Sergei Lukyanenko - The New Watch

Olga was standing on a small dais beside a lectern, looking out into the hall with a smile on her face. When the laughter died away, she said: ‘And then I said: “Franz, why have you got both gloves on the right hand?” He looked at Willem, blushed and shouted: “Well, damn me, so that was your hand!”’

The audience laughed until it groaned. It guffawed, chuckled, grunted and squealed. It had obviously been a very funny story – but I’d only caught the very end.

There’s nothing more pathetic than a man who has heard the end of a joke and starts asking plaintively: ‘What was that about, what was it? What happened at the beginning?’

‘And what did Willem say?’ someone shouted out from the hall.

Olga was apparently expecting this question and she had the answer ready.

‘Willem lowered his eyes sheepishly and replied: “Yes, Herr Franz, but it wasn’t my hand.”’

The audience collapsed in paroxysms of laughter, even louder than before. I sighed, slumped against the wall and waited.

It took a couple of minutes for order to be restored. After that Olga, evidently considering that she had the audience eating out of the palm of her hand, announced: ‘And now meet our guest, Senior Police Sergeant Dmitry Pastukhov!’

This was getting more and more interesting! Mentally congratulating myself on taking up the strategically correct position by the door, I squatted down on my haunches. And when Olga stepped down off the dais, clapping her hands, my old, if rather superficial, acquaintance Dmitry Pastukhov mounted it with an embarrassed expression on his face.

‘Hello,’ Dmitry said, with a smile that was awkward but basically friendly and sincere. ‘I am very pleased, I really am, to have been invited here.’

The audience suddenly burst into applause.

‘Of course, I’m not Franz, and I’m not Willem,’ Pastukhov continued, encouraged by this approval. ‘But a job’s a job, in any country at any time. Right? So ask what you like, and I’ll answer – only don’t forget, I’m a senior sergeant, not some high-up…’

‘Why have you been stuck as a sergeant for so long?’ a young girl from the research department piped up from the audience.

‘If I’d known you were going to invite me to speak, I’d have become a general!’ said Pastukhov, laughing the question off. He didn’t seem very keen to discuss the leisurely progress of his career.

But the audience was in a friendly mood. Alisher was the first to get up and ask a question.

‘Dima – may I call you Dima?’

‘Of course!’

‘Let’s discuss the following situation. There’s some kind of disturbance taking place in a city. The police are trying to restore order. They haven’t got enough men. The crowd is setting fire to cars, looting shops, beating up peaceful passers-by. And then two men approach you, an ordinary sergeant on patrol duty. One says he can pacify the crowd, the people will feel ashamed and all go home. The other says he can frighten the crowd, make the people feel pain and they will go running home. Whose help would you accept?’

‘The first to approach me!’ Pastukhov replied without a moment’s thought.

‘But if they both approach you at once?’ Alisher persisted. ‘And you can only accept help from one of them?’

Pastukhov pondered for literally a second. Then he said confidently: ‘The one who will frighten them and cause them pain. Would you like to know why?’

Well, would you believe it! There was a pretty decent speaker hiding away inside my police acquaintance! Or had Olga somehow, before his appearance, stimulated his ability to communicate with the audience?

‘Why?’ Alisher asked sympathetically.

‘Because feeling ashamed is for kids who’ve scrawled four-letter words on a fence!’ Pastukhov declared confidently. ‘And even then… these days, not even a kid feels ashamed of that. People who feel ashamed and go on their way… they’ll just get up to no good all over again! But if they feel pain and fear – that gets through to their brains, and their livers, that gets stored in their subconscious minds. Especially since… well, you know who we’re talking about here?’

‘Who?’ asked Alisher, fascinated.

‘Individuals involved in committing group criminal offences!’ said Pastukhov, energetically waving one hand through the air. ‘Mass disturbances, breaches of the rules of conduct of gatherings and demonstrations, an unsanctioned public assembly, the destruction of private property, delinquency, thuggery, robbery, hooliganism, bodily harm… Basically, the whole works! And can you find them all afterwards, arrest them and put them on trial for what they’ve done? No way! Probably ten fall guys will be picked and given a good beating as an example, and the rest will get away with a bit of a fright. So it would be good to punish them in the process of suppressing the illegal activity. So, one – let it be painful! And, two – let it be frightening!’

He glanced triumphantly round the hall.

The audience was silent. Thinking. But this was far from being the censorious silence of Light Others appalled by human cruelty. Everyone was simply silent as they thought over his words. And it seemed as if they were willing to agree with them.

And by and large I agreed with Pastukhov too.

I didn’t like it! But I agreed with him.

‘Dmitry, may I ask you another question, then?’ said Olga, rejoining the conversation. ‘On a slightly different subject, but nonetheless… There’s a ship sailing over the sea. A large one, with many passengers on board, very many. The hold springs a leak. There aren’t enough lifeboats. They can’t wait for help – it simply won’t get there in time. The captain realises they won’t be able to save everyone, but the passengers aren’t yet aware of the situation. What would you do?’

Pastukhov knitted his brows. Then he asked hopefully: ‘This is a kind of test, right? We had a visit from a psychologist, he asked questions like that…’

‘No, no!’ Olga said, shaking her head. ‘It’s not a test, not that. Simply a question. What do you think should be done in a situation like that?’

‘Well, probably they should put the children in the lifeboats,’ said Pastukhov, after thinking for a moment. ‘And the women, if they’ll fit.’

He was speaking sincerely, I could see that. And I immediately started to like the senior sergeant a lot more than when he was talking about the corrective power of pain and fear.

‘Not even all the children will fit in!’ said Olga. ‘And it’s by no means certain that they’ll survive in the lifeboats without any grown-ups, anyway.’

Pastukhov knitted his brows.

‘They could save those who are most deserving…’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You know, distinguished people with special honours and such…’ He rubbed the bridge of his nose and objected to his own idea. ‘No, that’s no good. Who’s going to decide, eh? Who’s worthy, who isn’t… you’d end up with a real set-to. I’d probably do nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ asked Olga. Curiously, not judgementally.

‘Nothing!’ Pastukhov replied, speaking firmly this time. ‘Well, you know, of course I’d order the crew to pump the water out, block off the hole with some kind of plug…’

‘They use patches for that!’ someone well informed on maritime matters told him from the hall.

‘With a patch, then,’ Pastukhov agreed. ‘But otherwise – let the musicians play and the waiters serve the food…’

He must have watched Titanic just recently, I thought.

‘But who’s going to be saved?’ Olga carried on questioning him.

‘Whoever manages to get away,’ Pastukhov said, with a shrug. ‘Whoever realises that the ship is sinking, that there aren’t enough lifeboats. That would be the fairest way of all. Afterwards, when everybody realises, you could try to impose some kind of order.’