‘Of course we’ve found him! This is the twenty-first century, Antokha! We called our information centre and asked them who didn’t show up for such-and-such a flight to Barcelona. A minute later Tolik called back and gave me the names and addresses. Innokentii Grigorievich Tolkov, ten and a half years old. Lives with his mum … well, you know that Others are statistically more common in single-parent families.’
‘It’s the effect of social deprivation,’ I muttered gruffly.
‘The explanation I heard is that dads subconsciously sense when a child is an Other and leave the family,’ said Semyon. ‘In other words, they’re afraid … The Tolkovs live not far from here, near the Water Stadium metro station – why don’t we mosey over?’
‘No, Semyon, I won’t go,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘You’ll manage just fine on your own.’
Semyon gave me a quizzical look.
‘Everything’s cool!’ I said firmly. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not having a fit of hysterics, I’m not going on a binge and I’m not hatching plans to quit the Watch. I’ll take a trip to the airport and wander about there for a while. This whole thing’s wrong somehow, can’t you see? A boy-Prophet mouthing vague prophecies, a plane that should have crashed and didn’t … it’s not right!’
‘Gesar’s already sent someone to inspect Sheremetyevo,’ Semyon told me.
His voice had a sly kind of note to it …
‘Who did he send?’
‘Las.’
‘I see,’ I said with a nod, stopping in front of the lifts and pressing the call button. ‘In other words, Gesar’s not expecting anything interesting.’
Las was an untypical Other. He didn’t have any Other abilities at all to begin with, and he shouldn’t have developed any. But several years earlier he had managed to get in the way of the spell of an ancient magical book, the Fuaran. The vampire Kostya, who at one time was my neighbour and even my friend, had used Las to demonstrate that the book gave him the power to turn human beings into Others …
What had seemed strangest to me was not that Las was transformed into an Other, but that he was transformed into a Light Other. He was no evil villain, but he had a very specific sense of humour … and his views on life would have been more suitable for a Dark One too. Working in the Night Watch hadn’t changed him all that much – he seemed to regard it as just one more joke.
But he was a weak Other. Seventh-Level, the very lowest, with only vague prospects of ever reaching the Fifth or Sixth (and Las wasn’t desperately keen on the idea anyway).
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Semyon disagreed amiably. ‘Gesar simply isn’t expecting anything interesting in the line of magic. You were there, after all, you didn’t spot anything. And you’re a Higher Magician …’
I winced.
‘Yes, you are, you are,’ Semyon said in a friendly tone. ‘You don’t have much experience, but you have all the abilities. So digging in that direction is pointless. But Las – he’ll look at the situation differently. Practically from a human point of view. His head works in a rather paradoxical fashion … what if he spots something?’
‘Then the two of us should definitely go together,’ I said. ‘And you can boldly proceed with initiating the Prophet.’
‘Arise, prophet, and see, and hearken …’ said Semyon, quoting Pushkin. He walked into the lift first when it finally arrived. He sighed: ‘Oh, I don’t like Prophets and Clairvoyants! They blurt out something about you, and then you wander around like an idiot, wondering what they meant by it. You can imagine such terrifying things sometimes, but it’s all total nonsense really, phooey, not worth bothering about!’
‘Thanks,’ I said to Semyon. ‘Don’t worry … I’m taking all this very calmly. A Prophet – so what?’
‘I remember we had a clairvoyant in Petrograd,’ Semyon remarked eagerly. ‘So in 1916, on New Year’s Eve, we ask him what the prospects are. And then he laid it all on us …’
I managed to intercept Las in the yard, just as he was getting into his freshly washed Mazda. He was frankly delighted when I showed up.
‘Anton, are you really busy?’
‘Well …’
‘Why don’t you scoot over to Sheremetyevo with me? Boris Ignatievich told me to follow in your footsteps and look for anything odd. Maybe you could come along?’
‘What are we going to do about you?’ I asked, clambering into the right-side front seat. ‘All right, I’ll go. But you’ll owe me one, you know that.’
‘Goes without saying,’ Las said delightedly, turning on the motor. ‘I’m a bit pushed for time – I had to change my plans for today.’
‘What plans were they?’ I asked as we drove out of the car park.
‘Well, it’s like this …’ Las was slightly embarrassed. ‘I was going to get baptised today.’
‘What?’ I thought I’d misheard.
‘Baptised,’ Las repeated, looking at the road. ‘All right, isn’t it? We can get baptised?’
‘Who are “we”?’ I asked, just to be on the safe side.
‘Others!’
‘Of course we can,’ I answered. ‘That’s, like, that’s … a spiritual matter. Magic’s magic, and faith …’
Las suddenly started talking nineteen to the dozen.
‘I just thought – the devil only knows what they’ll make of me practising magic … I always used to be an agnostic – a broad-profile ecumenist, that is – but then I thought … better get baptised, to make completely sure.’
‘There was this character in the Simpsons: to make completely sure, he observed the Sabbath day and performed the Salat too,’ I remarked, unable to resist the jibe.
‘Don’t blaspheme,’ Las said strictly. ‘I’m serious … I found this church especially for it, in the Moscow region. They say all the priests in Moscow are corrupt. But in the provinces they’re closer to God. I phoned them yesterday and had a talk – well, some acquaintances recommended me – they promised to baptise me today, but then Gesar gave me this assignment …’
‘You’re moving kind of fast,’ I said doubtfully. ‘Are you really ready for the sacrament of baptism?’
‘Of course,’ Las laughed. ‘I’ve bought a cross, and a Bible just in case, and a couple of icons …’
‘Hang on, hang on,’ I said, starting to get interested. We’d just come out onto Leningrad Chaussee and started burning up the road to the airport. Las usually put the ‘escort’ spell on his car, and people had started hastily making way for us. I don’t know which drivers saw what – for some it was an ambulance, for some a police car with its siren wailing, for some a government escort vehicle with blinking lights hung all over it, like some chicken-brain techie with his mobile phones – but they all cleared the road for us pretty smartly.
‘And have you learned off the creed?’
‘What creed?’ Las asked in surprise.
‘The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed!’
‘Do I have to?’ Las asked anxiously.
‘Never mind, the priest will explain,’ I said, beginning to feel really amused. ‘Have you bought a baptismal robe?’
‘What for?’
‘Well, when you climb out of the font …’
‘They only immerse infants in the font – I’m not going to climb into it! They splash the water on grown-ups!’
‘You numbskull,’ I said emphatically. ‘They have special fonts, for adults. They’re called baptisteries.’
‘Is that what the Baptists have?’
‘It’s what they all have.’
Las started pondering – thankfully, driving an automobile with the ‘escort’ spell on it didn’t require truly intense concentration.