Delamare’s leadership. One or two he had met, a handful more he knew by name, but some were new to him altogether. It seemed that they intended to meet monthly at La Maison Juste, that there were twenty-four of them, and that those who lived and worked abroad and couldn’t attend every month could appoint deputies to represent them, though the deputies did not have voting rights. Bonneville could follow the intricacies of debate only a little way before the new method failed, and detail was beyond Trepka’s reach. Something was blocking him, and he couldn’t discover what it was. It can only be a matter of bodily well-being, he told himself. Mentally he was at his peak; he was conscious of a surpassing clarity of thought. But the kick to the kidneys…and his dæmon’s broken wing…They took their toll, these wounds of war.
* * *
—
If he had persisted with the new method he might have found out, but he simply didn’t have the physical strength.
So he didn’t see what lay behind the blockage in his perception. It was the simple fact that each of the members of the Council had been advised by Marcel Delamare (privately, and confidentially, and in the most kindly way) that it would be better for the Magisterium, and especially for themselves, if they did not speak to one another about Council matters outside minuted Council meetings. The implication was that they of course enjoyed the President’s entire confidence, but that other members might not. They could by all means communicate with one another in writing, but it would be better if letters went through the President’s office first, so that he could advise on matters of policy or clarify misunderstandings.
It was all new, this Council business, so no one could object on the grounds that they’d never had to behave like that before. Obviously the President knew best. And those members who lived some way from Geneva didn’t know one another well in any case, and would have been unlikely to meet in a casual way, or by chance; so no one found anything wrong with the arrangement. And there were no schisms, no little cracks of variance for serious dispute to take root in. At first.
But some Council members did live in or near Geneva, and some of them (in a casual way, or by chance) did sometimes find themselves in one another’s company. And inevitably, people being what they are, they would talk about the Council, or the President, or the rules he had imposed, or the rumors of war, or anything else that occupied their attention; and it was natural too that some of them would find themselves chafing under the rule against such conversations.
So it was, one evening in the Retiring Chamber of the College of Bishops, that three men and two women found themselves in a casual way, or by chance, together after a fine dinner. They had come there to discuss in a perfectly lawful way something completely unrelated to the business of the Supreme Council, and since that other business had been concluded successfully some hours before, and since all five were Council members, and since the other guests (who weren’t) had left, it was not surprising that conversation should turn to the way the new Council was working.
They all knew one another well. It might be said that they were old friends. There was nothing, except the President’s warning, to stop them speaking their minds in the company of people they trusted and agreed with about so much. Besides, the food had been excellent and the wine generously poured. The fire was burning brightly; smokeleaf was being enjoyed; the armchairs were comfortable; dæmons were lolling on laps, or knees, or the cushioned backs of chairs.
“I’m very glad,” said their host, the Dean of the College of Bishops, a thin, intense, and zealous man, “to have this chance to talk, in private as it were. In view of what the President is about to announce, it would be a dereliction of our duty not to discuss the matter—”
“What is he about to announce?” said Karl von Landsberg. He was a senior officer of the Court of Common Order, large, red-bearded, and soldierly.
“That’s very much the point, Karl. We should have been told, and we haven’t.”
“Is it Council business, though?” said Mariette Seidel, a professor of philology from Lausanne.
“Do you mean this war declaration?” said Julius Morschach. He was a banker, rich beyond anyone’s ability to imagine, plump and sleek and genial.
“Yes, I do,” said the Dean.
“I’m afraid this is completely new to me,” said the fifth member of the group, Georges Parmentier, who had said very little throughout the evening. He was a parish priest from a small town near the eastern end of the lake, who had a reputation for simple piety that was not wholly undeserved. “War, you say?”
“Our President,” said the Dean, “is about to announce the start of a ‘holy campaign’ ”—the quotation marks were audible—“to capture and destroy something, somewhere, which he will claim is a source of inspiration and an object of reverence to the enemies of the Authority.”
“A what? A holy campaign? What does that mean?” said Von Landsberg.
“A war,” said the banker Morschach. “I have seen an outline of what he plans to say.”
“But how—”
“Where did you—”
“What on earth—”
“A war?”
“Haven’t you noticed how he’s been scuttling from capital to capital in the past few weeks for talks with governments all over Europe, and beyond?”
“Well, his travels here and there have been announced,” said Professor Seidel, “but the announcements have been very bland—almost empty of content, in fact. I had been wondering…”
“Julius, tell us about this announcement,” said Von Landsberg. “You say you’ve seen an outline, was it, of what he’s going to say. How did you get hold of that?”
“I’d rather not say for the moment. But you can take it that it’s genuine. He’s going to say that in the name of the Authority and of the entire body of the faithful, it is time to put an end to a source of evil that is corrupting the minds and hearts of countless numbers of people, from innocent children to men and women in positions of power and influence. It must be captured and destroyed.”
“ ‘It’? What is ‘it’?” said the professor.
“Drugs, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Von Landsberg confidently. “Opium, or worse.”
“The source of ‘it,’ whatever it is,” said the Dean, “is concealed in the heart of a desert in Central Asia. One of the most empty and barren wastelands you can imagine. The President has secret information about it. But of course he hasn’t told the Council.”
“Well, we should demand that he does!” said Von Landsberg. “This is intolerable.”
“And these treaties and agreements and so on…” said Professor Seidel.
“All part of a complicated diplomatic dance. He’s gathering support, which means the guarantee of arms and troops.”
“But why are other governments agreeing to this? How do they benefit?”
“By being part of a great movement. By securing the blessing of the greatest religious authority. By giving their populations a cause to cheer for and something to hate,” the Dean said. His eyes were blazing darkly; Professor Seidel found him hard to look at.
“But a war must have an enemy,” said Parmentier. “A state. A nation makes war on a nation, not a nameless something in the desert. What is the nation in this case?”
“Well, it would be Cathay, or that region known as Sinkiang,” said Morschach. “But he’s not calling it a war, he’s calling it a campaign. The object is not to force another nation to surrender, but to destroy this…thing.”
“What is this thing, though?”
“A place, or a building,” said the Dean. “That’s all anyone knows. But no doubt we shall hear some carefully crafted rumors and exaggerated stories in the press before very long. Agitation and propaganda.”
“What view of this campaign does the empire of Cathay take, do we know?” said the professor. “It would count as an invasion of their territory, wouldn’t it?”
“Cathay is a profound mystery,” said Morschach. “All we have is rumor, and I doubt whether any nation has more than that. Rumors that the Golden Emperor is in poor health, that he’s died, that he’s been transported bodily into heaven, that he’s been deposed and replaced by a mechanical figure controlled by an evil spirit—in short, what Cathay does or thinks is not predictable. But I daresay they’re interested in what might be about to happen in their western regions.”
“But what are we going to do about it now?” demanded Von Landsberg.
“That depends on the precise form of the relationship between the President and the Council,” said the Dean, “and that is something that’s never been made clear. Is it our function to support the President in everything he says and does, with no opportunity to discuss it or veto it? And now without being told anything about this—this campaign, we are to be assailed from every side by questions from journalists, politicians, academics, the general public, with no idea what the answers should be? It’s intolerable. Really quite intolerable.”
“When is he going to make this announcement?” said Parmentier.
“On Sunday, I’ve heard,” said Morschach. “At the Celebration of the Last Supper. He’ll preach a sermon calling on all faithful nations to join the campaign.”
“As you say, Jean-Paul,” said Professor Seidel to the Dean, “this is intolerable. We’ll have to stop him.”
“We should call an emergency meeting of the whole Council,” said Von Landsberg.
“How?” said Parmentier.
“Well—contact every member and summon them to Geneva!”
“Have you got a list of names and addresses?” said the priest. “Because I haven’t. I suspect the only list is with the President.”
“I know a few, but some of the members I’d never known before,” said Professor Seidel. “And in any case he directly forbade us to speak to one another. I’m sure this meeting is against the rules.”
There was a short silence.
“How did we allow ourselves to be put in this absurd position?” said the Dean.
“We’ll just have to go and see him ourselves. Do it now,” said Von Landsberg, bristling like his badger dæmon.
“He’s in Paris,” said the banker.
“Well, tomorrow, then. When he comes back.”
“The structural problem,” said the Dean, “the basic problem, is one of information. There are things going on that we know about, but only indirectly. Or by rumor. Take this soldier with the explosives.”
“What’s that?” said Von Landsberg. “Explosives?”
“Some officer of the Guard, acting on his own, set off a bomb or grenade in the forest above Les Diablerets. Someone died or disappeared. No one seems to know anything about it. Or show any interest, come to that.”
