Nightwatch w-1

by Sergei Lukyanenko

  The young woman smiled as she studied the Central Asian. She made a suggestion:

  «Why don’t you come with us, respected guest? We’ll sit and eat your melon, drink some tea. We’ve been waiting for you so long; it’s not polite to go running off immediately.»

  The little old man’s face expressed intense thought. Then he nodded:

  «Let’s go, let’s go.»

  His first step knocked the man with affected manners off his feet. It was as if there were an invisible shield moving along in front of the little man, an immaterial wall of raging wind: The sleek man was swept along the ground with his long hair trailing behind him, his eyes screwed up in terror, a silent scream breaking from his throat.

  The young guy who looked like a punk rocker waved his hand through the air, sending flashes of scarlet light flying at the little man. They were blindingly bright when they left his hand but started fading halfway to their target, and they reached the Asiatic’s back as a barely visible glimmer.

  «Ow, ow, ow,» the little old man said, but he didn’t stop. He twitched his shoulder blades, as if some annoying fly had landed on his back.

  «Alisa!» the young guy called, continuing his useless attack, working his fingers to compact the air, drawing the scarlet fire out of it and flinging it at the little old man. «Alisa!»

  The girl leaned her head to one side as she watched the Central Asian walking away. She said something in a quiet whisper and ran her hand across her dress. Out of nowhere a slim, transparent prism appeared in her hand.

  The little old man started walking faster, swerving left and right and holding his head down in a funny way. The sleek man went tumbling along in front of him, no longer even attempting to cry out. His face was ragged and bleeding; his arms and legs were shattered and useless, as if he hadn’t simply slid three meters across a smooth floor but been dragged three kilometers across the rocky steppe by a wild hurricane or behind a galloping horse.

  The girl looked at the little man through the prism.

  First the Central Asian started walking more slowly. Then he groaned and unclasped his hands—the melon smashed open with a crunch against the marble floor, the briefcase fell with a soft, heavy thud.

  «Oh,» gasped the man that the girl had called a devona . «Oh, oh!»

  The little man slumped to the floor, shuddering as he fell. His cheeks collapsed inward, his cheekbones protruded sharply, his hands were suddenly bony, the skin covered with a network of veins. His black hair didn’t turn gray, but it was suddenly thinner and dusted with gray. The air around him began to shimmer, and invisible currents of heat streamed toward Alisa.

  «What I did not give shall henceforth be mine,» the girl hissed. «All that is yours is mine.»

  Her face flushed with color as rapidly as the little man’s body dried out. Her lips smacked together as she whispered strange, breathy words. The punk frowned and lowered his hand—the final scarlet ray slammed into the floor, turning the stone dark.

  «Very easy,» he said, «very easy.»

  «The boss was very displeased,» said the girl, hiding the prism away in the folds of her dress. She smiled. Her face radiated the same kind of energy women sometimes show after a vigorous sexual encounter.

  «Easy, but our Kolya was unlucky.»

  The punk nodded, glancing at the long-haired man’s motionless body. There was no particular sympathy in his eyes, but no hostility either.

  «That’s for sure,» he said, walking over confidently to the desiccated corpse. He ran his hand through the air above it and the corpse crumbled into dust. With his next pass the young guy reduced the melon to a sticky mess.

  «The briefcase,» said the girl. «Check the briefcase.»

  A wave of his hand—and the worn imitation leather cracked apart and the briefcase fell open, like an oyster shell under the knife of an experienced pearl-diver. But to judge from the young guy’s expression, the pearl he’d been expecting wasn’t there. Two clean changes of underwear, a pair of cheap cotton tracksuit pants, a white shirt, rubber sandals in a plastic bag, a polystyrene cup with dried Korean noodles, a spectacle case.

  The young guy made a few more passes and the polystyrene cup split open, the clothing came apart at the seams, and the case opened to reveal the spectacles. He swore.

  «He hasn’t got anything, Alisa! Nothing at all!»

  An expression of surprise slowly spread across the witch’s face.

  «Stasik, this is the devona , the courier. He couldn’t have trusted what he was carrying to anyone else!»

  «He must have,» the young guy said, stirring the Central Asian’s ashes with his foot. «I warned you, didn’t I, Alisa? You can expect anything from the Light Ones. You took responsibility. I may be a weak magician, but I have more experience than you—fifty years more.»

  Alisa nodded. There was no confusion in her eyes now. Her hand slid over her dress again, seeking for the prism.

  «Yes,» she said softly. «You’re right, Stasik. But in fifty years’ time our experience will be equal.»

  The punk laughed, then squatted down beside the long-haired man’s body and started going through the pockets quickly.

  «You think so?»

  «I’m certain. You shouldn’t have insisted on having your own way. I was the one who wanted to check the other passengers as well.»

  The young guy swung around to protest, but it was too late—the hot currents of life energy were already streaming out of his body.

  Chapter 1

  The Oldsmobile was ancient, which I liked. But the open windows were no help against the insane heat rising from the road after the sun had been scorching it all day long. It needed an air-conditioner.

  Ilya was probably thinking the same thing. He was driving with one hand on the steering wheel, glancing around all the time and chatting with everyone. I knew a magician of his level could spot probabilities ten minutes in advance and there wasn’t going to be any crash, but I was still feeling a bit uneasy.

  «I was thinking about putting in an air-conditioner,» he told Yulia in a guilty voice. The young girl was suffering worse than anyone else from the heat; she had a blotchy rash on her face and her eyes looked glazed. I was just hoping she wasn’t going to be sick. «But it would have ruined the entire car; it wasn’t meant to have one! No air-conditioner, no cell phones, no onboard computers.»

  «Uh-huh,» said Yulia, with a feeble smile. We’d all been working late the day before. No one had gone to bed at all; we’d been stuck in the office until five in the morning and then stayed the rest of the night there. I suppose it’s pretty mean to make a thirteen-year-old girl slave away with the grownups. But it was what she’d wanted; no one had forced her.

  From her seat in the front, Svetlana shot Yulia an anxious look.

  Then she shot Semyon a look of extreme disapproval. The imperturbable magician almost choked on his Yava cigarette. He breathed in and all the cigarette smoke drifting around inside the car was drawn into his lungs. He flicked the butt out the window. The Yava was already a concession to popular opinion—until just recently Semyon had preferred to smoke Flight and other repulsive tobacco products.

  «Close the windows,» said Semyon.

  A moment later it suddenly started getting cold. A subtle, salty smell of the sea filled the air. I could even tell that it was the sea at night, and quite close—the typical smell of the Crimean shoreline. Iodine, seaweed, a subtle hint of wormwood. The Black Sea. Koktebel.

  «Koktebel?» I asked.

  «Yalta,» Semyon replied. «September tenth, nineteen seventy-two, about three a.m. After a small storm.»

  Ilya clicked his tongue enviously.

  «Pretty good! How come you haven’t used up a set of sensations like that in all this time?»

  Yulia gave Semyon a guilty look. Climate conservation wasn’t something every magician found easy, and the sensations Semyon had just used would have been a hit at any party.

  «Thank you, Semyon Pavlovich,» she
said. For some reason Yulia was as shy of Semyon as she was of the boss, and she always called him by his first name and patronymic.

  «Oh, that’s nothing,» Semyon replied calmly. «My collection includes rain in the taiga in nineteen thirteen, and I’ve got the nineteen forty typhoon, a spring morning in Jurmaala in fifty-six, and I think I’ve got a winter evening in Gagry.»

  Ilya laughed:

  «Forget the winter evening in Gagry. But rain in the taiga…«

  «I won’t swap,» Semyon warned him. «I know your collection; you haven’t got anything nearly that good.»

  «What about two, no, three for one…«

  «I could give you it as a present,» Semyon suggested.

  «Go take a hike,» said Ilya, jerking on the steering wheel. «What could I give you that would match that?»

  «Then I’ll invite you when I unseal it.»

  «I suppose I should be grateful for that.»

  He started sulking, naturally. I always thought of them as more or less equal in their powers, maybe Ilya was even a bit stronger. But Semyon had a flair for spotting the moment that was worth recording with magic. And he didn’t waste his collection without good reason.

  Of course, some people might have thought what he’d just done was a waste: brightening up the last half hour of our journey with such a precious set of sensations.

  «Nectar like that should be breathed in the evening, with kebabs on the barbecue,» said Ilya. He could be incredibly thick-skinned sometimes. Yulia went tense.

  «I remember one time in Yemen,» Semyon said unexpectedly. «Our helicopter… anyway, never mind that… we set out on foot. Our communications equipment had been destroyed, and using magic would have been calling way too much attention to ourselves. We set out on foot, across the Hadramawt desert. We had hardly any distance left to go to get to our regional agent, maybe a hundred kilometers. But we were all exhausted. And we had no water. And then Alyoshka—he’s a nice young guy who works in the Maritime Region now—said: ‘I can’t take any more, Semyon Pavlovich; I’ve got a wife and two children at home, I want to get back alive.’ He lay down on the sand and unsealed his special stash. He had rain in it. A cloudburst, twenty minutes of it. We drank all we needed, and filled our canteens, and recovered our strength. I felt like punching him in the face for not telling us sooner, but I took pity on him.»

  After a long speech like that, nobody in the car said anything for a minute, Semyon had presented the facts of his stormy biography so eloquently.

  Ilya was the first to gather his wits.

  «Why didn’t you use your rain in the taiga?»

  «What a comparison,» Semyon snorted. «A collector’s item from nineteen-thirteen and a standard spring cloudburst collected in Moscow. It smelled of gasoline, would you believe!»

  «I believe it.»

  «Well, there you are. There’s a time and place for everything. The evening I just recalled was pleasant enough, but not really outstanding. Just about right for your old jalopy.»

  Svetlana laughed quietly. The faint air of tension in the car was dispelled.

  The Night Watch had been working feverishly all week long. Not that there’d been anything unusual happening in Moscow; it was just routine. The city was in the grip of a heat wave unprecedented for June, and reports of incidents had dropped to an all-time low. Neither the Light Ones nor the Dark Ones were enjoying it too much.

  Our analysts spent about twenty-four hours working on the theory that the unexpectedly hot weather had been caused by some move the Dark Ones were planning. No doubt at the same time the Day Watch was investigating whether the Light Magicians had interfered with the climate. When both sides became convinced the anomalous weather was due to natural causes, they were left with absolutely nothing to do.

  The Dark Ones had turned as quiet as flies pinned down by rain. Despite all the doctors’ forecasts, the number of accidents and natural deaths across the city fell. The Light Ones didn’t feel much like working either; the magicians quarreled over unimportant trivia; it took half the day to get the simplest documents out of the archives; and when the analysts were asked to forecast the weather they replied spitefully with some eighteenth-century gibberish like: «The water is dark in the clouds.» Boris Ignatievich wandered around the office in a total stupor: Even with his oriental origins and rich experience of the East, he was floored by the heat, Moscow style. The previous morning, on Thursday, he’d called all the staff together, appointed two volunteers from the Watch to assist him and told everyone else to clear out of the city. To go anywhere, to the Maldives or Greece if they wanted, down to the devil’s kitchen in hell if they liked—even that would be more comfortable. Or just to a summerhouse outside town. We were told not to show up in the office again until lunchtime on Monday.

  The boss waited for exactly a minute, until the happy smiles had spread across all the faces there, then added that it would be only fair to earn this unexpected bounty with a burst of intensive work. That way we wouldn’t end up feeling ashamed of wasting away the days. The title of the old literary classic was true, he said—«Monday starts on Saturday.» So having been granted three extra days of vacation, we had to get through all the routine work in the time we had left.

  And that’s what we’d been doing—getting through it, some of us almost until the morning. We’d checked on the Dark Ones who were still in town and under special observation: vampires, werewolves, incubuses and succubuses, active witches, all sorts of troublesome riffraff from the lower levels. Everything was in order. What the vampires wanted right now wasn’t hot blood but cold beer. Instead of trying to cast bad spells on their neighbors, the witches were all trying to summon up a little rain over Moscow.

  But now we were on our way to relax. Not as far as the Maldives, of course—the boss had been too optimistic about the finance office’s generosity. But even two or three days out of town would be great. We felt sorry for the poor volunteers who’d stayed behind in the capital to keep watch with the boss.

  «I’ve got to call home,» said Yulia. She’d really livened up after Semyon swapped the damp heat in the car for cool sea air. «Sveta, lend me your cell.»

  I was enjoying the coolness too. I glanced into the cars we were overtaking: in most of them the windows were rolled down, and the people glared at us with envy, assuming, of course, our ancient automobile had a powerful air-conditioning system.

  «The turn’s coming up soon,» I said to Ilya.

  «I remember. I drove here once before.»

  «Quiet!» Yulia hissed fiercely and started jabbering into the cell phone. «Mom, it’s me! Yes, I’m here already. Of course, it’s great! There’s a lake here. No, it’s shallow. Mom, I can’t talk for long, Sveta’s dad lent me his cell. No, there’s no one else. Sveta? Just a moment.»

  Svetlana sighed and took the phone from the young girl. She gave me a dark look and I tried to put on a serious expression.

  «Hello, aunty Natasha,» Svetlana said in a squeaky child’s voice. «Yes, very pleased. Yes. No, with the grownups. Mom’s a long way off, shall I call her? Okay, I’ll tell her. Definitely. Goodbye.»

  She switched off the phone and spoke into empty space:

  «So tell me, my girl, what’s going to happen when your mom asks the real Sveta how the vacation went?»

  «Sveta will tell her we had a great time.»

  Svetlana sighed and glanced at Semyon as if she were looking for support.

  «Using magical powers for personal goals leads to unexpected consequences,» Semyon declared in a dry, official voice. «I remember one time…«

  «What magical powers?» Yulia asked, genuinely surprised. «I told my friend Sveta I was going off for a party with some guys and asked her to cover for me. She was staggered, but of course she agreed.»

  Ilya giggled in the driving seat.

  «What would I want with a party like that?» Yulia asked indignantly, clearly not understanding what was so funny. «That’s the way the human kids amuse
themselves. So what are you laughing at?»

  For every member of our Watch, work takes up the greater part of our lives. Not because we’re wild workaholics—who in his right mind wouldn’t rather relax than work? And not because the work is so very interesting—we spend most of our time on boring patrol duty or polishing the seats of our pants in our offices. It’s simply that there aren’t enough of us. It’s much easier to keep the Day Watch up to strength; any Dark One is only too keen for a chance to wield power. But our situation’s quite different.

  Outside work, though, every one of us has his own little piece of life that we won’t give up to anyone: not to the Light and not to the Darkness. It’s all ours… A little piece of life that we don’t hide, but we don’t put it out on display either. What’s left of our original, basic human nature.

  Some travel every time they get a chance. Ilya, for instance, prefers standard tour packages, but Semyon likes basic hitchhiking. He once traveled from Moscow to Vladivostok without a single kopeck in record time, but he didn’t register his achievement with the League of Free Travelers, because he used his magical powers twice on the way.

  For Ignat—and he’s not the only one—vacation always means sexual adventures. It’s a stage almost everyone goes through, because life offers Others far more opportunities than it does to human beings. It’s a well-known fact that people feel a powerful attraction to Others, even though they may not realize it.

  There are plenty of collectors among us too. From modest collectors of penknives, key rings, stamps, and cigarette lighters to collectors of weather, smells, auras, and spells. I used to collect model automobiles, paying really big money on rare models that only had any value for a few thousand idiots. I dumped the entire collection into two cardboard boxes ages ago. I ought to take them out in the yard and tip them into the sandbox for the little kids to enjoy.

  The number of hunters and fishermen is pretty high. Igor and Garik enjoy extreme parachute jumping. Our useless programmer Galya, a sweet girl, grows bonsai trees. I guess we cover pretty much the entire range of amusements that the human race has invented.