He came along the path quickly and easily, not running, but moving like an athlete or a hunter. He had opened a window in this world into the underground of another. The man bowed helplessly and led her away. The more she learned, though, the more difficult it became, as each new thing she found out suggested half a dozen questions, each leading in a different direction. Yes, said the alethiometer instantly. I wanted us to. Now the sun was setting, he thought he could see his strange companion. The outline of a man seemed to quiver in the light, and the air was thicker inside it. It said about balance first. It said the knife could be harmful or it could do good, but it was so slight, such a delicate kind of a balance, that the faintest thought or wish could tip it one way or the other. She felt dizzy, selfconscious, bemused, but she did as she had to and stepped up beside the old zalif. His right paw darted in and seized first one piece and then the other, holding them between the tips of his massive claws and placing them on the slab of iron that was the backplate of his armor. They gathered armfuls of the bush and carried them back up toward the cave. He cut through and found that his guess was right. And she was safe with me, until. The sound of their wheels on the hardpacked earth was low and steady. His father, the soldier, the explorer, would have known exactly what to take. Will had to guess. Maybe the gyptians would take me in. She darted back into the grove. She found a narrow space between two great roots and crammed herself into it, peering over the buttress beside her and out toward the approaching dust cloud. The only world he could find with the same conformation of ground was a bare, rocky place, where the moon glared down from a starry sky onto a bleached bonewhite ground where little insects crawled and uttered their scraping, chittering sounds over a wide silence. The man closed the door behind them and hooked a wire over a nail to keep it shut. Are you hungry or thirsty? Your friend is there! Will saw a rim of white on the horizon one day and watched as it grew and grew, separating itself into different peaks and ridges and passes between them, and so high that it seemed that they must be close at hand, only a few miles. He heard her and turned, knife in hand and eyes ablaze. Four hours later she was very hot and tired. The sun was low over the horizon. The rough track she was following had petered out, and she was clambering with more and more discomfort among tumbled boulders and smaller stones. To her left the slope fell away toward a landscape of olive and lemon groves, of poorly tended vineyards and abandoned windmills, lying hazy in the evening light. To her right a scree of small rocks and gravel sloped up to a cliff of crumbling limestone. The white sails by this time had already entered the river, easily making headway against the current. And they were so beautiful, those snow white slender sails, bending and dipping and filling.