The Alethiometer

I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter,
And make believe it came from you.

Joe Young & Fred E. Alhert

Dear Gerry,

I'm sorry I haven't written to you for so long. It's been ages, I know, and I'm truly ashamed of myself for it. But this is the first chance I've had to write to you since I met Mister Joyce. I wouldn't be doing it now, except that we've holed up in a farmer's barn for the night, but it's not dark yet as it's only eight o'clock.

Yes, I suppose I could have written something while we were on the Marie-Louise, but somehow there never seemed to be any time. Time goes funny when you're travelling - have you noticed that, Gerry? Perhaps it was different for you - sailing the ship and all. You were busy working, not like those lazy passengers, sitting around with nothing to do but sleep and dream.

Mister Joyce is writing something too.

How long has it been since I last wrote anything in my old exercise book? Ten years? Twenty? I don't know. I'm well out of practice, so this is going to be clumsy stuff until I get back into my stride. It'll probably still be a mess even when I'm in the swing of it. I'm not a very good writer, as poor Jim liked to remind me.

Jane doesn't like me writing in this book. 'What are you scribbling in there?' she asks. I say it's personal, and that upsets her. She doesn't like me doing anything she doesn't know every last thing about. Heavens, if she knew I was wandering around Frankland in the company of an attractive sixteen-year-old girl, she'd have a fit. Not only because she was jealous of the girl, but also because I'd be out of her sight. I feel guilty about this. Viola tells me I shouldn't feel like that; I'm doing something that's crucially important. Arthur says so, anyway and of course I believe him. So Jane thinks I'm in London, talking to material suppliers and the Ministry of War and conducting other business matters, when I'm actually on the lam, as it's phrased in those detective stories Elias likes so much.

I've got out of the habit of telling my story in words, even if it's only to myself. It's not only to myself, I know that. I'm not the only person who's interested in reading my story. There are others who are involved with it. Others who, you might say, live for it, even though all the stories they hear belong to dead people. Madame Griselda, my harpy, still waits for me, I know, in a white marble temple on an island in the river near a busy town where a church tower stands next to a grey stone bridge and the boats moor up next to an inn named after an angel.

Some day, Madame, some day. Some day soon, it seems to me. You and I can have a chat, and we'll get on much better than we did last time. We'll meet as old friends. Perhaps your mistress Gracious Wings will look in on us while you fill in all the details of my life on your screen, making sure to check every last detail for absolute correctness.

I wonder how many more life-stories you're responsible for, Madame G. There have been many deaths, this past year or two. Many stories to tell. These feel like the Last Days.

The girl; this Miss Moon, as I'm having to call her at the moment. I'm not having a very easy time of it with her. I can't say I like her very much and if it weren't for Arthur and the instructions he gave me I'd have packed it all in before now and gone home. Of course, now the Enemy has struck down those poor people in that boat I can't possibly give up. What a waste that would be; to throw Jacques Fourneaux's life away for nothing, out of cowardice or simple fed-upness.

What is it about her? Is it that she's so dreadfully spoilt? Is it her snobbery? Her vanity? No; although those are pretty annoying personal traits, they're not exactly fatal. I learned to shrug off the snobbishness of my customers a long time ago. I could hardly stay in business if I didn't. As for the vanity - well. Even in a shapeless uniform and with her hair cropped short she's still a very pretty girl, so I suppose she's got something to be vain about. And she's obviously very bright and, I think, basically good-natured. Brave, too. She wouldn't be here if she didn't have guts. I can even feel sorry for her, losing her brother so early in the War, although she's hardly the only person in the world to have lost a loved one to the Enemy.

Now we've left the Marie-Louise and what's left of the Fourneaux family behind and it's just Mister Joyce and me, things are getting worse and worse. Oh, how I wish I'd never come to Frankland! Or, for all that, left Highdean. This is just how it was with Mabel and Nancy after they turned nasty. He obviously hates me.

Why, Gerry, why?

But... If I'm honest with myself (and if I can't tell the truth to myself and Viola, who can I tell it to?) it's her daemon - her Alpharintus - that's upsetting me. His wrongness may not be immediately apparent to most people, but it's very obvious to Viola and me, especially now I've been told the secret.

'That daemon of hers,' Arthur said when we met in London. 'He's special.'

'Special? How?'

And Arthur told me, and it made my flesh crawl to think of it. I couldn't help myself. It wasn't just the fact that Alfie and she were abnormal, it was the manner of their abnormality. It was so wrong. Your daemon settles when you go through puberty. That's the way it is - the way it should be. But Alfie - his ability to assume human form, and the perversions associated with that ability... Like I say, it gave me the creeps.

Viola said it - Martin James, she said. They're like Martin James and his Lillian.

Yes, Martin James. My old master's brother, who was abducted by the Gobblers as a child, taken to Bolvangar and experimented on. Not in the way most of the children who were taken there were experimented on, by having their daemons separated from them... Oh, Hell...

Oh, what a mess. I had to stop writing there, and I seem to have wet the page rather and smudged it. Surely, after all these twenty or more years, I can forget about Martin James, and his unsettled daemon and the day he cut my Viola away from me... Some days I only think about it once or twice and it hardly troubles me. Some days it occupies all my thoughts and I have to go away for a while - into the workshop, or along the banks of the Isis in Port Meadow - and talk to Viola about it. Or speak to Lyra, even though she's been dead for twenty five years now. Jane leaves me alone when this mood comes on me. She knows there are some things that are so deeply personal that I can't share them with anyone, not even my wife and children.

Enough maundering. I'm supposed to be telling my story here, not complaining about our precious Miss Moon, or Lady Muck, or whatever it is she expects to be called today. Good grief! She's only a child. I shouldn't be letting her get to me like this.

We're camping in a barn. It's only a mile or two from the canal, but that's as far as we've been able to get this afternoon. Damn this crippled leg! Back home in Oxford I've found ways and means of managing with it. I can walk on it pretty well; on level pavements, at least. Jane or one of the servants can help me if I get into trouble, and that's not happened for years. But this is different. The ground goes up and down and the surface is rough. I'm having to lean on Miss Moon and, while I'm sure we make a most attractive couple, pretending we're running in a three-legged race is not the way to make the kind of progress we need to make if we're to get to Geneva in time, always assuming we're not too late already. I'll check on that, first thing.

He weighs a ton, Gerry! My shoulders ache quite horribly and we only managed to stagger a mile or so. Tomorrow, we're going to have to find a different way of getting along. Oh - I mean that in two ways, don't I? Clever me, I don't think.

Yes, I think we're going to have to get a lift from somebody. Our present speed is far too low. It was easy enough getting here - the Gyptian underground got me to the crossroads more straightforwardly and probably faster than the regular means of transport. But we can't use them again, not after what happened this afternoon. I told Miss Moon that she was the target of the attack - and that's true - but I think it's more than likely I'm in the firing line too. Before we get much further I think I'm going to have to tell the girl a little more about myself and what I know to get her to agree to what we're trying to do. I'm so dependent on her. I hate that.

I found it hard to sleep last night. Images kept flashing through my mind and however hard I tried to make them go away, they wouldn't. The horrors of the afternoon, of course. Not so much the charred corpse of Capitaine Fourneaux falling into the canal, as the sight of his Jeanne carelessly tossed through the air by the force of the blast. I kept seeing her; wreathed in smoke, twisted in pain, dying in agony. Did you see things like that, Gerry, before you died? Or was it quick and painless?

After a sparse supper of bread and cheese we lay on opposite sides of the barn and tried to sleep. I drifted off quite quickly at first, but then woke with those abominable visions tormenting me again. Not just of Jeanne's death, but other memories; from the ambulance depot and the field hospital. Horrible, horrible. Then I slept again for a while. Once I woke, to find Mister Joyce standing looking down at me, with a strange, unreadable expression on his face. He said something I couldn't quite make out. I wondered what he was up to. Surely he wasn't going to try to assault me? He'd be no match for me in a fight, even though he weighs more than I do. He's no taller than me and I don't suppose his reach - even with his good arm - is any better than mine. I quickly closed my eyes again, hoping he hadn't noticed I was awake, and ready to ask Alfie to Change and help defend me. I braced myself to get up and run if needs be, but it turned out I didn't have to.

Miss Moon slept in a pile of hay near the barn door. Viola and I took the other side of the floor. Around one in the morning I found I needed a pee, so I made my way out of the barn as quietly as I could, trying not to disturb her. When I returned, it was to find that the clouds had uncovered the moon and that a beam of light from an opening in the gable end of the barn wall was illuminating my reluctant companion. I stopped to look at her.

It must have been a quirk of the light, because for a moment it seemed that her head was surrounded, not by the bristly one-inch growth of her own dark hair, but by honey-coloured locks. She lay breathing softly on the hay, her face gold-clasped and beautiful. I stopped breathing myself for a moment, my heart leaping with an intoxicating hope. Was that really a mink-daemon in her arms? Could it be that she was not Miss Moon after all, but someone else?

'Lyra?' I said softly, and the girl moved in her sleep. As she shifted her position the light changed and the illusion shivered and broke into pieces. She was only Sonya Moon after all. She disgusted me; and I turned away from her, found my place by the barn wall, lay down, snuggled Viola into my right arm and tried to get some sleep.

That's all for now. I'll write again when I can.

Little Sis

- 0 -

'Miss Moon?' said Mister Joyce the next morning, waking me.

'Yes?' I said, shaking the straw out of my clothes. At least it wasn't caught in my hair.

'There are a couple of things we need to do.' He looked worried. What had upset him now?

'You mean, have breakfast and get out of here.'

'Besides that. For a start I've got to find a place where I can do some work.'

'Work? What do you mean?'

Mister Joyce paused. He seemed to be consulting with his Viola so, of course, I looked away.

'There's an... instrument I've got. It's damaged, and I've got to try to repair it.'

'Damaged? How? Did you drop it? What's it for?'

'It was the strike yesterday. I ought to have checked it last night. That lightning-bolt, it was anbaric...'

'Yes, I know.'

'Do you? Good, they've taught you some useful things at that posh school of yours, then.'

'Besides learning how to speak Frankish, you mean?' Holy Spirit, but he was an irritating man!

'Yes. Anyway, look, it was damaged by the strike, I need to try to mend it and I can't do that here. I need light and a workbench of some kind.'

'Can't it wait?'

'No, it can't.'

'What is it? Can you show me?'

'Yes, I suppose so.' Reluctantly, as if he hated what he was doing, Mister Joyce took a green velvet bag from his pocket. Holding it in his palm he loosened the bag's drawstrings and took out a gold or brass instrument the size of a large pocket-watch. It looked like a watch too, except that it had four hands and, instead of the hours, there were symbols engraved around the edge of the dial. It was, I have to say, a very nice thing to look at. The morning light glinted on its glass.

'Coo! Did you make that yourself, Mister Joyce? Is it a watch? Or some kind of compass?'

Again, he seemed unwilling to speak. 'No, I didn't make it. It was left to me by Professor Lyra Belacqua of the University of Oxford, in her will.'

'But what is it? Won't you tell me?'

'It's called an alethiometer.'

'An aleethy-what?'

'An alethiometer. It tells the truth, if you are able to operate it and interpret what it says. It's an oracle.'

'Oh. I see.' I didn't. Mister Joyce wasn't making any kind of sense. 'So what's wrong with it?'

'It's stuck. None of the pointers will move. Do you see?' He held it towards me. 'To use it you set three of the hands with these knurled knobs.' I saw them, spaced around the outside of the instrument. 'Then you ask a question and the pointer moves and gives you the answer.'

'Just like that?'

'If it works for you and you know how to read it properly, yes.'

'Can you ask it anything you like?'

'Within reason, yes. It can't predict the future, for example. Also, you have to ask sensible questions, otherwise the answer is harder to work out than the question, if you see what I mean.'

'So...' I was thinking. 'It really works?'

'When it's in good order, yes.'

'But that's incredible!' I was becoming excited. 'You could do anything if you had one of these. You'd know everything there was to know! You could... be King, if you wanted! Oh Mister Joyce, you've got to mend it!'

Careful, said Alfie.

'Wait a minute.' I had another thought. 'If this... alethiometer is as good as you make it out to be, why aren't you rich? Or why aren't you helping the Government? You could find out what the Enemy are doing, and help defeat them. What aren't you doing that, Mister Joyce?'

'It's not meant for doing things like that. It wasn't given to me so I could use it for my own profit. I make my living the honest way, by working. Not by cheating.'

'Oh! You've got principles, have you, Mister Joyce?' I put both my hands on my hips. The officer's sword brushed against my left thigh and, remembering it, I drew it and held it out. 'I should take it from you and give it to the King. Or the Church.'

'The Church has one already.' Mister Joyce never blinked, although he swayed a little on his bad leg.

'Oh.'

'Now put that silly thing away. Let's find a house where we can buy some breakfast and I can borrow the kitchen table. Come on.'

- 0 -

There was a sizeable village only another half-mile along the road from the farm where we had slept; with shops and an auberge, the Mouton Dor. The landlady there was happy to serve us with kaffee and fresh bread and cheese. I asked her if she had a salle privée we could use and, without showing any sign that she was surprised by my request, she showed us to a small back room with two benches and a table. We would have called it the Snug Bar in an English inn.

Mister Joyce waited until the door had closed behind us, and then he took out the alethiometer again. His tools were in the knapsack, so I got them out and handed them over to him. 'Do you mind if I watch?' I said.

'No, I suppose not,' was the answer.

Mister Joyce's tool-roll was packed with tiny delicate screwdrivers, tweezers, keys and other instruments I couldn't identify. Just like before when he'd mended the Marie-Louise's clock, Viola helped him, by holding the alethiometer as he undid its back-plate, or passing tools to him. She was truly his missing hand, and I marvelled to see them work together so neatly.

'I know a blind shopkeeper in Oxford, a friend of mine,' Mister Joyce said, putting the alethiometer carefully down on a piece of baize cloth. 'He's a pawnbroker, and his daemon does his seeing for him. He looks through her eyes, he says.'

'Gosh!'

'There'll be a lot more like him and me before this War is over.'

'Yes, I suppose so.'

Mister Joyce removed the knurled wheels and carefully extracted the works of the instrument from its case. 'Now, then,' he said, half to himself, half to Viola. 'What's up here?' He screwed a magnifying glass into his right eye and looked closely at the inwards. The he took out one of his tools - a little probe, like a dentist uses - and prodded at it. He shook his head.

This isn't going well, said Alfie.

Mister Joyce put the works back on the table and took out another of his tiny tools. He tried to undo one of the screws that held on the brass plate at one side of the instrument. It wouldn't turn. He took out another screwdriver - a bigger one - and tried again. Still no luck. I couldn't see his face, but by the stiff set of his shoulders I could see that something was badly wrong.

'Can I help?' I asked.

That was a silly thing to say, said Alfie.

'Is it stuck?'

Sunny, shut up!

Mister Joyce looked up. 'It's not just stuck. It's fused. Welded. Do you see?' He held it up to me. 'Look, where the iron arbors engage in the brass platework.'

I looked. There were shiny splodges of silvery metal where he pointed. 'It shouldn't be like that, then, all mushroomy?'

'No.' Mister Joyce shook his head.

'But can you mend it?'

'If I were in my workshop in Oxford, and if I had access to a gas-cutter and if I had plenty of time, yes, I could mend it. Here - no chance.' He put his head in his hands, both of them. Even then, I wondered how he did it - how he made the wooden elbow of his artificial left arm hinge like that.

'Why's it done that? My sword's all right. Look!' I drew it and put it down on the table next to the damaged instrument. Mister Joyce looked closely at it.

'You were lucky. Look where the blade joins the hilt, by the guard.' I looked. There was the same shiny, splodgy appearance to the metal where the steel of the blade met the brass of the guard.

'That strike was anbaric, as I said, and we were very close to it. If it hadn't been for the water of the canal drawing the charge away from us we'd have been killed instantly, like poor Jacques and Jeanne. We were lucky they were aiming for the Marie-Louise, not us. Even so, there was a big anbaric potential difference in the air, and it made a current flow in any nearby conductor, like the metal of your sword-blade. Where two dissimilar metals were joined together or came into contact, as in Lyra's alethiometer or your sword-hilt, great heat was generated - enough to melt the metal pieces and weld them. That sword is a crude thing, and it came to no great harm. This alethiometer is very delicate, and it's been seriously damaged. It may never work again.' His face was blank. I suddenly realised that he was grieving.

'Never mind,' I said, meaning only to console him. 'You'll mend it, I know you will. It's only a thing, you know.'

He looked away from me. 'It was hers. Lyra's.' His voice was very low. 'I've let her down. I've betrayed her. Again...' He wept then, and I picked Alfie up and carried him over to the window where I stood and looked out on the cobbled yard at the back of the inn. I could not comfort Mister Joyce. There were great shoals of meaning shifting beneath us - concerning things about which I knew nothing and understood less.

- 0 -

'The other thing we need,' said Mister Joyce as we stood in the square outside the auberge, our bill paid and our knapsack re-packed, 'is a better means of transport than Shanks' Pony.'

'So we're still going somewhere, are we?'

'Yes.'

'Where?'

'I can't tell you yet.'

'Do you know?'

'Yes.'

'Even without the alethiometer to tell you?'

'Yes.'

'North, south, east or west?'

'East.'

I was getting annoyed with this silly guessing game. 'So we're going up to the Front, then.' Did he think I was stupid?

'Yes. All right, we're going to the Front.'

'Then you ought to be wearing a soldier's uniform. The way it is now, you look like a deserter.'

'I'm in a reserved occupation.'

'Makes no difference here, Mister Joyce.'

'All right. I'll think of something.'

'So we're going up to the Front and we need transport. Why don't we borrow that car?' I pointed to a little Citroën souris that was standing in the road outside the butcher's shop.

'I don't think we should try to make off with someone's car in the middle of a village where everyone can see us, should we?'

'All right, what do you suggest?'

'I suggest we try to find someone who would be willing to lend - or hire - us their car.'

'You mean, like him?' I pointed to a sign above a pair of double doors in the building next to the inn:

M. Herande, Mécanicien

Voitures d'occasion
Voitures à louer
Toutes Marques

'A man who sells and hires out cars. That should do us. How much money have you got? I've about two thousand francs on me.'

'What's that in real money?'

'Fifty, sixty quid. Not much.'

'What?'

'Only fifty pounds or so. Why, what's wrong now?' Mister Joyce was looking furious.

'That's a workman's wages for ten weeks, and you're just casually walking around with it jangling in your pocket! Whole families have to live on far less than that and you don't seem to care. "Not much", eh? Bloody rich kids!' He jammed his right hand in his pocket.

'Yes!' Suddenly my blood was simmering. 'Yes, I'm rich. My family is very well-off indeed. Sorry if that makes us vulgar, Mister Joyce, sorry if that makes us snobs, but the Moon family has been working hard for absolute bloody centuries, building up our farms and our estates. We started from nothing, Mister Joyce. We work hard, and we pay fair wages to our people, and we've made everyone around us prosperous. We've shared out our money. We don't ask for favours or handouts from anybody. We'll let ourselves be cheated rather than drive an unfair bargain or take advantage of somebody's misfortune, because that's the kind of people we are. It's made us extremely bloody rich, Mister Joyce, being decent to people, and I'll thank you not to get all effing high-minded and principled about it. All right?'

Mister Joyce looked, to give him credit, a little sheepish. 'I'm sorry, Miss Moon. I didn't mean to...'

'No, I don't suppose you did. You can't help it, can you? You can't help hating me, even though I've done nothing to hurt you. I don't know why I don't just dump you here and go home to Mornington. That's what I'm supposed to be doing. I've disobeyed a direct order to be here, now, with you. Look, I'm sorry about your alethiometer being broken, but I'm not going to let that stop us. If we need to get a car, then we'll get a car, and the money my father made from grinding the faces of the poor will have to pay for it. Got it? Okay?'

'Bravo!' said Alfie and kissed my cheek. Viola's ears and tail twitched in response.

'And don't tell me I'm beautiful when I'm angry, either, unless you want to bloody well hop back to Oxford.'

Mister Joyce looked down at the pavement. 'I've said I'm sorry.'

- 0 -

Monsieur Herande was très désol, but the only car he had to spare was a steam-powered Dassault that must have been at least forty years old. 'La guerre,' he said, and shrugged his shoulders. He agreed to hire it to us for two weeks for twelve hundred francs which was outrageous, even for wartime. I managed to screw a supply of naphtha - a full tank and a spare carboy - out of him by threatening to report him to the Préfecture for offering for hire a car with two bald tyres. He changed the tyres for us and dropped the hire charge to a square thousand francs at which point, honour satisfied, we shook hands on the deal.

While I negotiated, Mister Joyce checked the condition of the car's engine and running gear. 'It's a bit stiff, but it'll go,' he said. 'Have you ever driven a steam car before?'

'No,' I replied.

'Well, they tell me it's just like driving a gas-engine powered one, except that you have to keep a weather eye on the steam pressure gauge and be sure to fill the boiler regularly with water.'

His face was grim - even grimmer than usual. 'We don't want the boiler exploding, do we?'

'No,' I said. 'We don't.' Why was he so worried about that?

Half-an-hour later, steam was hissing from the safety valve in a manner that seemed to mollify Mister Joyce's fears. I explained to Monsieur Herande that I had only driven gaz-powered vehicles before. I showed him my driver's badge and signed the hire papers in the name of Samuel Clarence Moon. That was Mister Joyce's idea.

'I think you'd better become a soldier boy, don't you? If they're looking for you, they'll be looking for a girl, not a young man. Pull your cap well down over your head and see if you can't do something about...' He pointed to my chest and I giggled.

'Hang your shirt and tunic outside your trousers; that'll disguise your waist. Now, wear that belt loose at an angle across your hips. That's it, now the sword doesn't stick out. Can you lower the pitch of your voice a bit?'

'Like this?' I growled in my best Noel-the-toy-lion voice.

'That'll do. It sounds like it's breaking. Your uniform is the wrong colour for an infantryman - it should be khaki, not grey - but that won't matter. You can be a driver in the Logistics Corps if you're challenged. All right, Driver Sam Moon?'

'Yes, Mister Joyce.' I smiled. The idea of becoming a boy had tickled me. 'But what about you? Have you thought of something?'

'Yes, I have. I'll be an SME - a Subject Matter Expert. The Army uses civilians like me as expert advisors on technical matters. I've got some papers in my knapsack that will support that story.'

'All right, Mister Joyce. You are still called Joyce, aren't you?'

'I'd better not be,' he said. 'If what I've been told is true, the name of Joyce will be known in Geneva. Call me... Mister Parry. John Parry.'

'But your papers...'

'We'll deal with that if we need to. Your uniform will get us past most of the checkpoints we may encounter. But Parry will do very well as a travelling name. Yes, indeed it will.'

And once again I found his expression completely unreadable.