‘A fine comparison,’ Olga said drily.
‘Sorry,’ Nadya answered, ‘I was judging from the point of view …’
I noticed that Gesar had been sitting with his eyes closed for about half a minute. And slowly turning crimson. Then he opened his eyes and stood up.
‘Right. I can’t hear Semyon. And I can’t contact him. Someone else try!’
Olga closed her eyes too.
Glyba applied his palm to his forehead picturesquely.
Jermenson chewed on his lips.
Svetlana frowned intensely.
But I took out my mobile and pressed one of the ‘hot keys’.
‘Yes, Antokha?’ Semyon answered cheerfully.
‘Where are you?’
‘Me? I’m at Olya and Kesha’s place. Drinking tea. Telling them all about our wonderful school for artistically gifted children.’
‘Gesar can’t make contact with you,’ I said
There was a brief pause, and then Semyon said: ‘You know, I can’t make contact either. With anyone. It’s like … everything’s gone blank …’
‘Tell him we’re on our way,’ ordered Gesar, walking rapidly towards the door. ‘Anton, Mark, Olga, you’re with me! Svetlana, Sergei, you’re in charge of the Watch.’
‘I’m not on the staff!’ Svetlana exclaimed indignantly.
‘Consider yourself drafted,’ Gesar flung out without looking round.
‘Sveta, if we start arguing now, the child might be killed,’ Olga said gently as she got up to follow Gesar. ‘And Semyon too. Do you understand?’
And Svetlana, who I could remember beating off Gesar’s attempts to get her involved in the Watch’s business at least a hundred times, backed down immediately. She just asked as we left: ‘What exactly do I have to do?’
‘Kill everything strange that tries to get into the office,’ Gesar replied.
‘I’m a doctor, not a killer!’ Sveta exclaimed indignantly.
‘Every good doctor has his own graveyard,’ snapped Gesar.
When we ran out into the yard, the boom across the entrance was already raised and Alisher and Garik were getting into the patrol van – a battered old Japanese SUV. They were obviously on duty-call today.
‘Mark Emmanuilovich, please join the two young watchmen, if you would be so kind,’ Gesar said briskly.
Apparently he seriously believed that we needed to have at least one Higher Other in each vehicle.
We got into the old BMW that Gesar had been riding around in for as long as I could remember. I sat in the front, Olga was on the back seat and Gesar was at the wheel. He didn’t usually sit there, I wasn’t even sure that the Great One knew how to drive a car.
But it turned out that he did – and how! We went flying out into the street and roared straight off up the oncoming lane, which apparently seemed less crowded with traffic to Gesar. We were spared the choruses of loud curses from drivers about wild, irresponsible Duma deputies and bureaucrats by just one thing.
The car was invisible.
And moreover, Gesar didn’t use an ordinary spell like the Sphere of Negation or other similar ones. We were entirely invisible. We were an empty space, hurtling along the road like a draught, a void as far as any other driver could see.
To be quite honest, this is pretty stressful, even when the driver at the wheel is a Higher Magician who could well have more than a hundred years of driving experience.
But it turned out that Gesar had no intention of playing tag with the motorists of Moscow. A moment later the car slipped into the Twilight.
Any Other can enter the Twilight. And taking someone else with you, or carrying something in, is a simple technical matter.
But to drag an entire car into the Twilight!
‘Remember the way we rode into the Twilight on a battle elephant?’ Olga suddenly asked with a laugh.
Was she joking or serious? Who could tell …
Now we were hurtling along through Twilight Moscow. The first layer is the one closest to reality. Here there are even buildings, cars and people. Everything is grey, dull and slow – but still real. Almost real, that is. Except that blue moss has been added to the roads and the walls of the buildings …
Our car had changed radically too. The old but sturdy German automobile seemed to melt: its dimensions shifted, the interior became far more old-fashioned, the wheel in Gesar’s hands shrank and became slimmer, with a glittering nickel rim on the inside and a rampant-deer emblem in the centre. A similar figure of a deer sprang up out of the bonnet. The instrument panel bulged out, thrusting towards Gesar a semicircular speedometer with four tiny square dial-plates lurking under it. At its centre the basic on-board computer was replaced by an absolutely primitive two-band radio receiver and in front of me a primeval mechanical clock appeared.
‘Yes,’ said Gesar, ‘I prefer Russian cars. A Series 2 Volga. My faithful old warhorse. Please don’t tell anyone about it – I know what you humorists are like …’
It wasn’t just a facade – I could smell the leather upholstery and I started slipping about on the shiny seat. Well, would you believe it … I didn’t even know the Soviet automotive industry had ever made a Volga with a leather interior and automatic transmission … maybe it even had airbags in it … they could certainly come in useful!
That boss of ours! Riding around in an ancient Volga and disguising it as a decent old ‘Beemer’! I wouldn’t have expected that kind of secretive patriotism from him, to be honest … or maybe it wasn’t patriotism, just conservatism?
But then, as a general rule, patriotism and conservatism are inseparable.
Gesar swung the wheel, swerving away from a Range Rover standing in the middle of the road. It was a strange-looking kind of vehicle – hung all over with advertising slogans and rotted right through, with its engine falling out of the chassis. This informational phantom probably hadn’t existed in the real world for a long time already, but it was still decaying here in the Twilight – that’s what happens with objects when they’ve been a focus of human attention for a long time, for whatever reason. The result of some kind of road accident, maybe?
‘No, we need to go deeper,’ Gesar suddenly decided.
This time he really did amaze me. He groaned – and the world around us turned completely colourless.
We were on the second level of the Twilight.
All the buildings became wooden – I must say that wooden buildings nine or ten storeys high look really strange. The road turned into a winding country track covered in tussocky grass. The people almost disappeared: here on the second level they were barely even visible. Everything was grey. Instead of cars there were little clouds of steam hanging above the road – as if someone had breathed out, emptying his lungs on a cold day …
Well, and of course, it turned very cold.
And the car changed again.
Very noticeably and for the better.
The deer, arched over in its leap on the bonnet, was transformed into a young woman with wings.
I gazed for a while at the emblem of two intertwined Rs, then asked:
‘So you prefer Russian automobiles, then, Boris Ignatievich?’
Gesar dove the Rolls-Royce Phantom hard over the empty roads, hurtling nonchalantly straight through the clumps of steam and the human shadows. Most people wouldn’t notice anything. Some would sense a chill on their skin and feel a blank, hopeless yearning for something glorious and enthralling – some experience that life had never granted them. In cases like that Americans say: ‘Someone just walked over my grave.’