Sixth Watch (16 page)

Olga was sitting beside the only member of the Science Department who was there, Lyudochka. This Fifth-Level Other looked exactly like a woman who is known by the diminutive form of her name ought to look—like a twenty-year-old young woman. She had looked that way for ten years or so, even though in fact she was about fifty. But then, Olga never looked anything like her hundreds of years either.

The women were having an agreeable chat, surrounded by empty desks with computer terminals and shelves of books and scrolls (well, it wasn't the archive, but there were still plenty of those). They looked like students gossiping in the library.

“And he likes to sleep on the pillow with me,” Lyudochka was saying. “Just imagine, he creeps under the blanket, sticks his head out, and puts it on the pillow! Like a real person! Such a tiny little thing, but he's smart . . .”

“Like a real person,” Olga agreed, squinting at me. “Hi, Anton. Only he's not an Other, or a person at all. He's a dog.”

“Of course,” said Lyudochka, slightly offended. “Naturally. Oh, hello, Anton!”

“Mind if I sit with you for a while?” I asked, taking a chair.

“Sit down,” said Olga. “Surprised?”

“By what?”

“The fact that I'm sitting here yacking. The end of the world is nigh and I've just sat down with a friend.”

“Maybe the end of the world is a standard sort of event for you,” I replied diplomatically.

“No, but the way life is arranged, there's always some small, local end of the world happening somewhere. Trains run off the tracks, airplanes crash, ships sink, oil depots explode. Epidemics wipe out
entire countries, people murder whole families, psychos torture children . . .”

Olga got up and sat on the desk, looking into my eyes. Lyudochka started to get up, apparently to leave, but Olga stopped her with a wave of her hand and kept talking.

“People who are dear to someone die. Wars blaze on for years and decades, crusaders kill Muslims, Muslims blow up Jews. Hutus slaughter Tutsis. But people live somehow. Some look up at the sky, calculating the movements of the planets. Some sow grain. Some are unfaithful to their wives. Some pick pockets. Some paint pictures. When soldiers were dying at Ypres, Balmont wrote: ‘Exalted moment, framing her chord, streaming down pearly rain, setting hearts trembling.' Men were burning alive in tanks, children were weeping from hunger in cold beds, women blue from the cold were lugging sheets of armor plating about, building tanks—and somewhere nearby a composer was writing a bravura march for a triumphal procession, and somewhere someone was writing jolly little stories for children . . .”

“Oh come on, jolly little stories, during a war . . .” I began.

“Have you read Nosov, Watchman?” Olga asked, narrowing her eyes. “You must have read him as a child. And your daughter has probably read
Mishka's Porridge
and
The Market Gardeners
. He wrote them in 1942. When everything was hanging by a thread. Is there even a single word in them about war and death? No. Because if you can't give children bread, you have to give them hope at least. Yes I know, you'll tell me that I'm a Watch member, I'm a Light One, a Higher One, and I'm just sitting here chatting . . . Sit down! I haven't finished yet, Lyudmila! Yes, I'm chatting, because everyone who can deal with your case is dealing with it. And those who can't are dealing with their usual business. Their own bread, their own melody, their own pickpockets. Their own foolish little investigation. Even if the apocalypse is upon us. Because if it doesn't happen, the grain must not rot in the ground, and the song must still be sung.
And the thief must sit in jail. And abuses of office must be investigated.”

She turned toward Lyudochka, who looked at her with large, round, frightened eyes.

“How old is your little dog?”

Lyudmila gulped and lowered her eyes.

“Twenty . . .”

“I can't hear you!”

“Twenty-seven . . . I don't . . . I feed him very strictly.”

Olga didn't say anything.

“It's not even a seventh-level intervention!” Lyudmila exclaimed with tears in her eyes. “When have I ever asked the Watch for anything?”

“The point is that you didn't ask!” Olga barked. “The point is that you didn't warn us, you fool! Your rank entitles you to several interventions a year, up to and including fifth level. Open the schedule of payments!”

“But what can—”

“Today I personally signed the license to prolong the life of a witch's cat! And she's not some ordinary, petty, repulsive little witch, she's the Grandmother of the Moscow section. And her cat is more than seventy years old. And no way would we ever have granted permission; we've been keeping an eye on that cat for ages—it's the source of more than half her power! But since the witch was in possession of the record of a Day Watch investigation into the two occasions when you extended the life of your pet, there wasn't a thing I could do!”

Lyudochka turned white and gaped at Olga.

“Get up and get out,” said Olga. “And don't let me set eyes on you again today. Go and work at home—you know what's going on.”

“But what . . . What will happen to . . .” Lyudmila said, and gulped.

“Nothing will happen,” Olga growled. “Your animal's not to blame.”

Lyudmila dashed to the door as if she was afraid Olga would change her mind.

“Next time submit an official request, you fool!” Olga shouted at her back, then sighed and shook her head. “Anton, how is it possible to work with people like that . . . What brings you here?”

“I need your help . . . as a woman,” I said gruffly.

“Ah, what is it, has someone offended my little boysie-woysie, then?” Olga asked.

“Why do you have to be so mocking?” I asked.

“Well, if you remember I was a stuffed owl for a very long time.” Olga chuckled. “And I didn't always stand in Gesar's office. For twenty years I stood in a school, in the biology laboratory.”

“How horrible!” I exclaimed sincerely.

“To put it mildly. All the things I saw and heard . . . Well, what do you want?”

“Who is your husband's superior?” I asked point blank.

Olga thought for a moment.

“Is this connected with the investigation?”

“Directly. You've read my morning report . . .”

“Of course, no need to repeat yourself,” Olga said flippantly.

“You remember the six Great Parties?”

“Yes, it's nonsense. I've lived in this world for quite a while, Anton. Been in the Watch all my life. No one has ever mentioned any Great Parties.”

“I've been down in the archive. I asked Killoran to help me. She found an old document that mentions the six Great Parties. But very vaguely. Anyway, they are Light, Darkness, the Conclave, the Master of Masters, the Assumer of Appearance, and the Basis.”

Olga rubbed her forehead and lowered her eyes. She jumped off the desk, took out a pack of cigarettes, and lit one. She narrowed her eyes and looked at me ironically.

“And, combining what the Tiger said with this . . . new information, you've decided that they're . . .”

“The Night Watch. The Day Watch. Witches. Vampires. Shape
shifters. And some unknown thingamajig, perhaps even the Twilight itself.”

Olga blew out a stream of smoke and threw her head back, looking at the ceiling.

“So, Killoran . . . What's her name? Helen?”

“Yes.”

“Six Great Parties . . .” Olga sighed. “Well look, I have two pieces of news for you.”

“A good one and a bad one?”

“Yes, the usual thing,” Olga said, but I didn't like the tone of her voice. “First, neither the Night Watch nor the Day Watch have any higher leadership. Even in Russia there isn't any, officially, although of course, Gesar's the number one.”

“So it's the same for us as it is for the vampires? The master of the territory is the one who bit everyone in it.”

“More or less. Or whoever initiated everyone. I don't know if you remember, but it was Gesar who initiated you, wasn't it? If you think about it, our lines of initiation all run back to him.”

“And that's a bad start,” I said with a nod.

“Everything seems clear enough with the witches,” said Olga. “I don't know about any top-of-the-heap vampire. But shape-shifters definitely don't have any supreme leaders. You can ask Hena.”

“Helen gave me the same advice,” I replied disappointedly.

Olga gave me a sidelong glance before she went on.

“As for the Basis, I don't have a clue there either. And that, Anton, was the good news.”

“Then what's the bad news?” I asked.

“Come on,” Olga said, taking hold of my hand. “Come along . . . Higher One . . .”

I didn't ask any questions.

First, I enjoy setting up “moments of truth” like this myself.

Second, she wouldn't have answered.

Third, I sensed that I really wouldn't like this bad news.

We descended lower and lower. To the sixth underground level. To the archive.

I felt a twinge of alarm in my chest.

“Did Gorodetsky visit the archive today?” Olga asked the two guards.

They were obviously disconcerted.

“Yes . . .” the senior member of the duo, a Sixth-Level Other, finally managed to get out. “But . . . He doesn't have the right, does he?”

“He could have slipped in without us noticing him,” added the other one. Only Seventh Level. Well, well, the very weakest had been put on guard duty; everyone was out “in the field.”

“Of course,” said Olga. “A Higher One can always addle the brains of someone on a lower level.”

And with that kind phrase, she pulled me on after her as she pushed open the doors of the archive. Everything was as it had been an hour ago—darkness, with a cone of light above the desk.

Olga walked up to the desk without speaking. But, anticipating an unpleasant surprise, I looked at her through the Twilight.

To hell with all of Helen's precautions!

Olga was walking through the archive, completely covered in a scaly armor of spells. It looked like she must have activated a substantial part of her arsenal while we were on the way down. The Great One had bright rainbows of spells blazing on her fingers.

Olga stopped at the desk and looked around. She touched the kettle standing on the desk. She opened the box that Helen and I had found, took out the document, and gave it a brief glance.

“Aren't you going to say anything?” I said.

Olga was silent.

“Helen!” I called. “Helen!”

“Don't yell,” said Olga. “She isn't here.”

“But where is she?”

“How should I know? Maybe Dublin, for instance? Did you come to see her often?”

“Yesterday and the day before yesterday.”

“And before that?”

“Well, I probably hadn't called in for a year,” I muttered, feeling horror creeping up on me.

“She left more than a year ago. Finished making her notes and copied what she wanted, in exchange for other documents. And then, well, she left. She was sick of sitting in here. Were you away from Moscow then?”

I didn't answer.

“Who addled your brains?” Olga asked. “Higher One . . . You do realize that you've been duped, befuddled, enchanted? Whoever was here, it certainly wasn't Helen Killoran! The archive has been empty for a long time! If anyone needs something, they come down, switch on the light, rummage in the catalogues, and look for what they want!”

“You know what the worst thing is?” I asked.

Olga didn't answer.

“I can remember Helen leaving,” I said. “She held a party, right here. We even danced together. I remember.
Now
I remember.”

IT WAS AN OLD PICTURE, POSSIBLY SOMETHING FROM THE
seventeenth-century Italian school. Nothing special, a view of the canals in Venice. Gesar probably knew the artist, or perhaps that place had some special meaning for him.

I sat there, examining the little houses, bridges, and gondolas, and tried not to to notice the waves of coolness running across the back of my head. As if the shutters of an air conditioner were quivering right there beside me, breathing out a chilly wind . . .

“I think that will do,” said Gesar. He lowered his hand heavily onto my shoulder and went back to his desk. Olga was sitting a little to one side, on a chair set there for her.

“So what's wrong with me?” I asked.

“Induced amnesia,” said Gesar, looking at me in gentle surprise, as if I had said something stupid. “Nothing but induced amnesia. You were made to forget that Killoran left Moscow sixteen months ago. And so, when you went down into the archive and saw . . . Hmm . . . Saw someone there who looked like Helen, you quite calmly started talking to her.”

“Gesar, I have all the required mental defenses in place.”

“And even a few that aren't required, I noticed. The point is, Anton, that this is our oversight. Our common oversight. We're all well protected against the possibility of having false memories imposed on us or our existing ones distorted. At least by any Others
who are weaker than us or our equals. Which means that no one but a Higher Other could have implanted an image of something that didn't exist in your memory. But . . .”

“We're not protected against erasure,” I said.

“Against blocking. Erasing a memory would have provoked a defensive reaction too. But precise blocking wouldn't. You simply forgot that Killoran had left. That's all.”

“But how did she”—I frowned—“if it is a ‘she' and not a ‘he,' get into our office?”

“With some difficulty, probably,” Gesar said, and paused for a moment. “Our office's defenses are very secure. But if we assume certain factors, it is possible to sneak through.”

“What factors?” Olga asked curiously. “I have my own theories, but I'd like to hear this.”

“A Higher level of Power,” said Gesar. “Color . . . Light or Gray. The absence of any malicious intentions. Under these conditions it is possible to bypass the spells that are in place. And with the ability to manipulate memory, it's possible to get past the guards too. Either by blocking their memories of Ms. Killoran's departure or by completely erasing their memories of an Other walking past them. I think that if we check everyone who has been on guard duty, we'll find these blocks, remove them, and discover the day and the hour when she arrived.”

“And she's only just gone,” I said. “I went to look for Olga immediately after our conversation. She had promised to pass on the document for translation herself. But obviously she left after me and cleared out. But who can it be, Boris Ignatievich? We know all the Higher Light Ones, there aren't so very many of us, even including those who are retired. Are Gray Ones Inquisitors?”

“Not necessarily,” said Olga. “They could be Others in the process of changing their color. You know yourself that it happens only extremely rarely, and usually with Higher Ones. Sometimes the color changes all the way, sometimes it gets stuck in the middle, like with the Inquisitors.”

“A Higher One who can be either color,” I said. “Wonderful. I feel like an idiot.”

“Don't,” said Gesar. “If, in the course of my rather long life, I haven't thought about the danger of amnesic intervention, then I'm the biggest idiot of all.”

“In any case, it must have been a Higher One who influenced you,” said Olga. “And very, very professionally. Masterfully, in fact.”

“I understand what you're driving at,” Gesar said, nodding.

“So do I,” I murmured. “Vampires. Even the very weakest vampire is a master of amnesia.”

“And not only because of the secretion in their saliva,” Olga said with a nod. “A Higher Vampire is a master of illusion . . . You didn't kiss her, did you, Anton? It might not have been a vampiress, but a male vampire.”

“And yuck to you,” I replied.

Olga laughed.

“All right, all right, I won't say anything to Sveta.”

“And yuck again,” I said with passion. “Thanks for trying to cheer me up, but I'm okay. Isn't there anything else, Boris Ignatievich? No other interventions?”

“No.” Gesar shook his head. “It was all done with great finesse. Hard as it is for me to suggest it, quite possibly our uninvited guest's intentions were good.”

“Even if he's the very Darkest of the Dark Ones, he doesn't want to die either,” Olga said with a nod. A phone rang in her handbag, which was lying on the floor. Olga leaned down, took out the phone, and held it against her ear without speaking. She waited for a moment, listening to something, and then said, “I see. Carry on.”

“From the archive?” I asked when Olga put the phone away again.

“Yes. Everything's clean. There are traces of the presence of an intruder, but no methods, neither human nor Other, can extract any information. We didn't really expect that they would. Anton, there was something you wanted to find out from Gesar when you came looking for me.”

Gesar raised one eyebrow and looked at me.

“You wanted to find out from me, but you went to Olga?” he asked.

“It's a delicate matter,” I explained. “Gesar, who stands above you?”

“I don't understand,” said Gesar, frowning even more severely.

“You're the head of the Light Ones of Moscow. And of the whole of Russia, of course. And to some extent, of contiguous territories too, right?”

“To some extent,” said Gesar. “It's all my Tibetan imperialism, you see. Well, and the fact that the Night Watch of Kirgizia, for instance, is headed up by a Second-Level Other.”

“Who is the head of the Others of Europe? And of the whole world?”

“The answer's simple in both cases,” said Gesar. “No one.”

“That's not possible.”

“Who is the head of all the people in the world?”

“We won't go into the UN,” I said. “But even with my old-fashioned human patriotism . . . the USA is the most powerful country in the world.”

“Of course,” Gesar said dismissively. “But it doesn't lead the world, for one incredibly simple and funny reason, which I won't explain here. People don't have any absolute top leader. And it's the same for Others, Light or Dark.”

“But what if one is needed?” I asked. “The document in the archives is dated 1215. And someone signed it in the name of the Light. If it suddenly becomes necessary to make some very important decisions . . .”

“It already is necessary,” said Gesar. “And I've informed all the regional assemblies about it in a letter that was signed by myself and Zabulon and certified with the oath of the Light and the oath of the Darkness.”

“And then what happens?” I asked tensely.

“Then things will happen as they already have several times in history. Zabulon and I will be granted the right to make a decision
in the name of the Light and the Darkness. Formally speaking, we shall be the leaders. In the resolution of this matter.”

“It's that simple?” I exclaimed.

“Democracy in its very highest manifestation,” Gesar said, chuckling. “Although no, it's probably more like that communism we once wanted to build. Two rational and responsible human . . . hmm . . . former human beings who possess enough knowledge and experience of life and who happen to find themselves in the right place at the right time, are invested with the right to make a decision for everyone.”

“Yefremov,” I said.

“He was a good fellow, pity he was human,” said Gesar, nodding. “But it's actually pure, simple practicality.”

“So we've found two of the Parties,” I said. “That's a pretty good start. Now for the witches, the shape-shifters, vampires, and whatever else.”

“Provided, of course, that we have understood everything correctly,” Gesar said skeptically. “The witches—yes. I'm not sure about all the rest of it.”

“We're already working on it,” Olga said. “Everyone's been briefed on the new information.”

“What should I do?” I asked.

“Visit your family,” Gesar advised me.

“I'll wait awhile,” I replied. “Let them miss me.”

“Then work,” said Gesar. “Olga, what have we got on Ms. Yulia Khokhlenko?”

“We haven't got anything,” Olga replied sourly. “Three pages of orientation material. She was born in 1890, in Little Russia. Later she lived in Kiev, Odessa, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. She settled here. And she was elected Grandmother twenty-five years ago.”

“She's very young for a Grandmother.” Gesar laughed. “It's a shame Arina left us. Now, she was good. Or Lemesheva. But this Khokhlova . . .”

“Khokhlenko,” Olga corrected him.

Gesar just waved that aside.

“It's not important. That's not necessarily her real name. Probably a sobriquet from her place of birth. What's happening with that Herman of hers?”

“We were obliged to sanction another rejuvenation.” Olga sighed. “I'll tell you about it later. Look, I was just about to send her the permit.”

“She's not in the Watch?” asked Gesar, narrowing his eyes. “Look sharp then, Anton. You can take it, and have a word with her.”

“What can I tell her?” I asked.

“Everything, within reason.”

“What do we want?”

Gesar snorted.

“You should realize that yourself. The present Universal Grandmother. The head of the Conclave.”

“And if she doesn't want to tell me?” I asked, getting up.

“Don't attempt to use force, that's for sure,” said Gesar. “In that case, I'll go myself. But try to manage it somehow. And I'll go to see Hena right now.”

“And I'll go to see the Moscow Master of Vampires,” said Olga. “We still have some time, but there's no point in wasting it.”

Yulia Khokhlenko, the head of Moscow's witches, the “Grandmother” in their terminology, didn't try too hard to look young. Maybe because of her position. Or maybe for some other reason.

Of course, she didn't look 125 years old. Sixty at most. She was lean and charming, with thick black hair; no doubt people thought she dyed it.

Granny Yulia worked in an ordinary municipal kindergarten called Little Sunshine in the southeast district of Moscow. As a simple teacher, not even the director.

The parents and the children all absolutely adored her.

At the entrance to the kindergarten I hung a simple, but very
convenient spell on myself: Our Guy. After that I didn't have to worry about how to get past the security guard, or what the teachers and nurses I ran into would think—every one of them saw me as someone familiar, someone they knew, who had a right to be here. The security man shook my hand heartily, the teachers smiled, even the dour, tipsy electrician, standing on a ladder and fiddling with a fluorescent light tube, forced out a mangled greeting.

In the orientation information that Olga had given me, it said that Yulia Tarasovna Khokhlenko was now working as the class teacher of the preschool group. It was a small kindergarten. In the 1990s, when Muscovites almost stopped having children, half of it had been walled off and made into a private lycée. But times had changed, the lycée had been thrown out of the other half of the kindergarten, and now the Tajik
gastarbeiters
were working away in there, plastering, painting, and laying floors. All simultaneously, or so it seemed. The Little Sunshine kindergarten was about to expand.

I walked up a stairway with funny double banisters—one at the level of an adult hand and the other lower down, for the kids. I pushed open a door with a colored drawing cut out of some children's book hanging on it—Baba Yaga in her mortar, clutching her broom—and walked into the preschool group's classroom.

Thirty pairs of eyes stared at me. The senior group had just gotten back from a walk. Some of them had already removed their outdoor clothing, some were still tangled up in half-removed jumpsuits and trousers, some hadn't even taken their woolly hats off yet.

A moment later I was engulfed by a tidal wave of yelling, clamoring children.

If you think that a six-year-old child is nothing compared to an adult, then you've never been assaulted by thirty preschool children.

“What are you doing?” I howled as they toppled me over onto the floor, forcing my head down painfully against the shoe-drying rack. A wet felt boot tumbled onto my face. Thirty pairs of hands clutched at me.

Had the crazy old Grandmother turned her wards into security guards?

“Uncle Dima!” a little kid with light hair howled joyfully as he flung himself onto me.

“Uncle Pasha Uncle Pasha Uncle Pasha,” chirruped a red-haired little girl.

“Daddy! Daddy!” howled a freckle-faced boy, so excited that he almost had tears in his eyes.

“Right, shoo, all of you!” a voice exclaimed somewhere above me, and the children retreated. Yulia Tarasovna had made her entrance—there's no other way to put it—from one of the other rooms that her group inhabited.

The children ran off, laughing.

“Everyone get changed, have a pee, and wash your hands!” Yulia Tarasovna commanded. And she held out her hand to help me up. I, however, disdained an old woman's help and got up myself, glancing warily at the children.

“Hello, Yulia Tarasovna,” I said.

The witch was wearing a brightly colored dress and an abundance of beads, bracelets, and rings that could have rivaled any Gypsy. Well, what can I say—witches use the magic of artifacts . . .

“And hello to you, Anton Gorodetsky, Light Magician,” Khokhlenko said in a low voice. “What were you thinking, Great One, hanging a ‘charmer' on yourself on the way into a kindergarten? Don't you know that children react twelve times more powerfully to magic?”