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“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 borscht?” my wife asked.

  I just sighed as I stuck all sorts of magical trinkets into my various pockets. I was a hundred percent 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:

  “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?

  On what wings dare he aspire?

  What the hand dare seize the fire?

  And what shoulder and what art

  Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

  And when thy heart began to beat,

  What dread hand and what dread feet?”

  “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?

  When the stars threw down their spears,

  And water’d heaven with their tears,

  Did He smile His work to see?

  Did He who made the lamb make thee?

  Tiger, tiger, burning bright

  In the forests of the night,

  What immortal hand or eye

  Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”

  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 license 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 unpre-cedented 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 defense. “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 kilometers 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 b
it 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!”

  “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.

  “When the stars threw down their spears,

  And water’d heaven with their tears . . .”

  “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 realized,” 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.”

  Chapter 8

  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 defenseless 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.”<
br />
  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 baptized . . .” 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.”