Oxford

It is seven o'clock and nearly time to change for dinner.  Lady Elizabeth Boreal sits in her boudoir which is, like all the rooms in her house, beautifully and expensively furnished.  Parander, her serpent-daemon, lies on the eighteenth-century writing desk in front of her, coiled around the silver inkwell.

It has been a busy day, as, indeed, they always are.  The Boreal estates are extensive and their industrial concerns, while not rivalling those of Jordan College in size, are very profitable.  As non-executive Chairman of the board of the Boreal Foundation, Lizzie's responsibilities are what she cares to make them.

Her mother Marisa Coulter was never one to sit back and let events take their course.  Neither is Lizzie.

Something is worrying her, however.  She cannot ignore the nagging feeling that she has made a serious mistake.

'You had to say something, or Will would have been suspicious.'

'Yes, I know.  But…'

Did I let my feelings for Will cloud my judgement?

'I don't see how you could have changed Lyra's message.'

'We shouldn't have told them the third part – Look for the Ring.'

'Kirjava would have known if I'd held anything back.  She's not stupid.'

'We could have changed it to something less… revealing.'

'Kirjava might still have noticed.  And besides…'

'It's pretty obscure.  I know.  But it's just the sort of thing he might try to follow up.'

'Shall we warn them?'

'Hmmm… yes.  It can't hurt.'  Lizzie takes a sheet of paper, writes a short message in her elegant hand, and seals it with her father's ring.  She sends for a footman who enters, takes the note, bows deeply, and leaves the room.

There.  That's all I can do for now.

Lizzie rings for her maid.  Will she wear the yellow or the blue silk frock tonight?

Culham and Colombo, Sri Lanka

It is ten o'clock and fully dark as Will pulls into the far corner of the car park of the Waggon and Horses public house in the village of Culham.

'This'll do.  Keep the inside car lights off.'

'What'll we do when the pub turns out?'

'That won't be for an hour or so.  You and Guili just keep your heads down.  Anyone who does notice the car will assume the owner's had too much to drink and taken a taxi home.'

'OK.  Will… do take care.'

'We will.  Now, let's get going.'  Will flips his phone open.  'Mary.'

'Here.'

'Nice of you to join us.  Right, now you, Judy.'  Judy dials in, audio only, to Will and Mary's call.  Will clips his phone to his top pocket and fixes a headset to his right ear.

'Are we all online?'

'Yes.'

'Check.'

'Can't see much.'

'That's because it's dark.'  Will keys up the video gain on his phone.  'Better?'

'Picture's noisy as hell, but OK.'

Dressed in the darkest clothes that Will could find in his wardrobe, he, Kirjava and Giancarlo get out of the car.  Will is wearing a sidepack which contains a compass and an electric torch.  Giancarlo carries nothing but the Subtle Knife.  Mary tries not to let the jerky picture she receives on her TV as Will walks along the pavement make her feel too queasy.  Outside her hotel window the sun is coming up over the roofs of Colombo.

Keeping to the shadows, Will, Kirjava by his side, and Giancarlo walk half a mile or so to a piece of open ground where they can see the fence that surrounds the group of buildings they plan to investigate.  The moon shines from behind them, outlining its structure.

'What an ugly place!'

'It's practical, Carlo.  That's the way we build here.  You remember.'

'It didn't have to look so awful.  Didn't you tell me this was a place of learning and philosophy?'

'Well, yes.'

'In Ci'gazze, it would have been our joy to make such a place as beautiful as we could.'

'Will, Carlo, I hate to interrupt, but shouldn't you be getting on with it?'

'Sorry, Mary.'  To Giancarlo:  'It looks like about 40 meters,' checking his compass, '…due west.  Beam us over, Scotty!'

'Perdono?'

'Cut a window!'

Recalling the feel, the location, the vector, of the world that Will and he found that afternoon, Giancarlo takes out the Knife and makes a cut, slicing into space-time, left and right, up and down, opening a window for Will and himself.  They step through it into an empty desert world; wide sands and green sky, pink sun and purple clouds.  'Remiel?'

'It is done.'  Remiel has nullified the Spectre which Giancarlo's Knife-cut let in to a world not far from theirs.  'Keep an eye out for us, will you?'

'Ever your guardian angel, Will, Carlo.'

Will and Giancarlo take forty strides westward.  This is the world they found that afternoon when they drove out into the Oxfordshire countryside to test out the Knife.  Giancarlo's own world is not safe for them, and others are occupied, or misaligned, or the window he cuts opens out onto open sea, or a sheer drop, or deep underground.

Will has used this method of breaking into a building before, twelve years previously, at Sir Charles Latrom's house in north Oxford.  It is new to Giancarlo.

'OK, now let's go back to my world and see where we come out.'

Mary and Judy lost Will's signal when he and Giancarlo crossed over into the transit world.  Now that they have returned, and are standing within the fence by the outside wall of the main complex, Will must dial back into their call.

'Damn!  I knew this was going to be a pain!'  It is too much to expect that Vodafone will have set up phone cells in all the worlds of probability.

'Judy, Mary, we're past the fence.  Next time, Carlo, we'll go inside the building.  I'm not expecting that we'll find any actual people in there – it's too late at night – but there will probably be monitoring devices.'

'Burglar alarms?'

'That sort of thing.  They'll be set up to detect the heat of our bodies.  There'll be motion sensors, and TV cameras too.  We must be very careful when we move around inside the building.'

'We can use the Knife to go from place to place inside as well.'

'Yes, that's what I intend to do.  Right – no more messing about.  In we go!'

The man and woman sit on swivel chairs in front of a bank of monitors, whose screens show an assortment of views of the area, relayed by the infrared cameras that ring the JET complex.

'Why are there two of them?'

'I expected Parry - the LR message mentioned him.  He's the shorter one.  The other one – I've no idea where he came from.'

'Is it a man?'

'Don't know.  I think so.'

They watch the screens closely.  Then:

'What the fuck?'

'They just… vanished!'

'That's impossible!  Try the other cameras.'

'There!  By the wall!  They're back!  How the hell did they do that?  They just skipped across forty yards of empty space!'

'Zoom in.  Yes, that's him.  It's definitely Parry.'

'And the other one – wait!  What's that?'

The man sits back in his chair, then leans forward again, his eyes intent on the screen.  'Yes!'  He adjusts the camera's pan and zoom controls.  'Do you see that?  In his hand?'

'Something shiny?  Are they tooled up?  Is that a knife he's holding?'

'Absofuckinglutelyright it is.'  Mr Greaves swivels his chair around to face Miss Morley.  'If I'm right – and I know I am – we are the luckiest pair of bastards in the whole wide world.

'We've got to play this right.  Absolutely right.  'Cause if we do, it's payday.  Now, and for the rest of our lives.

'Payday…'