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Chapter Sixteen

The Silver Guillotine

Lyra ducked her head at once under the shelter of her wolverine hood, and shuffled in through the double doors with the other children Tih later to worry about what she’d say when they came face to face: she had another problem to deal with first, and that was how to hide her furs where she could get at the permission

But luckily, there was such disorder inside, with the adults trying to hurry the children through so as to clear the way for the passengers fro very carefully Lyra slipped out of the anorak, the leggings, and the boots and bundled theh the crowded corridors to her dored a locker to the corner, stood on it, and pushed at the ceiling The panel lifted, just as Roger had said, and into the space beyond she thrust the boots and leggings As an afterthought, she took the alethiometer from her pouch and hid it in the inh too

She jumped down, pushed back the locker, and whispered to Pantalaimon, "We must just pretend to be stupid till she sees us, and then say ere kidnapped And nothing about the gyptians or lorek Byrnison especially"

Because Lyra now realized, if she hadn’t done so before, that all the fear in her nature was drawn to Mrs Coulter as a cos

she’d seen, and even the hideous cruelty of the intercision, she could cope with; she was strong enough; but the thought of that sweet face and gentle voice, the ih to melt her stoyptians were coive yourself away, she said, and drifted back toward the canteen, fro

Children were lining up to get hot drinks, some of them still in their coal-silk anoraks Their talk was all of the zep-pelin and its passenger

"It was her - with the et you, too?"

"She said she’d write to my mum and dad and I bet she never"

"She never told us about kids getting killed She never said nothing about that"

"That ht my Karossa and nearly killed her - I could feel all weak"

They were as frightened as Lyra was She found Annie and the others, and sat down

"Listen," she said, "can you keep a secret?"

"Yeah!"

The three faces turned to her, vivid with expectation

"There’s a plan to escape," Lyra said quietly "There’s soht, and they’ll be here in about a day Maybe sooner What we all got to do is be ready as soon as the signal goes and get our cold-weather clothes at once and run out No waiting about You just got to run Only if you don’t get your anoraks and boots and stuff, you’ll die of cold"

"What signal?" Annie demanded

"The fire bell, like this afternoon It’s all organized All the kids’re going to know and none of the grownups Especially not her"

Their eyes were gleah the canteen thepassed around Lyra could tell that the atetic and eager for play; then when they had seen Mrs Coulter they were bubbling with a suppressed hysterical fear; but now there was a control and purpose to their talkativeness Lyra marveled at the effect hope could have

She watched through the open doorway, but carefully, ready to duck her head, because there were adult voices co, and then Mrs Coulter herself was briefly visible, looking in and s at the happy children, with their hot drinks and their cake, so warm and well fed A little shiver ran alh the whole canteen, and every child was still and silent, staring at her

Mrs Coulter smiled and passed on without a word Little by little the talk started again

Lyra said, "Where do they go to talk?"

"Probably the conference roo her and her dasrownups there and one of ’e a lecture and I had to stand there and do what he told o away frosIt’s a big room with a lot of chairs and tables and a little platforoing to pretend the fire drill went off all right I bet they’re scared of her, same as we are"

For the rest of the day, Lyra stayed close to the other girls, watching, saying little, re, there was supper, there was playtiames and a few tattered books and a table-tennis table At some point Lyra and the others beca on, because the adults were hurrying to and fro or standing in anxious groups talking urgently Lyra guessed they’d discovered the dae how it had happened

But she didn’t see Mrs Coulter, which was a relief When it was tiirls into her confidence

"Listen," she said, "do they ever come round and see if we’re asleep?"

"They just look in once," said Bella "They just flash a lantern round, they don’t really look"

"Good ’Cause I’h the ceiling that this boy showed me"

She explained, and before she’d even finished, Annie said, "I’ll come with you!"

"No, you better not, ’cause it’ll be easier if there’s just one personYou can all say you fell asleep and you don’t knohere I’ve gone"

"But if I caht," said Lyra

Their two dae at each other, Pantalaimon as a wildcat, Annie’s Kyrillion as a fox They were quivering Pantalaimon uttered the lowest, softest hiss and bared his teeth, and Kyrillion turned aside and began to grooht then," said Annie, resigned

It was quite coles between children to be settled by their dae the dominance of the other Their humans accepted the outcome without resentment, on the whole, so Lyra knew that Annie would do as she asked

They all contributed ite to bulk out Lyra’s bed and make it look as if she was still there, and swore to say they knew nothing about it Then Lyra listened at the door to , jumped up on the locker, pushed up the panel, and hauled herself through

"Just don’t say anything," she whispered down to the three faces watching

Then she dropped the panel gently back into place and looked around

She was crouching in a narrow irders and struts The panels of the ceilings were slightly translucent, so soleam Lyra could see this narrow space (only two feet or so in height) extending in all directions around her It was croith et lost in, but provided she kept to the ht on the panels, and as long as she o from one end of the station to the other

"It’s just like back in Jordan, Pan," she whispered, "looking in the Retiring Room"

"If you hadn’t done that, none of this would have happened," he whispered back

"Then it’s up to s, working out approximately which direction the conference room was in, and then set off It was a far from easy journey She had to move on hands and knees, because the space was too low to crouch in, and every so often she had to squeeze under a big square duct or lift herself over so pipes The metal channels she crawled in followed the tops of internal walls, as far as she could tell, and as long as she stayed in the solidity below her; but they were very narrow, and had sharp edges, so sharp that she cut her knuckles and her knees on the she was sore all over, and crahly where she was, and she could see the dark bulk of her furs crauide her back She could tell where a room was empty because the panels were dark, and from time to time she heard voices from below, and stopped to listen, but it was only the cooks in the kitchen, or the nurses in what Lyra, in her Jordan way, thought of as their co, so she moved on

At last she ca to her calculations; and sure enough, there was an area free of any pipework, where air conditioning and heating ducts led down at one end, and where all the panels in a wide rectangular space were lit evenly She placed her ear to the panel, and heard a ht place

She listened carefully, and then inched her way along till she was as close as she could get to the speakers Then she lay full length in the metal channel and leaned her head sideways to hear as well as she could

There was the occasional clink of cutlery, or the sound of glass on glass as drink was poured, so they were having dinner as they talked There were four voices, she thought, including Mrs Coulter’s The other three werethe escaped das that section?" said Mrs Coulter’s gentle musical voice

"A research student called McKay," said one of the men "But there are auto - "

"They didn’t work," she said

"With respect, they did, Mrs Coulter McKay assures us that he locked all the cages when he left the building at eleven hundred hours today The outer door of course would not have been open in any case, because he entered and left by the inner door, as he normally did There’s a code that has to be entered in the ordinator controlling the locks, and there’s a record in its oes off"

"But the alaro off," she said

"It did Unfortunately, it rang when everyone was outside, taking part in the fire drill"

"But when you went back inside - "

"Unfortunately, both alarn fault that will have to be rectified What it meant was that when the fire bell was turned off after the practice, the laboratory alarm was turned off as well Even then it would still have been picked up, because of the normal checks that would have taken place after every disruption of routine; but by that time, Mrs Coulter, you had arrived unexpectedly, and if you recall, you asked specifically to meet the laboratory staff there and then, in your room Consequently, no one returned to the laboratory until some time later"

"I see," said Mrs Coulter coldly "In that case, the dae the fire drill itself And that widens the list of suspects to include every adult in the station Had you considered that?"

"Had you considered that it ht have been done by a child?" said someone else

She was silent, and the second man went on:

"Every adult had a task to do, and every task would have taken their full attention, and every task was done There is no possibility that any of the staff here could have opened the door None So either so that, or one of the children es, and return to the front of theto investigate?" she said "No; on second thought, don’t tellout of malice We have to be quite extraordinarily careful It was an atrocious lapse to have allowed both alarms to be on the same circuit That must be corrected at once Possibly the Tartar officer in charge of the guard could help your investigation? I merelythe fire drill, by the way? I suppose you have considered that?"

"Yes, we have," said the uard was fully occupied on patrol, every man They keep meticulous records"

"I’ your very best," she said "Well, there we are A great pity But enough of that for now Tell me about the new separator"

Lyra felt a thrill of fear There was only one thing this could mean

"Ah," said the doctor, relieved to find the conversation turning to another subject, "there’s a real advance With the first model we could never entirely overco of shock, but we’ve is did it better by hand," said a man who hadn’t spoken yet

"Centuries of practice," said the otherwas the only option for so that was to the adult operators If you ree quite a nu breakthrough was the use of anesthesia combined with the Maystadt anbaric scalpel We were able to reduce death from operative shock to below five percent"

"And the new instru The blood was pounding in her ears, and Pantalaiainst her side, and whispering, "Hush, Lyra, they won’t do it - on’t let them do it - "

"Yes, it was a curious discovery by Lord Asriel hiave us the key to the new anese and titaniu body fro with Lord Asriel?"

"Perhaps you haven’t heard," said Mrs Coulter "Lord Asriel is under suspended sentence of death One of the conditions of his exile in Svalbard was that he give up his philosophical work entirely Unfortunately, he ed to obtain books and ations to the point where it’s positively dangerous to let hiun to debate the question of the sentence of death, and the probability is that it’ll be carried out But your new instrument, Doctor How does it work?"

"Ah - yes - sentence of death, you say? Gracious GodI’ what happens when the intercision is made with the patient in a conscious state, and of course that couldn’t be done with the Maystadt process So we’ve developed a kind of guillotine, I suppose you could say The blade is anese and titanium alloy, and the child is placed in a compartment - like a small cabin - of alloywith it While there is a connection, of course, the link re the link at once They are then separate entities"