Chapter 7 7. Mary alone

The last rose dances like a majestic tree spreading its fruitful vines...——John Milton At almost the same moment, the seducer whom Father Gomez went to follow was himself being seduced. "Thank you, no, no, I only need this much, I really don't want it, thank you." Dr. Mary Malone said to the old couple in the olive garden, because they had to give her too much food, so much She can't hold it. They have no children and live here in isolation.They had been afraid of the ghosts that appeared in the silver-grey woods, but when Mary Malone approached with the rucksack, the ghosts were scared and ran away.The old couple had welcomed Mary into their little vine-sheltered cottage, served her with wine, cheese, bread, and olives, and now they wouldn't let her go.

"I must go on," said Mary again, "thank you, you've been so kind to me--I can't carry--oh yes, a little more cheese--thanks--" Apparently they saw her as a talisman against ghosts, something she wished she had.She'd seen enough vandalism, ghost-eaten adults, and carrion-eating urchins during her week in Magpie City to fill her with dread of the wandering vampires.All she knew was that they did float away whenever she came near, but it was impossible for anyone who wanted her to stay because she had to keep going. She put away the last morsel of goat cheese wrapped in vine leaves, bowed again with a smile, and took a final sip of the spring water gurgling from the gray rocks, and then, like the old couple, gently Clapping his hands lightly, he turned and left firmly.

She looked much more decisive than when she set out.The last communication with the entities she and Lyra called Shadow Particles and Dust, respectively, had been on her computer monitor, and at their command she had destroyed it.Now she was at a loss, they told her to go through the exit of the Oxford where she lived - which was also Will's Oxford - which she did, only to find herself in another extraordinary world, where The spectacle made him dizzy and trembling.Other than that, her only mission is to find the boy and girl, and play snake, whatever that means. So she walked, explored, questioned, but found nothing.But now, as she left the olive grove and turned onto the path, she felt that she must be guided.

When she was far enough away from the small farmhouse that she was sure no one would disturb her, she sat down under the pine tree and opened her rucksack.On the bottom layer of the rucksack, wrapped in a silk scarf, was a book she had kept for twenty years: a book on Chinese divination—. She brought the book with her for two reasons.One is emotional: the book was given to her by her grandfather, and she used it a lot when she was in school.Another reason is that when Laila first found Mary's lab, she pointed to the poster of the symbol on the door and asked, "What's that?" Learned (she claims) that Dust has many other ways of talking to humans, one of which is using these Chinese symbols.

So, in her haste to pack and leave her world, Mary Malone took this, and the stalks of jasmine she used to read.Now is the time to use it. She spread the silk on the ground, and began to divide, then count, then divide and count again, and then put the number aside.As a teenager, she was obsessed with it because of a combination of curiosity and fanaticism.Haven't had much contact since then.She had almost forgotten how, but soon she found the steps returning to her mind, along with a sense of poise and concentration that played an important role in communicating with the Shadow Particles .

Finally, she arrived at the number corresponding to the hexagram of six intermittent lines, and she began to look up its meaning.This is the hardest part, because of the inscrutable language. She read: Turning to the peak to gain nutrients brings good luck, sharp eyes to detect greed like a tiger This seems very inspiring, she continued to read, following the verses in it, all the way through a maze of paths, and finally read: Quiet Love in the remote mountains, trails and paths, small stones, door holes and cave entrances. She could only guess what it meant. "Acupoint" couldn't help reminding her of the mysterious window through which she entered the world; the first few lines seemed to indicate that she should go up.

Puzzled, but encouraged, she put away her book and the eucalyptus, and set out down the path. Four hours passed and she was hot and tired.The sun is low on the horizon.The rough trail had faded away, and now she was climbing, harder and harder, among the rolling boulders and pebbles. Below the slope to the left, olive groves, lemon groves, neglected vineyards, and an abandoned windmill, all foggy in the twilight.To her right, a debris pile, small ores and gravels on the ground, sloped up to the edge of a crumbling limestone cliff. Exhausted, she lifted the rucksack again and stepped onto another flat rock—but stopped before she could shift her weight over it.Something strange glinted in the sun, and she shielded her eyes with her hands from the glare reflected by the rubble, and tried to find it again.

There it was: hanging unsupported like a piece of glass, but not the reflective glass that would attract attention: just a square that stood apart from its surroundings.Then she remembered what she had said: paths, small stones, door openings and cave openings. It was like a window on Sunderland Avenue, and she could see it only because of the sunlight: if the sun had been higher, it would have had no shadow at all. She approached that little patch of air with curiosity and excitement, because she hadn't had time to look at the first window last time: she had to leave as soon as possible.But she looked at this one carefully, touched the sill, turned to the back, to see why she couldn't see it from the other side, and compared how this one was so different from the last one, and felt her heart bewitched by these wonderful sights. And almost exploded with excitement.

The man with the knife had opened this window around the time of the American Revolution, and he had inadvertently forgotten to close it, but at least he was cutting something very similar to this side of the world: also next to a rock face.But the rocks over there are different from here, not limestone but granite, and when Mary stepped into that new world, she found herself not standing at the foot of a towering cliff, but at the foot of a low cliff slightly above the ground. On the stone pile, overlooking a vast plain. It was dusk here too, and she sat down to catch her breath, rest her legs, and savor the miracle without hurrying.

The boundless golden light and the boundless prairie were completely different from anything she had ever seen in her own world. First, although the short grasses of various colors cover most of the land, buff, tan, emerald, ocher, yellow, and gold, gently undulating and visible in the long afterglow of the sun, the plains It seems that there are rivers of rocks criss-crossing, and the surface is glowing with a faint gray light. Second, the plain was full of the tallest trees Mary had ever seen.While attending a high-energy physics conference in California, she took the time to look at the tall redwood trees and marvel at them; but whatever they were, they were at least half as tall as the redwood trees.Their leaves were dense and dark green, and their huge trunks were golden-red in the deep twilight.

Finally, groups of animals graze on the prairie, because they are too far away to see what it is.Their movements were odd, and she couldn't quite figure them out just yet. She was very tired, and hungry and thirsty.Somewhere nearby, however, she heard the delightful ticking of a spring, and it took her only a minute to find it: a stream of clear water seeped through a crack in the green moss and flowed down the hillside , forming a thin stream.She drank gratefully for a long time, filling the bottle, and then set about making herself comfortable, for the night was fast approaching. She ate some coarse bread and goat's cheese, leaning against a rock in her sleeping bag, and fell into a deep sleep. When she woke up, the rising sun shone brightly on her face, the air was cool, and the dew turned into small beads and fell on her hair and sleeping bag.She lay refreshed for a few more minutes, feeling as if she was the only person in the world. She sat up, yawned, stretched, shivered, washed in the cool spring water, ate a few dried figs, and began to observe the surrounding environment. She climbed the hill behind her, and the ground gradually sloped down, then rose again, and the whole panorama unfolded before her eyes, across the vast prairie.The long shadows of the trees were on her side now, and she could see flocks of birds circling in front of them.They look like specks of dust compared to the towering green canopy. She picked up her rucksack again and went downhill into the rough, lush grass of the prairie toward the nearest row of trees four or five miles away. The grass was knee-deep, with undergrowth like juniper growing in the middle, only her ankles high, and flowers like poppies, buttercups, and cornflowers, which added a different color to the landscape; Then she saw a large bee, the size of the top knuckle of her thumb.It flew over a blue flower and threw it up and down.But when it came out of the bud and flew into the sky again, she could see clearly that it was not an insect, because after a while, it flew to her hand, landed on her finger, and very gently pulled the long needle-like The mouth tapped on her skin, then flew away again as soon as it realized it wasn't nectar.It was a tiny hummingbird, its bronze-feathered wings flapping so fast she couldn't see clearly. How jealous every botanist on earth would be if they could see what she sees now! As she walked on, she found herself getting closer and closer to a herd of the grazing animals she had seen the night before, whose actions puzzled her inexplicably.They were about the size of a deer or antelope and similar in color, but their legs made her stop and rub her eyes to get a better look: a rhombus in shape, two in the middle, one in front and one under the tail, so they moved Get up with a weird rocking motion.Ma.Li really wanted to check their skeletons, to understand how the entire structure works. As for the grazing animals, they watched her with docile and indifferent eyes, not alarmed at all.She wanted to get closer and take a look at them slowly, but it was getting hotter and hotter, and the shade of those big trees looked very attractive, anyway, there was plenty of time. Presently she found herself stepping out of the meadow into a river of stones like those seen from the hillside: another miracle. It may have been some kind of lava flow, dark below, almost black, but lighter on the surface, as if ground down by impact.It was as smooth as a well-paved road in Mary's own world, and certainly much easier to walk on than a grass field. The river made a wide bend toward the trees, and the nearer she went along the river, the more amazed she was by the size of the trunks, which she estimated were as wide as the house she used to live in and as high as —Like...she couldn't even find a comparison. She approached the first tree trunk and put her hands on the crumpled red-gold bark.The ground is covered with ankle-deep brown leaves.The leaves are as long as her feet, and they are soft and fragrant when stepped on.Soon she was surrounded by a cloud of midge-like flying insects, a swarm of tiny hummingbirds, a yellow butterfly with wings as wide as her palm, and a daunting number of reptiles.The air is filled with hums, chirps and scrapes. She walked through the trees feeling a lot like being in a cathedral: the same silence, the same sense of ascension in the structure, and the same awe within herself. It took longer to get here than she had expected, and it was almost noon, because the beams of light pouring down through the tree cover were almost vertical.Mary drowsily wondered why the herbivores didn't hide in the shade of the trees during the hottest part of the day. She soon discovered why. She felt too hot to go any further, so she lay down to rest under a giant tree, dozing with her head on her rucksack. She had closed her eyes for about 20 minutes and hadn't fully fallen asleep when suddenly there was a very loud impact sound from a very close place, shaking the ground. Then there was another sound.Mary sat up startled, regained her senses, and saw something moving a yard away that turned into a round object, rolled across the ground, stopped and fell on its side. Then, a little farther off, another one fell, and she saw the huge thing fall, hit the roots of the nearest tree, and roll away. The thought of having such a thing fall on her was enough to make her grab her rucksack and run out of the woods. What are they?Seed pods? Looking up carefully, she ventured once more to the canopy and looked at the one that fell closest.She picked it up and dragged it out of the woods, and put it on the grass to see what happened. It is perfectly round, with a diameter about the width of her palm, and a piece is recessed in the middle where it was connected to the tree. It is not heavy, but it is very hard. It is covered with tough hair, so the hand can only touch it in one direction. In the past, the other direction did not work.She scratched the surface with a knife, but there was no mark left. Her fingers seemed to be smoother, and she smelled it: in addition to the smell of dust, there was also a faint fragrance. She looked at the pod again, and there was something shiny in the middle of the pod.When she touched it again, she felt it was a little more slippery.It's spilling an oil. Mary put it down and pondered the way the world had evolved. If her guesses about these universes are correct, that they are multiple worlds as predicted by quantum theory, it is possible that some of them were spun off from her own world earlier than others.Evidently, in this world, evolution favored large trees and large animals with diamond-shaped skeletons. She began to realize how narrow her knowledge was, not knowing botany, not geology, not biology of any kind—she was as ignorant as a baby. Then she heard a low, thunderous rumble, and at first it was difficult to tell where it was coming from, until she saw a cloud of dust rolling along a road--towards the row of trees, towards her.It was about a mile away, but it was not moving slowly, and she was suddenly frightened. She ran into the woods again, found a narrow space between two big tree roots and squeezed in, peering out from above the tree roots beside her at the approaching dust cloud. The scene in front of her made her dizzy.At first it looked like a motorcade, then she thought it was a herd of animals on wheels.But this is impossible, no animal has wheels.She hadn't seen it, but she did see it now. There were a dozen or so of them, about the same size as the grass-eating animals, but thinner, gray, with horns on their heads, and short, elephant-like noses.They also have the same diamond-shaped skeleton, but they somehow have a wheel on each of their front and rear legs. But no animal is born with wheels, she insists on this in her mind, they can't exist, you need a shaft and a bearing completely separate from the rotating part, that can't happen, can't--then, when They stopped within fifty yards, and as the dust settled she suddenly made a connection between the two, and burst out laughing, mingled with a merry cough or two. Those wheels are the seed pods.Round and round, extremely hard and light—couldn't be more perfect.The animals hook the claws of the front and rear legs into the center of the pod, and use the two side legs to push the ground forward.She was amazed, but also a little worried, because their horns looked sharp and aggressive, and even from this distance, she could see the spirituality and curiosity in their eyes. They are looking for her. One of them saw the pod she had brought out of the woods, and he rolled towards it from the road. When he came close, he lifted it aside with his nose and rolled it to his companion. They gathered around the pod and touched it lightly with their soft, muscular noses, and she thought she understood their soft clicks, clicks, and grunts: they were expressing disapproval.Someone fiddled with this: it's not right. Then it occurred to her: I've come here for a purpose, even though I don't understand it yet.Be bold and strive for the initiative. So she stood up and shouted unnaturally: "Here, I am here, I saw your seed pods, I'm sorry, please don't hurt me." Their heads turned all over at once, their noses stuck out, their bright eyes looked forward, and their ears were all erect. She came out of her hiding place in the tree roots, faced them directly, and stretched out her hands, then realized that this gesture might mean nothing to an animal without hands.But she can only do so.She picked up the rucksack and walked across the grass to the road. Up close—not five paces away—she could see their shapes much better, but her attention was drawn to something alive and conscious in their eyes, a kind of spirituality. .These animals are as different from those that graze nearby as humans are from cattle. Mary pointed to herself and said, "Mary." The nearest animal stuck its nose forward.Mary leaned forward and the guy touched the chest she was pointing at, and she heard her voice come back from the guy's throat: "Mary." "What are you?" she asked. "What's your department?" the guy responded. She can only answer. "I'm human," she said. "I'm kinky," the guy said, and something even stranger happened: the animals laughed. Their eyes puckered up, their noses wriggled, their heads shook--and there was a real joyous sound coming from their throats.She couldn't help it: she laughed too. Then the other guy came up and touched her hand with his nose, and Mary reached over with her other hand and took his soft, hairy, probing nose. "Ah," she said, "you are smelling the pods..." "Seed box," said the guy. "If you can make sounds in my language, we might be able to communicate someday. God knows what. Mary," she said, pointing to herself again. no response.They just watch.She did it again: "Mary." The nearest animal touched its own chest with its nose and spoke.Is it three syllables or two syllables? He said it again, and this time Mary tried to make the same sound: "Murfa," she said carefully. The other animals laughed and repeated "Mulfa" in her voice, even as if they were making fun of the one who spoke. "Murfa!" they said again, as if it were a good joke. "Well, if you could laugh, I don't think you would eat me," said Mary.From this moment on, there was a casualness and friendliness between her and them, and she no longer felt nervous. The bunch of animals relaxed, too: they had something to do, they weren't just wandering around.Mary saw that one of them had a saddle or pack on its back, and the other two were lifting a seed pod up with their noses, and fastened it with straps around it, with complex and dexterous movements.When standing they balance on both legs, and when moving, they use the front and rear legs to steer, the movements are graceful and powerful. One of them rolled to the side of the road, raised its nose and blew like a horn.The group of herbivores raised their heads in unison and ran towards them.When they arrived, they stood patiently by the side of the road, letting the guy on wheels pass slowly among them, counting, marking, and counting. Then Mary saw one stick its nose under a herbivore to suckle, then roll to her side and gently lift its nose to her mouth. At first she flinched, but there was hope in the animal's eyes, and she stepped forward and opened her mouth again.He spat a bit of the sweet, light milk into her mouth, watched her drink it, and gave her some more, over and over again.He was so smart and friendly that Mary couldn't help but hugged his head and kissed it, smelling the hot, dusty hide, feeling the hard bone beneath it, and the muscular, powerful nose. After a while, the leader gave a soft cry, and the herbivores walked away.The Murfas were ready to leave. She was glad they had taken her in and sad that they were going to leave, but then she was surprised. One of them fell on his knees in the road and greeted her with his nose, and the others beckoned and invited her... Exactly: they offered to carry her, to take her with them. One took her rucksack and strapped it to the saddle of the third, and Mary scrambled onto the back of the kneeling Mulfa, not knowing where to put her feet--on his front feet Or on the back foot?What should her hands hold? But before she could think it through, the fellow stood up, and they all started down the road, and Mary rode with them on Mulfa. "Because he's Will."