Night Watch 05 - The New Watch (8 page)

‘It’s just like expecting the Twilight to create a Mirror and send it to the side that’s losing . . .’ Olga said in a gentle voice.

Gesar shut up.

He didn’t simply stop talking, he shut up. He sat there for a while, gazing at the tabletop, and then said: ‘The theory is accepted. It’s absurd. I don’t like it – because I’m afraid of something of the kind. But as a theory, it’s accepted. Anything else?’

Nadya raised her hand again. ‘Boris Ignatievich, I don’t think we should be trying to guess right now,’ she said. ‘What difference does it make to us who has appeared? After all, we already know that he’s very powerful and he does strange things. So all right. We need to understand what he wants.’

‘And?’ asked Gesar.

‘Da— Anton . . .’ Nadya blushed.

‘It’s all right, we know that he’s your daddy,’ Gesar said in a surprisingly gentle voice. ‘Go on.’

‘It all started when daddy saw the boy-Prophet who was afraid to fly in the aeroplane because the aeroplane was going to crash,’ said Nadya, clearly embarrassed. ‘Well, he saved the boy and his mummy, didn’t he? But what if someone else wanted to save him too, only he did it a simpler way: he saved the whole aeroplane all at once? And that’s why the aeroplane didn’t crash. And then, when he realised the boy wasn’t on it any more, he set out to look for him . . .’

‘That business with the policeman? Why did he give himself away like that? He left witnesses and a trail as well.’

‘He didn’t give himself away. He . . . he introduced himself,’ Nadya said quietly.

‘He left his visiting card,’ exclaimed Olga, snapping her fingers. ‘That’s right. He realised that one of the policemen had recognised him as an Other and deliberately affected his partner. But what made him think we’d find those policemen, and so quickly?’

‘If that policeman is an ordinary person, but he can see Others, it could be the result of his contact with daddy,’ said Nadya. ‘They taught us that a spell can leave a side effect, a trace . . . and that trace is usually connected with the magician who cast the spell. What if someone saw the trace on the policeman and realised he was connected with my daddy? For him it was . . . well, like kicking a dog to make it whine so that its master would look round.’

‘A fine comparison,’ Olga said drily.

‘Sorry,’ Nadya answered, ‘I was judging from the point of view . . .’

I noticed that Gesar had been sitting with his eyes closed for about half a minute. And slowly turning crimson. Then he opened his eyes and stood up.

‘Right. I can’t hear Semyon. And I can’t contact him. Someone else try!’

Olga closed her eyes too.

Glyba applied his palm to his forehead picturesquely.

Jermenson chewed on his lips.

Svetlana frowned intensely.

But I took out my mobile and pressed one of the ‘hot keys’.

‘Yes, Antokha?’ Semyon answered cheerfully.

‘Where are you?’

‘Me? I’m at Olya and Kesha’s place. Drinking tea. Telling them all about our wonderful school for artistically gifted children.’

‘Gesar can’t make contact with you,’ I said

There was a brief pause, and then Semyon said: ‘You know, I can’t make contact either. With anyone. It’s like . . . everything’s gone blank . . .’

‘Tell him we’re on our way,’ ordered Gesar, walking rapidly towards the door. ‘Anton, Mark, Olga, you’re with me! Svetlana, Sergei, you’re in charge of the Watch.’

‘I’m not on the staff!’ Svetlana exclaimed indignantly.

‘Consider yourself drafted,’ Gesar flung out without looking round.

‘Sveta, if we start arguing now, the child might be killed,’ Olga said gently as she got up to follow Gesar. ‘And Semyon too. Do you understand?’

And Svetlana, who I could remember beating off Gesar’s attempts to get her involved in the Watch’s business at least a hundred times, backed down immediately. She just asked as we left: ‘What exactly do I have to do?’

‘Kill everything strange that tries to get into the office,’ Gesar replied.

‘I’m a doctor, not a killer!’ Sveta exclaimed indignantly.

‘Every good doctor has his own graveyard,’ snapped Gesar.

When we ran out into the yard, the boom across the entrance was already raised and Alisher and Garik were getting into the patrol van – a battered old Japanese SUV. They were obviously on duty-call today.

‘Mark Emmanuilovich, please join the two young watchmen, if you would be so kind,’ Gesar said briskly.

Apparently he seriously believed that we needed to have at least one Higher Other in each vehicle.

We got into the old BMW that Gesar had been riding around in for as long as I could remember. I sat in the front, Olga was on the back seat and Gesar was at the wheel. He didn’t usually sit there, I wasn’t even sure that the Great One knew how to drive a car.

But it turned out that he did – and how! We went flying out into the street and roared straight off up the oncoming lane, which apparently seemed less crowded with traffic to Gesar. We were spared the choruses of loud curses from drivers about wild, irresponsible Duma deputies and bureaucrats by just one thing.

The car was invisible.

And moreover, Gesar didn’t use an ordinary spell like the Sphere of Negation or other similar ones. We were entirely invisible. We were an empty space, hurtling along the road like a draught, a void as far as any other driver could see.

To be quite honest, this is pretty stressful, even when the driver at the wheel is a Higher Magician who could well have more than a hundred years of driving experience.

But it turned out that Gesar had no intention of playing tag with the motorists of Moscow. A moment later the car slipped into the Twilight.

Any Other can enter the Twilight. And taking someone else with you, or carrying something in, is a simple technical matter.

But to drag an entire car into the Twilight!

‘Remember the way we rode into the Twilight on a battle elephant?’ Olga suddenly asked with a laugh.

Was she joking or serious? Who could tell . . .

Now we were hurtling along through Twilight Moscow. The first layer is the one closest to reality. Here there are even buildings, cars and people. Everything is grey, dull and slow – but still real. Almost real, that is. Except that blue moss has been added to the roads and the walls of the buildings . . .

Our car had changed radically too. The old but sturdy German automobile seemed to melt: its dimensions shifted, the interior became far more old-fashioned, the wheel in Gesar’s hands shrank and became slimmer, with a glittering nickel rim on the inside and a rampant-deer emblem in the centre. A similar figure of a deer sprang up out of the bonnet. The instrument panel bulged out, thrusting towards Gesar a semicircular speedometer with four tiny square dial-plates lurking under it. At its centre the basic on-board computer was replaced by an absolutely primitive two-band radio receiver and in front of me a primeval mechanical clock appeared.

‘Yes,’ said Gesar, ‘I prefer Russian cars. A Series 2 Volga. My faithful old warhorse. Please don’t tell anyone about it – I know what you humorists are like . . .’

It wasn’t just a facade – I could smell the leather upholstery and I started slipping about on the shiny seat. Well, would you believe it . . . I didn’t even know the Soviet automotive industry had ever made a Volga with a leather interior and automatic transmission . . . maybe it even had airbags in it . . . they could certainly come in useful!

That boss of ours! Riding around in an ancient Volga and disguising it as a decent old ‘Beemer’! I wouldn’t have expected that kind of secretive patriotism from him, to be honest . . . or maybe it wasn’t patriotism, just conservatism?

But then, as a general rule, patriotism and conservatism are inseparable.

Gesar swung the wheel, swerving away from a Range Rover standing in the middle of the road. It was a strange-looking kind of vehicle – hung all over with advertising slogans and rotted right through, with its engine falling out of the chassis. This informational phantom probably hadn’t existed in the real world for a long time already, but it was still decaying here in the Twilight – that’s what happens with objects when they’ve been a focus of human attention for a long time, for whatever reason. The result of some kind of road accident, maybe?

‘No, we need to go deeper,’ Gesar suddenly decided.

This time he really did amaze me. He groaned – and the world around us turned completely colourless.

We were on the second level of the Twilight.

All the buildings became wooden – I must say that wooden buildings nine or ten storeys high look really strange. The road turned into a winding country track covered in tussocky grass. The people almost disappeared: here on the second level they were barely even visible. Everything was grey. Instead of cars there were little clouds of steam hanging above the road – as if someone had breathed out, emptying his lungs on a cold day . . .

Well, and of course, it turned very cold.

And the car changed again.

Very noticeably and for the better.

The deer, arched over in its leap on the bonnet, was transformed into a young woman with wings.

I gazed for a while at the emblem of two intertwined Rs, then asked:

‘So you prefer Russian automobiles, then, Boris Ignatievich?’

Gesar dove the Rolls-Royce Phantom hard over the empty roads, hurtling nonchalantly straight through the clumps of steam and the human shadows. Most people wouldn’t notice anything. Some would sense a chill on their skin and feel a blank, hopeless yearning for something glorious and enthralling – some experience that life had never granted them. In cases like that Americans say: ‘Someone just walked over my grave.’

But the reality is actually even more chilling – at that instant an Other has just walked or driven straight through you.

‘Everyone lies, Anton,’ Gesar said suddenly. ‘Everyone lies.’

So apparently he did watch TV after all.

And his conservatism wasn’t equivalent to patriotism either.

‘A really fine car,’ he admitted. ‘That’s just between the two of us, of course.’

We travelled through the second level at the same speed as in the ordinary world. Except, of course, that there weren’t any traffic jams blocking our way. But that wasn’t what interested Gesar. The important thing was that time passed far more slowly here than in the real world – we would reach Semyon literally a minute after the phone call.

But then, whoever was on his way to him could also move through the Twilight. And even go a layer or two deeper.

If there
was
anyone on the way to him, of course.

Suddenly Gesar swore out loud. Technically speaking, I didn’t know the language that he switched into – probably it was the one they spoke in Tibet when he was a child there. But the intonation left no doubt: the boss was swearing.

‘Shame on you, Gesar,’ said Olga, confirming my hunch.

‘Don’t you notice anything unusual?’ asked Gesar.

I looked around and said: ‘The Twilight. Blue moss. The usual.’

‘We’re on the second level,’ Olga said thoughtfully. ‘What’s blue moss doing here?’

To be quite honest, there wasn’t a lot of moss. A few patches here and there on the road. Here and there on the walls. They were barely noticeable, because there are no colours on the second level, but they were definitely there.

Blue moss on the second level of the Twilight!

‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ I admitted.

‘The point is that I’ve never seen anything like it either,’ Gesar declared. ‘Except perhaps—’

He wasn’t given a chance to finish – because a fireball flared into life dead ahead of the Rolls-Royce’s windscreen.

IF YOU WISHED
to divide all known magic into two parts, the easiest way would be to divide it into battle magic and everyday magic. Despite the opinion common among novice Others, there would be two or even three times as much of the ‘everyday’ variety. This is painstakingly hammered into the heads of the beginners at the very first classes in the Night Watch – magic is not intended for doing harm, for war or killing . . . for every Fireball or Viper’s Kiss you can find five peaceful spells: the Crusher for breaking down refuse, the Iron for ironing clothes, the Awl and the Drill Bit for making holes in domestic conditions, Prometheus for lighting a campfire or barbecue easily and conveniently . . .

Fairly quickly, however, the beginners realise that almost all the domestic spells work in battle conditions too. Their only shortcomings are basically that they are slower or that they consume more Power than specialised battle magic. In the time that it takes a beginner to create and adjust a Drill Bit or apply an Iron to his adversary’s face, you can fling the Triple Blade ten times over.

That’s why, after a brief period of interest in the non-standard applications of the Crusher or the Vent Valve, most Others stop experimenting and begin using everyday magic in everyday life and battle magic in battle.

Apart, that is, from certain Others who will sooner or later earn the legitimate title of Battle Magician.

They are the ones who eventually fathom a most important truth – it’s easy enough to put on an impressive show, battering each other with fireballs or trying to crush each other with the Press. And it also carries on for a very long time. Because that’s what your adversary is expecting from you. And he protects himself with the Barrier of Will, the Sphere of Negation, the Magician’s Shield . . . There they stand, facing each other – a Light Other and a Dark Other, hammering at each other with spells, defending themselves against spells, sometimes even finding time to abuse each other verbally in the process. Maybe this is a good thing. After all, the majority of magical duels are not fought to the death but until one of the adversaries surrenders or withdraws from the field of battle. Otherwise we would have wiped ourselves out ages ago.

But if a genuine Battle Magician enters the fray – then everything goes very differently. He employs the good old healing spell Willow Bark or its jolly Dark variant, Aspirin. And the unsuspecting enemy suddenly finds that his body temperature has fallen to that of the ambient environment. A Battle Magician doesn’t fling the Triple Blade, he applies the simple little Grater, which Svetlana uses when she makes vitamin salads for Nadya out of apples and carrots, and I use to clean off the saucepans if something gets burnt on . . . And his adversary suddenly becomes a millimetre or two slimmer. Instantly, from all sides. Usually no one can continue the battle after that.