«All right,» said the porter, turning back. «She says go on up. Mind you don't go anywhere else.»
«No, I won't,» she said demurely, a good little girl doing what she was told.
At the top of the stairs, though, she had a surprise, because just as she passed a door with a symbol indicating woman on it, it opened and there was Dr. Malone silently beckoning her in.
She entered, puzzled. This wasn't the laboratory, it was a washroom, and Dr. Malone was agitated.
She said, «Lyra, there's someone else in the lab — police officers or something. They know you came to see me yesterday — I don't know what they're after, but I don't like it What's going on?»
«How do they know I came to see you?»
«I don't know! They didn't know your name, but I knew who they meant —»
«Oh. Well, I can lie to them. That's easy.»
«But what is going on?»
A woman's voice spoke from the corridor outside: «Dr. Malone? Have you seen the child?»
«Yes,» Dr. Malone called. «I was just showing her where the washroom is…»
There was no need for her to be so anxious, thought Lyra, but perhaps she wasn't used to danger.
The woman in the corridor was young and dressed very smartly, and she tried to smile when Lyra came out, but her eyes remained hard and suspicious.
«Hello,» she said. «You're Lyra, are you?»
«Yeah. What's your name?»
«I'm Sergeant Clifford. Come along in.»
Lyra thought this young woman had a nerve, acting as if it were her own laboratory, but she nodded meekly. That was the moment when she first felt a twinge of regret. She knew she shouldn't be here; she knew what the alethiometer wanted her to do, and it was not this. She stood doubtfully in the doorway.
In the room already there was a tall powerful man with white eyebrows. Lyra knew what Scholars looked like, and neither of these two was a Scholar.
«Come in, Lyra,» said Sergeant Clifford again. «It's all right. This is Inspector Walters.»
«Hello, Lyra,» said the man. «I've been hearing all about you from Dr. Malone here. I'd like to ask you a few questions, if that's all right.»
«What sort of questions?» she said.
«Nothing difficult,» he said, smiling. «Come and sit down, Lyra.»
He pushed a chair toward her. Lyra sat down carefully, and heard the door close itself. Dr. Malone was standing nearby. Pantalaimon, cricket-formed in Lyra's breast pocket, was agitated; she could feel him against her breast, and hoped the tremor didn't show. She thought to him to keep still.
«Where d'you come from, Lyra?» said Inspector Walters.
If she said Oxford, they'd easily be able to check. But she couldn't say another world, either. These people were dangerous; they'd want to know more at once. She thought of the only other name she knew of in this world: the place Will had come from.
«Winchester,» she said.
«You've been in the wars, haven't you, Lyra?» said the inspector. «How did you get those bruises? There's a bruise on your cheek, and another on your leg — has someone been knocking you about?»
«No,» said Lyra.
«Do you go to school, Lyra?»
«Yeah. Sometimes,» she added.
«Shouldn't you be at school today?»
She said nothing. She was feeling more and more uneasy. She looked at Dr. Malone, whose face was tight and unhappy.
«I just came here to see Dr. Malone,» Lyra said.
«Are you staying in Oxford, Lyra? Where are you staying?»
«With some people,» she said. «Just friends.»
«What's their address?»
«I don't know exactly what it's called. I can find it easy, but I can't remember the name of the street.»
«Who are these people?»
«Just friends of my father,» she said.
«Oh, I see. How did you find Dr. Malone?»
«'Cause my father's a physicist, and he knows her.»
It was going more easily now, she thought. She began to relax into it and lie more fluently.
«And she showed you what she was working on, did she?»
«Yeah. The engine with the screen … Yes, all that.»
«You're interested in that sort of thing, are you? Science, and so on?»
«Yeah. Physics, especially.»
«You going to be a scientist when you grow up?»
That sort of question deserved a blank stare, which it got. He wasn't disconcerted. His pale eyes looked briefly at the young woman, and then back to Lyra.
«And were you surprised at what Dr. Malone showed you?»
«Well, sort of, but I knew what to expect»
«Because of your father?»
«Yeah. 'Cause he's doing the same kind of work.»
«Yes, quite. Do you understand it?»
«Some of it»
«Your father's looking into dark matter, then?»
«Yes.»
«Has he got as far as Dr. Malone?»
«Not in the same way. He can do some things better, but that engine with the words on the screen — he hasn't got one of those.»
«Is Will staying with your friends as well?»
«Yes, he —»
And she stopped. She knew at once she'd made a horrible mistake.
So did they, and they were on their feet in a moment to stop her from running out but somehow Dr. Malone was in the way, and the sergeant tripped and fell, blocking the way of the inspector. It gave Lyra time to dart out, slam the door shut behind her, and run full tilt for the stairs.
Two men in white coats came out of a door, and she bumped into them. Suddenly Pantalaimon was a crow, shrieking and flapping, and he startled them so much they fell back and she pulled free of their hands and raced down the last flight of stairs into the lobby just as the porter put the phone down and lumbered along behind his counter calling out «Oy! Stop there! You!»
But the flap he had to lift was at the other end, and she got to the revolving door before he could come out and catch her.
And behind her, the lift doors were opening, and the pale-haired man was running out so fast, so strong —
And the door wouldn't turn! Pantalaimon shrieked at her: they were pushing the wrong side!
She cried out in fear and turned herself around, hurling her little weight against the heavy glass, willing it to turn, and got it to move just in time to avoid the grasp of the porter, who then got in the way of the pale-haired man, so Lyra could dash out and away before they got through.
Across the road, ignoring the cars, the brakes, the squeal of tires; into this gap between tall buildings, and then another road, with cars from both directions. But she was quick, dodging bicycles, always with the pale-haired man just behind her — oh, he was frightening!
Into a garden, over a fence, through some bushes — Pantalaimon skimming overhead, a swift, calling to her which way to go; crouching down behind a coal bunker as the pale man's footsteps came racing past, and she couldn't hear him panting, he was so fast, and so fit; and Pantalaimon said, «Back now! Go back to the road —»
So she crept out of her hiding place and ran back across the grass, out through the garden gate, into the open spaces of the Banbury Road again; and once again she dodged across, and once again tires squealed on the road; and then she was running up Norham Gardens, a quiet tree-lined road of tall Victorian houses near the park.
She stopped to gain her breath. There was a tall hedge in front of one of the gardens, with a low wall at its foot, and she sat there tucked closely in under the privet.
«She helped us!» Pantalaimon said. «Dr. Malone got in their way. She's on our side, not theirs.»
«Oh, Pan,» she said, «I shouldn't have said that about Will. I should've been more careful —»
«Shouldn't have come,» he said severely.
«I know. That too …»
But she hadn't got time to berate herself, because Pantalaimon fluttered to her shoulder, and then said, «Look out — behind —» and immediately changed to a cricket again and dived into her pocket.