The ink-black water of the Oxus swirled before him. A causeway ran next to the bank, straight as a rod. At regular intervals old Soviet streetlights, grimy and rusted, arched over the promenade. There was a train station behind him. He had just gotten off. Ahead of him was the border with Uzbekistan.

He had also lost Kirjava. He could sense her, dimly, somewhere in the undergrowth of hydrangeas which ran along the curbs of surface streets near the river. He heard her thoughts, was calling her to him in fact, but there was something like static between them. His mind was full, crammed with too much information. He held a small paper cup in his right hand, a Turkish coffee. He felt hungover, but had drunk nothing, and the events of his dream on the train replayed in his mind. The shade, Xaphania, Mary Malone. He needed his daemon to come back into his body. It would have been easier if he could still see her. He thought of another dream, the one that had made him leave London, of Lyra on a boat traveling through the Mediterranean. Less a dream than an impression of a dream, but lately these had provoked him to action without his fully remembering them. Like this dream now. He did not know why, and it was nothing rational to go on, but he had to get to Samarkand. But how does one meet a shade?

He thought of the book, then. It was the dreams of Lyra, and the mysterious square temple in the desert, which had told him he had to leave London. But it was the book which told him that this place was where he had to go. A text written in strange characters, a combination of Egyptian and Arabic - his professor had called it "Manichaean" - that had been on display for his first year class as an example of special collections in his university library. The book described a fire-temple the Qarmatians had replaced the Kaaba with during a heretical episode of Islamic History, and it was this which made Will realize the temple he was dreaming of was Persian. He looked for where the surviving temples in the world were, and decided - depressed one winter day, alone at university, behind on his rent - that he would go to Yazd. For some odd reason he thought he might find Lyra there. But that was before he learned that Persia was originally further to the East...

"Although I suppose Professor Polstead could have told me that, if I had stayed," he said to himself. He picked up a flat stone lying on the promenade, considered it for a second, and then skipped it along the water of the river. He felt Kirjava returning to him as a warm swelling in his chest. She said no words to him, but he felt contentment, protection - and also warning, a guidance. His daemon was looking out for him. Trouble was near. And he did not speak the language.

Above the black water was an ivory bridge. It curled gracefully over the river, its walls set with metal lamps that looked almost Mongolian to Will. There were two lanes for car traffic, and also walkways for pedestrians on either side. It crossed the border and abutted a snarl of barbed wire where the Uzbek checkpoint stood. He saw pacing guards with AK-47s. There were a series of tolls for the cars, but there was also an office, with plexiglass windows shining translucently in the mid-afternoon light, for pedestrians. He hoisted his rucksack and began to cross the bridge.

Halfway across he encountered a group of Chinese tourists, snapping photographs. They appeared to be an extended family, and were taking turns posing at the high point of the bridge in the middle of the river. They were taking up the whole walkway, which initially annoyed him, but Will felt a rush of familiarity when he saw them and irrationally he thought that maybe one of them had English as a second language, unlike the people he had met on the train.

"Hello," he said, raising his voice a bit. "I'm trying to cross the border, is it okay if I cut through?"

The family turned to him, and an older woman answered, "You are crossing the border alone?"

He swallowed. "Well. Yes."

There were some murmurs exchanged glances. Then the woman shook her head. "You're not going to do that," she said.

"I'm sorry?" said Will, thinking for a moment that they had blocked the bridge on purpose, and were about to demand something of him.

"They take bribes," said the woman. "What are you, Australian? Even if you have booked a visa with them, they will make you pay extra for it."

"I see," said Will. "Well, I need to go through."

She looked at him like he had a disease. "Why?"

"Why are you taking selfies on a bridge in the middle of the Oxus?" he shot back.

She snorted. "We are not taking selfies. We are a television crew. From Hong Kong." She pulled a business card from inside her jacket and handed it to him. It read: Li Daiyu - Paranormal Investigator. The Unbelievable, 怪談.

He turned it over, but could not make much of the characters on the back. Not a family then, although there were many different ages. Some of the crew were quite young, still in their teens. "Why don't you have any film cameras, then?" he asked suspiciously.

"Because they confiscated them," said one of the men, gesturing to the Uzbek checkpoint beyond them. "Accused us of espionage."

"We have been coming here every day for two weeks to try to get them back," said the woman.

"I guess it's a picturesque spot to wait," said Will, looking out over the roiling water.

"No no no," said the woman. "We came here for this. We came here for the anomaly."

"I'm sorry?" said Will.

Daiyu pointed above the river, and Will felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. He knew what he was going to see there before he looked. His body knew it - the stubs of his two left fingers began throbbing. He turned and followed her gaze. There was a window, cut by the subtle knife, or some other force. Through it, he could see a stream of reflected light. Dust, he thought at first, and then realized it was just sunlight refracted in a waterfall. Xaphania, he thought. You were supposed to get all of them. And then he thought, maybe it leads to her... and then quickly suppressed it. If he allowed himself to think it he might go through, and if he went through it might close behind him, and he would be trapped there to die within ten years, which would be a wasted life.

Except what did he have to live for, again? It had not been that good so far...

"My," he said slowly. "That is an anomaly. Do the authorities..." he gestured toward the Uzbek checkpoint. The woman shook her head. "I see. So you're taking 'selfies', to get footage for your television program."

"We think it is a gateway to the spirit world," said Daiyu.

"Have you tried to...go through it?" said Will. The bridge at its zenith was about fifteen meters above the water, and the window was three meters above that. Any boat on the river that was able to go under the bridge could not reach it. It could only have been cut from the other side, Will decided. But then, why would the bearer not have closed it? Unless they were being pursued, he thought, his mind racing ahead of him - yes, they were pursued and jumped quickly down into the water, and then could not get back up to close it...at least, this was one possibility.

Daiyu was looking at him appraisingly. "You have seen one of these before." Suddenly the attitude of the team shifted. Up until then only Daiyu and a couple others had been paying attention to Will. Most were uninterested, or had been observing the anomaly in a non-obvious way. All at once seven pairs of eyes were looking at him intently, even the teenagers, who began whispering to each other in Cantonese.

"Maybe," said Will, deciding to answer truthfully while keeping things vague. "I'm not sure. What are they saying?"

"They are debating whether we should interview you," said Daiyu. "We were looking for a Buddhist angle on this story."

"Oh," said Will. "Can't help you there."

"In answer to your question," said Daiyu, "we are renting a hydrofoil ferry."

"Sorry, what?"

"A very small hovercraft the Russians build. We want to use it to get close-up footage of the anomaly, but the ship is useless without our equipment."

"We were going to rent an ekranoplan," said the other man who spoke English. "But we would have to drag it from the Caspian Sea, it's not in the program budget."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Will.

"These are ground-effect vehicles," said Daiyu. "They operate best over water. And Jiawei is only joking, there is no way we could afford Soviet military aircraft. But hydrofoil ferries are common in this country. The Soviets loved them. We just need to give them a boost to make the hovercraft float higher. Which makes great television." She beamed.

Will looked out over the river. Was this window what he had been looking for? Could it be it led to Lyra's world, and he could reconnect to her through there? And why had Xaphania not closed it? It had been almost ten years. But then, the angel had millions of worlds to travel through...

"You know something about this," said Daiyu. "You should come with us to our hotel, we can interview you there."

Suddenly he snapped back to reality. These were strangers. "I'm very intrigued," he said. His heart ached. Lyra... "But I really need to get to Uzbekistan by nightfall. My visa is dated for today."

"They are going to charge you 5 million s'om to enter," said Daiyu. "I'm warning you."

"It's a risk I have to take."

"Well do you have the money?" When he did not answer she continued, "We are staying in the Lotus Hotel, near Dunya Bazar in Turkmenabat. We will also be back here tomorrow to try to retrieve our cameras. Or at the Chinese Embassy, filing an official complaint with our ambassador. If you can't get through, find us again, we'll help you."

He eyed her suspiciously. "You don't know me. Why would you help me?"

Daiyu looked him over. "I like Australians. But also, my ghost tells me that you know something about this. So I'm acting in my self-interest. And it makes great television." She held out a hand.

Reluctantly, he took it, and then shook. "Alright," he said. "But I'm going to try the border first. I reserved a visa for this date."

She nodded, and the film crew parted to let him pass.

He walked back down the bridge, his mind abuzz with the unexpected window. Everything so far was telling him to cross the border and get to Samarkand. What he would find there he was unsure. But if he left Turkmenistan, he would lose the chance to see what was beyond that window. The Sun was beginning to set. He walked down the other side of the white bridge, and approached the red and white awning of the border crossing. The windows glowed orange in the dying light.

Suddenly he felt, or imagined, a shadow behind him. He turned and there was Spinoza, standing on the edge of the bridge, glaring at him. "Aren't you forgetting something?" he said.

"I'm coming to meet you," protested Will. "In Samarkand."

"So you're just going to leave the window behind?"

"Well, yes," said Will. "I promised Xaphania that I would not go through another, and even if I did - the risk is too great."

"Hm," said Spinoza. "You've gone soft."

"You said you wanted me to meet you in Samarkand, which is what I'm doing!"

"Why do you think time has any meaning to me at all?"

"What?" said Will, stopping short. What did that mean?

"If you get there tomorrow, two weeks from now, what difference does it make. Like I said, I'm dead. I can wait."

"So you want me to go look at the window?"

"I don't want you to do anything. It's you who doesn't know what he wants. And by the way, you've got a problem," he gestured matter-of-factly behind Will's head.

Will turned to see two Uzbek guards walking forward, clearly perturbed that Will had stopped right in front of the office, in full view of everyone, to have a conversation with an unknown being. "Uh, hi," he said. "I'm here to, uh, cross the border." He waved his passport. They gestured with their rifles noncommittally and began to escort him inside. Great, he thought to Kirjava as he stepped through the doorway. Looks like I'm being apprehended...