The Zeppelin

'There's something very wrong.'

'What do you mean, Pan?'

'I mean that we're being lied to.'

'Lied to? By who? The Dean? The Master? You must be wrong, Pan. I've known them for years. They're decent men. They wouldn't lie to me.'

'Sit down, Lyra.'

Lyra and Pantalaimon were in their rooms. A shower had caught them on the way back from the Dean's House and they were both soaked. Lyra had hung her gown and mortarboard in front of the small fire which her scout had made up while they was out. The human and her daemon sat in one of the chairs next to the grate. The firelight was reflected off the polished fronts of the bookshelves which stood against the opposite wall of the room. It six o'clock and beginning to get dark. Soon the scout would return with a taper to light the lamps.

'I'd kill for a bun.' Pantalaimon's nose twitched. 'It was no fun at all, watching you and those decayed old men stuffing yourselves with sandwiches and cake.'

'Go and get one, then.' The daemon ran into the small kitchen which, together with a private bathroom, separated Lyra's study from her bedroom. Lyra could hear him scrabbling around in the cupboards, there was a small cry of triumph, and then the patter of his paws as he ran across the wooden floor and sprang into her lap. A Marlborough bun fell from Pantalaimon's mouth in a shower of crumbs and sugar crystals and landed on Lyra's clothes.

'Ooof! You're putting on weight, daemon. And you're wet!'

'Impossible. All in your imagination. I'm a metaphysical creature, remember?'

'So why do you like buns? They're not very metaphysical! Just messy!' Lyra smoothed her hand across her skirt, gathering up the fragments and tossing them into the fire, where they flared in sparks of orange and blue. Pantalaimon smirked and preened his fur which had suddenly, you might say metaphysically, become dry, soft and silky.

'Now then. Why do you think we're being lied to?'

'It's not lying, exactly. They're just not telling us everything they know.'

'Why do you say that?'

'What did they say about the alethiometer?' Lyra's hand instinctively patted the pocket where the instrument lay, checking that it was safe.

'The Master said that they hoped I'd be able to find out exactly why the King had called the Council.'

'That's right. But then straight away he said not to bother. Didn't that strike you as odd?'

'I suppose so. Actually, I felt a little insulted. It was as if he was saying that they couldn't wait the time it would have taken me to read the alethiometer and find the answer.'

'Because you're very quick with it these days.'

'I am! I'm nearly as quick with it as I was when… when…'

'Yes.'

A brief silence.

'The thing is, Lyra, they didn't want you to discover what's going on before you agreed that we'd go to London. They thought that if you knew why the King had called the Council you might say no.'

'No? I'd never say that! Not to the Master. Wait, yes. I see what you're saying… There was something else too, about not being able to trust the alethiometer. That it might be confused. I didn't understand that properly.'

'No. Me neither. How could the oracle be confused?'

'I don't know. Why don't we…'

'Talk to Will tonight? You know why we can't do that.'

'Yes.' Lyra stared at the floor. 'I know why.'

A King's Council is, as the Master of Jordan said, a rare occurrence. As a rule, the usual mechanisms of government – the Civil Service, the armed forces and the police – are sufficient to manage the everyday running of the Kingdom of Brytain and its associated Empire. The King rules, his ministers govern, and all is, generally speaking, done properly and in a carefully considered fashion.

Every now and then, however, something crops up that falls outside the remit of Government. War, or the threat of invasion. Sedition, or the threat of insurrection. An economic crisis. Or, perhaps a more subtle danger, difficult for those people to grasp whose lives are buried deep in the minutiae of administrative detail.

At such times the King calls a Council, composed of representatives of the parts of the life of the nation which usually operate outside, or only loosely associated with, the work of Government. Among these institutions are counted the great Universities and Colleges; and of those Colleges it is Jordan that is paramount. Jordan College's representative at a King's Council is, therefore, a very significant and important person, who may expect to be treated appropriately.

Thus when a car, glossy in black and silver, called at the entrance of Jordan to collect Professor Belacqua, it was not to take her directly to London, for the roads were not yet of a high enough standard, nor to the station, although it was but half a mile from the College and the trains ran frequently to Paddington. Instead it carried her, her daemon, her modest luggage and a portable set of the Books Of Reading And Interpretation to a field by the Witney Road where an airship, bouncing and swaying in the gusting wind, waited to transport them to Falkeshall Gardens.

Pantalaimon looked up at the silver bulk of the Zeppelin, tugging against its mooring ropes twenty feet above their heads. 'This is ridiculous, Lyra. We'll be sick all the way. What's wrong with the train?'

A uniformed officer of the King's Flight stepped up to them and saluted. 'King's Councillor?'

'Yes. I am Professor Belacqua.'

'This way please, Madam Professor.'

They were shown to the base of the mooring mast, where a lift carried them up fifty feet to the forward passenger entrance.

'My things?'

'Are being loaded now, Madam Professor. Please follow the attendant to the passenger lounge.' A steward led them gingerly down a set of aluminium steps and along a passageway to a large room, full of lightweight chairs and tables. Behind a railing wide windows gave a panoramic view of the ground below. The whole room was empty, but for themselves. They took a chair next to the window and watched the ground lurching from side to side.

'I am going to be sick!'

'Don't be silly, Pan. It'll all settle down once we're airborne.'

The stop-captain cried 'Ship away!', the ground crew released the mooring lines and with a roar of her engines the airship leapt into the sky and pointed her nose south-east for London. The westerly wind caught the Zeppelin's tail-fins, sending her careering sideways across the sky. Standing in the control gondola the go-captain studied the altimeter and log and shook his head grimly, while the helmsman wrestled with the steering wheel. Special mission, indeed!

Two men, in a subterranean room. Facing away from each other, their faces cowled. Avoiding one another's eyes. Speaking in muffled voices.

'They've left Oxford?'

'Ten minutes ago.'

'And the wind?'

'Gusting to gale force.'

'Have the men been paid?'

'Not yet.'

'Don't bother, then.'

'Why not?'

'I do not think that they will be collecting their money.'

Three hundred feet above the two men, on top of the towers and spires of the Palace of Westminster, the pennants were thrashing wildly at the flagpoles, the rising wind pulling at their fibres, tearing them to rags and tatters.