Night Watch 05 - The New Watch (13 page)

‘And don’t you feel sorry for the boy?’

‘You can’t feel sorry for everyone. If dozens of Others have to spill their blood to prevent a child shedding a single teardrop, then let him bawl. But I don’t want to just hand him over for slaughter without at least trying to do something.’

‘So, if the Tiger comes . . .’

‘Then the Night Watch will not do battle with him.’

‘That’s contemptible.’

‘It’s honest. If the Inquisition came to back us up, we’d have some kind of chance. Maybe. But they’ve refused. Now everything depends on how much time we have until the Tiger shows up. If it’s not before morning, I’ll probably have got the boy to speak out by then. Let him utter his prophecy . . . I won’t even listen to him. He can mutter it into the toilet bowl. Or into a hollow in a tree, like Erasmus . . . I can grow a tree with a hollow, especially for the occasion. But if the Tiger comes at night . . .’

‘But Boris Ignatievich, where in Blake’s poem does it say anything about him coming in the morning?’

Gesar paused for a few seconds, and then quoted it again.

‘That’s a fat lot of help.’

‘Well, I just hope it means what I think it means,’ said Gesar.

‘Well maybe it really does mean the morning,’ I said. ‘You know how . . . poetical . . . all these poets are.’

‘The analysts tell me that it’s actually an allusion to Milton’s
Paradise Lost
, a reference to the fallen angels who were defeated, fell from heaven and were lamented by the other angels . . . You’re right, Anton, poets are so poetical. How can you tell what it is they really mean?’

I walked over to the window and looked out at the sky over Moscow. The usual low Moscow sky. No stars to be seen, although it was dark already and they should have appeared by now. Rain . . . rain was possible . . . perfectly possible . . .

‘Anton, you won’t be able to do a thing,’ Gesar said gently. ‘Even I won’t. Or the entire Watch, all together. You go. I’m going to work with the boy. I just hope I’ll get it done in time.’

The boss is a dyed-in-the-wool pragmatist, of course. And his pragmatism would allow him to hand the boy over to a creature from the Twilight, or even to a real tiger in the zoo, if he decided that was the lesser of two evils. But he would try everything he could to save him, out of sheer stubbornness . . .

I knew that.

‘I’ll be in the office for a while. Call me if anything happens, Boris Ignatievich . . .’

Gesar nodded.

‘Is our conversation confidential?’ I asked, just to make sure, as I walked over to the door.

‘As you think best,’ Gesar replied unexpectedly.

I hesitated and looked at my boss.

Then I walked out, closing the door firmly behind me.

There were three people sitting in the duty room – Las, Semyon and Alisher. What they were discussing wasn’t the boy-Prophet and it wasn’t the Tiger. Their topic of conversation was far more exalted.

‘And then I suddenly realise,’ Las was saying, ‘that I have been granted peace and the world of the spirit. So my decision to turn to God was the right one!’

‘I should think so, after a bottle of cognac,’ Alisher remarked. ‘Hi, Anton!’

‘Hi,’ I replied, perching on the table. The duty watchmen’s room is fairly large, but the two sofas, large round table with chairs around it and mini-kitchen along one wall don’t leave much free space.

‘The cognac’s got nothing to do with it!’ Las exclaimed indignantly. ‘Do you believe in Allah?’

‘I do,’ Alisher replied. ‘But then, I don’t drink.’

‘What about beer?’

‘I drink beer. But the prophet said the first drop of wine kills a man – he didn’t say anything about beer.’

‘Excuses, excuses’ Las snapped. ‘So why mock at my faith in God?’

‘I’m not mocking,’ Alisher said calmly. ‘It’s very good that you believe. Only you shouldn’t confuse a state of intoxication with the touch of God’s hand. It’s improper.’

Las gestured dismissively. ‘A slight intoxication helps a man to cast off the chains of convention and frees his mind.’

‘That’s no condition of divine revelation, far from it,’ Semyon chuckled. ‘I like going into churches, it’s calm, the smell’s good and the aura’s benign. But I don’t sense God.’

‘Your moment will come too!’ Las declared solemnly. ‘You’ll sense God within you. You’re a good man, after all.’

‘I’m an Other,’ Semyon replied. ‘A good one, I hope. But an Other. And for us, I’m afraid, there is no God . . .’

‘Guys, can I ask a question?’ I put in.

‘What is it?’ asked Las, livening up.

‘If you know for certain that it’s impossible to win but, if you don’t fight, someone’s going to be killed . . . what would you do?’

‘If it’s impossible, why should I die too?’ asked Las.

‘If you have to fight, it’s not important if you’re going to win,’ Alisher answered.

‘Why, are the lad’s chances as bad all that?’ Semyon asked, with a frown.

I carried on with my own questions. ‘Guys, have you ever heard of the Twilight Creature?’

Silence.

‘I’ve only just found out about him too. That’s because we don’t read children’s books. Only I’m not sure if I ought to . . .’

‘If you’ve started, then finish,’ said Semyon. ‘Either say something straight out, or never mention it. It’s not fair otherwise.’

‘I think Gesar has left the choice up to us,’ I said. ‘Guys, tonight the office is going to be stormed. Attacked by a certain creature, that is . . . And we can’t possibly defeat it.’

QUITE HONESTLY,
I’D
got the idea that Gesar had given me his unspoken blessing to enlist volunteers. I could see immediately the way it would be – me telling the guys, them telling their friends, the entire Watch gathering in the office, and the Tiger showing up to be met by all the Light Ones in Moscow . . . And together they would see him off. After all, who said that a Twilight Creature couldn’t be defeated? Those lousy analysts . . . origins unknown, strength unknown, intentions obscure, impossible to defeat . . .

We would defeat him. We’d all get together – and beat him. It would be more fun all together. How could Semyon, Alisher and Las possibly agree that we ought to hand over a defenceless child to some mysterious, unknown creature?

‘If it was one of us that ended up in a mess like that, then I’d get involved,’ said Semyon. ‘If it was your daughter . . . knock on wood,’ said Semyon, tapping the table. ‘But for that kid – no way.’

‘He is one of us!’ I exclaimed indignantly.

‘He’s a Light Other,’ said Semyon, nodding. ‘But not one of us. Maybe in a year’s time he would have been one of us. Maybe in a month. But not yet. You say yourself there’s no way we can beat this thing. Why would it be better if we all died?’

‘But how do we know it’s impossible?’ I asked indignantly.

‘Judging from the skirmish this afternoon, it is impossible,’ Semyon replied calmly. ‘We don’t have a chance. And wiping out the Watch for the sake of one Other is stupid.’

‘Semyon’s right,’ said Alisher, nodding. ‘I’m not afraid of being killed in battle, if there’s a chance of winning. But this – this is a game beyond our level. I saw him . . . and I didn’t like what I saw. Let’s hope Gesar can teach the kid to prophesy.’

‘But you just said that if you have to fight it doesn’t matter if you win or not!’

‘Right. But we don’t have to fight on this one.’

I looked at Las.

‘Why does the Prophet have to be an obnoxious little kid and not a beautiful young girl?’ Las exclaimed. ‘There’s no motivation to sacrifice yourself!’

‘I thought you were about to get baptised . . .’ I reminded him.

‘Exactly. I want to be able to do that. You know, even those thick-skulled knights who picked a fight at every chance they got only dashed off to do battle with a dragon if it had carried off a delightful young maiden, not some scruffy brat of a shepherd boy.’

‘How egotistical your motivation is,’ I said sarcastically.

‘Aesthetic,’ Las corrected me. ‘If I’m going to sacrifice myself, I want the goal to be exalted.’

‘And the life of a Prophet isn’t an exalted goal?’

‘Prophets usually give utterance to predictions that are pretty grim.’

A chilling presentiment stole into my mind as I looked at them.

‘Have you already discussed the situation, then?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ said Semyon. ‘We didn’t know who it was we were dealing with. But it doesn’t take a genius to predict that the attack will be repeated.’

‘And what if I dig my heels in and try to defend the lad?’ I said, looking Semyon in the eye.

‘Then I’ll help you,’ Semyon said, with a nod. ‘And we’ll die together. So I ask you not to do it. Think of Svetlana. And Nadya. And tell me honestly – are you prepared to die for some kid you don’t even know?’

I looked at my friends.

Thought for a few moments.

Imagined Sveta and Nadya . . .

Then the boy-Prophet.

And I said: ‘No, Semyon. I’m not.’

‘And you’re right,’ said Semyon, nodding. ‘Exalted feelings, noble impulses, reckless courage, foolhardy self-sacrifice – that’s all very fine. But there has to be a reason for it. A real reason. Otherwise all your Light Other aspirations amount to no more than stupidity. The annals of the Watches recall many Others who were noble but stupid. But they’re history now. And unfortunately their example is not worth imitating.’

‘You’d better go home,’ Alisher put in. ‘You’re not on duty.’

And I realised that when Gesar gave me permission to reveal the information about the Tiger, he’d had a different purpose in mind. To make me see sense.

Well, he’d done just that.

I didn’t go home, of course. No, I didn’t pester anyone else with questions about whether they would wade into a hopeless battle with a Twilight Creature. And I didn’t make the rounds of the office, mentally placing Others in the key defensive positions. I went to the analysts and scrounged a copy of the report for Gesar (before they gave me it, the guys contacted the boss and got his go-ahead). A close reading convinced me that Gesar wasn’t lying and in the opinion of the analysts (based on rather poorly documented attempts to fight the Tiger – in the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries) we wouldn’t be able to defeat the Twilight Creature.

At night, strangely enough, the Watch office is empty. We’re called the ‘Night Watch’ and we patrol the streets mostly at night (how else can we do it – our main client base are the lower Dark Ones, the vampires and shapeshifters, who find it harder to control themselves) but our work is like an iceberg: most of it’s invisible. And that work takes place during the day – paper-shuffling, training, analysing data, studying fresh information. We live among human beings, after all, and it’s more convenient for us to live by their rhythm. At least we managed to push an initiative through the human parliament recently to coordinate daylight-saving time across the entire country . . .

I sat at the computer in my office for a while. Went into my e-mail and wrote a couple of letters. For some reason I suddenly remembered the song that the policeman Iskender’s son had been playing, searched for the group that performed it and was surprised to discover that it was from Kazakhstan – I hadn’t realised before that they played anything but the
dombra
down there! Then I found a pirate site where their other songs were available. I clicked on the title
Obedient Boys
, leaned back in my chair and listened:

Stabbing sharp asters into the streets,

The moon rose to greet susceptible youth,

And sang as she beamed out pagan brightness:

‘Children, kill your electrical glare,

Children, before you are all left eyeless,

I’ll point out salvation, show you the way:

All those who walk the moonlight path

Reach the magical city some day.

Where everyone breathes inspiration like air

And all of the architects there are dreams,

And it’s not banknotes, but sunlight that warms,

And if you’re in love, they won’t think you a fool.’

And the young boy sitting there on the stairs

Believed in the moon’s fateful songs of deceit.

And when he believed, the stairs started growing

And carried on, reaching right up to the sky.

The boy set off up to climb the ribbed steps,

But his friends and family all came running:

‘You have no business up there in the sky!

Stop! Don’t go – this fate is for fools!’

And, listening to them, the boy came back down

With a lingering, longing glance at the moon.

But later he hid and hated them all

And wept for what he had seen in the sky.

That made me wince. The wrong choice. The boy-Prophet was nothing like a romantic young hero, but the song was reproaching me for something.

What the hell was this? Why couldn’t these Kazakhs imitate Russian kitsch pop and sing songs about beautiful girls, expensive resorts and glittering cars, instead of propagating this decadent romanticism! I turned off the computer and walked out of the office.

My feet took me to the basement floors of their own accord. The door of one of the rooms was open and I glanced inside. The two ‘old-timers’, Jermenson and Glyba, were sitting there, sipping calmly on glasses of cognac. Mark Emmanuilovich was snacking on non-kosher smoked eel, while Glyba, a member of the old Soviet school, was using ‘nikolashka’ – a sliced lemon, sprinkled with coffee and sugar. There was a sign of the new times, however – the coffee wasn’t instant, but natural, and Glyba was crumbling the beans over the lemon with his strong fingers.