Thomas Moran Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice

Thomas Moran Entrance to the Grand Canal, VeniceJean Francois Millet The Walk to WorkJean Francois Millet The Angelus
That's what she said. All right, it's nonsense, but listen to it, Oliver, will you?" said Dr. Mary Malone. "She knew about Shadows. She calls them—it—she calls it Dust, but it's the same thing. It's our shadow particles. And I'm telling you, , she was communicating with them. They are conscious. And they can respond. And you remember your skulls? Well, she told me about some skulls in the Pitt-Rivers Museum. She'd found out with her compass thing that they were much older than the museum said, and there were Shadows—"
"Wait a minute. Give me some sort of structure here. What are you saying? You saying she's confirmed what we know already, or that she's telling us something new?"
"Both. I don't know. But suppose something happened thirty, forty thousand when she was wearing the electrodes linking her to the Cave, there was the most extraordinary display on the screen: pictures, symbols… She had an instrument too, a sort of compass thing made of gold, with different symbols all around the rim. And she said she could read that in the same way, and she knew about the state of mind, too—she knew it intimately."It was midmorning. Lyra's Scholar, Dr. Malone, was red-eyed from lack of sleep, and her colleague, who'd just returned from Geneva, was impatient to hear more, and skeptical, and preoccupied."And the point was, Oliver