What difference did it make, anyway?
I didn't feel resentful. I wasn't even in pain. The two of us had never made love. In fact, I was the one who'd been careful to erect barriers. I didn't just live for the present moment; I wanted everything right now, but I wanted it forever.
I found the disc-player on my belt and switched it on at random. That always worked for me. Maybe because I'd been controlling the simple electronic circuits for a long time, like Tiger Cub, without knowing it?
Who's to blame if you're so tired?
And haven't found what you were longing for?
Lost everything you sought so hard,
Flown up to the sky and fallen back again?
Whose fault is it that day after day
Life walks on other people's paths
But your home has become lonely,
With darkness behind its windows,
And the light dims and sounds die
And your hands seek new torment,
And if your pain should ease—
It means a new disaster's on the way.
It was what I myself had wanted. I'd tried to make it happen. And now I had only myself to blame. Instead of spending all evening with Semyon, discussing the complex issues of the global conflict between Good and Evil, I ought to have stayed. Instead of getting angry with Gesar and Olga for their cunning version of truth, I ought to have insisted on my own. And never, ever have thought that it was impossible to win.
Once you start thinking like that, you've already lost.
Who's to blame, tell me, brother,
One is married, another's rich,
One is funny, another's in love.
One's a fool, another's your enemy,
And whose fault is it that there and here
They wait for each other, it's how they live,
But the day is dreary, the night is empty,
The warm places are crowded out,
And the light dims and sounds die,
And your hands seek new torment,
And if your pain should ease,
It means a new disaster's on the way.
Who's to blame and what's the secret,
Why is there no grief or happiness
No victories without defeats,
And the score of luck and disaster is even.
And whose fault is it you're alone,
And your one life so very long,
And so dreary and you're still waiting,
Hoping some day you will die.
«Oh, no,» I whispered, pulling off the earphones. «That's not for me.»
We'd all been taught for so long to give everything and not take anything in exchange. To sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others, to face the machine-gun fire. Every glance noble and wise, not one single empty thought, not one sinful intention. After all, we were Others. We'd risen above the crowd, unfurled our immaculately clean banners, polished up our high boots, pulled on our white gloves. Oh, yes, in our own little world we could never go too far. A justification could be found for any action, a noble and exalted justification. A unique act for the first time in the ring—here we are all in white, and everyone else is covered in shit!
I was sick of it!
A passionate heart, clean hands, a cool head… Surely it was no accident that during the Revolution and the Civil War, almost all the Light Ones had attached themselves to the Cheka? And most of those who didn't had died, at the hands of the Dark Ones, or even more often at the hands of those they were defending. At the hands of human beings, because of human stupidity, baseness, cowardice, hypocrisy, envy. A passionate heart and clean hands. But keeping a cool head was more important. That was absolutely essential. I didn't really agree with all the rest. Why not a pure heart and hot hands? I like the sound of that better.
«I don't want to protect you,» I said into the quietness of the forest morning. «I don't want to! Children and women, old men and imbeciles—none of you. Live the way you want to, get what you deserve! Run from vampires, worship Dark Magicians, kiss the goat under his tail! If you've deserved it—take it! If my love means less than your happy life, then I don't wish you happiness!»
They can become better, they must, they're our roots, they're our future, they're our responsibility. Little people and big people, road sweepers and presidents, criminals and policemen. They carry within them the Light that can burst out in life-giving warmth or death-dealing flame…
I don't believe it!
I've seen all of you. Road sweepers and presidents, robbers and cops. Seen mothers killing their children, fathers raping their daughters. Seen sons throwing their mothers out of the house and daughters putting arsenic in their fathers' food. Seen a husband smiling as he sees the guest out and closes the door, then punches his pregnant wife in the face. Seen a smiling wife send her drunken husband out for another bottle and turn to his best friend for a passionate embrace. It's very simple to see all this. All you have to do is look. That's why they teach us not to look before they teach us to look through the Twilight.
But we still look anyway.
They're weak, they don't live long, they're afraid of everything. We mustn't despise them and hate them; that would be criminal. They must only be loved, pitied, and protected. That is our job, our duty. We are the Watch.
I don't believe it!
Nobody can be forced to commit an act of villainy. You can't push anybody into the mud; people always step into it themselves. No matter what the circumstances of life are, there are no justifications and there never will be any. But people look for justifications and they find them. All people have been taught to do that, and they've all proved diligent pupils.
And we're probably just the best of the best.
Yes, of course, there have been, there still are, and there always will be those who have not become Others, but managed somehow to remain people. But there are so few of them, so very few. Or perhaps we're simply afraid to look at them more closely? Afraid to see what we might discover?
«Am I supposed to live for your sake?» I asked. The forest didn't answer; it was already prepared to accept anything I said.
Why must we sacrifice everything? Ourselves and those we love?
For the sake of those who will neither know about it nor appreciate it.
And even if they did find out about it, all we'd earn for our efforts would be an amazed shake of the head and the insulting exclamation: «Stupid hicks.»
Perhaps it would be worth just once showing humankind who exactly the Others are? What one single Other is capable of when he's not shackled by the Treaty, when he breaks free of the Watches?
I actually smiled to myself as I pictured the whole scene. The general picture, not just my place in it: I'd be stopped soon enough. So would any Great Magician or Great Sorceress who decided to violate the Treaty and reveal the Others to the world.
What a hullabaloo there'd be!
Aliens landing at the Kremlin and the White House wouldn't even come close.
Impossible, of course.
Not my path.
In the first place, because I didn't want to take over the world or throw it into total turmoil.
I wanted only one thing: that they not force the woman I love to sacrifice herself. Because the path of the Great Ones is genuine sacrifice. The appalling powers they develop change them totally and completely.
None of us are quite human. But at least we remember that we used to be human. And we can still be happy and sad, feel love and hate. The great magicians and sorceresses move beyond the bounds of human emotions. They probably feel emotions of their own, but we can't understand them. Even Gesar, a magician beyond classification, isn't a Great One. And Olga somehow failed to become a Great One.
They'd bungled something. Failed to pull off some grandiose operation in the struggle against the Darkness.