'Have you got problems or something?' Las asked. 'Sorry if I'm sticking my nose in, but you're looking pretty low.'
'No, it's nothing,' I said, shaking myself. 'I'm just missing my daughter. I'll be off in a minute . . . she's with my wife at the dacha, and I've got all this work to do here . . .'
'A sacred duty,' Las said approvingly. 'A child must not be left without attention. At least if her mother's with her, that's the most important thing.'
I looked at Las.
'The mother's most important for a child,' Las said, with the air of a Vysotsky, Piaget or some other doyen of child psychology. 'It's biologically determined. What we males mostly do is take care of the female. And the female takes care of the child.'
I was let into Timur Borisovich's apartment without any arguments. The bodyguards looked perfectly all right and probably didn't have the slightest idea about recent events.
Gesar and his new-found son were drinking tea in the study. The study was large – I'd even be tempted to call it huge – with a massive desk and heaps of all sorts of amusing trinkets on the shelves of the antique cabinets. It was amazing how similar their tastes were. Timur Borisovich's study was just like his father's office.
'Come in, young man,' Timur Borisovich said, and smiled at me. 'You see, everything's been worked out.'
He cast a quick glance at Gesar and added:
'He's still young, hot-headed . . .'
'That's for sure,' Gesar said with a nod. 'What's happened, Anton?'
'I need to have a word,' I said. 'In private.'
Gesar sighed and looked at his son, who stood up:
'I'll go and see my blockheads. No point in them just sitting on their backsides here. I'll find them something to do.'
Timur Borisovich went out, and I was left alone with Gesar.
'Well, what's happened, Gorodetsky?' he asked wearily.
'Can we speak freely?'
'Yes.'
'You didn't want to see your son become a Dark Magician, did you?' I asked.
'Would you like to see your Nadiushka as a Dark Enchantress?' said Gesar, answering a question with a question.
'But Timur was certain to become a Dark One,' I went on. 'You needed to be granted the right to his remoralisation. And for that the Dark Ones or, even better, the Inquisition had to panic and apply unreasonable force to your son.'
'And that's what happened,' said Gesar. 'All right, Gorodetsky, are you trying to accuse me of anything?'
'No, I'm trying to understand.'
'You saw me swear on the Light. I hadn't met Timur before. I didn't promise him anything, I didn't send the letters. And I didn't engage anyone to do these things.'
No, Gesar wasn't making excuses. And he wasn't trying to pull the wool over my eyes. It was as if he was setting out the terms of a problem – waiting with relish to see what answer his pupil would give.
'Witiezslav only needed to ask one more question,' he said. 'But apparently that question was too human for him . . .'
Gesar blinked rapidly.
'The mother,' I said.
'Witiezslav killed his own mother,' Gesar explained. 'Not with deliberate intent. He was a young vampire and he couldn't control himself. But . . . ever since then he has tried not even to say that word.'
'Who is Timur's mother?'
'There ought to be a name in the file.'
'There could be any name at all in the file. It says that Timur's mother disappeared at the end of the war . . . but I know a female Other who spent the time since then trapped in the body of a bird. As far as people knew, she had died.'
Gesar was silent.
'Could you really not find him any sooner?'
'We were sure that Timka had died,' Gesar said quietly. 'Olga was the one who didn't want to accept it. And when she was rehabilitated, she went on looking . . .'
'She found her son. And made him a rash promise,' I concluded.
'It's permissible for women to give way to their feelings,' Gesar said dryly. 'Even the wisest of women. And men exist to protect their woman and their child. To organise everything on a serious, rational basis.'
I nodded.
'Do you blame me?' Gesar asked curiously 'Anton?'
'Who am I to blame you?' I asked. 'I have a daughter who's a Light Other. And I wouldn't want to let the Dark have her.'
'Thank you, Anton.' Gesar nodded and relaxed visibly. 'I'm glad you understand that.'
'I just wonder how far you would have gone for your son and Olga,' I said. 'You know Svetlana had a premonition? Some kind of danger for me.'
Gesar shrugged.
'Premonitions are pretty unreliable.'
'What if I'd decided to tell the Inquisition the truth?' I went on. 'Decided to leave the Watch and join the Inquisition . . .What then?'
'You didn't leave,' Gesar said. 'Despite all Witiezslav's hints. What else, Anton? I can tell you've got another question you want to ask.'
'How did your son turn out to be an Other?' I asked. 'It's a lottery. It's rare for a family of Others to have a child who's an Other.'
'Anton, either go to Witiezslav and present him with your conclusions,' Gesar said in a low voice, 'or get out and go to Svetlana, as you were planning to do. Spare me this interrogation.'
'Aren't you afraid the Inquisition will think it all through and figure out what happened?' I carried on.
'No, I'm not. In three hours Witiezslav will sign a document closing the investigation. They won't open the case again. They're already up to their ears in shit.'
'Good luck with remoralising Timur,' I said.
And I headed for the door.
'You still have another week's leave. Spend some time with your family,' Gesar called after me.
At first I was going to reply proudly that I didn't need any handouts.
But I stopped myself in time.
What the heck!
'Two weeks,' I said. 'At this stage I've got at least a month of compensatory leave coming.'
Gesar didn't say a word.
EPILOGUE
I DECIDED TO return the BMW after I got back from leave. After all . . .
The road surface was brand new – the highway here used to be all potholes, with a few connecting stretches of good road; now it was stretches of good road, only occasionally interrupted by potholes – so the car coasted comfortably at high speed.
It's good to be an Other.
I knew I wouldn't get caught in traffic. I knew a dump-truck with a drunk driver wouldn't suddenly swerve in front of me. If I ran out of petrol, I could pour water into the tank and turn it into fuel.
Who wouldn't want a life like that for his own child?
What right did I have to blame Gesar and Olga for anything?
The stereo in the car was brand-new, with a minidisc slot. At first I was going to stick Combat Implants into it, then I decided I was in the mood for something more lyrical.
I put on The White Guard.
I don't know what you have decided.
I don't know how things are there with you,
An angel has sewed the sky shut with thread,
Dark blue and light blue . . .
I don't remember the taste of loss,
I have no strength to resist evil,
Every time I walk out the door,
I walk towards your warmth . . .
My mobile phone rang. And the intelligent stereo immediately turned down its own volume.
'Sveta?' I asked.
'You're hard to reach, Anton.'
Svetlana's voice was calm. That meant everything was all right.
And that was the most important thing.
'I couldn't get through to you either,' I admitted.
'Must be fluctuations in the ether,' Svetlana laughed. 'What happened half an hour ago?'
'Nothing special. I had a talk with Gesar.'
'Is everything okay?'
'Yes.'
'I had a premonition. That you were walking close to the edge.
'
I nodded, watching the road. I have a clever wife, Gesar. Her premonitions are reliable.
'And everything's all right now?' I asked, just to make sure.
'Now everything's all right.'
'Sveta . . .' I asked, holding the wheel with one hand. 'What should you do when you're not sure if you've done the right thing? If you're tormented over whether you're right or not.'
'Join the Dark Ones,' Svetlana replied without any hesitation. 'They're never tormented.'
'And that's the whole answer?'
'It's the only answer there is. And all the difference there is between Light Ones and Dark Ones. You can call it conscience, you can call it a moral sense. It comes down to the same thing.'
'I have this feeling,' I complained, 'as if the time of order is coming to an end. Do you understand? And I don't know what's coming next. Not a dark time, not a light time . . . not even the time of the Inquisitors . . .'
'It's nobody's time, Anton,' said Svetlana. 'That's all it is, nobody's time. You're right, something's coming. Something's going to happen in the world. But not right this minute.'
'Talk to me, Sveta,' I asked her. 'I've still got half an hour to drive. Talk to me for that half-hour, okay?'
'I haven't got much money left on my mobile,' Svetlana answered doubtfully.
'I can call you back,' I suggested. 'I'm on an assignment, I've got a company mobile. Gesar can pay the bill.'
'And won't your conscience torment you?' she laughed.
'I gave it a good drilling today.'
'All right, don't call back, I'll put a spell on my mobile,' said Svetlana. Maybe she was joking, maybe she was serious. I can't always tell.
'Then talk to me,' I said. 'Tell me what's going to happen when I get there. What Nadiushka's going to say. What you're going to say. What your mother's going to say. What's going to happen to us.'
'Everything's going to be fine,' said Svetlana. 'I'll be happy, and so will Nadya. And my mother will be happy . . .'
I drove the car, contravening the strict rules of the state highway patrol by pressing the mobile phone to my ear with one hand. Trucks came hurtling towards me and past me on the other side of the road.
I listened to what Svetlana was saying.
And from the speakers the quiet female voice carried on singing:
When you come back, everything will be different,
How shall we recognise each other . . .
When you come back,
But I am not your wife or even your friend.
When you come back to me,
Who loved you so madly in the past,
When you come back,
You will see the lots were cast long ago, and not by us . . .
Story Two
NOBODY'S SPACE
PROLOGUE
HOLIDAYS IN THE countryside near Moscow have always been the prerogative of the rich or the poor. It's only the middle classes that prefer Turkish hotels on inclusive tariffs offering 'as much as you can drink', a torrid Spanish siesta or the neat and tidy coast of Croatia. The middle classes don't like to take their holidays in Central Russia.
But then, the middle classes in Russia aren't very big.
In any case, the profession of biology teacher, even in a prestigious Moscow grammar school, has nothing whatever to do with the middle classes. And if the teacher is female, if her swine of a husband left her three years ago for another woman, who has no intention of encroaching on the mother's right to bring up her two children, then Turkish hotels are no more than an idle fantasy.
It was a good thing the children had not yet reached the terrible teenage years and were still genuinely delighted by the old dacha, the little stream and the forest that started just beyond the fence.
What was not so good was the way the elder child, a daughter, took her senior status so seriously. At the age of ten you can be pretty good at keeping an eye on your little five-year-old brother splashing about in the stream, but there's no way you ought to go wandering deep into the forest with him, relying on the knowledge you've gleaned from a school textbook on nature studies.
As yet, however, ten-year-old Ksyusha had no idea that they were lost. She walked blithely on along the forest path that she could barely even make out, holding her brother tightly by the hand as she told him a story:
'And then they hammered more pine stakes through him. They hammered one stake into his forehead, and another into his stomach! But he got up out of his coffin and said: 'You can't kill me anyway! I've been dead for ages already! My name is . . .'
Her brother started whingeing quietly.
'Okay, okay, I was joking,' Ksyusha said more seriously. 'He fell down and died. They buried him and went off to celebrate.'
'I'm f-f-frightened,' Romka confessed. He wasn't stammering because he was afraid, though – he always stammered. 'Don't t-tell me any m-m-more, all right?'
'All right,' said Ksyusha, looking round. She could still see the path behind them, but ahead it was completely lost under fallen pine needles and rotting leaves. The forest had suddenly become gloomy and menacing. Nothing at all like it was near the village where their mother had rented their summer dacha – an old house that no one lived in any more. They'd better turn back, before it was too late. As a caring older sister, Ksyusha realised that.
'Let's go home, or mum will tell us off.'
'A doggy,' her brother said suddenly. 'Look, a doggy!'
Ksyusha turned round.
There really was a dog standing behind her. A large, grey dog with big teeth. Looking at her with its mouth open, just as if it was smiling.
'I want a doggy like that,' Romka said without stumbling over the words at all, and looked at his sister proudly.
Ksyusha was a city girl and she'd only ever seen wolves in pictures. And in the zoo as well, only those were an exotic species from somewhere in Asia . . .
But now she felt suddenly afraid.
'Let's go, let's go,' she said quietly, tightening her grip on Romka's hand. 'It's someone else's doggy, you can't play with it.'
Something in her voice must have frightened her brother, frightened him so badly that instead of complaining, he clutched his sister's hand even tighter and followed her without a murmur.
The grey creature stood still for a moment, and then set off after the children at a slow, deliberate walk.
'It's f-following us,' said Romka, looking back. 'Ksyusha, is it a w-wolf?'
'It's a doggy,' said Ksyusha. 'Only don't run, okay? Dogs bite people who run!'
The animal made a coughing sound, as if it was laughing.
'Run!' shouted Ksyusha, and they set off at random, forcing their way through the forest, through the prickly bushes that grasped at them, past an incredibly big anthill as tall as a grown-up, past a row of moss-covered tree-stumps where someone had once cut down ten trees and dragged them away.