Sergei Lukyanenko - The New Watch

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 licence 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 unprecedented 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 defence. ‘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 kilometres 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 bit 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.

‘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.