‘The war will last nine years?’
‘The First World War began in 1914, the Civil War in Russia ended in 1923. Can you do the sum?’
‘It ended in 1922,’ I protested stubbornly.
‘Oh, these historians! In Yakutia, in Kamchatka and Chukotka, it was 1923!’ Gesar growled. ‘Who are you arguing with? Were you there? I fought against Bologov’s Cossacks and their shaman in 1923! And the basmachi carried on their bloody struggle after that …’
‘That’s not what I’m arguing about,’ I said in a conciliatory tone. ‘If the count includes 1914 and 1922, that makes exactly nine years.’
Gesar raised his hands thoughtfully and started bending down the fingers. Then he looked at me and turned crimson.
‘So what are you arguing about? It’s all happened!’
‘Not all of it,’ I said morosely. ‘ “A third of the people die of starvation …” ’
‘Famine in the Volga region, Kazakhstan, Little Russia … Not a third, of course, but let’s grant the Prophets the right to pile on the tragedy.’
‘ “The world absorbs the rest of the nation …” ’
‘What country hasn’t been absorbed into the world nowadays?’ asked Gesar, raising one eyebrow in surprise. ‘Globalisation, Anton! Everybody has dissolved in everybody! I went into a toilet in Paris, and there were graffiti scratched on the wall in fourteen languages!’
‘ “Moscow consumed by flames …” ’
‘Prophecies are always allegorical,’ Gesar snapped. ‘The old Moscow has perished, there’s nothing left of it but the Kremlin – but the Kremlin isn’t Moscow.’
‘ “With the loss of his heir, the tsar is deranged …” ’
Gesar pondered for a moment. Then he said: ‘Well, that is the result of Arina’s interference. She treated the heir to the throne’s illness, if she’s not lying, so he didn’t die – as he should have done … But one way or another, all the rest has happened. The silly old fool has simply gone gaga. She wants to suffer a bit, don’t you know. She has destroyed Russia! What a laugh! The whole world and its uncle have been trying to destroy Russia for a thousand years, but it’s still there, and it will stay there!’
‘Thank you,’ I said sincerely, getting up. ‘I was feeling pretty lousy about it.’
‘Anton, I’ve lived in many different places,’ Gesar said in a gentle voice. ‘Tibet … China … India … Flanders …’
‘Not Holland?’ I asked.
‘Zeelandic Flanders,’ Gesar replied. ‘Now it’s part of Holland, that’s right. The point, Anton, is that you can get stuck on any country. I love Tibet, and India, and Flanders. And Russia, of course! But with the passing years you come to realise that the most important things are your family, your friends, your work. And as for countries … we’re all citizens of humankind, we have emerged from it, but we live and work for its sake. We’re all Others! That’s what is most important. Don’t be afraid of that old Witch’s nonsense. Sleeping for all that time had a bad effect on her. Don’t seek for meaning in Erasmus’s old lump of wood: if even Arina didn’t covet it – and she could have stolen it from you a hundred times – it means there isn’t any meaning in it. But when it comes to Innokentii’s prophecy, of course, that’s where you really blundered! That would be really worth knowing!’
I hung my head repentantly.
‘You definitely erased everything from the toy phone?’ Gesar asked casually.
‘Yes. I gave it to the lab guys.’
‘They couldn’t fish anything out of it,’ Gesar sighed. ‘A tiny microchip, completely written over, the old information completely erased … And you didn’t keep another flash stick?’
‘I don’t have another one. They’ve checked already.’
‘That’s bad,’ said Gesar, sighing heavily again. ‘The most valuable piece of information you obtained in Formosa is that the Tiger is not exactly what we thought: he tries to spur the Prophets on to make their prophesies, not eliminate them! But he behaved quite differently here! He himself stated that the prophecy must not be uttered! And that makes the prophecy interesting – but now it’s out of our reach!’
‘It’s my fault …’
‘Drop it,’ said Gesar, with a wave of his hand. Yes, he was clearly in an excellent mood. ‘What’s done is done. No point raking over old coals. I don’t have any assignments for you today, you can take care of your own business. Ah yes … you are granted the right to one seventh-level benign intervention!’
‘If only I’d had it yesterday evening!’
‘You would have saved the girl, and the vampire would have been given a new licence. You know that!’
I shrugged and walked out of the office.
CHAPTER 2
THE MAIN ADVANTAGE that someone at the top has, at least in an organisation like the Night Watch, is the freedom to plan his own day.
I actually always had more than enough work. Officially I had been made responsible for supervising trainees, monitoring teaching in the school and inspecting patrols. In the tedious bureaucratic language that is self-generated in any organisation, whether it’s the accounts office of a pipe-rolling mill or an alliance of anarchistic romantic artists, my job was titled ‘Deputy Director for the Training and Professional Development of Personnel’.
Doesn’t actually sound too exhausting, right? But I had practically no free time left. Unless I took an arbitrary decision to rake all the papers to one corner of the desk, switch off my work mobile and do something that was strictly optional. Then it miraculously turned out that the Watch was capable of existing without one of its deputy directors for as long as you could wish. But the moment I turned back to work, I was swamped by a tsunami of applications, requests, complaints, instructions and schedules.
As a child I didn’t like school, as a young man I didn’t like college – and I went through all that to end up supervising the training programme in a magical police force! I wonder whether, if I had remained a programmer, or taken up architecture – that was what my parents wanted, we had some well-known architect or other in our family – educational work would have caught up with me anyway?
Probably it would. Anybody, even an Other, can only change the form of his life, not its content. In one old computer game a wicked witch had the habit of asking people she met: ‘What can change human nature?’ – and afterwards she took great pleasure in killing them. Because no one could find the right answer …
But although Nature cannot be changed, she can always be deceived. For a while.
And so I sat at the desk in my office for a few minutes, looking through the papers and smoking a cigarette. About a year earlier Igor, in a burst of fanatical enthusiasm for the healthy lifestyle, had launched a campaign to prohibit smoking in the Watch’s office premises. In general terms everybody, including the smokers, agreed with his arguments. But when it came down to the specifics, opinions differed widely. Naturally, in areas where non-smokers worked, no one smoked anyway. In communal areas it was permitted, but only if no one objected. Everyone took their dose of poison either in the smoking rooms or in their own offices – and when all was said and done, it didn’t take that much magic to rid rooms of the smell of tobacco. But Igor insisted on having everything his way, railing about the stench of tobacco, holding up the example of civilised Europe, pressing home the point that it was embarrassing when colleagues visited us from there. (Although I hadn’t noticed the European Others suffering much when they drank vodka at receptions, smoked in their rooms or, for instance, bought hundreds of suspiciously cheap ‘licenced’ movie DVDs and music CDs in the shops.)