Night Watch 05 - The New Watch (12 page)

‘Is this some kind of textbook?’

‘For reading out of class. Stories about the childhood of great magicians.’

I didn’t get to study in the magician’s classes. In those years they didn’t find so many Others, and setting up special classes for them was regarded as impractical. So I did my learning on the job . . .

I leafed through the chapters about Merlin, Karl Cemius, Michel Lefroid and Pan Chang. I stumbled across a chapter about Gesar and smiled when I read the first lines: ‘When the Great Gesar was a little boy, he lived in the mountains of Tibet. He was an unattractive, sickly child, he often caught cold and was even given the offensive name Djoru, or “snotty”. No one knew that Gesar was really an Other, one of the most powerful magicians in the world. The only one who did know was a Dark Other, Soton, who dreamed of making Gesar a Dark One . . .’

‘Look further on,’ Nadya begged me impatiently. ‘About Erasmus . . .’

‘Was Erasmus of Rotterdam really a Prophet?’ I asked in surprise, opening the book at the page that had been marked. The bookmark was pink, with little fairies out of some Disney cartoon on it. ‘Ah, Erasmus Darwin . . .’

The author certainly didn’t make a great effort to vary the introductions for his young readers. But that actually lent the narrative a certain epic quality.

‘When the great prophet Erasmus Darwin was a little boy, he lived in the small village of Elton in Ireland. He was always a dreamy and romantic child. He often used to run out of the house and lie in a field of blossoming clover, examining the little flowers. Erasmus was convinced that plants could love like people, that they even had their own sex life. He wrote his remarkable poem
The Love of Plants
about this. But that was later . . .’

I closed the book and looked at the title page.
A textbook of extracurricular reading for middle and senior school age
. I snorted.

‘Daddy, do you really think I don’t know anything about sex life?’ asked Nadya.

I looked at her. ‘Nadya, you’re ten years old. Yes, I think you don’t know anything about it.’

Nadya blushed slightly and murmured: ‘But I watch television. I know that grown-ups like to kiss and hug . . .’

‘Stop!’ I exclaimed in panic. ‘Stop. Let’s agree that you’ll talk about this with mummy, okay?’

‘All right,’ Nadya said and nodded.

I tried to hand her book back to her.

‘So is it true about the Twilight?’ Nadya asked again.

‘About the Twilight? Ah, yes . . .’ I started looking through what came next. Erasmus had learned how to enter the Twilight . . . Others had decided to take him into the Watch . . . well, well, into the Day Watch . . . What?

I sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the text.

‘. . . Prophets and Clairvoyants are always highly valued in the Watches, because their gift is only found rarely – especially the gift of a genuine Prophet. And if a Prophet starts working for one of the two forces, it can lead to great disasters. Therefore the Twilight itself tries to prevent this. If a Prophet might say something very, very important that Others ought not to know, a Twilight Creature comes to him. The Twilight Creature is created by the depths of the Twilight and the power of the Twilight Creature is infinite. None of the Others can stop it or defeat it. And either the Watches leave the Prophet alone, or the Twilight Creature kills him – to prevent a great disaster . . . Little Erasmus was lucky. When he realised that the Twilight Creature was on his trail, he went to his favourite tree – an old hollow ash – and shouted out the prophecy into the hollow. When a Prophet utters the most important prophecy of his life, he doesn’t remember exactly what he has said. The Twilight Creature realised that no one would find out about the prophecy and left Erasmus in peace . . .’

After that the narrative continued, talking about how the artful Erasmus also persuaded the Watches to leave him in peace and lived a happy life, amusing himself by creating golems and bringing corpses to life, often uttering ordinary predictions for the Others – and sometimes shocking the people around him in the eighteenth century by telling them about the Big Bang or jet engines fuelled by oxygen and hydrogen, or the spontaneous appearance of life in the oceans. There was also a little bit about his grandson Charles, who was far more famous among human beings. In time, Erasmus had retired from any kind of work and staged his own death as Others are in the habit of doing, and now he lived somewhere in Great Britain, not wishing to see anyone . . .

I quickly leafed through the chapter to the end. And what exactly was so remarkable about this Prophet that I personally had never heard of? Ah . . . there it was . . .

‘You will probably ask why Erasmus Darwin is remarkable. Well, it is because he managed to outwit the Twilight Creature. Prophets are usually only able to make their most important prophecy if they utter it immediately after being initiated – even the Twilight Creature needs time to find its prey. But Erasmus guessed how to evade his pursuer when the beast was already dogging his heels. Under the gaze of its eyes, blazing so brightly in the darkness, people seemed little different from the plants that Erasmus loved so much . . . Never despair, never give up, even an overwhelmingly superior force can be outwitted – that is what the life of the remarkable little Other Erasmus teaches us . . .’

‘Burning so bright in the darkness . . .’ I said and rubbed the bridge of my nose. ‘Tiger, tiger . . .’

‘Quoting poetry now, are you?’ asked Svetlana, glancing out of the kitchen.

‘What do you mean?’

‘“Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes?” Blake. William Blake. His poem
The Tiger
.’

‘You wouldn’t know if he happened to be acquainted with Charles Darwin’s grandfather, would you?’ I asked.

‘Erasmus?’ Svetlana asked brightly. ‘The one who was an Other?’

I nodded and got up off the sofa.

‘He was more than a mere chance acquaintance. Blake even illustrated his books. Something about the love of plants.’

‘So Blake didn’t just write poetry?’

‘Well, actually he illustrated heaps of books and is just as famous as an artist as he is as a poet. And, by the way, he wasn’t an Other in the literal sense of the word, but he did possess the rare ability—’ Svetlana suddenly stopped dead.

‘Well?’ I asked wearily, opening the cupboard that Nadya was strictly forbidden to touch. Locks would be useless against her, unfortunately, but Nadya’s a bright girl and she keeps her word.

‘He could see Others. Dark Ones and Light Ones.’

‘Like my
polizei
acquaintance,’ I said. ‘Svetlana, I’ve got to go to work.’

‘Are you going to have some borsch?’ my wife asked.

I just sighed as I stuck all sorts of magical trinkets into my various pockets. I was a hundred per cent certain that none of these amulets would actually be any use to me, but the habit was too strong.

‘Anton . . .’ Svetlana called to me when I was already in the doorway.

‘What?’

‘I once left the Watch, so that we could be together.’

‘I remember.’

‘I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time . . .’

I looked at her. Svetlana paused for a moment, then lowered her eyes.

‘Take care.’

I raced up to Gesar’s office on the third floor like a lunatic. Considering that I was waving a book on the childhood of outstanding Others in the air, I must have looked like someone who has discovered a coded prophecy for the next two hundred years in
Pinocchio
, together with a report of an encounter with aliens from another planet, the formula of a cure for the common cold and an obscene acrostic at the beginning of chapter two.

‘Where’s the fire?’ asked Gesar.

He was sitting on the edge of the desk, and the boy-Prophet was lounging in his office chair. The chair was rather spacious for the boy, to put it mildly. Judging from the fact that Kesha was sitting in a clumsy imitation of the simplest meditation pose, Gesar must have been trying to teach him to control his gift. There was no one else there.

‘The Tiger!’ I exclaimed wildly.

‘He’s far away,’ Gesar replied calmly. ‘I believe we’ll be okay until the morning.’

I cited Blake’s poem:

‘You could at least quote the entire poem,’ Gesar replied, and continued:

‘What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

Kesha gaped at us wide-eyed. Nowadays you don’t often see two grown men suddenly start reciting verse. Then he closed his eyes again. Such diligence – incredible!

‘Is the full version any more help to us?’ I asked sullenly.

‘I just think it suggests that we have time until the morning,’ Gesar explained.

‘You know everything already,’ I said. ‘The Prophet Erasmus Darwin. The only Prophet who ever got away from the Twilight Creature.’

‘I don’t know,’ Gesar replied simply. ‘That’s one version of the story. But I regard it as poetic licence in an account of one of the standard squabbles between the Light Ones and Dark Ones of Ireland.’

‘Is the Tiger something like a Mirror?’ I asked.

‘No. By no means is every Prophet pursued by Twilight Creatures. And they’re not concerned in the least about the balance between the Watches. If . . . if the legends are to be believed . . . they try to prevent the utterance of prophecies that foretell unprecedented disasters and catastrophes. And they eliminate anyone who stands in their way . . .’

‘You knew,’ I said. ‘You knew everything, Boris Ignatievich . . .’

‘I didn’t know!’ Gesar retorted gruffly. ‘Do you think I’m some kind of computer that remembers everything? Zabulon hinted at Twilight Creatures. I’d never heard of anything of the kind, but I put on a brave face – as if I understood what he was talking about. I set the analysts onto it, they combed the databases and half an hour ago they came up with the same book you have there . . . plus two hundred pages of analysis and theories. Was it Tolik who tipped you off? I’ll strip him of his bonuses until the end of the century!’

‘No one leaked any information to me,’ I said, leaping to my friend’s defence. ‘The book’s on Nadya’s extracurricular reading list and she came to me with a question. I read it. And after that . . . after that we guessed the whole thing as a family. About Erasmus, about Blake and the Tiger . . .’

‘Apparently the Twilight Creature didn’t come to Erasmus in human form,’ Gesar laughed. ‘And afterwards he said something about it to someone he knew, who wasn’t an Other, but could see . . .’

‘Boris Ignatievich, we have to ask the Inquisition for help,’ I said. ‘If all this about the Tiger is true, then how can we—’

Gesar didn’t let me finish. ‘They refused, Anton.’

‘What?’ I asked, bewildered.

‘The recommendation of the Inquisition is not to get involved in a conflict and let the Tiger take the boy.’

That was the first time he pronounced the word ‘Tiger’ so that it sounded like a name.

‘But he . . .’ I said, glancing sideways at Kesha.

‘Yes, the Tiger will kill him,’ Gesar said with a nod.

‘Boris Ignatievich!’

‘The boy can’t hear us,’ my boss reassured me. ‘I’ve put up a screen. Just so that our voices won’t disturb him.’

‘Gesar, then who is he, this Tiger?’

‘No one knows, Anton. He’s far too rare a beast. Either the Prophet manages to utter his main prophecy and the Tiger backs off. Or . . . or he kills the Prophet and leaves. I presume that’s why Prophets are such a rare breed too. He usually finds them before we do.’

‘What’s a main prophecy?’

Gesar sighed and glanced ostentatiously at his watch. Then he pointed to one of the chairs and sat down in the one beside it. He glanced round at Kesha and wagged his finger at him. The boy closed his eyes again.

‘The very first prophecy that a Prophet makes when his powers become effective is called his main prophecy. It can be extremely important or absolutely insignificant. But according to one theory – one theory – we’re getting into very uncertain territory here, Anton.’

‘Don’t drag it out.’

‘This theory says that the first prophecy doesn’t just predict reality, but changes it. But there’s another theory that says . . . of course a Prophet can’t change reality. But he selects one of the possible courses that reality can follow . . . develops it and fixes it. To use old photographers’ terminology.’

‘There aren’t any photographers left who develop images and fix them,’ I muttered. ‘So the Tiger tries to stop the first prophecy because, if it’s terrible, it will come true?’

‘That’s right. If the kid predicts World War Three, then it’ll happen. If he predicts a hit by an asteroid a couple of kilometres long, then one will fall on us . . .’

‘But what he told me in the airport—’

‘That’s not a prophecy. Just a harbinger. He has to make his prophecy now, after initiation. Usually during the first few days. Sometimes in the first few hours.’

I looked at the fat little lad squirming in the large, threadbare chair and asked: ‘What do you want to do, boss?’

‘Shake the boy up a bit so that he utters his main prophecy. It’s by no means certain that it
will
be something terrible. Anton. I really don’t feel like capitulating to some weird Twilight Creature that won’t even talk to us!’