And that had set the monstrous black vortex growing.
“I don’t know what I ought to do now, Anton. I keep doing stupid things. Today I almost jumped into bed with a stranger.” For Svetlana to tell me that must have been almost as difficult as telling me about her mother.
“Sveta, we can work this out,” I began. “The important thing is not just to give up, not punish yourself unnecessarily . . .”
“I told her on purpose, Anton! I knew what she’d say! I wanted to be told not to do it! She ought to have cursed me, the damned old fool!”
Svetlana had no idea how right she was . . . No one knows what mechanisms are involved here, what goes on in the Twilight, and how being cursed by a stranger is different from being cursed by someone you love, by your son or by your mother. Except that a mother’s curse is the most terrible of all.
“Anton, take it easy.”
The sound of Olga’s voice sobered me up instantly.
“That’s too simple, Anton. Have you ever dealt with a mother’s curse?”
“No,” I said. I said it out loud, answering Svetlana and Olga at the same time.
“I’m to blame,” said Svetlana, with a shake of her head. “Thanks, Anton, I’m to blame and no one else.”
“I have,” the voice said through the Twilight. “Anton, my friend, this looks all wrong! A mother’s curse is a blinding black explosion and a large vortex. But it always dissipates in an instant. Almost always.”
Maybe so. I didn’t argue with her. Olga was a specialist in curses, and she’d seen all sorts of things. Of course, nobody would wish their own child ill . . . at least, not for long. But there were exceptions.
“Exceptions are possible,” Olga agreed. “They’ll check her mother out thoroughly now. But . . . I wouldn’t count on this being over soon.”
“Svetlana,” I asked. “Isn’t there any other solution? Some other way to help your mother? Apart from a transplant?”
“No. I’m a doctor, I know. Medicine’s not all-powerful.”
“What if it wasn’t medicine?”
She was puzzled:
“What do you mean, Anton?”
“Alternative medicine,” I said. “Folk medicine.”
“Anton . . .”
“I understand, Svetlana; it’s hard to believe,” I added hastily. “There are so many charlatans, con men, and psychos out there. But is all of it really lies?”
“Anton, can you show me one person who has cured a really serious illness?” said Svetlana, looking at me ironically. “Not just tell me about him, but show him to me. And his patients too, preferably before and after treatment. Then I’ll believe. I’ll believe in anything, in psychics, and healers, in White Magicians and Black Magicians . . .”
I couldn’t help squirming on my chair. She had the most absolute proof possible of the existence of “black” magic hanging right there over her head, a textbook case.
“I can show you one,” I said. I remembered how they’d brought Danila into the office one time. It was after an ordinary fight—not absolutely standard, but not too heavy either. He’d just been unlucky. They were detaining a family of werewolves for some petty violation of the Treaty. The werewolves could have given themselves up and nothing more would have come of it than a brief joint investigation by the two Watches.
But the werewolves decided to resist. They probably had an entire trail of bloody crimes behind them that the Night Watch knew nothing about—and now they never would. Danila went in first and got badly mauled. His left lung, his heart, a deep trauma to the liver, one kidney torn right out.
The boss fixed Danila up, with a helping hand from almost everyone in the Watch who had any strength right then. I was standing in the third circle; our job was not so much to provide the boss with energy as to cut out external influences. But sometimes I took a look at Danila. He kept sinking into the Twilight, either on his own or with the boss. Every time he surfaced into reality his wounds were smaller. It was impressive, but not really all that difficult; after all, the wounds were still fresh and they weren’t predestined. But I had no doubt that the boss could cure Svetlana’s mother. Even if the line of her destiny broke off in the near future, even if she was definitely going to die. She could be cured. Death would simply be due to other causes . . .
“Anton, aren’t you afraid to talk like that?”
I shrugged. Svetlana sighed.
“If you give someone hope, you become responsible, Anton. I don’t believe in miracles. But right now I just might. Doesn’t that scare you?”
I looked into her eyes.
“No, Svetlana. There are lots of things that scare me. But different things.”
“Anton, the vortex is down by twenty centimeters. The boss says to tell you well done.”
There was something about her voice I didn’t like. A conversation through the Twilight isn’t like an ordinary one; you can sense emotions.
“What’s happened?” I asked through the dead gray shroud.
“Keep going, Anton.”
“What’s happened?”
“I wish I could feel so self-assured,” said Svetlana. She looked at the window: “Did you hear that? A kind of rustling sound . . .”
“The wind,” I suggested. “Or someone walking by.”
“Olga, tell me!”
“Anton, everything’s fine with the vortex. It’s slowly shrinking. You’re increasing her internal resistance somehow. They calculate that by morning the vortex will have shrunk to a theoretically safe size. Then I can get to work.”
“Then what’s the problem? There is one, Olga, I can sense it!”
She didn’t answer.
“Olga, are we partners or not?”
That worked. I couldn’t see the white owl, but I knew her eyes had glinted and she’d glanced toward the windows of our field headquarters, into the faces of the boss and the observer from the Dark Ones.
“Anton, there’s a problem with the boy.”
“With Egor?”
“Anton, what are you thinking about?” Svetlana asked. It was hard work holding simultaneous conversations in the real world and the Twilight one . . .
“Just wishing I could be in two places at the same time.”
“Anton, your mission is far more important.”
“Tell me, Olga.”
“I don’t understand, Anton.” That was Svetlana again.
“You know, I’ve just realized that a friend of mine is in trouble. Big trouble,” I said, looking into her eyes.
“The girl-vampire. She’s taken the boy.”
I didn’t feel a thing . . . No emotions, no pity, no anger, no sadness. I just felt cold and empty inside.
I must have been expecting it. I didn’t know why, but I was.
“But Bear and Tiger Cub are there!”
“It just happened.”
“And what’s happened to him?”
As long as she hadn’t initiated him! Death, simple death. Eternal death was more terrible.
“He’s alive. She’s taken him as a hostage.”
“What?”
That had never happened before. It had simply never happened. Taking hostages was a game human beings played.
“The girl-vampire’s demanding negotiations. She wants a trial . . . she’s hoping to find some way out.”
In my head I gave the vampire ten out of ten for inventiveness. She didn’t have a chance of getting away and she’d never had one. But if she could shift all the blame onto her eliminated friend, the one who’d initiated her . . . I don’t know anything, I don’t understand a thing. I just got bitten and turned into what I am. I didn’t know the rules. I hadn’t read the Treaty. I’ll be a normal, law-abiding vampire . . .
“It might even work!” I thought. Especially if Night Watch made a few concessions. And we would . . . we had no choice. Every human life had to be protected.
I even went limp in relief. You might say, what was the kid to me, anyway? If he’d drawn the sho
rt straw, he could have been the legitimate prey of vampires and werewolves. That’s just the way life is. And I’d have walked on by. Never mind the short straw—how many times had Night Watch gotten there too late, how many people had been killed by the Dark Ones . . . But it was a strange thing. I was already involved in the struggle for him, I’d stepped into the Twilight and spilled blood. And it wasn’t all the same to me anymore. Not by a long way . . .
Conversations in the Twilight move a lot faster than they do in the human world. But I still had to divide myself between Olga and Svetlana.
“Anton, don’t bother your head about my problems.”
In spite of everything, I felt like laughing. Right then there were hundreds of heads trying to deal with her problems, and Svetlana had no idea; she knew nothing about it. But it was enough to mention other people’s problems, so tiny in comparison with the black inferno vortex, and she immediately started worrying about them.
“You know,” I said, “there’s a law called the law of paired events. You have problems, but I wasn’t talking about them. There’s someone else who has really big problems. His own personal problems. But that doesn’t make them any easier.”
She understood. I liked the fact that she wasn’t embarrassed, either. She just added:
“My problems are personal too.”
“Not entirely,” I said. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“And that other person—can you help him?”
“Someone else will help him,” I said.
“Are you sure? Thanks for listening to me, but it’s impossible to help me. It’s just my dumb destiny, I guess.”
“Is she throwing me out?” I asked through the Twilight. I didn’t want to touch her mind right then.
“No,” Olga replied. “No . . . Anton, she can feel it.”
Did she really have some Other powers? Or was it just a freak upsurge, triggered by the Inferno?
“What can she feel?”
“That you’re needed at the other place.”
“Why me?”
“That crazy bloodsucking bitch is demanding you for the negotiations. The one who killed her partner.”
That really made me feel sick. We’d done an elective on antiterrorist tactics, more so that we could avoid having to use our powers as Others if we got caught up in human disputes than for any real requirements of the job. We’d covered terrorist psychology, and in those terms, the vampire was acting perfectly logically. I was the first Watch agent she had ever come across. I’d killed her mentor and wounded her. For her the image of her enemy was concentrated in me.
“How long has she been asking for me?”
“About ten minutes.”
I looked into Svetlana’s eyes. Dry, calm, not a single tear. The hardest thing of all is when pain is hidden behind a mask of calm.
“Sveta, would you mind if I went now?”
She shrugged.
“This is all so stupid . . .” I said. “It seems to me that you need help right now. At least someone who can listen to you. Or is willing to sit beside you and drink cold tea.”
A faint smile and a barely perceptible nod.
“But you’re right . . . there is someone else who needs help.”
“Anton, you’re strange.”
I shook my head:
“Not strange. Very strange.”
“I have this feeling . . . I’ve known you for a long time, but it’s like we’d never met before. And then—it’s like you’re talking to me and someone else at the same time.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s it exactly.”
“Maybe I’m going insane?”
“No.”
“Anton . . . this wasn’t just a chance visit, was it?”
I didn’t answer. Olga whispered something and stopped talking. The gigantic vortex rotated slowly above her head.
“No, it wasn’t,” I said. “I came to help.”
If the Dark Magician who had cursed her were watching us . . . That is, if it weren’t just an accidental “mother’s curse,” but a calculated blow struck by a professional . . .
We looked at each other without saying anything.
I had the feeling I could almost grasp what was really going on here. The answer was there, right beside me, and all our theories were stupid nonsense; we were following the old rules and maps that the boss had asked me to ditch. But to do that, I needed to think. I had to cut myself off for at least a second from what was going on, stare at a blank wall or a mindless TV screen, and stop feeling torn between the desire to help one small human being and tens or hundreds of thousands of people. Stop swinging one way, then the other, trying to resolve this lousy situation, which would still turn out badly whichever way the cards fell, and the only difference it would make to me was that I would die quickly when the blast of the Inferno flung me into the gray expanses of the Twilight world, or slowly and painfully, kindling the dull flame of self-contempt in my own heart . . .
“Sveta, I’ve got to go,” I said.
“Anton!” It wasn’t Olga; it was the boss. “Anton . . .”
He stopped; he couldn’t give me any orders; the situation was an ethical impasse. The girl-vampire was obviously sticking to her demands and refusing to negotiate with anyone except me. If he ordered me to stay, the boss would condemn the young hostage to death . . . He couldn’t order me, he couldn’t even ask me.
“We’re organizing your withdrawal . . .”
“Better just tell the vampire I’m coming.”
Svetlana reached out and touched my hand:
“Are you going away forever?”
“Just until the morning,” I said.
“I don’t want you to go,” she said simply.
“I know.”
“Who are you?”
An express introduction to the mysteries of the universe? The same scene all over again?
“I’ll tell you in the morning. Okay?”
“You’re out of your mind,” said the boss’s voice.
“Do you really have to go away?”
“Don’t say that!” Olga shouted. She’d sensed what I was thinking.
But I said it anyway.
“Sveta, when they suggested you should mutilate yourself to prolong your mother’s life, and you refused . . . You did what was right, what was rational, didn’t you? But now you’re suffering. And the pain’s so bad, it would have been better to act irrationally.”
“If you don’t go now, will you suffer?”
“Yes.”
“Then go. Only come back, Anton.”
I got up from the table, leaving my cold tea. The Inferno vortex swayed above us.
“I will, for sure,” I said. “And believe me . . . The situation isn’t hopeless.”
Neither of us said another word. I went out of the apartment and began walking down the stairs. Svetlana closed the door behind me. That silence . . . That deathly silence; even the dogs had howled themselves out that night.
“Irrational,” I thought, “I’m being irrational. If there’s no ethically correct solution, act irrationally. Did someone tell me that? Have I just remembered a line from my old course notes, a phrase from a lecture? Or am I looking for excuses?”
“The vortex . . .” Olga whispered. Her voice was almost unrecognizable, husky. I wanted to press her head against my shoulder.
I pushed the entrance door open and slipped out onto the icy sidewalk. The white owl circled above my head like a bundle of fluff.
The Inferno vortex had shrunk; it was shorter. Not a lot, relative to its overall height, but enough so that I could see it, maybe one and a half or two meters.
“Did you know that would happen?” asked the boss.
I looked up at the vortex and shook my head. Just what was going on here? Why had the Inferno reacted by growing larger and stronger when Ignat showed up? Putting people into a mellow state of mind was his specialty. Why had my aimless conversation and unexpected departure made the vortex shrink? br />
“It’s time I fired that group of analysts,” said the boss. I realized he’d said it to everyone, not just me. “When will we have a working hypothesis for what’s going on?”
A car suddenly appeared from the direction of Zelyony Avenue, catching me in the glare of its headlights. Its tires squealed as it bounced clumsily over the bumps of broken asphalt and stopped beside the entrance. The hot-orange, low-slung, sporty cabriolet looked absurd, surrounded by the prefabricated, multi-story blocks of a city where the best way of getting around was still a jeep.
Semyon stuck his head out on the driver’s side and nodded:
“Get in. I’ve been told to drive you like the wind.”
I looked around at Olga and she sensed my glance.
“I’ve got a job to do here. Go.”
I walked around the car and got into the front. Ilya was sprawled in the back—the boss must have decided the Tiger Cub–Bear double act needed reinforcements.
“Anton,” said Olga’s voice, pursuing me through the Twilight. “Remember . . . you made a deal today. Don’t forget that, not for a single moment . . .”
I didn’t understand at first what she was talking about. The witch from the Day Watch? What did she have to do with anything?
The car jerked, scraping across the hummocks of ice. Semyon swore with relish as he twisted the wheel, and the car began crawling toward the avenue with an indignant roar.
“What half-wit did you get the wheels from?” I asked. “Driving around in this weather . . .”
Ilya chuckled.
“Shshsh! Boris Ignatievich has lent you his very own car.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, turning to face him. The boss was always delivered to work in his company BMW. I’d never realized he had a yen for impractical luxury . . .
“It’s the truth. Antoshka, how did you manage that?” Ilya nodded in the direction of the vortex hanging above the houses. “I never realized you had powers like that!”
“I never touched it. Just talked to the girl.”
“Talked? You mean you didn’t actually fuck her?”
That was Ilya’s usual way of talking when he was feeling tense about something. And he had plenty of reasons for feeling tense just then. But it still made me wince. I thought what he said sounded strained . . . or maybe he just hit a raw nerve.