Chapter 25 Saint-Jean-Les-Eaux
The cataract of Saint-Jean-les-Eaux plunged between pinnacles of rock at the eastern end of a spur of the Alps, and the generating station clung to the side of the mountain above it. It was a wild region, a bleak and battered wilderness, and no one would have built anything there at all had it not been for the promise of driving great anbaric generators with the power of the thousands of tons of water that roared through the gorge.
It was the night following Mrs. Coulter's arrest, and the weather was stormy. Near the sheer stone front of the generating station, a zeppelin slowed to a hover in the buffeting wind. The searchlights below the craft made it look as if it were standing on several legs of light and gradually lowering itself to lie down.
But the pilot wasn't satisfied; the wind was swept into eddies and cross-gusts by the edges of the mountain. Besides, the cables, the pylons, the transformers were too close: to be swept in among them, with a zeppelin full of inflammable gas, would be instantly fatal. Sleet drummed slantwise at the great rigid envelope of the craft, making a noise that almost drowned the clatter and howl of the straining engines, and obscuring the view of the ground.
"Not here," the pilot shouted over the noise. "We'll go around the spur. "
Father MacPhail watched fiercely as the pilot moved the throttle forward and adjusted the trim of the engines. The zeppelin rose with a lurch and moved over the rim of the mountain. Those legs of light suddenly lengthened and seemed to feel their way down the ridge, their lower ends lost in the whirl of sleet and rain.
"You can't get closer to the station than this?" said the President, leaning forward to let his voice carry to the pilot.
"Not if you want to land," the pilot said.
"Yes, we want to land. Very well, put us down below the ridge. "
The pilot gave orders for the crew to prepare to moor. Since the equipment they were going to unload was heavy as well as delicate, it was important to make the craft secure. The President settled back, tapping his fingers on the arm of his seat, gnawing his lip, but saying nothing and letting the pilot work unflustered.
From his hiding place in the transverse bulkheads at the rear of the cabin, Lord Roke watched. Several times during the flight his little shadowy form had passed along behind the metal mesh, clearly visible to anyone who might have looked, if only they had turned their heads; but in order to hear what was happening, he had to come to a place where they could see him. The risk was unavoidable.
He edged forward, listening hard through the roar of the engines, the thunder of the hail and sleet, the high-pitched singing of the wind in the wires, and the clatter of booted feet on metal walkways. The flight engineer called some figures to the pilot, who confirmed them, and Lord Roke sank back into the shadows, holding tight to the struts and beams as the airship plunged and tilted.
Finally, sensing from the movement that the craft was nearly anchored, he made his way back through the skin of the cabin to the seats on the starboard side.
There were men passing through in both directions: crew members, technicians, priests. Many of their daemons were dogs, brimming with curiosity. On the other side of the aisle, Mrs. Coulter sat awake and silent, her golden daemon watching everything from her lap and exuding malice.
Lord Roke waited for the chance and then darted across to Mrs. Coulter's seat, and was up in the shadow of her shoulder in a moment.
"What are they doing?" she murmured.
"Landing. We're near the generating station. "
"Are you going to stay with me, or work on your own?" she whispered.
"I'll stay with you. I'll have to hide under your coat. "
She was wearing a heavy sheepskin coat, uncomfortably hot in the heated cabin, but with her hands manacled she couldn't take it off.
"Go on, now," she said, looking around, and he darted inside the breast, finding a fur-lined pocket where he could sit securely. The golden monkey tucked Mrs. Coulter's silk collar inside solicitously, for all the world like a fastidious couturier attending to his favorite model, while all the time making sure that Lord Roke was completely hidden in the folds of the coat.
He was just in time. Not a minute later a soldier armed with a rifle came to order Mrs. Coulter out of the airship.
"Must I have these handcuffs on?" she said.
"I haven't been told to remove them," he replied. "On your feet, please. "
"But it's hard to move if I can't hold on to things. I'm stiff - I've been sitting here for the best part of a day without moving - and you know I haven't got any weapons, because you searched me. Go and ask the President if it's really necessary to manacle me. Am I going to try and run away in this wilderness?"
Lord Roke was impervious to her charm, but interested in its effect on others. The guard was a young man; they should have sent a grizzled old warrior.
"Well," said the guard, "I'm sure you won't, ma'am, but I can't do what I en't been ordered to do. You see that, I'm sure. Please stand up, ma'am, and if you stumble, I'll catch hold of your arm. "
She stood up, and Lord Roke felt her move clumsily forward. She was the most graceful human the Gallivespian had ever seen; this clumsiness was feigned. As they reached the head of the gangway, Lord Roke felt her stumble and cry out in alarm, and felt the jar as the guard's arm caught her. He heard the change in the sounds around them, too; the howl of the wind, the engines turning over steadily to generate power for the lights, voices from somewhere nearby giving orders.
They moved down the gangway, Mrs. Coulter leaning heavily on the guard. She was speaking softly, and Lord Roke could just make out his reply.
"The sergeant, ma'am - over there by the large crate - he's got the keys. But I daren't ask him, ma'am, I'm sorry. "
"Oh well," she said with a pretty sigh of regret. "Thank you anyway. "
Lord Roke heard booted feet moving away over rock, and then she whispered: "You heard about the keys?"
"Tell me where the sergeant is. I need to know where and how far. "
"About ten of my paces away. To the right. A big man. I can see the keys in a bunch at his waist. "
"No good unless I know which one. Did you see them lock the manacles?"
"Yes. A short, stubby key with black tape wound around it. "
Lord Roke climbed down hand over hand in the thick fleece of her coat, until he reached the hem at the level of her knees. There he clung and looked around.
They had rigged a floodlight, which made the wet rocks glisten brilliantly. But as he looked down, casting around for shadows, he saw the glare begin to swing sideways in a gust of wind. He heard a shout, and the light went out abruptly.
He dropped to the ground at once and sprang through the dashing sleet toward the sergeant, who had lurched forward to try and catch the falling floodlight.
In the confusion Lord Roke leapt at the big man's leg as it swung past him, seized the camouflage cotton of the trousers - heavy and sodden with rain already - and kicked a spur into the flesh just above the boot.
The sergeant gave a grunting cry and fell clumsily, grasping his leg, trying to breathe, trying to call out. Lord Roke let go and sprang away from the falling body.
No one had noticed: the noise of the wind and the engines and the pounding hail covered the man's cry, and in the darkness his body couldn't be seen. But there were others close by, and Lord Roke had to work quickly. He leapt to the fallen man's side, where the bunch of keys lay in a pool of icy water, and hauled aside the great shafts of steel, as big around as his arm and half as long as he was, till he found the one with the black tape. And then there was the clasp of the key ring to wrestle with, and the perpetual risk of the hail, which for a Gallivespian was deadly: blocks of ice as big as his two fists.
And then a voice above him said, "You all right, Sergeant?"
The soldier's daemon was growling and nuzzling at the sergeant's, who had fallen into a semi-stupor.
Lord Roke couldn't wait: a spring and a kick, and the other man fell beside the sergeant.
Hauling, wrestling, heaving, Lord Roke finally snapped open the key ring, and then he had to lift six other keys out of the way before the black-taped one was free. Any second now they'd get the light back on, but even in the half-dark they could hardly miss two men lying unconscious -
And as he hoisted the key out, a shout went up. He hauled up the massive shaft with all the strength he had, tugging, heaving, lifting, crawling, dragging, and hid beside a small boulder just as pounding feet arrived and voices called for light. "Shot?"
"Didn't hear a thing - "
"Are they breathing?"
Then the floodlight, secure again, snapped on once more. Lord Roke was caught in the open, as clear as a fox in the headlights of a car. He stood stock-still, his eyes moving left and right, and once he was sure that everyone's attention was on the two men who had fallen so mysteriously, he hauled the key to his shoulder and ran around the puddles and the boulders until he reached Mrs. Coulter.
A second later she had unlocked the handcuffs and lowered them silently to the ground. Lord Roke leapt for the hem of her coat and ran up to her shoulder.
"Where's the bomb?" he said, close to her ear.
"They've just begun to unload it. It's the big crate on the ground over there. I can't do anything till they take it out, and even then - "
"All right," he said, "run. Hide yourself. I'll stay here and watch. Run!"
He leapt down to her sleeve and sprang away. Without a sound she moved away from the light, slowly at first so as not to catch the eye of the guard, and then she crouched and ran into the rain-lashed darkness farther up the slope, the golden monkey darting ahead to see the way.
Behind her she heard the continuing roar of the engines, the confused shouts, the powerful voice of the President trying to impose some order on the scene. She remembered the long, horrible pain and hallucination that she'd suffered at the spur of the Chevalier Tialys, and didn't envy the two men their waking up.
But soon she was higher up, clambering over the wet rocks, and all she could see behind her was the wavering glow of the floodlight reflected back from the great curved belly of the zeppelin; and presently that went out again, and all she could hear was the engine roar, straining vainly against the wind and the thunder of the cataract below.
The engineers from the hydro-anbaric station were struggling over the edge of the gorge to bring a power cable to the bomb.
The problem for Mrs. Coulter was not how to get out of this situation alive: that was a secondary matter. The problem was how to get Lyra's hair out of the bomb before they set it off. Lord Roke had burned the hair from the envelope after her arrest, letting the wind take the ashes away into the night sky; and then he'd found his way to the laboratory and watched as they placed the rest of the little dark golden curl in the resonating chamber in preparation. He knew exactly where it was, and how to open the chamber, but the brilliant light and the glittering surfaces in the laboratory, not to mention the constant coming and going of technicians, made it impossible for him to do anything about it there.
So they'd have to remove the lock of hair after the bomb was set up.
And that was going to be even harder, because of what the President intended to do with Mrs. Coulter. The energy of the bomb came from cutting the link between human and daemon, and that meant the hideous process of intercision: the cages of mesh, the silver guillotine. He was going to sever the lifelong connection between her and the golden monkey and use the power released by that to destroy her daughter. She and Lyra would perish by the means she herself had invented. It was neat, at least, she thought.
Her only hope was Lord Roke. But in their whispered exchanges in the zeppelin, he'd explained about the power of his poison spurs: he couldn't go on using them continually, because with each sting, the venom weakened. It took a day for the full potency to build up again. Before long his main weapon would lose its force, and then they'd only have their wits.
She found an overhanging rock next to the roots of a spruce tree that clung to the side of the gorge, and settled herself beneath it to look around.
Behind her and above, over the lip of the ravine and in the full force of the wind, stood the generating station. The engineers were rigging a series of lights to help them bring the cable to the bomb: she could hear their voices not far away, shouting commands, and see the lights wavering through the trees. The cable itself, as thick as a man's arm, was being hauled from a gigantic reel on a truck at the top of the slope, and at the rate they were edging their way down over the rocks, they'd reach the bomb in five minutes or less.
At the zeppelin Father MacPhail had rallied the soldiers. Several men stood guard, looking out into the sleet-filled dark with rifles at the ready, while others opened the wooden crate containing the bomb and made it ready for the cable. Mrs. Coulter could see it clearly in the wash of the floodlights, streaming with rain, an ungainly mass of machinery and wiring slightly tilted on the rocky ground. She heard a high-tension crackle and hum from the lights, whose cables swung in the wind, scattering the rain and throwing shadows up over the rocks and down again, like a grotesque jump rope.
Mrs. Coulter was horribly familiar with one part of the structure: the mesh cages, the silver blade above. They stood at one end of the apparatus. The rest of it was strange to her; she could see no principle behind the coils, the jars, the banks of insulators, the lattice of tubing. Nevertheless, somewhere in all that complexity was the little lock of hair on which everything depended.
To her left the slope fell away into the dark, and far below was a glimmer of white and a thunder of water from the cataract of Saint-Jean-les-Eaux.
There came a cry. A soldier dropped his rifle and stumbled forward, falling to the ground, kicking and thrashing and groaning with pain. In response the President looked up to the sky, put his hands to his mouth, and uttered a piercing yell.
What was he doing?
A moment later Mrs. Coulter found out. Of all unlikely things, a witch flew down and landed beside the President as he shouted above the wind:
"Search nearby! There is a creature of some kind helping the woman. It's attacked several of my men already. You can see through the dark. Find it and kill it!"
"There is something coming," said the witch in a tone that carried clearly to Mrs. Coulter's shelter. "I can see it in the north. "
"Never mind that. Find the creature and destroy it," said the President. "It can't be far away. And look for the woman, too. "
The witch sprang into the air again.
Suddenly the monkey seized Mrs. Coulter's hand and pointed.
There was Lord Roke, lying in the open on a patch of moss. How could they not have seen him? But something had happened, for he wasn't moving.
"Go and bring him back," she said, and the monkey, crouching low, darted from one rock to another, making for the little patch of green among the rocks. His golden fur was soon darkened by the rain and plastered close to his body, making him smaller and less easy to see, but all the same he was horribly conspicuous.
Father MacPhail, meanwhile, had turned to the bomb again. The engineers from the generating station had brought their cable right down to it, and the technicians were busy securing the clamps and making ready the terminals.
Mrs. Coulter wondered what he intended to do, now that his victim had escaped. Then the President turned to look over his shoulder, and she saw his expression. It was so fixed and intense that he looked more like a mask than a man. His lips were moving in prayer, his eyes were turned up wide open as the rain beat into them, and altogether he looked like some gloomy Spanish painting of a saint in the ecstasy of martyrdom. Mrs. Coulter felt a sudden bolt of fear, because she knew exactly what he intended: he was going to sacrifice himself. The bomb would work whether or not she was part of it.
Darting from rock to rock, the golden mon
key reached Lord Roke.
"My left leg is broken," said the Gallivespian calmly. "The last man stepped on me. Listen carefully - "
As the monkey lifted him away from the lights, Lord Roke explained exactly where the resonating chamber was and how to open it. They were practically under the eyes of the soldiers, but step by step, from shadow to shadow, the daemon crept with his little burden.
Mrs. Coulter, watching and biting her lip, heard a rush of air and felt a heavy knock - not to her body, but to the tree. An arrow stuck there quivering less than a hand's breadth from her left arm. At once she rolled away, before the witch could shoot another, and tumbled down the slope toward the monkey.
And then everything was happening at once, too quickly: there was a burst of gunfire, and a cloud of acrid smoke billowed across the slope, though she saw no flames. The golden monkey, seeing Mrs. Coulter attacked, set Lord Roke down and sprang to her defense, just as the witch flew down, knife at the ready. Lord Roke pushed himself back against the nearest rock, and Mrs. Coulter grappled directly with the witch. They wrestled furiously among the rocks, while the golden monkey set about tearing all the needles from the witch's cloud-pine branch.
Meanwhile, the President was thrusting his lizard daemon into the smaller of the silver mesh cages. She writhed and screamed and kicked and bit, but he struck her off his hand and slammed the door shut quickly. The technicians were making the final adjustments, checking their meters and gauges.
Out of nowhere a seagull flew down with a wild cry and seized the Gallivespian in his claw. It was the witch's daemon. Lord Roke fought hard, but the bird had him too tightly, and then the witch tore herself from Mrs. Coulter's grasp, snatched the tattered pine branch, and leapt into the air to join her daemon.
Mrs. Coulter hurled herself toward the bomb, feeling the smoke attack her nose and throat like claws: tear gas. The soldiers, most of them, had fallen or stumbled away choking (and where had the gas come from? she wondered), but now, as the wind dispersed it, they were beginning to gather themselves again. The great ribbed belly of the zeppelin bulked over the bomb, straining at its cables in the wind, its silver sides running with moisture.
But then a sound from high above made Mrs. Coulter's ears ring: a scream so high and horrified that even the golden monkey clutched her in fear. And a second later, pitching down in a swirl of white limbs, black silk, and green twigs, the witch fell right at the feet of Father MacPhail, her bones crunching audibly on the rock.
Mrs. Coulter darted forward to see if Lord Roke had survived the fall. But the Gallivespian was dead. His right spur was deep in the witch's neck.
The witch herself was still just alive, and her mouth moved shudderingly, saying, "Something coming - something else - coming - "
It made no sense. The President was already stepping over her body to reach the larger cage. His daemon was running up and down the sides of the other, her little claws making the silver mesh ring, her voice crying for pity.
The golden monkey leapt for Father MacPhail, but not to attack: he scrambled up and over the man's shoulders to reach the complex heart of the wires and the pipe work, the resonating chamber. The President tried to grab him, but Mrs. Coulter seized the man's arm and tried to pull him back. She couldn't see: the rain was driving into her eyes, and there was still gas in the air.
And all around there was gunfire. What was happening?
The floodlights swung in the wind, so that nothing seemed steady, not even the black rocks of the mountainside. The President and Mrs. Coulter fought hand to hand, scratching, punching, tearing, pulling, biting, and she was tired and he was strong; but she was desperate, too, and she might have pulled him away, but part of her was watching her daemon as he manipulated the handles, his fierce black paws snapping the mechanism this way, that way, pulling, twisting, reaching in -
Then came a blow to her temple. She fell stunned, and the President broke free and hauled himself bleeding into the cage, dragging the door shut after him.
And the monkey had the chamber open - a glass door on heavy hinges, and he was reaching inside - and there was the lock of hair: held between rubber pads in a metal clasp! Still more to undo; and Mrs. Coulter was hauling herself up with shaking hands. She shook the silvery mesh with all her might, looking up at the blade, the sparking terminals, the man inside. The monkey was unscrewing the clasp, and the President, his face a mask of grim exultation, was twisting wires together.
There was a flash of intense white, a lashing crack, and the monkey's form was flung high in the air. With him came a little cloud of gold: was it Lyra's hair? Was it his own fur? Whatever it was, it blew away at once in the dark. Mrs. Coulter's right hand had convulsed so tightly that it clung to the mesh, leaving her half-lying, half-hanging, while her head rang and her heart pounded.
But something had happened to her sight. A terrible clarity had come over her eyes, the power to see the most tiny details, and they were focused on the one detail in the universe that mattered: stuck to one of the pads of the clasp in the resonating chamber, there was a single dark gold hair.
She cried a great wail of anguish, and shook and shook the cage, trying to loosen the hair with the little strength she had left. The President passed his hands over his face, wiping it clear of the rain. His mouth moved as though he were speaking, but she couldn't hear a word. She tore at the mesh, helpless, and then hurled her whole weight against the machine as he brought two wires together with a spark. In utter silence the brilliant silver blade shot down.
Something exploded, somewhere, but Mrs. Coulter was beyond feeling it.
There were hands lifting her up: Lord Asriel's hands. There was nothing to be surprised at anymore; the intention craft stood behind him, poised on the slope and perfectly level. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the craft, ignoring the gunfire, the billowing smoke, the cries of alarm and confusion.
"Is he dead? Did it go off?" she managed to say.
Lord Asriel climbed in beside her, and the snow leopard leapt in, too, the half-stunned monkey in her mouth. Lord Asriel took the controls and the craft sprang at once into the air. Through pain-dazed eyes Mrs. Coulter looked down at the mountain slope. Men were running here and there like ants; some lay dead, while others crawled brokenly over the rocks; the great cable from the generating station snaked down through the chaos, the only purposeful thing in sight, making its way to the glittering bomb, where the President's body lay crumpled inside the cage.
"Lord Roke?" said Lord Asriel.
"Dead," she whispered.
He pressed a button, and a lance of flame jetted toward the tossing, swaying zeppelin. An instant later the whole airship bloomed into a rose of white fire, engulfing the intention craft, which hung motionless and unharmed in the middle of it. Lord Asriel moved the craft unhurriedly away, and they watched as the blazing zeppelin fell slowly, slowly down on top of the whole scene - bomb, cable, soldiers, and all - and everything began to tumble in a welter of smoke and flames down the mountainside, gathering speed and incinerating the resinous trees as it went, until it plunged into the white waters of the cataract, which whirled it all away into the dark.
Lord Asriel touched the controls again and the intention craft began to speed away northward. But Mrs. Coulter couldn't take her eyes off the scene; she watched behind them for a long time, gazing with tear-filled eyes at the fire, until it was no more than a vertical line of orange scratched on the dark and wreathed in smoke and steam, and then it was nothing.