Twilight Watch Read online

  "I think it made fun of bad attitudes," I said.

  "Thank you," Las said sadly. "But that's exactly the problem- there are too many people who won't understand that. They'll think it's all for real."

  "That's what the fools will think," I said, trying to console the unacknowledged bard.

  "But there are more of them!" Las exclaimed. "And they haven't perfected head replacements yet…"

  He reached for the bottle, poured the vodka and said, "You drop in any time you need to, no need to be shy. And later I'll get you a key for an apartment on the fifteenth floor. The apartment's empty, but it has a toilet."

  "Won't the owner object?" I asked with a laugh.

  "It's all the same to him now. And his heirs can't agree on how to share out the space."

  Chapter 3

  I GOT BACK TO MY PLACE AT FOUR IN THE MORNING. SLIGHTLY DRUNK, but remarkably relaxed. After all, you don't often come across people who are so different. Working in the Watch encourages you to be too categorical. This guy doesn't smoke or drink-he's a good boy. This one swears like a trooper-he's a bad boy. And there's nothing to be done about it. Those are precisely the ones we're most interested in-the good ones as our support, the bad ones as a potential source of Dark Ones.

  But somehow we tend to forget that there are all different sorts of people…

  The bard with the bass guitar didn't know anything about the Others. I was sure of that. If only I could have sat up half the night with every one of Assol's inhabitants, I could have formed an accurate opinion of all of them.

  But I wasn't entertaining any such illusions. Not everybody will ask you to come in, not everybody will start talking to you about obscure, abstract subjects. And apart from the ten or so residents, there were hundreds of service personnel-security guards, plumbers, laborers, bookkeepers. There was no way I could possibly check all of them in a reasonable amount of time.

  I took a wash in the shower-I discovered a strange sort of hose in it that I could get a jet of water out of-and then walked out into my one and only room. I needed to get some sleep… and the next morning I'd try to come up with a new plan.

  "Hi, Anton," a voice said from the window.

  I recognized the voice. And I immediately felt sick at heart.

  "Good morning, Kostya," I said. The words of greeting sounded inappropriate somehow, but to wish the vampire a bad morning would have been even more stupid.

  "Can I come in?" Kostya asked.

  I walked over to the window. Kostya was sitting on the outside sill with his back to me, dangling his legs. He was completely naked, as if to make obvious that he hadn't climbed up the wall, but flown to the window in the form of a gigantic bat.

  A Higher Vampire. At not much more than twenty years old. A talented boy…

  "I think not," I said.

  Kostya nodded and didn't try to argue. "As I understand it, we're working on the same job?"

  "Yes."

  "That's good." Kostya turned around and flashed a gleaming white smile. "I like the idea of working with you. But are you really afraid of me?"

  "No."

  "I've learned a lot," Kostya boasted. Just like when he was a kid and he used to declare, "I'm a terrible vampire! I'm going to learn how to turn into a bat! I'm going to learn how to fly!"

  "You haven't learned anything," I corrected him. "You've stolen a lot."

  Kostya frowned. "Words. The usual Light word game. Your people allowed me to take it, so I did. So what's the problem?"

  "Are we going to carry on sparring like this?" I asked. I raised my hand, folding the fingers into the sign of Aton, the negation of non-life. I'd been wanting for ages to find out if the ancient North African spells worked on modern Russian creatures of the Darkness.

  Kostya glanced warily at the incomplete sign. Either he knew what it was, or he'd caught a whiff of Power. "Are you allowed to breach your disguise?"

  I lowered my hand in annoyance. "No. But I might just risk it."

  "No need. If you say so, I'll leave. But right now we're doing the same job… we have to talk."

  "So talk," I said, dragging a stool over to the window.

  "You won't let me in then?"

  "I don't want to be all alone in the middle of the night with a naked man," I chuckled. "Who knows what people will think? Let's hear it."

  "What do you make of the T-shirt collector?"

  I looked at Kostya quizzically.

  "The guy on the tenth floor. He collects funny T-shirts."

  "He doesn't know anything," I said.

  Kostya nodded. "That's what I think too. Eight of the apartments here are occupied. The owners of another six show up from time to time, but all the rest are very rarely here. I've already checked out all the permanent residents."

  "And?"

  "Nothing. They don't know anything about us."

  I didn't ask how Kostya could be so sure. After all, he was a Higher Vampire. They can enter another person's mind as easily as an experienced magician.

  "I'll deal with the other six in the morning," said Kostya. "But I'm not very hopeful."

  "And do you have any suggestions?" I asked.

  Kostya shrugged. "Anyone living here has enough money and influence to interest a vampire or a werewolf. A weak, hungry one… newly initiated. So the list of suspects is pretty long."

  "How many newly initiated lower Dark Ones are there in Moscow now?" I asked. I was amazed at how easily the phrase "lower Dark Ones" slipped off my tongue.

  I never used to call them that.

  I used to feel sorry for them.

  Kostya reacted calmly to the phrase. He really was a Higher Vampire. In control, confident of himself.

  "Not many," he said evasively. "They're being checked, don't worry. Everybody's being checked. All the lower Others, and even magicians."

  "Is Zabulon really concerned?" I asked.

  "Gesar isn't exactly a model of composure," Kostya chuckled. "Everyone's concerned. You're the only one taking the situation so lightly."

  "I don't see it as a great disaster," I said. "There are human beings who know we exist. Not many, but there are some. One more person doesn't change the situation. If he makes a sensation out of this, we'll soon locate him and make him look like some kind of psycho. That sort of thing has already…"

  "And what if he becomes an Other?" Kostya asked curtly.

  "Then there'll be one more Other," I said and shrugged.

  "What if he doesn't become a vampire or a werewolf, but a genuine Other?" Kostya bared his teeth in a smile. "A genuine Other? Light or Dark… that doesn't matter."

  "Then there'll be one more magician," I said.

  Kostya shook his head. "Listen, Anton, I'm quite fond of you. Even now. But sometimes I'm amazed at just how naive you are…" Kostya stretched-his arms rapidly sprouted a covering of short fur, his skin turned dark and coarse. "You deal with the staff," he said in a shrill, piercing voice. "If you get wind of anything, call me."

  He turned his face, distorted by the transformation, toward me and smiled again. "You know, Anton, a naive Light One like you is the only kind a Dark One could ever be friends with…"

  He jumped down, flapping his leathery wings ponderously. The huge bat flew off into the night, a little awkwardly, but quickly enough.

  There was a small rectangle of cardboard lying on the outside sill-a business card. I picked it up and read it. "Konstantin. Research assistant, the Scientific Research Institute for Hematological Problems."

  And then the phone numbers-work, home, cell. I actually remembered the home number-Kostya was still living with his parents. Most vampires tend to have pretty strong family ties.

  What had he been trying to tell me?

  Why all the panic?

  I switched on the light, lay down on the mattress and looked at the pale-gray rectangles of the windows.

  "If he becomes a genuine Other…"

  How did Others appear in the World? No one knew. "A random mutation" La
s had called it-a perfectly adequate term. You were born a human being, you lived an ordinary life… until one of the Others sensed your ability to enter the Twilight and pump Power out of it. After that you were "guided." Lovingly and carefully coaxed into the required spiritual condition so that in a moment of powerful emotional agitation you would look at your shadow and see it in a different way. See it lying there like a black rag, like a curtain you could pull up over yourself and then draw aside to enter another world.

  The world of the Others.

  The Twilight.

  And the state you were in when you first found yourself in the Twilight-joyful and benign or miserable and angry-determined who you would be. What kind of Power you would go on to draw from the Twilight… the Twilight that drinks Power from ordinary people.

  "If he becomes a genuine Other…"

  There was always the possibility of coercive initiation, but only through the loss of life and transformation into a walking corpse. A human being could become a vampire or a werewolf and he would be forced to maintain his existence by taking the lives of human beings. So there was a route for the Dark Ones… but one that even they weren't particularly fond of.

  Only what if it really was possible to become a magician?

  What if there was a way for any human being to be transformed into an Other? To acquire long-very long-life and exceptional abilities. There was no doubt many people would want to do it.

  And we wouldn't be against it, either. There were so many fine people living in the world who were worthy to become Light Others.

  Only the Dark Ones would start building up their ranks too…

  Suddenly it struck me. It was no disaster that someone had revealed our secrets to a human being. It was no disaster that information could leak out. It was no disaster that the traitor knew the address of the Inquisition.

  But this was a new twist in the spiral of endless war!

  For centuries the Light Ones and Dark Ones had been shackled by the Treaty. We had the right to search for Others among human beings, even the right to nudge them in the right direction. But we were obliged to sift through tons of sand in our search for grains of gold. The balance was maintained.

  Then suddenly here was a chance to transform thousands, millions of people into Others.

  A soccer team wins the cup final-and a wave of magic surges across tens of thousands of exultant people, transforming them into Light Others.

  Then and there the Day Watch issues a command to the fans of the team that has lost-and they're transformed into Dark Others.

  That was what Kostya had had in mind. The immense temptation to shift the balance of power in your own favor at a single stroke. Of course, the consequences would be clear, both to the Dark Ones and us Light Ones. The two sides would adopt new amendments to the Treaty and restrict the initiation of human beings within acceptable limits. After all, the USA and the USSR had managed to keep the nuclear arms race within bounds…

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. Semyon had once told me that the arms race was halted by the creation of the ultimate weapon. Two thermonuclear devices-that was all that was required-each of which could trigger a self-sustaining reaction of nuclear fusion. The American one was installed somewhere in Texas, the Russian one in Siberia. It was enough to explode either one of them-and the entire planet would be transformed into a ball of flame.

  Only that state of affairs didn't suit us, so the weapon that was never meant to be used could never be activated. But the presidents didn't need to know that-they were only human beings…

  Maybe the top commands of the Watches had "magical bombs" like that? And that was why the Inquisition, which was in on the secret, policed the observation of the Treaty so fervently?

  Maybe.

  But even so it would be better if it were impossible to initiate ordinary people…

  Even in my drowsy state I winced at my own thought. What did this mean, that I'd begun to think like a fully-fledged Other? There are Others, and there are human beings-and they're second class. They can never enter the Twilight, they're not going to live more than a hundred years. And there's nothing you can do about it…

  Yes, that was exactly the way I'd started to think. Finding a good human being with the natural aptitudes of an Other and bringing him or her over to your own side-that was a joy. But turning absolutely everyone into Others was puerile nonsense, a dangerous and irresponsible delusion.

  Now I had something to feel proud about. It had taken me less than ten years to finally stop being human.

  My morning began with contemplation of the mysteries of the shower stall. Reason finally overcame soulless metal and I got a shower-with music playing, no less-and then concocted a breakfast out of biscotti, salami, and yogurt. Feeling uplifted by the sunshine, I settled down on the windowsill and breakfasted with a view of the Moscow River. For some reason I recalled Kostya admitting that vampires can't look at the sun. Sunlight doesn't actually burn them at all, it just gives them a disagreeable sensation.

  But I had no time for indulging in sad thoughts about my old acquaintances. I had to search for… for whom? The renegade Other? I was hardly in the best position to do that. His human client? A long, dreary business.

  All right, I decided. We'll proceed according to the strict laws of the classic detective novel. What do we have? What we have is a clue. The letter sent from Assol. What does it give us? It doesn't give us anything. Unless perhaps someone saw the letter being posted three days ago. There's not much chance that they'd remember, of course…

  What a fool I was. I even slapped myself on the forehead. Sure, it's no disgrace for an Other to forget about modern technology. Others aren't very fond of complicated technical devices. But I was a computer hardware specialist.

  All the grounds of Assol were monitored by video cameras.

  I put on my suit and knotted my tie, splashed on the eau de cologne that Ignat had chosen for me the day before, dropped my phone into my inside pocket… "Only dumb kids and sales assistants carry their cells on their belts!"-that was one of Gesar's helpful little homilies.

  The cell was new and still unfamiliar. It had different kinds of games in it, a built-in music-player, a dictaphone, and all sorts of other nonsense entirely unnecessary in a phone.

  I rode down to the vestibule in the cool silence of the new Otis elevator and immediately caught sight of my new acquaintance from the night before-only this time he was looking really strange…

  Las, wearing brand new blue overalls with "Assol" written on the back, was explaining something to a confused elderly man dressed in the same way. I heard what he said: "This isn't a broom you've got here, okay! There's a computer in it, it tells you how dirty the asphalt is and the pressure of the cleaning solution… Come on, I'll show you…"

  My feet automatically carried me after them. Out in the yard, in front of the entrance to the vestibule, there were two bright-orange road-sweeping machines-with a tank of water, round brushes, and a little glass cabin for the driver. There was something toylike about the small vehicles, as if they'd come straight from Sunshine Town, where the happy baby girls and boys cheerfully clean their own miniature avenues.

  Las clambered nimbly into one of the machines and the elderly man thrust himself halfway in after him. He listened to something Las said, nodded, and set off toward the second orange cleaning unit.

  "And if you're lazy, you'll spend the rest of your life as a junior yard keeper!" I heard Las say. His machine set off, twirling its brushes merrily, and began spinning circles on the asphalt surface. Before my eyes a yard that was already clean acquired an entirely sterile appearance.

  Well, would you believe it.

  So he worked as a yard keeper in the Assol complex, did he?

  I tried to withdraw unobtrusively, so as not to embarrass the man, but Las had already spotted me and he drove closer, waving his hand gleefully. The brushes started turning less vigorously.

  "So you work here then?" I asked.
I suddenly started having the most fantastic ideas, such as Las didn't live in Assol at all, he'd simply moved into an empty apartment for a while. There was no way anyone with a huge residence like that would go cleaning the yard.

  "I earn a bit on the side," Las explained calmly. "It's a real gas, I tell you. Ride around the yard for an hour in the morning, instead of your morning exercises, and they pay you wages for it. And not bad wages, either!"

  I didn't say anything.

  "Do you like going on the rides in the park?" Las asked me. "All those buggies, where you have to pay ten dollars for three minutes? Well, here they pay you the money. For enjoying yourself. Or take those computer games, for instance… sitting there, twitching that joystick about…"

  "It all depends on whether they make you paint the fence…" I muttered.

  "That's right," Las agreed happily. "But they don't make me do that. I get the same buzz cleaning up the yard as Leo Tolstoy did from scything hay. Only no one has to wash it all again after me-unlike the count, whose peasants used to finish the job after him… I'm in their good graces here, I regularly get a bonus. So, do you fancy riding around too? I could get you a job, if you like. The professional yard keepers just can't get the hang of this technical equipment."

  "I'll think about it," I said, examining the briskly spinning brushes, the water spurting out of the nickel-plated nozzles, the gleaming cabin. Back when we were kids, which of us didn't want to drive a street-washing truck? Now, of course, after early childhood kids start dreaming about working as a banker or a hit man…

  "Okay, think it over, but I've got work to do," Las said amiably. The machine set off around the yard, sweeping, washing, and sucking up dirt. I heard singing from the cabin:

  The generation of yard keepers and watchmen

  Have lost each other in the vast expanse of winter…

  They've all gone back home now.

  In our time, when every third man is a hero,