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Mary Malone was constructing a mirror Not out of vanity, for she had little of that, but because she wanted to test an idea she had She wanted to try and catch Shadows, and without the instruments in her laboratory she had to improvise with the y had little use for s with stone and wood and cord and shell and horn, but what ets of copper and other metals that they found in the sand of the river, and they were never used for tool They were ornae, would exchange strips of bright copper, which were bent around the base of one of their horns with
So they were fascinated by the Swiss Army knife that was Mary’s most valuable possession
Atal, the zalif as her particular friend, exclaimed with astonishment one day when Mary unfolded the knife and showed her all the parts, and explained as well as she could, with her lie, what they were for One attachan to burn a design onto a dry branch, and it was that which set her thinking about Shadows
They were fishing at the time, but the river was low and the fish must have been elsewhere, so they let the net lie across the water and sat on the grassy bank and talked, until Mary saw the dry branch, which had a sn, a sihted Atal; but as the thin line of sht touched the wood, Mary thought: If this became fossilized, and a scientist in ten million years found it, they could still find Shadows around it, because I’ve worked on it
She drifted into a sun-doped reverie until Atal asked:
What are you drea?
Mary tried to explain about her work, her research, the laboratory, the discovery of shadow particles, the fantastical revelation that they were conscious, and found the whole tale gripping her again, so that she longed to be back a her equipment
She didn’t expect Atal to follow her explanation, partly because of her own ie, but partly because the ly rooted in the physical everyday world, andwas , Yes - we knohat you mean - we call it and then she used a word that sounded like their word for light
Mary said, Light?
Atal said, Not light, but and said the word ht on water when it ht coht flakes, we call it that, but it is a make-like
Make-like was their term for metaphor, Mary had discovered
So she said, It is not really light, but you see it and it looks like that light on water at sunset?
Atal said, Yes All the mulefa have this You have, too That is hoe knew you were like us and not like the grazers, who don’t have it Even though you look so bizarre and horrible, you are like us, because you have - and again cah to say: so like sraf, or sarf, accompanied by a leftward flick of the trunk
Mary was excited She had to keep herself calht words
What do you know about it? Where does it come from?
From us, and from the oil, was Atal’s reply, and Mary knew she reat seedpod wheels
Frorown up But without the trees it would just vanish again With the wheels and the oil, it stays aain Mary had to keep herself froun to suspect about Shadoas that children and adults reacted to them differently, or attracted different kinds of Shadow activity Hadn’t Lyra said that the scientists in her world had discovered so like that about Dust, which was their naain
And it was connected to what the Shadows had said to her on the computer screen just before she’d left her oorld: whatever it was, this question, it had to do with the great change in human history symbolized in the story of Adainal Sin In his investigations aue Oliver Payne had discovered that around thirty thousand years ago a great increase had taken place in the number of shadow particles associated with hu had happened then, some development in evolution, totheir effects
She said to Atal:
How long have there been mulefa?
And Atal said:
Thirty-three thousand years
She was able to read Mary’s expressions by this tihed at the way Mary’s jaw dropped The hter was free and joyful and so infectious that Mary usually had to join in, but now she remained serious and astounded and said:
How can you know so exactly? Do you have a history of all those years?
Oh yes, said Atal Ever since we have had the sraf, we have had
What happened to give you the sraf?
We discovered how to use the wheels One day a creature with no naan to play, and as she played she -
She?
She, yes She had no nah the hole in a seedpod, and the snake said
The snake spoke to her?
No, no! It is a make-like The story tells that the snake said, "What do you know? What do you re, nothing, nothing" So the snake said, "Put your foot through the hole in the seedpod where I was playing, and you will become wise" So she put a foot in where the snake had been And the oil entered her blood and helped her seeshe saas the sraf It was so strange and pleasant that she wanted to share it at once with her kindred So she and her mate took the seedpods, and they discovered that they kneho they were, they knew they were ave each other names They named themselves mulefa They named the seed tree, and all the creatures and plants
Because they were different, said Mary
Yes, they were And so were their children, because as more seedpods fell, they showed their children how to use theh to ride the wheels, they began to generate the sraf as well, and the sraf came back with the oil and stayed with them So they saw that they had to plant more seedpod trees for the sake of the oil, but the pods were so hard that they seldoerminated So the first mulefa sahat they must do to help the trees, which was to ride on the wheels and break theether
Mary directly understood about a quarter of what Atal was saying, but by questioning and guessing she found out the rest quite accurately; and her own co all the tih, the ested half a dozen questions, each leading in a different direction
But she pulled her est; and that hy she thought about the mirror
It was the coested it Reflected light like the glare off the sea was polarized; it ht be that the shadow particles, when they behaved like waves as light did, were capable of being polarized, too
I can’t see sraf as you can, she said, but I would like to ht help me see it
Atal was excited by this idea, and they hauled in their net at once and began to gather what Mary needed As a token of good luck there were three fine fish in the net
The sap lacquer was a product of another and much smaller tree, which thethe sap and dissolving it in the alcohol they made from distilled fruit juice, the mulefa made a substance like milk in consistency, and delicate amber in color, which they used as a varnish They would put up to twenty coats on a base of wood or shell, letting each one cure under wet cloth before applying the next, and gradually build up a surface of great hardness and brilliance They would usually make it opaque with various oxides, but sometimes they left it transparent, and that hat had interested Mary: because the clear amber-colored lacquer had the same curious property as the ht rays in two, so that when you looked through it you saw double
She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, except that she knew that if she fooled around for long enough, without fretting, or nagging herself, she’d find out She re the words of the poet Keats to Lyra, and Lyra’s understanding at once that that was her own state of mind when she read the alethiometer - that hat Mary had to find now
So she began by finding herself aat the surface with a piece of sandstone (no metal: no planes) until it was as flat as she could make it That was the h, with tirove with Atal, having carefully explained what she was intending, and asked permission to take some sap The mulefa were happy to let her, but too busy to be concerned With Atal’s help she drew off so process of boiling, dissolving, boiling again, until the varnish was ready to use
The mulefa used pads of a cottony fiber fro the instructions of a craftsain, seeing hardly any difference each ti it cure unhurriedly and finding gradually that the thickness was building up She painted on over forty coats - she lost count - but by the time her lacquer had run out, the surface was at least five millimeters thick
After the final layer caently, in smooth circularand she could bear the labor nothe group went to work in a coppice of what they called knot wood, htening the interweaving so that the grown sticks would be properly shaped They valued Mary’s help for this task, as she on her own could squeeze into narrower gaps than the hter spaces
It was only when that as done, and they had returned to the settlein to experiment, or rather to play, since she still didn’t have a clear idea of what she was doing
First she tried using the lacquer sheet simply as a mirror, but for lack of a silvered back, all she could see was a doubled reflection faintly in the wood
Then she thought that what she really needed was the lacquer without the wood, but she quailed at the idea ofanother sheet; how could sheanyway?
The idea ca the wood away to leave the lacquer That would take time, too, but at least she had the Swiss Ar it very delicately froreatest of care not to scratch the lacquer fro a mess of torn and splintered wood stuck immovably to the pane of clear, hard varnish
She wondered ould happen if she soaked it in water Did the lacquer soften if it got wet? No, said her master in the craft, it will remain hard forever; but why not do it like this? And he showed her a liquid kept in a stone bohich would eat through any wood in only a few hours It looked and smelled to Mary like an acid
That would hurt the lacquer hardly at all, he said, and she could repair any daued by her project and helped her to swab the acid delicately onto the wood, telling her how theya e of some shallow lakes she had not yet visited Gradually the wood softened and cale sheet of clear brown-yellow lacquer, about the size of a page from a paperback book