Sixth Watch

by Sergei Lukyanenko

  “It probably can be interpreted in a broad sense,” Nadya agreed. “Only there has to be blood. Now look . . . The most important Light One is me.”

  “How do you make that out?” I asked indignantly.

  “Well, who else? Who has more right to represent the Light than an Absolute Light One?” Nadya asked.

  “Don’t get so high and mighty,” I advised her. “Even if you do represent the Light, we’ll ask you to appoint a representative.”

  Nadya snorted.

  “The Dark One. Well, I don’t know. A vampire, obviously. And a witch . . .”

  “No one can understand the final point,” I complained. “What kind of Party is that? ‘The Basis, the Foundation’ . . .”

  “A Prophet,” said Nadya.

  I looked at her and froze.

  “Remember that little book you read? The Foundation: Incredible Stories about Prophets.”

  “About psychologists,” I corrected her mechanically. “Well, or Seers, if you like.”

  “In short, a Prophet,” Nadya said with a nod. “There aren’t many of them anyway, and hardly any powerful ones at all. They’re the basis of everything, they don’t foretell the future, they shape it. And the bit about the blood is important too, right? Is Gesar somehow connected by blood with Glyba? No way. So they’re no good.”

  “You’re not connected with Glyba at all either,” I said tensely.

  “Not with him, of course. But I’m connected with Kesha now.”

  I felt an icy silence descend when Nadya finished what she was saying.

  “By blood.”

  Something clinked behind me. I swung around and looked at Sveta. She put the glass full of milk down on the little table and looked intently at Nadya, half turning toward her.

  “How . . . When?” I asked.

  “A long time ago. Two months already.”

  “That’s . . .” I refrained from using the absurd phrase “that’s not possible” and concluded: “That’s too early, Nadya.”

  “It just happened,” she said perfectly calmly with a shrug. “We kind of decided spontaneously.”

  “Nadya, you’re not old enough to do it spontaneously . . . Or unspontaneously!” I exclaimed, barely able to stop myself from shouting.

  “Why aren’t I?” Nadya asked, amazed. “I think even Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, although they were younger than me . . .”

  I thought I was losing my mind. And it seemed like I wasn’t the only one.

  “Tom Sawyer? With Huck Finn?” Svetlana exclaimed. “That’s a very progressive kind of reading!”

  “In the first place, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are fictional characters,” I said, trying to remain calm and collected. “And in the second place, nothing of the sort happened and it never could have!”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Nadya, looking from her mother to me and back again.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Blood brotherhood,” said Nadya. “Innokentii and I swore an oath in blood and we signed our names in blood.”

  “Children’s games,” I said, and burst into laughter. “Nadya, what a child you are!”

  There was a glugging sound behind me. I looked around again and saw Sveta pouring cognac into a glass.

  “Me too!” I said.

  “You wanted milk,” Sveta said.

  “Milk is for children!”

  “Dad, Mum, did you think I was talking about sex?” Nadya asked in a cold voice. “That Innokentii and I had sex?”

  “We didn’t think anything,” said Svetlana, handing me a glass. “We just didn’t understand what you were saying.”

  “We’ve decided not to have sex for the time being,” Nadya said reassuringly. “Kesha thinks it will retard the development of our magical potential.”

  I downed my cognac in one gulp.

  “But I think he’s wrong,” Nadya continued pensively. “I think he’s being a bit of a coward!”

  I took the glass of milk out of Svetlana’s hands and chased the cognac down with it.

  “Well good for you. I’m very glad that you’re both such rational young people.”

  I could have stopped there, but Nadya hadn’t managed to hide the impish spite that was lingering in her eyes.

  “But you’re both still very young, after all,” I went on. “So today your mother will have a talk with you about what a young girl ought to know.”

  “Definitely,” Sveta said in a sweet voice. “We’ll probably start with stamens and pistils, but then we’ll talk about everything seriously.”

  “Mum!” Nadya exclaimed.

  “And I’ll have a word with Kesha,” I added. “If, as you say, the boy is a bit of a coward . . . His father ought to have spoken to him on the subject, but since he doesn’t live in a family, I’ll talk to him. The poor boy probably wants to get it off his chest, find out what’s happening to his body, and there’s no one—”

  “Dad!” Nadya howled. “Shut-up-shut-up-shut-up!”

  “Are you going to troll your old parents again?” I asked.

  Nadya pouted sulkily.

  “I’ll probably even buy him an encyclopedia for boys,” I declared.

  “I won’t!” said Nadya. “I won’t do it again! But it’s your own fault, isn’t it? For thinking that straightaway? And you talk about children’s games!”

  “And what else can the parents of a teenage girl think?” I asked. “A girl your age was on the way to spend the night with her boyfriend when a vampire attacked her.”

  “Then she’s a fool,” Nadya said sullenly. “And in any case, Kesha really does think it slows down magical development . . .”

  “Is it true, about the blood?” I asked, trying to get away from this slippery subject.

  “Yes. Kesha and I really did . . . Well, we swore this oath . . .” Nadya lowered her eyes.

  “And you told me you cut yourself making a salad,” I said, recalling Nadya with a plaster on her finger. “The Little Sunshine Madhouse.”

  “Maybe it is a madhouse,” Svetlana said. “But our daughter’s right, Anton. The requirement for a blood tie is important. Perhaps it can be any kind of blood tie, but it has to be there.”

  “After the team gathers, they can swear an oath in blood,” I suggested. “Like Nadya and Kesha.”

  “I don’t think that will work,” said Svetlana. “You know yourself, Anton, that requirements like this are a kind of fixed convention. A game. But with clear rules. ‘Blood brotherhood’ created so simply and crudely won’t work.”

  I didn’t argue with that.

  Svetlana has a better sense of such subtle things than I do. She doesn’t know, but she senses.

  “Then I know absolutely nothing at all,” I said wearily. “A tie of blood. Where does that get us? Mr. Glyba can adopt me and we’ll go and do the job . . .”

  “Go to bed,” Svetlana said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “You need to rest.”

  “And are you going to rearrange your schedule to suit me?” I asked. “It’s still the afternoon here.”

  “You won’t bother us. Lie down and have a sleep; Nadya and I will watch TV.”

  And I didn’t argue with that.

  My sleep was sound and calm, and I had none of those dreams that are so misleading.

  Simply sleep.

  It was only just before I woke that it threw up a scrap of a dream that couldn’t really be called either a nightmare or a vision.

  At first I was standing in my Moscow apartment, and Gesar kept trying to climb in through the window. No, he wasn’t levitating and he hadn’t grown wings. A fire engine brought him on its extended ladder. Gesar clambered onto the cornice and waved to me with a grin.

  In the dream it seemed perfectly natural that he should arrive that way and that his goal was to have a drink with me.

  But while I was walking over to the window to let Gesar in, he slipped off the cornice somehow, and he was left dangling below the window, clinging on wi
th his fingertips. I opened the window and tried to pull my boss in, but he was too heavy. I didn’t even think about magic at all, as if there was no such thing. Then I went to get a rope to tie around Gesar so I could haul him into the apartment, but when I got back I saw my boss’s gaping, frightened eyes and his fingers slipping off the ledge.

  An instant later, following the laws of dreams, I was falling instead of Gesar, hurtling down past the wall of the high-rise building.

  But even then I didn’t feel any terror. I just looked into the windows curiously.

  A woman putting on lipstick in a mirror. A beautiful woman, completely naked, apart from bright-red boots and a red bow tie.

  Two elderly men playing cards. The cards were rather strange, with little colored pictures and text on them. On the table in front of the men, instead of cards, there were tiny creatures. Little monster-people in strange clothes with swords and knives—none of them more than four inches tall—jumping up and down and waving their arms, fighting and falling . . .

  An elderly, cultured-looking man in professorial spectacles, feeding a swallow sitting on a kitchen chair with grasshoppers.

  Two little girls sitting on the floor, swaying to and fro and swinging at each other moodily with dolls. The dolls were disheveled and so were the little girls. I thought they must be in pain and on the point of tears—but the children’s expressions were determined and impassive.

  A fat, bald man smoking a pipe, standing in front of a huge glass cabinet full of Karlsons. All different kinds of figures, in different colors and sizes and materials.

  A teenage boy standing and talking to his mother. At one point he turned toward me and I saw that it was Egor, as he was the first time I met him.

  After opening my eyes I lay there without moving for a while. I suppose I must have slept for two or three hours. A little bit more or less than that and I would still have felt short of sleep. But two or three hours was just the right amount of sleep to refresh my body and my mind. Not for long, unfortunately—only for half a day.

  The room was dark, illuminated only by the feeble, glimmering colors of the television. There was a barely audible murmur of voices—Sveta and Nadya were watching something.

  What strange things they are, our dreams!

  Well, why would I dream of Gesar falling? Or of him climbing in through the window to have a drink with me?

  And those strange people and events in the windows flying past me?

  And young Egor?

  Of course, if you try, you can find an explanation for everything. Gesar is trying to establish a normal human relationship with me, but things keep breaking down because of my weakness and reluctance to reach out to him in response.

  The naked woman in the red boots and bow tie—that’s banal, Freudian stuff. I want sex. With a dissolute stranger.

  The men with the cards and the little monster-people . . . That’s the Two-in-One, playing with us like puppets.

  The professor feeding the swift with grasshoppers? That’s . . . that’s . . . well, let’s say it’s the futility of existence. He who is born to jump cannot fly. Except into someone else’s stomach.

  The little girls hitting each other—that’s the Watches fighting.

  The boy Egor is my guilt complex about him.

  That only leaves unexplained the bald man with the pipe and the Karlsons. Well, we’ll write that off as a joke of the subconscious.

  For instance—it’s a profoundly secret dream of mine to be bald, smoke a pipe, and collect Karlsons . . .

  The television’s murmuring was replaced by the lively music that plays over the credits. Then I heard a quiet woman’s voice.

  “A good film. My favorite film from my childhood.”

  “Only it’s really, really ancient,” Nadya replied skeptically. “It’s not in 3-D.”

  “There wasn’t any 3-D then,” Svetlana said.

  “But was there color? Or did they color it in afterward?”

  “There was color,” Svetlana said calmly. “And in those days children were better brought up and didn’t try to show off by making cheap cracks in conversations with their parents.”

  “Oh, Mum . . . it was an honest question! That film we watched yesterday, about the children’s camp, it was in black and white.”

  “Nadenka, don’t ever think you’re more cunning than your parents are. I was a little girl too, and I remember very well all the thoughts you have swarming around in your head right now. And believe me, not many of them are clever ones.”

  “Mum . . .”

  “Why did you frighten your father and me like that?”

  There was a brief pause.

  “I . . . I did it for a joke.”

  “Well don’t joke like that anymore. All right?”

  “I’m at an awkward transitional age. I’m supposed to joke like that.”

  “You’re only supposed to get covered in pimples. All the rest is optional. Surely you can understand that your father . . .”

  I sighed noisily and stretched, then sat up on the bed.

  My wife and daughter really were sitting in front of the television.

  “Did I sleep for long?” I asked in fake alarm.

  “Why, were you in a hurry to go somewhere?” Svetlana asked in surprise.

  “No, but I’m cut off from everything here. Like you. What if Gesar’s looking for me?”

  Svetlana shook her head skeptically.

  “Take it from me, Gesar would find a way to get through to you, no matter how cut off you might be. He would appear in your dreams if necessary.”

  “He would appear in my dreams,” I echoed. “Aha.”

  I got up and went to the bathroom. I came out a minute later, drying my face with a towel.

  Svetlana gave me a knowing look.

  “Well, did he actually?”

  “He appeared in my dreams,” I confirmed. “I’ll go and check right away. When should I come to visit you?”

  “It’s almost eight in the evening now,” said Svetlana. “You’ll come to us . . .”

  She paused for a moment. Nadya and I glanced at each other. Svetlana didn’t have moments of prescience all that often, but if they concerned family matters, her foresights were always unerringly accurate.

  “You’ll come to us at one in the afternoon,” Svetlana said after her brief hesitation. Her face rapidly turned pale. “Yes. At one o’clock . . . in the afternoon. Tomorrow.”

  Svetlana and I had understood everything.

  I would come the next day at one o’clock.

  I would definitely come.

  If I was still alive, of course.

  But apparently that wasn’t definite at all.

  “Well, see you tomorrow,” I said.

  Sveta nodded and whispered with just her lips: “See you tomorrow.”

  “ ’Bye, Dad!” Nadya called to me from in front of the television. “And I don’t agree to spend the rest of my adolescence stuck in here!”

  “All right, I’ll bear that in mind,” I called back, keeping my eyes fixed on Svetlana. “Shall I say hi to Kesha?”

  “Oh, Dad!” my daughter said indignantly. “We’ve been through that already!”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Then say hi, of course,” Nadya answered warily.

  I nodded to Svetlana.

  “See you. I’ll grab some potatoes tomorrow.”

  Sveta smiled. With an effort, but she smiled.

  “And onions,” she said.

  “And even carrots,” I promised. “Everything will be all right. I’m feeling great. Bursting with energy and ready for great deeds.”

  “That’s because Mum and I pumped you full of Power,” Nadya boasted. “I collected it and Mum poured it into you.”

  “Well, I’ve really got it made!” I exclaimed, opening the portal. “I even envy myself!”

  I thought I heard the phone ring at the very moment I was stepping through the portal.

  CHAPTER 5

 
; AT NIGHT THE BUSINESS CENTER WAS AS WIDE AWAKE AS IT WAS in the daytime. The same kind of girls were sitting at the desk in the vestibule, I came across the same kind of security men along the way, and the same kind of inconspicuous Eastern-looking women in security service uniforms were washing the floors and scrubbing the panels of the walls.

  “What an invigorating working atmosphere!” I said. “Eh?”

  “You’re really full of energy, I can see that,” Olga muttered gruffly.

  “Listen, you’re the one who told me to take a rest!”

  “I did,” Olga admitted gloomily. “And I got a full-scale tongue-lashing for that from Gesar. Especially when he realized that he couldn’t find you.”

  “Hidden better than anyone else,” I said. “I’m proud of myself.”

  “Don’t be. Gesar almost reached you. He said he could feel your dream. And if he had a few days, he would have gotten to you.”

  We walked into the elevator and I shook my head.

  “That’s bad. Very bad. So this . . . Double What’s His Name . . .”

  Olga snorted.

  “Ah!” I said, slapping myself on the head. “The Two-in-One!”

  “Oh yes, he’s no weaker than Gesar is.” Olga sighed. “But he doesn’t know you, Sveta, and Nadya so well. It will be harder for those two to find them.”

  “You say that as if you’re certain that they’re not our friends and not our enemies, but something completely different.”

  “That’s the way it is, Anton. The Twilight gutted them and filled them with something new. They’re nothing but a facade.”

  “Then why not us? Why didn’t Svetlana and I become the Twilight’s instrument? Nadya wouldn’t even have tried to resist, she wouldn’t have understood what had happened.”

  As I said it, my blood ran cold. I imagined something pitiless, implacable, and irresistible erasing me and my personality. Or even worse, leaving it somewhere on the bottom of my soul, floundering and screaming in helpless horror. And then “I”—this gutted and altered “I”—go with an equally false Sveta to kill Nadezhda . . .

  “There are rules for everything,” Olga said. Her expression was severe and stubborn, as usual. “Apparently it can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”