Chapter 9 9. Upstream

The shadow of the mind seems almighty sun rest time clouds passing by the moon — Emily Dickinson "Show me the knife," said Iorek Bernison, "I understand metal, and things made of iron or steel are no mystery to bears, but I have never seen a knife like yours, I'd love to take a closer look." Will and the Bear King are bathing in the warm rays of the setting sun on the front deck of the steamer, and the boat is going up the river quickly, with enough fuel and food on board; he and Iorek Bernison are starting to take stock of each other for the second time , has been done once before.

Will handed the knife to Iorek with the handle facing forward, and the bear king took it carefully, his thumb and other four fingers were as skilled as a human being, and now he turned the knife around, brought it close to his eyes, and held it up to shine , Tried the sharp edge on a piece of iron-steel blade. "That's the blade you sliced ​​my helmet with," he said. "The other blade is so strange that I don't know what it is, what it's for, or what it's made of, but I want to. How did you got it?" Will told him most of what had happened, omitting only the things about himself: his mother, the man he had killed, his father.

"You fought it and lost two fingers?" said the Bear King. "Show me the wound." Will held out his hand.Thanks to Father's oil, the bone's exposed wound was healing well, but still fragile.Bear King sniffed. "Blood moss," he said, "and one other thing I can't tell. Who gave it to you?" "A man who told me how to use the knife, and then died, had some oil in one of his horn boxes, and healed my wound; the witches tried, but they spells don't work." "Then he told you how to use the knife?" Iorek Bernison said, handing the knife back to Will carefully.

"Go to war with it on Lord Asriel's side," Will said, "but first I have to save Lyra? Tricky Tongue." "Then we'll help," said Bear King, and Will's heart was pounding with joy. In the days that followed, Will learned why the bears made the long journey to Central Asia, far from home. Ever since that catastrophe blasted the worlds apart, all the ice in the North Pole has begun to melt, and all sorts of strange new waters have appeared.Since the bears are dependent on the ice and the animals that live in the cold sea, they could see that if they stayed where they would soon starve, they decided to take action out of reason.They must move to a place where there is plenty of snow and ice: they will go to the highest mountains, to the pinnacles soaring to the sky; .They will evolve from ocean-dwelling bears to bears hiding in snow-capped mountains until the world settles down again.

"So you're not fighting?" Will said. "Our old enemies have disappeared with the seals and walruses; and if we encounter new enemies, we know how to fight." "I thought there was going to be a big war and everyone would be involved. If so, which side would you fight for?" "The side that's good for the bears, so what? But there are a few people I like a little bit, one is the man who flies in the balloon, he is dead. The other is the witch Serafina Pekkala. The third is that Kid Lila? Eloquent. So I'll do what's good for the bear first, then what's good for that kid or the witch, or avenge my dead comrade Lee Scoresby. That's why I Something that will help you save Lyra Smooth Tongue from that damned woman, Kurt."

He told Will how he and some of his subjects swam to the mouth of the river, rented boats and sailors with gold, made reasonable use of the Arctic currents, and followed the river as far as possible from the inland—because the source of the river was where they were going. At the foot of the northern mountain range.And because Lyra was also imprisoned there, so far so good. Time passed like this. During the day, Will lay on the deck dozing, resting, and recharging his energy, because he was exhausted from head to toe.He watched as the scenery began to change, the rolling prairie giving way to low grassy slopes and then higher mountains occasionally punctuated by canyons and cataracts; the boat continued south.

He would talk to the captain and the sailors out of politeness, but he lacked Lyra's familiarity with strangers, and he found it hard to think of many topics; luckily they weren't very interested in him either, it was just a matter of time. a job, and when it's over they leave without a care; besides, they don't like bears very much, although they have plenty of gold.Will was a foreigner, and they didn't care what he was as long as he paid for the meal.And he also has a strange witch-like elf: sometimes he is around, sometimes he seems to disappear.Like many sailors, they were superstitious and happy to leave him alone.

Balthamos was also silent.Sometimes his pain was so intense that he would leave the ship and fly high into the clouds, looking for any light, smell, meteor, or crest that would remind him of his shared experience with Baruch.In the evenings, too, when he talked in the dark little cabin where Will slept, he simply reported how far they had come, and how far they were from that cave and valley, perhaps thinking Will had little sympathy, though if he paid attention If so, he will find that this is not the case at all.He became more and more terse and prim, but never sarcastic, at least he kept that promise.

As for Iorek, he checked the knife again and again, looking at it for hours, trying the blades on both sides, bending it, holding it up to the light, licking it with his tongue, sniffing it, even Listen to the sound of air flowing over its surface.Will wasn't worried about the knife, since Iorek was clearly the most accomplished craftsman, nor was he worried about Iorek himself, since his huge claws were dexterous. Iorek finally walked up to Will and said, "This other blade, you didn't tell me what it does, what is it for? How do you use it?" "I can't show you here," Will said, "because the boat is moving, and I'll show you as soon as the boat stops."

"I can imagine it," said the Bear King, "but I don't understand it. It's the strangest thing I've ever seen." He handed it back to Will, staring into it for a long time with deep black eyes, inscrutable and uneasy. By this time, the water had changed color as it encountered the remains of the first flood from the North Pole.Will saw that the big earthquakes had different effects on the earth in different places.Village after village was flooded to the roof, and hundreds of thousands of people with nothing left in their boats or canoes tried to salvage something.The earth must have sunk a little here, for the river widened and the current slowed down, making it difficult for the captain to follow his true course in the wide and swift current.The air here is hotter, the sun is higher, and the bears find it difficult to find a little coolness. Some swim with the boat, tasting the water of their hometown in this foreign land.

But at last the river narrowed and deepened again, and before long the mountains of the Great Central Asian Plateau began to appear. One day Will saw a white fringe on the horizon, and he kept staring, and it was those white peaks and ridges and passes, rising so high that they seemed so close—only a few miles away—but in reality Still far away, only because the mountains are huge, and as the hour gets closer they seem to grow impossibly taller. Most of the bears had never seen mountains but the cliffs of their own Svalbard; looking up at the great mountains still so far away, they fell silent. "What do we hunt there, Iorek Bernison?" asked a bear. "Are there seals on the hills? How shall we live?" "Snow and ice," replied the Bear King, "we'll be comfortable, and there's plenty of wildlife. Our lives will be different for a while, but we will survive.When things are back to normal and the North Pole freezes over again, we'll still be alive to go back and reclaim our lands.If we hang around there, we'll starve to death.Get ready for a strange and new way of life, my bears. " At last the steamship could not go any further, because the river bed here was narrow and shallow, so the captain stopped the boat at the bottom of a valley, which must have been covered with grass and mountain flowers, and the river meandered through the pebble river bed, but now the valley is gone. It became a lake.The captain insisted that he did not dare to sail through, because after this point, even if there was a flood from the north, it would not be enough for the ship to navigate. So they docked at a protruding rock like a trestle on the side of the valley, and got off the boat. "Where are we now?" Will said to the captain, whose English was limited. The captain found a tattered old map, pointed at his pipe, and said, "Here in this valley. You take it and go on." "Thanks," Will said, wondering if he should offer to pay, but the captain had already turned to supervise the unloading. It was not long before about thirty bears and their armor were all on the narrow bank.The captain yelled a horn, and the boat immediately turned around against the current and sailed into the middle of the river. A siren echoed in the valley for a long time. Will sat down on a rock to look at the map.If he is not mistaken, according to what the angel said, the valley where Laila was imprisoned is not far to the southeast, and the best way to get there is through a pass called Song City. "Remember this place, everyone," said Iorek Bernison to his subjects. "When we return to the North Pole, we will gather here. Now you will go your separate ways and hunt, eat, and live. Don't make a war, we are not here to fight a war.If there is a threat of war, I will summon you. " Bears are mostly solitary, and they gather only in times of war and emergencies.Now that they had reached the edge of the snow field, they all couldn't wait to set off to explore on their own. "Come on, Will," said Iorek Bernison. "Let's go find Lyra." Will picked up the rucksack and they set off. The first part of the journey went well.Although the sun was hot, the pine forest and rhododendron bushes shaded them, and the air was fresh and clean.The ground is full of rocks, but the rocks are covered with deep moss and pine needles, and the slopes to climb are not very steep.Will thinks he enjoys exercising like this.During these days on the ship, he had no choice but to rest and build up his strength.When he met Iorek, his body was already at its limit.He himself didn't know this, but the Bear King did. Once the two of them were alone, Will told Iorek how to use the other blade.He opened up a world of misty, dripping rainforests; strong-smelling steam wafting out into the thin mountain air.Iorek watched carefully, touched the window with his paw, sniffed, stepped into the humid air and looked around quietly.Monkeys and apes screeching, birds chirping, insects chirping, frogs croaking, and the incessant ticking caused by the heavy humidity, to Will on the other side, it was a commotion. Then Iorek came back and watched Will close the window, begging to take another look at the knife; its eyes were so tight on the silver blade that Will worried it might cut them.Iorek inspected it for a long time, then handed it back to Will, saying only one thing: "I was right: I can't beat it." They move on, talking very little, which suits them both.Iorek Bernison caught a gazelle and ate most of it, leaving the tender meat for Will to cook.Once, when they came to a village, and Iorek was waiting in the forest, Will exchanged a gold coin for some stale bread and dried fruit, and a pair of yak leather boots and a sheepskin vest, because the night was already dark. It's getting cold. Will also asked others about Rainbow Valley.The man's spirit was a raven, and Balthamos also became a raven spirit to help, making understanding and communication between them easier, and Will was given clear and useful pointers. There are still three days to go.That's right, they're almost here. Others are coming too. Lord Asriel's squadron of rotorcraft and Zeppelins reached the passage between two worlds: the rift in the sky above Svalbard.They still have a long way to go, but besides replenishing basic supplies, they fly non-stop.The Commander, King Okunway of Africa, communicates twice a day with the Basalt Fortress; his rotorcraft has a Galliferspin lodestone receiver, by which he is as swift as Lord Asriel himself Find out what's happening elsewhere. The news received was disturbing.Madame Salmazia, the little spy, had heard that the two mighty arms of the Church—the Inquisition and the Society for the Work of the Holy Spirit—agreed to put aside dissent and pool intelligence.The Society had an alethirist faster and more skilled than Fra Pavel, and thanks to him the ecclesiastical court now knew Lyra's exact location and much more: they knew that Lord Asriel had Send troops to rescue her. The court wasted no time in ordering a fleet of Zeppelins to take off, and that same day a battalion of Swiss Guards began boarding the Zeppelins waiting on the shores of Lake Geneva. So each side knew the other was headed for the cave, and they both knew it was to their advantage whoever got there first, but neither had much advantage at the moment: Lord Asriel's rotorcraft was faster than the Zeppelin of the Church Court, But they fly farther and are constrained by the speed of their zeppelins. There was another circumstance: whoever captured Laila first would have to fight the enemy to break out of the encirclement. This was easier for the ecclesiastical courts because they didn't have to worry about Laila's safety.They went there to kill her. The zeppelin in which the presiding judge of the ecclesiastical court was traveling was also carrying some passengers he did not know.Knight Thales received a message through his lodestone resonator ordering himself and Lady Sarmazia to be smuggled onto the airship.When the Zeppelin reached the valley, he and his wife went ahead alone to the cave where Lyra was imprisoned, and tried to protect her until King Ogunwe's troops came to rescue her. Her safety was above all else. It's dangerous to board a Zeppelin, especially with the gear they're carrying.Besides the lodestone resonator, the most important equipment is a pair of insect pupae and their food.When the adults hatch, they look like dragonflies, but they're not actually dragonflies in Will and Lyra's world.First, they are much larger.The Galifuspians carefully feed these guys. The insects of each tribe are different. The tribe of the Knights of Thales breeds large red and yellow striped dragonflies with great appetite and savagery, while Sarmazia What the lady raised was a fast, slender worm with a blue electrified body that glowed in the dark. Each spy is equipped with a few of these pupae, which can be kept alive or rapidly grown into adults by feeding them carefully concocted oils and honey.Depending on wind speeds, Thales and Sarmazia now have thirty-six hours to hatch the pupae, and because the flight takes so long, they need the insects to hatch before the Zeppelin lands. The knight and his companions found an inconspicuous spot behind a shelf where they could hide safely while the airship was being loaded and fueled.Then the engine began to roar, the light hull was shaken back and forth, the ground crew dispersed, and eight Zeppelins rose into the night sky. This kind of hiding would have been regarded as a fatal insult by them, but at least it can hide as well as a mouse.From the hiding place, the Galliferspins could overhear a lot, and they communicated with Lord Locke every hour in King Ogunway's gyroplane. But there was one thing they couldn't hear from the Zeppelin, because the presiding judge didn't mention it: that the assassin, Father Gomez, had received a pardon for his future sins—if the ecclesiastical court acted... If you fail.Father Gomez is in another place, and no one knows his whereabouts.