I sighed and set off towards the building's entrance. The trunk of the vortex swayed as it tried to touch me. I stretched my hands out, folding them into the Xamadi, the sign of negation.
The vortex shuddered and recoiled. Not really afraid, just playing by the rules. At that size the advancing Inferno should already have developed powers of reason, stopped being a mindless, target-seeking missile and become a ferocious, experienced kamikaze. I know that sounds odd – an experienced kamikaze – but when it comes to the Dark, the term's justified. Once it breaks through into the human world, an Inferno vortex is doomed, but it's only a single wasp out of a huge swarm that dies.
'Your hour hasn't come yet,' I said. The Inferno wasn't about to answer me, but I felt like saying it anyway.
I walked past the stalk. The vortex looked like it was made of blue-black glass that had acquired the flexibility of rubber. Its outer surface was almost motionless, but deep inside, where the dark blue became impenetrable darkness, I could vaguely see a furious spinning motion.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe its hour had come . . .
The entrance didn't even have a coded entry system. Or rather, it had one, but it had been smashed and gutted. That was normal. A little greeting from the Dark. I'd already stopped paying any attention to its tracks, even stopped noticing the words and the dirty paw marks on walls, the broken lamps and the fouled lifts. But now I was wound up tight.
I needn't have asked for the number. I could sense the girl – I kept on thinking about her as a girl, even though she'd been married – I knew which way to go, I could even see her apartment, or rather, not see it, but perceive it as a whole.
The only thing I didn't understand was how I was going to get rid of that damned twister.
I stopped in front of the door. It was an ordinary one, not metal, very unusual on a first floor, especially in a building where the entrance lock is broken. I gave a deep sigh and rang the bell. Eleven o'clock. A bit late, of course.
I heard steps. There was no sound insulation . . .
CHAPTER 7
SHE OPENED the door straight away.
She didn't ask who it was, she didn't look through the spy-hole, she didn't put on the chain. In Moscow! And at night! Alone in her apartment! The vortex was devouring the final remnants of the girl's caution, the caution that had kept her alive for several days. That was usually the way people died when they had been cursed . . .
But to look at, Svetlana still seemed normal. Except maybe for the shadows under her eyes, but who knew what kind of a night she'd had? And the way she was dressed – a skirt, a smart blouse, shoes – as if she was expecting someone or was all set to go out.
'Good evening, Svetlana,' I said, already noticing a faint gleam of recognition in her eyes. Of course, she had a vague memory of me from the previous day. And I had to exploit that moment when she'd already realised we knew each other but still hadn't remembered from where.
I reached out through the Twilight. Cautiously, because the vortex was hanging right there above the girl's head as if it was attached to her, and it could react at any second. Cautiously, because I didn't really want to deceive her.
Not even if it were for her own good.
It's only the first time that's interesting and funny. If you still find it amusing after that, the Night Watch is the wrong place for you. It's one thing to shift someone's moral imperatives, especially when it's always towards the Good. It's quite another to interfere with their memory. It's inevitable, it has to be done, it's part of the Treaty, and through the very process of entering and leaving the Twilight we induce a momentary amnesia in the people around us.
But if you ever start to enjoy toying with someone else's memory – it's time you quit the Watch.
'Good evening, Anton.' Her voice blurred slightly when I forced her to remember things that had never happened. 'What's happened?'
I smiled sourly and slapped myself on the stomach. By now there was a hurricane raging in Svetlana's memory. My control wasn't so great that I could implant a fully structured false memory in her mind. Fortunately, in this case, I could just give her a couple of hints, and from then on she deceived herself. She put my image together out of one old acquaintance I happened to resemble and another person she'd known and liked even earlier than that, but not for long, as well as a couple of dozen patients my age and some of her neighbours in the building. I only gave the process a gentle nudge, helping Svetlana towards an integrated image. A good man ... a neurasthenic . . . quite often unwell. . . flirts a bit, but no more than a bit – very unsure of himself. . . lives on the next stairwell.
'Are you in pain?' She gathered her thoughts. She really was a good doctor. With a genuine vocation.
'A bit. I had a drink yesterday,' I said, trying to look repentant.
'Anton, I warned you . . . come in . . .'
I went in and closed the door – the girl hadn't even bothered to do it. While I was taking off my coat, I had a quick look round, in the ordinary world and in the Twilight.
Cheap wallpaper, a tattered rug on the floor, an old pair of boots, a light bulb in a simple glass shade on the ceiling, a radio telephone on the wall – cheap Chinese junk. Modest. Clean. Ordinary. And the important thing here wasn't that the profession of district doctor doesn't pay very well. It was more that she didn't feel any need for comfort. That was bad . . . very bad.
In the Twilight world the apartment made a slightly better impression. No repulsive plant life, no trace of the Dark. Apart from the black vortex, of course, just hanging there ... I could see the entire thing, from the stalk, swirling round above the girl's head, up to the broad mouth, thirty metres higher.
I followed Svetlana through into the only room. At least things were a bit more cosy in here. The sofa had a warm orange glow – not all of it, though, just the part by the old-fashioned standard lamp. Two walls were covered with single-box bookshelves stacked on top of each other, seven shelves high.
I was beginning to understand her, not just as a professional target and a potential victim of a Dark Magician, not just as the unwitting cause of a catastrophe, but as a person. An introverted, bookish child, with a mass of complexes and her head full of crazy ideals and a childish faith in the beautiful prince who was searching for her and would surely find her. Work as a doctor, a few girlfriends, a few male friends and lots and lots of loneliness. Conscientious work almost in the spirit of a builder of communism, infrequent visits to the cafe and occasional loves. And each evening like every other one, on the sofa, with a book, with the phone lying beside her, with the television muttering something soapy and comforting.
How many of you there still are, girls and boys of various ages, raised by naïve parents in the seventies. How many of you there are, so unhappy, not knowing how to be happy. How I long to take pity on you, how I long to help you. To touch you through the Twilight – gently, with no force at all. To give you just a little confidence in yourself, just a bit of optimism, a gram of willpower, a crumb of irony. To help you, so that you can help others.
But I can't.
Every action taken by Good grants permission for an active response by Evil. The Treaty! The Watches! The balance of peace in the world?
I have to live with it or go crazy, break the law, walk through the crowd handing out unsolicited gifts, changing destinies, wondering which corner I'll turn and find my old friends and eternal enemies, waiting to dispatch me into the Twilight. For ever . . .
'Anton, how's your mother?'