'I know.'
'Who are you?'
An express introduction to the mysteries of the universe? The same scene all over again?
'I'll tell you in the morning. Okay?'
'You're out of your mind,' said the boss's voice.
'Do you really have to go away?'
'Don't say that!' Olga shouted. She'd sensed what I was thinking.
But I said it anyway.
'Sveta, when they suggested you should mutilate yourself to prolong your mother's life, and you refused . . . You did what was right, what was rational, didn't you? But now you're suffering. And the pain's so bad, it would have been better to act irrationally.'
'If you don't go now, will you suffer?'
'Yes.'
'Then go. Only come back, Anton.'
I got up from the table, leaving my cold tea. The Inferno vortex swayed above us.
'I will, for sure,' I said. 'And believe me . . . the situation isn't hopeless.'
Neither of us said another word. I went out of the apartment and began walking down the stairs. Svetlana closed the door behind me. That silence . . . That deathly silence, even the dogs had howled themselves out that night.
Irrational, I thought, I'm being irrational. If there's no ethically correct solution, act irrationally. Did someone tell me that? Have I just remembered a line from my old course notes, a phrase from a lecture? Or am I looking for excuses?
'The vortex . . .' Olga whispered. Her voice was almost unrecognisable, husky. I wanted to press her head against my shoulder.
I pushed the door to the building open and stepped out on to the icy pavement. The owl circled above my head like a bundle of white fluff.
The Inferno vortex had shrunk, it was shorter. Not a lot, relative to its overall height, but enough so that I could see it, maybe one and a half or two metres.
'Did you know that would happen?' asked the boss.
I looked up at the vortex and shook my head. Just what was going on here? Why had the Inferno reacted by growing larger and stronger when Ignat showed up? Putting people into a mellow state of mind was his speciality. Why had my aimless conversation and unexpected departure made the vortex shrink?
'It's time I sacked that group of analysts,' said the boss. I realised he'd said it to everyone, not just me. 'When will we have a working hypothesis for what's going on?'
A car suddenly appeared from the direction of Zelyony Avenue, catching me in the glare of its headlights. Its tyres squealed as it bounced clumsily over the bumps of broken tarmac and stopped beside me. The hot-orange, low-slung, sporty cabriolet looked ridiculous, surrounded by the prefabricated, multi-storey blocks of a city where the best way of getting around was still a jeep.
Semyon stuck his head out on the driver's side and nodded:
'Get in. I've been told to drive you like the wind.'
I looked round at Olga and she sensed my glance.
'I've got a job to do here. Go.'
I walked round the car and got into the front. Ilya was sprawled in the back – the boss must have decided the Tiger Cub-Bear double act needed reinforcements.
'Anton,' said Olga's voice, pursuing me through the Twilight. 'Remember . . . you made a deal today. Don't forget that, not for a single moment. . .'
I didn't understand at first what she was talking about. The witch from the Day Watch? What had she got to do with anything?
The car jerked, scraping across the hummocks of ice. Semyon swore with relish as he twisted the wheel and the car began crawling toward the avenue with an indignant roar.
'What halfwit did you get this car from?' I asked. Driving around in this in this weather . . .'
Ilya laughed.
'Shshsh! Boris Ignatievich has lent you his very own car.'
'Are you serious?' I asked, turning to face him. The boss was always delivered to work in his office BMW. I'd never realised he had a penchant for impractical luxury.
'It's the truth. Antosha, how did you manage that?' Ilya nodded in the direction of the vortex hanging above the houses. 'I never realised you had powers like that!'
'I never touched it. Just talked to the girl.'
'Talked? You mean you didn't fuck her?'
That was Ilya's usual way of talking when he was feeling tense about something. And he had plenty of reasons for feeling tense just then. But it still made me wince. I thought what he said sounded strained ... or maybe he just hit a raw nerve.
'No. Ilya, don't talk like that.'
'Sorry,' he said flippantly. 'So what did you do?'
'I just talked.'
The car finally hurtled out onto the avenue.
'Hold tight,' said Semyon curtly. I was pressed back in my seat. Ilya lolled about behind me, taking out a cigarette and lighting up.
Twenty seconds later I realised that my previous ride had been no more than a lazy jaunt.
'Semyon, has the probability of an accident been deleted?' I shouted. The car hurtled through the night, as if it was trying to overtake the beams of its own headlights.
'I've been driving for seventy years,' Semyon said contemptuously. 'I drove trucks on the Road of Life during the siege of Leningrad!'
There was no reason to doubt what he said, but the thought crossed my mind that those journeys had been less dangerous. He hadn't been moving this fast, and predicting where a bomb's going to fall is no great challenge for an Other. There weren't many cars around now, but there were some, the road was terrible, to put it mildly, and our sports car was never meant for conditions like this.
'Ilya, what happened over there?' I asked, trying to tear my eyes away from a truck swerving out of our path. 'Have you been posted on that?'
'You mean with the vampire and the kid?'
'Yes.'
'We did something stupid, that's what happened,' said Ilya, and then he swore. 'Maybe not really all that stupid . . . We'd done everything right. Tiger Cub and Bear introduced themselves to the kid's parents as their favourite distant relatives.'
'"We're from the Urals"?' I asked, remembering our course on social contacts and how to get to know people.
'Yes. Everything was going fine. The table was set, the drink was flowing, they were pigging out on Urals delicacies . . . from the nearest supermarket. . .'
'They were really having a great time.' That note in Ilya's voice didn't sound like envy, more like enthusiastic approval of his colleagues. 'Everything was just fine. The kid sat with them some of the time, some of the time he was in his room . . . How could they know he was already able to enter the Twilight?'
I felt a cold shudder.
Well, how could they have known?
I hadn't told them. And I hadn't told the boss. Or anyone. I'd been satisfied with pulling Egor out of the Twilight and sacrificing a little of my own blood. A hero. The solitary warrior in the field.
Ilya went on, not suspecting a thing.
'The vampire hooked him with the Call. Very neatly too, the guys felt nothing. And firmly . . . the kid never made a sound. He entered the Twilight and climbed up on to the roof.'
'How?'
'Over the balconies. He only had to climb up three floors. The vampire was already waiting for him. And she knew the boy was under guard – the moment she took him, she revealed herself. Now the parents are sound asleep and the vampire's standing there with her arms round the kid, while Tiger Cub and Bear are going out of their minds.'
I didn't say anything. I didn't have anything to say.
'Our stupid mistake,' Ilya concluded. 'And a combination of unforeseen circumstances with potentially fatal consequences. Nobody had even initiated the kid . . . How could anyone know he could enter the Twilight?'
'I knew.'
Perhaps it was my memories that did it, or perhaps I was just frightened by our terrible speed as the car raced along the highway, but I looked into the Twilight.
People are so lucky that they can't see this – ever! And so unlucky that they will never be able to see it.
A high, grey sky, where there have never been any stars, a sky as glutinous as milk jelly, glowing with a ghastly, wan light. The outlines of everything have softened and dissolved – the buildings, covered with a carpet of blue moss, and the trees, with branches that sway regardless of which way the wind's blowing, and the streetlamps, with the birds circling above them, barely moving their short wings. The cars coming towards you move really slow, the people walking along the street are hardly even moving their feet. Everything appears through a grey light filter, everything sounds as if your ears are plugged with cotton wool. A silent, black and white movie, an eerie, elegant director's cut. The world from which we draw our strength. The world that drinks our life. The Twilight. Whoever you really are when you enter it, that's who you are when you come out. The grey gloom dissolves the shell that has been growing over you all your life, extracts the core that people call the soul and tests its quality. And that's when you'll feel yourself crunching in the jaws of the Twilight, you'll feel the chilly, piercing wind, as corrosive as snake venom . . . and you'll become an Other.
And choose which side to take.
'Is the boy still in the Twilight?' I asked.
'They're all in the Twilight,' said Ilya, diving in there after me. 'Anton, why didn't you tell them?'
'It never occurred to me. I didn't think it was that important. I'm not a field operative, Ilya.'
He shook his head.
We find it impossible, or almost impossible, to reproach each other. Especially when someone's really messed up. There's no need, our punishment is always there, all around us. The Twilight gives us more strength than humans can ever have, it gives us a life that is almost immortal in human terms. And it also takes it all away when the time comes.
In one sense we all live on borrowed time. Not just the vampires and werewolves who have to kill in order to prolong their strange existence. The Dark Ones can't afford to do good. And we can't afford the opposite.
'If I don't pull this off. . .' I didn't finish the sentence. Everything was already clear anyway.
CHAPTER 8
SEEN THROUGH the Twilight it actually looked beautiful. Up on the roof, the flat roof of that absurd 'box on stilts', I could see different-coloured patches of light. The only things that have any colour in there are our emotions. And there were plenty of those around.
The brightest of all was the column of crimson flame that pierced the sky – the vampire's fear and fury.
'She's powerful,' Semyon said simply, glancing up at the roof and kicking the car door shut. He sighed and started taking off his coat.
'What are you doing?' I asked.
'I'll go up the wall. . . over the balconies. I advise you to do the same, Ilya. Only you go in the Twilight, it's easier.'
'And how are you going?'