Сергей Лукьяненко - Day Watch

"There, you see that light?" Makar asked, turning back to look at me. "You go straight toward that. I'm off now…"

It seemed like the boy just wanted to play a trick on me… it was three hundred meters to the light through the dense growth of the park. He would have been able to boast to his friends about how he led the new teacher into the bushes and left her there…

But Makar had no sooner taken a step off to the side than he caught his foot on something and fell with a cry of surprise. I didn't even feel like gloating-it was so funny.

"Didn't you say you knew everything round here?" I couldn't resist asking.

He didn't even answer, just breathed heavily through his nose as he rubbed his bruised and bleeding knee. I squatted down beside him and looked into his eyes:

"You wanted to play a trick on me, didn't you?"

The kid glanced at me and quickly turned his eyes away. He muttered, "I'm sorry…"

"Do you play tricks like that on everyone?" I asked.

"No…"

"So why was I accorded such an honor?"

It was a moment before he answered. "You looked like… you were very sure of yourself."

"I should think so," I agreed simply. "I had some adventures on my way here. I was almost killed on the way-word of honor! But I got through it. So how am I supposed to look?"

"I'm sorry…"

All his seriousness and self-assurance had completely deserted him. As I squatted beside him I said, "Show me your knee."

He took his hand away.

Power. I know what it is. I could almost feel it, the Power pouring out of the boy: generated by the pain, the resentment, the shame-it was pure Power… I could almost take it-like any Dark Other, whose strength is people's weakness.

Almost.

But it wasn't what I actually needed. Makar sat there gritting his teeth and not making a sound. He wouldn't give way, and he held the Power inside himself. It was too much for me right now…

I took a flashlight as slim as a pen out of my purse and switched it on.

"It's nothing. Do you want me to put a Band-Aid on it?"

"No, don't. It will be okay like that."

"As you wish." I stood up and shone the flashlight around. Yes, it would have been difficult trying to find my way to that lighted window in the distance… "What now, Makar. Are you going to run away? Or are you going to show me the way after all?"

He got up without saying anything and set off, and I followed him. When we were already at the building, which turned out not to be small at all-it was a two-story mansion house with columns-Makar asked, "Are you going to tell the duty teacher?"

"About what?" I laughed. "Nothing happened, did it? We just had a quiet stroll along the path…"

He stood there sniffing loudly for a second, then repeated his apology, only this time far more sincerely: "I'm sorry. That was a stupid stunt I tried to pull."

"Take care of that knee," I advised him. "Don't forget to wash it and dab it with iodine."

–«¦»-

I COULD HEAR WATER SPLASHING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL-THE duty camp leader had excused himself and gone out to get washed after I woke him up. He'd been dozing peacefully to the hissing of a trashy Chinese tape recorder. I don't understand how anyone can possibly sleep to the sound of Vysotsky's songs, but I suppose that heap of junk wasn't fit for playing anything else.

There'll be poems and math,

Honors and debts, unequal battle…

Today all the little tin soldiers

Are lined up here on the old map.

He should have kept them back in the barracks,

But this is war, like any other war,

And warriors in both armies fall

In equal numbers on each side.

"I'm done, sorry about that…" the duty leader said as he came out of the tiny shower room, still wiping his face with a standard-issue cotton waffle-cloth towel. "I was exhausted."

I nodded understandingly. The tape recorder carried on playing, obligingly making Vysotsky's voice even hoarser than ever:

Perhaps it's the gaps in their upbringing

O r the weakness of their education?

But neither one of the two

Sides can win this long campaign.

All these accursed problems of conscience:

How not to do wrong in your own eyes?

Here and there, the tin soldiers on both sides,

How do we decide who ought to win…

The duty leader frowned and turned the volume down so low I couldn't make out the words any longer. He held out his hand: "Pyotr."

"Alisa."

His grip was as firm as if he were shaking hands with a man. It immediately gave me a sense of distance: a strictly professional relationship …

Well, that was fine. I didn't feel particularly inspired by this short, skinny man who looked like a juvenile himself. Naturally, I was intending to take a lover for the period of my vacation, but someone a bit younger and better looking would suit me better. Pyotr must have been at least thirty-five, and even without any Other abilities I could read him like an open book. An exemplary family man-in the sense that he was almost never unfaithful to his wife, and didn't drink or smoke much and devoted the appropriate amount of time to his children-or rather, his only child. A responsible man who loved his work, he could be trusted with a crowd of snot-nosed kids or teenage hooligans without any concern: He would wipe away the kids' snot, have a heart-to-heart talk with the hooligans, take away their bottle of vodka, lecture them on the harmfulness of smoking, and pile on the work, the play, and the morality.

In other words, the perfect embodiment of the Light Ones' dream-not a living human being at all.

"I'm very pleased to meet you," I said. "I've dreamed about working at Artek for so long. It's a shame it has to be under these circumstances…"

Pyotr sighed. "Yes, it's a sad business. We're all very upset for poor Nastenka… Are you a friend of hers?"

"No," I said and shook my head. "I was two years behind her in college. To be honest I can't really remember her face…"

Pyotr nodded and began looking through my documents. I wasn't worried about meeting Nastya. She would probably remember my face-Zabulon is always very thorough about details. If there wasn't a single Other anywhere in Artek, then someone would have come from Yalta or Simferopol, stood close to Nastya for a moment or two… and now she would remember me.

"Have you worked as a Pioneer leader before?"

"Yes, but… not in Artek, of course."

"That doesn't matter," Pyotr said with a shrug. "They have a staff of two thousand three hundred here, that's the only difference."

The tone in which he pronounced these words seemed almost to contradict their meaning. He was proud of Artek, as proud as if he'd founded the camp himself; as if he'd personally fought off the fascists with a machine gun in his hands, built all the buildings and planted the trees.

I smiled in a way that said: "I don't believe that, but I won't say anything out of politeness."

"Nastya works in the Azure section," Pyotr said. "I'll take you there-it's already time for Nastya to get up anyway. Our bus goes to Simferopol at five… how did you get here, Alisa?"

"There were no problems," I said. "I came by car."

Pyotr frowned. "They ripped you off, I suppose?"

"No, it was okay," I lied.

"In any case, it's a bit risky," Pyotr added. "A beautiful young woman alone in a car at night with a stranger."

"There were two of them," I said, "and they were absorbed in each other's company."

Pyotr didn't understand. He sighed and said, "It's not for me to tell you how to behave, Alisa. You're an adult with a mind of your own. But don't forget that anything can happen! Artek is a kingdom of childhood, a realm of love, friendship, and justice. It's the one small thing that we have managed to preserve! But outside the camp… there are all sorts of people."