“How’s Sveta? Did she scold you?” Semyon asked as he drove off.
“No, of course not. She wished me luck, fed me a delicious dinner, and gave me heaps of useful advice.”
“A good wife always keeps her husband happy,” Semyon declared cheerfully.
“You’re in a good mood today,” I remarked. “Is Gesar sending you to Samarkand too?”
“As if he would,” Semyon said with a histrionic sigh. “Listen, lads, why are you going to Samarkand? The capital’s Binkent, I remember that for certain!”
“ Tashkent,” I corrected him.
“Nah, Binkent,” said Semyon. “Or isn’t it? Ah, I remember! The town’s called Shash!”
“Semyon, you’re not old enough to remember Binkent,” Alisher scoffed. “Binkent and Shash were ages ago-only Gesar remembers that. But we’re flying to Samarkand because that’s where the oldest Light Other who works in a Watch lives. The Watch in Tashkent is bigger, they have all the swank of a capital city, but most of them are young. Even their boss is younger than you are.”
“Well, how about that…,” said Semyon, shaking his head. “Incredible. The East-and everyone in the Watches is young?”
“In the East the old men don’t like to fight. The old men like to watch beautiful girls, eat pilaf, and play backgammon,” Alisher replied seriously.
“Do you often go home?” Semyon asked. “To see your family and friends?”
“I haven’t been there even once in eight years.”
“Why’s that?” Semyon asked in surprise. “Don’t you miss your home at all?”
“I haven’t got a home, Semyon. Or any family. And a devona’s son doesn’t have any friends.”
There was an awkward silence. Semyon drove without speaking. Eventually I just had to ask, “Alisher, if this isn’t too personal a question…Your father, was he a man? Or an Other?”
“A devona is a servant whom a powerful magician creates for himself.” Alisher’s voice was as steady as if he were giving a lecture. “The magician finds some halfwit who has no family and fills him with Power from the Twilight. He pumps him full of pure energy…and the result is a stupid, but very healthy man who possesses magical abilities… No, he’s not quite a man anymore. But he’s not an Other-all of his power is borrowed, inserted into him by the magician at some time. A devona serves his master faithfully, he can work miracles…but his head still doesn’t work any better than it did before. Usually the magician chooses people who are mentally retarded, or have Down syndrome-they’re not aggressive and they’re very devoted. The power inserted into them gives them good health and a long life.”
We didn’t say anything. Neither of us had expected such a frank answer from Alisher.
“The common people think a devona is possessed by spirits,” he went on. “And that’s almost true: It’s like taking an empty, cracked vessel and giving it new content. Only, instead of intelligence it is usually filled with devotion. But Gesar’s not like all the others. Not even like other Light Ones. He cured my father. Not completely…even he can’t do absolutely anything. At one time my father was a total idiot. I think he suffered from imbecility-obviously owing to some kind of organic damage to the brain. Gesar healed my father’s body, and in time he acquired normal human reason. He remembered that he had once been a complete imbecile. He knew that if Gesar didn’t fill him with fresh Power regularly, his body would reject his reason again. But he didn’t serve Gesar out of fear. He said he would give his life for Gesar because he had helped him to become aware. To become a man. And also, of course, because a mindless fool like him now had a wife and a son. He was very afraid that I would grow up an idiot. But it was all right. Only…only the people remember everything. That my father was a devona, that he had lived too long in this world, that once he was an imbecile who couldn’t even wipe his own nose-they remembered all that. My mother’s family rejected her when she left to join my father. And they didn’t acknowledge me, either. They forbade their children to play with me. I am the son of a devona. The son of a man who should have lived the life of an animal. I have nowhere to go back to. My home is here now. My job is to do what Gesar tells me to do.”
“Wow…” Semyon said quietly. “That’s a tough deal…really tough.” Then he subtly changed tack. “I remember how we drove back those counterrevolutionary bandits, the basmaches. You don’t mind me saying that, do you?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Well, maybe now they’re not bandits any longer, but national heroes…”
“When Gesar was a commissar in Turkestan, my father fought in his detachment,” Alisher said with pride.
“He fought there?” Semyon asked excitedly. “What year was that in?”
“The early twenties.”
“No, I was later…In Garm, in twenty-nine, when the basmaches broke through from abroad.”
They launched into a lively discussion of events from days of long ago. From what I understood, it seemed that Alisher’s father and Semyon had almost crossed paths: They had both fought alongside Gesar when he was on active military service in the Red Army. To be quite honest, I didn’t really understand how Gesar could have taken part in the events of the Civil War. The Great Light One couldn’t possibly have bombarded the White Guards and the basmaches with Fireballs! Apparently not all Others had been indifferent to that revolution. Some of them had taken one side or the other in the struggle. And the great Gesar and his comrades had gone dashing about the steppes of Asia to fight whoever had taken the other side.
And I also thought that now I could probably guess why Gesar and Rustam had quarreled.
EARLY IN THE MORNING IS THE RIGHT TIME TO ARRIVE IN A NEW CITY. By train, on a plane-it makes no difference. The day seems to start with a brand-new leaf.
On the plane Alisher became taciturn and thoughtful again. I half-dozed almost all the way through the flight, but he looked out the window as if he could see something interesting on the distant ground, enveloped in night. Then just before we landed, when we flew out into the morning and the plane started its descent, he asked, “Anton, would you mind if we separate for a while?”
I gave the young magician a curious look. Gesar’s instructions hadn’t involved anything of the kind. And Alisher had already told me everything about his family and friends-or, rather, about the fact that he didn’t have any.
But then, it wasn’t hard to guess what a young guy who had left his homeland at the age of just over twenty might be thinking about.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Adolat,” he replied without trying to deny anything. “I’d like to see her. To know what happened to her.”
I nodded and asked, “Does that name mean something?”
“All names mean something. Didn’t you ask Gesar to give you knowledge of the Uzbek language?” Alisher asked in surprise.
“He didn’t suggest it,” I mumbled. But really, why hadn’t I thought of it? And how could Gesar have goofed so badly? We Others learn the major languages of the world as a matter of course-naturally, with the help of magic. Less common languages can be lodged in your mind by a more powerful and experienced magician. Gesar could have done it. Alisher couldn’t.
“That means he didn’t think you needed it,” Alisher said thoughtfully. “Interesting…”
It seemed as if Alisher couldn’t imagine Gesar making a mistake.
“Will I really need the Uzbek language?” I asked.
“It’s unlikely. Almost everyone knows Russian… And anyway, nobody would take you for an Uzbek,” Alisher said with a smile. “Adolat means ‘justice.’ A beautiful name, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“She’s an ordinary human being,” Alisher murmured. “But she has a good name. A Light name. We went to school together…”