Sergei Lukyanenko - The New Watch

‘Thank you, that’s a very valuable opinion,’ said Olga. ‘Any more questions?’

‘Dmitry, this is a different situation…’ said someone in the audience. ‘You’re an ordinary person, a cop, I mean, a polizei … uh, sorry. An ordinary policeman who knows nothing about Others. At night you come across a creature who behaves exactly as if he’s a vampire – or a werewolf, say. What would you do?’

‘Take out my pistol and attempt to detain him,’ Pastukhov replied.

The audience seemed to be surprised. There was total silence. Pastukhov shuffled his feet.

‘Don’t go thinking that I’m some crazy, gung-ho kind of hero,’ he said guiltily. ‘But what would I think? That it was some sort of psycho who’d dressed himself up as a vampire or a werewolf. That means he can be arrested. What can he do against a pistol? But if I know – the way I know a little bit about you – well then, of course, no. I’d run for it! But you wanted to know how an ordinary cop – a policemen, that is, would react…’

I quietly opened the door a bit and walked out of the hall.

Somehow I didn’t like what was going on. Since when had they started preparing the Night Watch for interacting with the human agencies of law enforcement? The humans were on their own and we were on our own. That was the way it had always been. Or maybe not always?

No, I definitely didn’t like this.

I looked round. Over at one side, beside a little projecting wall, Las was standing, smoking stealthily and hiding the cigarette in his fist like a schoolboy.

‘What are you up to?’ I asked, taken by surprise.

‘What can a cop tell me that I don’t already know?’ Las asked rhetorically. ‘Though I remember I met one cop who played a Vivaldi concerto on the flute. Now that did surprise me!’

‘Well, why shouldn’t a man have a hobby like that?’ I asked, shrugging. ‘No matter if he’s a policeman to the depths of his soul – if he enjoys playing, let him!’

‘Right, but not standing under the falling snow in winter, on duty!’ Las protested. He thought for a second and added. ‘His playing was lousy anyway, I tell you honestly. Definitely a C-minus.’

I shook my head. I had never encountered any militiamen or policemen who played the flute. In general I hadn’t come across even a tenth as many amusing little scenes as Las saw all around him. I’d come across plenty that were beastly and abominable, but not the amusing kind.

‘In the first place,’ I began, ‘I wasn’t invited to the lecture.’

Las nodded understandingly and whispered: ‘Yes, I would have been offended too!’

‘In the second place, I find the whole subject rather strange,’ I went on, ignoring the jibe. ‘Are we preparing for a series of cataclysms or something?’

‘There’s no stability,’ said Las. ‘The terrorists have seized another plane.’

‘What plane?’ I asked, pricking up my ears.

Las looked at me suspiciously. Then he shut his cigarette end in a pocket ashtray and waved his hand about to disperse the smoke.

‘Forget it. It’s just a figure of speech. Anton, take a look around you! At the human world. You’re all Great Ones, mighty magicians, you’re not interested in watching ordinary life. But the world’s in a fever, financial crisis after financial crisis, currencies skipping up and down, governments falling in countries all over the place, revolution after revolution in the underdeveloped countries. And meanwhile our enemy is cunning and powerful, he’s on the offensive.’

‘We’re supposed to have a truce with the Dark Ones,’ I remarked. ‘And Zabulon’s not being any more malign than usual…’

‘Zabulon! Ha!’ said Las and laughed sarcastically. ‘He’s small fry. Our enemy is the Prince of Darkness.’

‘The devil?’ I said. ‘Well, there are no specific grounds for believing that he exists… Did you get baptised, then?’

‘Do you need to ask?’ Las proudly pushed his fingers in behind his collar and showed me a brand new shiny little cross. ‘I got baptised, I confessed, took the sacrament – the works!’

‘A good job you didn’t receive extreme unction,’ I quipped. ‘That’s it, then. The forces of evil are doomed now.’

‘Don’t mock,’ Las said in an offended voice.

I suddenly felt awkward. In the final analysis, faith is every individual’s personal matter. Whether he’s an Other or a human being… Take Arina, the witchiest of witches, but she still believed!

‘Sorry, I was wrong,’ I said. ‘Since it’s impossible in principle to prove that God does or doesn’t exist…’

Las patted me on the shoulder patronisingly.

‘That’s okay. I understand. But you won’t deny that the world is seeing an increase in conflicts between countries that can’t be resolved by peaceful methods, financial instability is on the increase and all the traditional economic, political and social models are imploding?’

‘I won’t,’ I admitted.

‘Well then, in these conditions the Watch is absolutely obliged to prepare to take measures for the protection of the human herd.’

I thought I must have misheard.

‘The human what?’

‘Herd. Well, population,’ Las said, frowning.

‘You’re not very polite about human beings,’ I said.

‘Well, have they deserved any better?’ Las asked in surprise. ‘Two thousand years since people were given the Good News! And what’s changed in all that time? We have the same old wars and violence, infamy and abomination!’

‘Overall there has been some progress,’ I said, disagreeing. ‘In wartime they used to annihilate people or turn them into slaves, the peasants starved to death…’

‘And now in wartime they torture them and poison them with gas in concentration camps, bomb them with high-precision smart bombs or, in the very best of cases, they occupy countries economically and turn them into powerless satellites. And where there is no war – they dumb down their own people and treat them like cattle.’ Las spread his hands emphatically. ‘All those Genghis Khans, Xerxeses and Caligulas were more honest, I reckon. So far, there is nothing to respect human beings for.’

I started getting a bit wound up at this point.

‘Las, we’re the Night Watch. We protect people, we don’t despise them.’

Las pulled a wry face.

‘Listen, Anton. You’re, you know… a Higher Magician and all that. One of the high-ups. But can we talk off the record, just as friends?’

‘Sure, go on.’

‘Then don’t give me that razzmatazz about how we protect people,’ Las said calmly. ‘We control them – just a little bit. And we prevent the Day Watch from controlling people the way they think is right. What kind of protection is it, when we issue licences to vampires to hunt people? What kind of protection is it, if for every good deed that we do the Dark Ones are granted the right to work evil? We protect ourselves! Our way of thinking, our comfortable existence, our long lives and lack of human problems. Sure, we’re good, and the Dark Ones are bad! That’s why we don’t entirely regard human beings as cattle. But we don’t consider them equal to ourselves!’

‘We do,’ I said stubbornly.

‘Oh, yes?’ Las laughed. ‘When did you last live life as a human, Anton? So that you had to count the money left in your pocket until payday, grovel to some petty human bureaucrat to get some absurd little piece of paper with a stamp on it, wander round grimy, filthy health centres trying to get exhausted doctors to treat you, spend two hours stuck in a traffic jam because half of Moscow has been blocked off for some big shot, or dodge a car with a flashing light and “special” number plates hurtling along the wrong side of the road?’