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?'
Ah, yes. As Anton Gorodetsky, the patient, I had an old mother. She had osteochondrosis and a full set of old folks' ailments. She was Svetlana's patient too.
'Not too bad, she's okay. I'm the one who's—'
'Lie down.'
I pulled off my shirt and sweater and lay down on the sofa. Svetlana squatted down beside me. She ran her warm fingers over my stomach and even palpated my liver.
'Does that hurt?'
'No . . . not now.'
'How much did you drink?'
As I replied to the doctor's questions, I looked for the answers in her mind. No need to make it look like I was dying. Yes... I had dull pains, not too sharp . . . After food ... I'd just had a little twinge. . .
'So far it's just gastritis, Anton,' said Svetlana, taking her hands away. 'But that's bad enough, you know that. I'll write you a prescription.'
She got up, walked to the door and took her handbag off the peg.
All this time I was observing the vortex. There was nothing happening, my arrival hadn't triggered any intensification in the Inferno, but it hadn't done anything to weaken it either.
'Anton . . .' I recognised the voice coming through the Twilight as Olga's. 'Anton, the vortex has lost three centimetres of height. You must have made a right move somewhere. Think, Anton.'
A right move? When? I hadn't done anything except invent a reason to visit.
'Anton, do you have any of your ulcer medicine left?' Svetlana asked, looking across at me from the table. I nodded as I tucked in my shirt.
'Yes, a few capsules.'
'When you get home, take one. And buy some more tomorrow. Then take them for two weeks, before you go to bed.'
Svetlana was obviously one of those doctors who believe in pills. That didn't bother me, I believed in them too. All of us – the Others, that is – have an irrational awe of science; even in cases when elementary magical influence would do the job, we reach for the painkillers and antibiotics.
'Svetlana, I hope you don't mind me asking,' I said, looking away guiltily. 'Have you got problems of some kind?'
'Where did you get that idea, Anton?' she asked, carrying on writing and not even glancing in my direction. But she tensed.
'Just a feeling. Has someone offended you somehow?'
She put down her pen and looked at me with curiosity and gentle sympathy in her eyes.
'No, Anton. There's nothing. I expect it's just the winter. The winter's too long.'
She gave a forced smile and the Inferno vortex swayed above her head, shifting its stalk greedily.
'The sky's grey, the world's grey. And I don't feel like doing anything . . . everything seems meaningless. I'm tired, Anton. It'll pass when spring comes.'
'You're depressed, Svetlana,' I blurted out before I realised that I'd drawn the diagnosis out of her own memory. But she didn't pay any attention.
'Probably. Never mind, when the sun comes out. . . Thanks for your concern, Anton.'
This time her smile was more genuine, but it was still pained.
I heard Olga's voice whispering through the Twilight:
'Anton, it's down ten centimetres. The vortex is losing height. The analysts are working on it, Anton. Keep talking to her.'
What was I doing right?'
That question was more terrifying than 'What am I doing wrong?' Make a mistake, and all you have to do is make a sharp change of approach. But if you've hit the target without knowing how you did it, then you're in a real bind. It's tough being a bad shot who's hit the bull's eye by chance, struggling to remember how you moved your hands and screwed up your eyes, how much pressure your finger applied to the trigger . . . and not wanting to believe that the bullet was directed to the target by a random gust of wind.
I caught myself sitting and looking at Svetlana. And she was looking at me. Seriously, without speaking.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I'm sorry, Svetlana, forgive me. I came barging in late in the evening, and now I'm interfering in your private life . . .'
'That's all right, Anton. Actually, I like it. Now, would you like some tea?"
'Down twenty centimetres, Anton! Say yes!'
Even those few centimetres skimmed off the height of the vortex were a gift from the gods. They were human lives. Tens or even hundreds of lives snatched away from the inevitable catastrophe. I didn't know how I was doing it, but I was increasing Svetlana's resistance to the Inferno. And the vortex was beginning to melt away.