‘We’re supposed to have a truce with the Dark Ones,’ I remarked. ‘And Zabulon’s not being any more malign than usual …’
‘Zabulon! Ha!’ said Las and laughed sarcastically. ‘He’s small fry. Our enemy is the Prince of Darkness.’
‘The devil?’ I said. ‘Well, there are no specific grounds for believing that he exists … Did you get baptised, then?’
‘Do you need to ask?’ Las proudly pushed his fingers in behind his collar and showed me a brand new shiny little cross. ‘I got baptised, I confessed, took the sacrament – the works!’
‘A good job you didn’t receive extreme unction,’ I quipped. ‘That’s it, then. The forces of evil are doomed now.’
‘Don’t mock,’ Las said in an offended voice.
I suddenly felt awkward. In the final analysis, faith is every individual’s personal matter. Whether he’s an Other or a human being … Take Arina, the witchiest of witches, but she still believed!
‘Sorry, I was wrong,’ I said. ‘Since it’s impossible in principle to prove that God does or doesn’t exist …’
Las patted me on the shoulder patronisingly.
‘That’s okay. I understand. But you won’t deny that the world is seeing an increase in conflicts between countries that can’t be resolved by peaceful methods, financial instability is on the increase and all the traditional economic, political and social models are imploding?’
‘I won’t,’ I admitted.
‘Well then, in these conditions the Watch is absolutely obliged to prepare to take measures for the protection of the human herd.’
I thought I must have misheard.
‘The human what?’
‘Herd. Well, population,’ Las said, frowning.
‘You’re not very polite about human beings,’ I said.
‘Well, have they deserved any better?’ Las asked in surprise. ‘Two thousand years since people were given the Good News! And what’s changed in all that time? We have the same old wars and violence, infamy and abomination!’
‘Overall there has been some progress,’ I said, disagreeing. ‘In wartime they used to annihilate people or turn them into slaves, the peasants starved to death …’
‘And now in wartime they torture them and poison them with gas in concentration camps, bomb them with high-precision smart bombs or, in the very best of cases, they occupy countries economically and turn them into powerless satellites. And where there is no war – they dumb down their own people and treat them like cattle.’ Las spread his hands emphatically. ‘All those Genghis Khans, Xerxeses and Caligulas were more honest, I reckon. So far, there is nothing to respect human beings for.’
I started getting a bit wound up at this point.
‘Las, we’re the Night Watch. We protect people, we don’t despise them.’
Las pulled a wry face.
‘Listen, Anton. You’re, you know … a Higher Magician and all that. One of the high-ups. But can we talk off the record, just as friends?’
‘Sure, go on.’
‘Then don’t give me that razzmatazz about how we protect people,’ Las said calmly. ‘We control them – just a little bit. And we prevent the Day Watch from controlling people the way they think is right. What kind of protection is it, when we issue licences to vampires to hunt people? What kind of protection is it, if for every good deed that we do the Dark Ones are granted the right to work evil? We protect ourselves! Our way of thinking, our comfortable existence, our long lives and lack of human problems. Sure, we’re good, and the Dark Ones are bad! That’s why we don’t entirely regard human beings as cattle. But we don’t consider them equal to ourselves!’
‘We do,’ I said stubbornly.
‘Oh, yes?’ Las laughed. ‘When did you last live life as a human, Anton? So that you had to count the money left in your pocket until payday, grovel to some petty human bureaucrat to get some absurd little piece of paper with a stamp on it, wander round grimy, filthy health centres trying to get exhausted doctors to treat you, spend two hours stuck in a traffic jam because half of Moscow has been blocked off for some big shot, or dodge a car with a flashing light and “special” number plates hurtling along the wrong side of the road?’
‘There are plenty of people in Moscow who don’t count every kopeck and don’t grovel to bureaucrats …’ I began.
‘Of course, and they regard the people around them as cattle,’ Las said. ‘All those other people who don’t have a flashing light or a couple of credit cards from major foreign banks in their wallet. And if you behave like those who reckon they’re above the common folk – and, I’m sorry, that’s exactly how you do behave when you calculate the lines of probability, remoralise roughnecks just for a minute or two when you run into them, pay in a shop with your bank card from work, which has no limit—’
‘Why do you think our Watch bank cards don’t have any limit?’ I asked in amazement.
‘I checked it,’ Las chuckled. ‘Seems like you try to live within the pay that’s supposed to be transferred to your account. Count it all up some time, out of curiosity – you’ll soon see that you’ve been spending two or three times as much as you earn for a long time! The only limit is your internal sense of measure … and that has a way of getting stretched. So, Anton, if you behave like those people who are used to thinking of themselves as above everyone else you’re absolutely no different from them.’
‘I don’t drive through red lights with a flashing beacon!’ I growled.
‘Of course not. You drive through the crossroads in the Twilight, or you apply a Sphere of Inattention to your car, so that everyone brakes without even knowing why. What’s the difference between your magic and a flashing light? There isn’t any! You think of yourself as a member of a higher race too – only, of course, with greater reason. You are a member of a higher race! You’re an Other. A Light Other. So you wish people well. But it’s a long, long time since you lived the life of ordinary people and you couldn’t live that way. You wouldn’t last even a single day.’
‘I would,’ I said stubbornly.
‘That’s what you think,’ said Las, frowning. ‘Anyway … I like humans, I wish them well. But I don’t idealise them. And since they behave like cattle, that’s the way I have to relate to them. No way am I going to pretend that there’s no difference between me and Vasya the yard-keeper.’
‘There isn’t any difference, except that we have magical abilities,’ I said. ‘Absolutely none. We have the same morality, the same dreams … the whole kit and caboodle!’ I raised my hands, touched the Twilight and felt for my own aura. ‘Block for twenty-four hours.’
‘I was absolutely certain you would do that,’ Las said. ‘Well, go on, try it. Only twenty-four hours is too ambitious to start with. A couple of hours would have been enough for you.’
‘I queued for passport control in the airport for an hour,’ I said. ‘It was okay, not a peep out of me.’
‘A pity it wasn’t two,’ Las sighed. ‘Then you would have been more careful now … Right, then, we’ll talk tomorrow.’
‘Right, then,’ I said and nodded.
‘Shall I give you a lift home?’ Las asked.
I just snorted disdainfully and headed for the exit.
CHAPTER 3
THERE’S A SIMPLE way to understand what a blind man feels in this life: close your eyes and try to do something. Something ordinary, not difficult. Something you normally do anyway ‘without looking’ – take a spoon out of a drawer in a table, light a cigarette, put a CD in a music centre. It only takes five minutes at the most to understand everything and know that you’ll never forget it.