Oxford

'What on earth are we going to feed them all?'  The aisles of the supermarket stretch up and down before them, brightly lit and offering a vast array of choices.

'Giancarlo will eat anything.  Guilietta – I don't know.'

'How about pizza?  That must be safe.  All children love pizza.'

'OK, pizza it is.'

'What about Kirjava?  What does she eat?  Felix?  Whiskas?'

'Nothing. I mean; she doesn't actually need to eat anything.  She's a metaphysical creature, mostly.

'But we'll get her some Pringles.  She likes to nibble…'

Judy stares at Will incredulously.  'You're winding me up!'

'Certainly not.'  Will tries hard to keep his face straight, but inside he is rolling on the floor, laughing.  'Sour cream and chives flavour.'

'I suppose you're going to tell me that Remiel eats and drinks too.  What shall we get him?  A pork pie?  Kippers?  A Dr Pepper?'

'Oh no, that would never do.  Angels don't like sodas.'

Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Oxford

Mary Malone sits on the bed in her room, facing the TV which is displaying the sitting room of Will's flat, transmitted to her by his phone.  It is half-past seven in the evening in Oxford; the small hours of the morning in Sri Lanka.

'Hello Mary.  Are you alone?'  She has placed her own phone on top of the hotel TV.

'Will!  Yes, go ahead.  Who have you got with you?  Is that Giancarlo?  It can't be!'

'Mary!  It's been a very long time.'  It certainly has.  Six years.  What a handsome young man he has become!

'Who's that with you?'

'This is my sister, Guili.'  An extraordinarily beautiful child, eight or nine years old, with dark curly hair and deep brown eyes, waves shyly to Mary's face on the screen.  She had not known that you could talk to the TV as well as watch it.

'Hello, Guili.  Nice to meet you.'

'I'm Judy Beckley.  Hello, Mary.'  The girl sitting on the floor cushion next to Will is not what you would call conventionally pretty, but Mary sees in her the qualities that Will has already noticed.  Could she be the one? Mary asks herself.

'Mary!'  Kirjava's greeting is addressed both to her and to her daemon, which is perched on her left shoulder.

Lastly a voice; near and distant, loud and soft, real and imaginary:  'Mary.  It is good to see you.'

Mary has never been comfortable talking to angels.  'Remiel.  Greetings.'  I nearly said Welcome To Our Planet.

'OK, everyone.'  Will takes charge.  'We're all here because, in one way or another, circumstances have brought us together.  And because of this.'  He holds up the Knife.

'Does anyone here believe that we have all come together by chance?  Where this is involved,' he lifts the Knife higher, 'there are no chances, or accidents.

'The Knife has an intrinsic Purpose, and it's hard for us to tell when we are doing what we want, or what it wants.  A friend of mine, a very wise creature indeed, once told me this:

"Sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know.  Sometimes in doing what you intend you also do what the knife intends, without knowing."

'We must keep in mind what Iorek Byrnison said all the time from now on.  We must examine and question our motives in everything we say and do.'

Will looks around at everyone in the room, and Mary too.  He puts the Knife down on the carpet.

'OK.  First; let's look at what the alethiometer told Lyra, bearing in mind that reading the instrument is still very hard for her.'

'Can we trust this… thing?'  Judy asks.  'Isn't it all a bit, well, magical?  Mystical?  Not real?'

Only Mary and Kirjava know how much control Will exerts on his anger at this point.  He is silent for a few seconds, grim-faced.  Then he turns to Judy.

'You see, Judy, it's all or nothing.  Either you believe us, or you don't.  Either everything I and Kirjava and Giancarlo have told you is true, or it's not.  There are no half measures – you're for us or you're against us.

'This is the time, right now, when you have to make your mind up.  You can get up and leave – I'll drive you home if you like – and we'll say no more about it.  We might even see another film together sometime.  Or you can stay, and learn the truth.  Be part of it.  Because only the truth is good enough for us.  The absolute truth.  Lyra knows that, and she would never lie, or misrepresent the alethiometer to us.

'That's it.  That's all I can say.  It's up to you now.'  Will looks down at the floor.  The room falls deathly quiet.

'I… I'm sorry, Will.  I'll keep quiet.'

'No!'  Will almost shouts the word.  'No!  What you say matters.  It's important.  Keep quiet, and you might as well not be here at all.'

Judy smiles wanly.  'Is he always like this, Mary?'

'Oh yes.  Sometimes much worse.  You'll get used to it.'

The atmosphere relaxes.  'Right.  The first thing the alethiometer said was this: The Knife is on the move.  That's obvious enough, I think.  Yes?'  Everybody nods their assent.  'The second thing was: The girl's mother died.  Before last night, I'd have said that meant Lyra's or Lizzie's mother, Mrs Coulter, although it was far from certain that that was what the alethiometer meant.  But now…'

'Guili,' says Giancarlo.  'Her mother was killed by a Spectre.'  Guilietta looks up.

'A Spectre that should not have existed.  Remiel?'

'That is correct.  While Giancarlo and Giovanni Bellini were using the Knife to travel from world to world, rescuing the trapped and dying Exiles, Spectres were let into the worlds from the Void beyond.  But I am absolutely sure that I destroyed each Spectre that appeared, including last night's.'

'What about the Spectres that were let in by me, and the Bearers before me?  The angel Xaphania told me and Lyra that they would be dealt with.  Are you sure that every single last one of them was destroyed also?  There were lots of them at the Battle of the Plain.'

'All the Spectres that were not killed by the Ghosts were extinguished by myself, or my brothers and sisters.'

Will is cross-examining an angel!  Judy can hardly believe what she is hearing.

'OK.  So we have a girl whose mother was killed by a Spectre that should not have existed.  A Spectre that was, apparently, not let into the worlds of living consciousness by the Subtle Knife.

'I think it's clear that Guili is the girl the alethiometer means.  She would not be here now if she were not.  Nor would the Knife.'  Guilietta's eyes are wide open and glistening with tears. Will turns to her and kisses her gently on the cheek.  'Guili, sweetheart, do you still want to stay here with us?'

The girl looks up to Will and Giancarlo.  'Yes, Doctor Will.  I'll stay.'  She wraps an arm around her brother's waist.

'You're a very brave girl.  OK, where does that leave us?  The alethiometer has told us something we thought we knew already.  The important thing is that it has made us think about this thing that we know.'

Mary: 'We've got a Spectre that was not admitted by the Knife and wasn't left over after the War in Heaven.  That can mean only one thing…'

'Yes.  Somewhere there is another Knife.  Or something like it.'

'But there must be an infinite number of worlds of possibility in which the Knife was created.  This Spectre could have been created by one of those other Knives.  I don't see how that helps.'

'I know what you mean, Mary.   Looked at it that way, it's hopeless.  The numbers are just too big.  Haven't you noticed, though, that the worlds we have seen and travelled in have formed a sort of clump, or cluster?  I mean, we've seen many worlds which are very different from ours, and some which are quite similar.  We've never seen one that is almost exactly the same as ours, where there is only a tiny difference, like the pillar boxes being painted blue instead of red, for example.'

'I see what you mean.  The worlds are like the stars in the galaxies, they're a lot of them all grouped together, and then, a huge distance away across a wide gap, there could be another galaxy of worlds, like our own.'

'That's a good way of putting it.  In our local cluster of worlds, there is only one Cittagazze, only one world full of wheeled creatures, only one where people's daemons are separate entities.  Excepting present company, of course.'  Will smiles at Kirjava and strokes her lustrous fur.

'So… I think we can take it that if there is another Subtle Knife, it is in a world-cluster that is so far away that we and it will never come into contact with each other.'

'This other Knife, or whatever it is.  What should we be doing about it?'

'The Knife is so dangerous that, if it to be allowed to continue to exist,' did Giancarlo see the blade shiver? 'it must be kept under the strictest control.  It's just the same for any other Knife, or Knife-like device.'

'You think, then, that there is another Knife loose in the worlds?'

'I'm sure of it, Giancarlo.  Last Saturday, Judy and I saw the wound it made.'

Judy describes Jack Farrell's dramatic appearance in Casualty.  'I'd never seen anything like it until last night.  How sharp is that thing?'  She points to the Knife, where it lies on the floor in front of them, kept well in sight.

'Nobody knows.  There's no limit to what it can cut.

'OK.  I think we should leave the last thing the alethiometer told Lyra for a while and talk about the Knife a bit more.

'A day or two ago, I asked Mary to see if she could find out anything about any kind of device which could make a cut the way the Knife does, cleanly and without effort.'

Will looks up to the screen of the TV.  'Mary, over to you.'

'There are two things.  First, I consulted the I Ching yesterday, and it told me that there was danger and that I could help.  Though what I can do when I'm stuck out here thousands of miles away, I don't know.'

'You're helping now.'

'Thanks, Will.  I can't help thinking, though, that the oracle may have had rather more in mind than just chatting on the phone.

'Anyway, did you look up those URLs I sent you?'

Will looks sheepish.   'Sorry, Mary, no.  I've been busy.'

'If you had any idea what it cost me to get that information!'  Roger the Dodger was sniffing around earlier.  Must have been chucked out of someone else's bed again.

'OK.  It's like this…'