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Authors: Sergei Lukyanenko

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BOOK: The Twilight Watch
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I'd had some odd ideas when I was working on this place . . .

The power was on. That was good at least, but it wasn't the
reason I'd come here.

I opened the windows to dispel the oppressive silence. The
warm evening air came rushing into the room. On the far side
of the river, lights were twinkling in the windows of the buildings
– the ordinary, human buildings. But the silence was just as
intense. No wonder, it was after midnight.

I took out my minidisc player, rummaged through my discs and
chose The White Guard, a group that was never going to top the
charts on MTV or fill sports stadiums. I stuck the earphones in
my ears and stretched out on the mattress.

When this battle is over,
If you survive until the dawn,
You'll realise the scent of victory
Is as bitter as the smoke of defeat.
And you're alone on the cold battlefield,
With no enemies from now on,
But the sky presses down on your shoulders,
What can you do in this empty desert?
But you will wait
For what time
Will bring,
You will wait . . .
And honey will taste more bitter than salt,
Your tears more bitter than the wormwood in the steppes,
And I know of no pain worse than this,
To be alive among so many who are sleeping.
But you will wait
For what time
Will bring,
You will wait . . .

Catching myself trying to sing along out of tune with the quiet
female voice, I tugged out the earphones and switched the player
off. No. I hadn't come here to lounge around doing nothing.

What would James Bond have done in my place? Immediately
found the mysterious renegade Other, his human client and the
author of the provocative letters.

And what was I going to do?

I was going to look for what I needed desperately. If it really came
to it, there had to be toilet facilities downstairs, at the security point.

Somewhere outside the window – it seemed very close – a bass
guitar began growling ponderously. I jumped to my feet, but
couldn't see anyone in the apartment.

'Hi there, you mob' said a voice outside the windows. I leaned
out over the windowsill and surveyed the wall of the Assol building.
I spotted some windows open two floors up – that was where
those unusually arranged, aggressive chords on the bass guitar were
coming from.

I haven't squeezed my guts out for a long time,
It's a long time since I've squeezed out my guts,
And just recently I happened to notice
How long it is since I squeezed out my guts.
But I used to squeeze them out so fine!
No one else could squeeze them out so far!
I squeezed them right out there for everyone,
I was the only one squeezing them out!

It was impossible to imagine a greater contrast with the quiet
voice of Zoya Yashchenko, the female singer with The White
Guard, than this extraordinary song. But there was something
about it I liked. The singer ran through a three-chord bridge and
continued with his lament:

Sometimes now I still squeeze them out,
But now it's not the way it used to be.

They just don't squeeze out the same way at all
I'll never squeeze them out again the way I used to . . .

I started laughing. It had all the distinctive features of Russian
'gangster' songs – a lyric hero recalling his former splendour,
describing his present fallen state and lamenting that he will never
recover the glory of former days.

And I had a strong suspicion that if this song were played on
Radio Chanson, ninety per cent of the listeners wouldn't even
suspect it was a send-up.

The guitar gave a few sighs. And then the voice launched into
a new song:

I've never been in the loony bin,
So stop asking me about that . . .

The music broke off. I rummaged in the cardboard box, found
a bottle of vodka and a stick of smoked salami. I skipped out onto
the landing, pulled the door shut and set off up the stairs.

Finding the midnight bard's apartment was about as hard as
finding a working pneumatic drill in the bushes.

The birds have stopped their singing,
The sun no longer shines
There are no vicious kids frolicking
Round the rubbish tip outside . . .

I rang the bell, certain that no one would hear it. But the music
stopped, and about thirty seconds later the door opened.

Standing there in the doorway with an amiable smile on his
face was a short, stocky man about thirty years old, holding a bass
guitar. With a certain morose satisfaction, I observed that he had
a 'bandit' haircut like me. The bard was wearing threadbare jeans
and an amusing T-shirt – a paratrooper in Russian uniform slitting
the throat of an American soldier with a huge knife. Below
the picture was the defiant slogan 'Let us remind you who really
won the Second World War!'

'That's not bad, either,' the guitarist said, looking at my T-shirt.
'Come on in.'

He took the vodka and the salami and moved back inside.

I took a look at him through the Twilight.

A human being.

And such a confused jumble of an aura that I decided there
and then not to try to understand his character. Grey, pink, red
and blue tones . . . a really impressive cocktail.

I followed him inside.

His apartment turned out to be twice as big as mine. Oho, he
didn't earn the money for that by playing the guitar . . . But then,
that was none of my business. What was really funny was that,
apart from its size, the apartment looked like an exact copy of
mine. The initial phase of a magnificent finishing job hastily wound
up and left incomplete.

Standing in the middle of this monstrously huge living space –
at least fifteen square metres – there was a chair, and in front of
the chair a microphone on a stand, a good quality professional
amplifier and two enormous speakers.

Over by the wall there were three immense Bosch fridges. The
guitarist opened the biggest one – it was empty – and put the
bottle of vodka in the freezer. He explained:

'It's warm.'

'I haven't got a fridge yet,' I said.

'It happens,' the bard sympathised. 'Las.'

'What do you mean, "las",' I asked, puzzled.

'That's my name, Las. Not the one in my passport.'

'Anton,' I said, introducing myself. 'That is the name in my passport.'

'It happens,' Las sympathised again. 'Come far?'

'I live on the eighth,' I explained.

Las scratched the back of his head thoughtfully. He looked at
the open windows and explained:

'I opened them so it wouldn't be so loud. Otherwise my ears can't
take it. I was going to put in soundproofing, but I ran out of money.'

'That seems to be a common problem,' I said cautiously. 'I
haven't even got a toilet.'

Las smiled triumphantly.

'I have. I've had it for a week! That door over there.'

When I got back, Las was melancholically slicing the salami.
Unable to resist, I asked him:

'Why is your toilet so huge and English-looking?'

'Did you see the company label on it?' Las asked me. '"We
invented the first toilet". Just had to buy it, didn't I, with that
written on it? I keep meaning to scan the label and change it a
little bit, write: "We were the first to guess that people need . . ."'

'I get the idea,' I said. 'I do have a shower installed, though.'

'Really?' Las said, standing up. 'I've been dreaming about having
a shower for three days . . .'

I held out my keys.

'Meanwhile you organise the hors d'oeuvres,' Las said happily.
'The vodka has to cool for another ten minutes anyway. And I'll
be quick.'

The door slammed shut, and I was left in a stranger's apartment
– alone with an amplifier that was switched on, a half-sliced stick
of salami and three huge, empty fridges.

Well, how about that! I would never have expected the easygoing
social relations of a friendly communal apartment – or a
student hostel – to exist inside buildings like this.

You use my toilet, and I'll get washed in your jacuzzi . . . And
Pyotr Petrovich has a fridge, and Ivan Ivanovich promised to bring
some vodka – he trades in the stuff – and Semyon Semyon cuts
the sausage for the snacks very neatly, with loving care . . .

Probably the majority of the people with apartments there had
bought them 'for posterity'. Using every last bit of money they
could earn – and beg, steal or borrow. And it was only afterwards
that the happy owners had realised that an apartment that size also
required major finishing work. And that any construction firm
wouldn't think twice about ripping off someone who had bought
a home here. And that they still had to pay every month for the
massive grounds, the underground car parks, the embankments and
the park.

So the huge building was standing there half-empty, very nearly
deserted. Of course, it was no tragedy if someone was a bit short
of cash. But for the first time I could see with my own eyes that
it was at least a tragicomedy.

How many people really lived in the Assol complex? Was I the
only one who had noticed the bass guitar in the middle of the
night and before that had the strange musician made his racket
entirely unchallenged?

One person on each floor? It was probably even less than
that . . .

But then who had sent the letter?

I tried to imagine Las cutting letters out of
Pravda
with nail
scissors. I couldn't. Someone like him would have come up with
something a bit more imaginative.

I closed my eyes, picturing the grey shadow of my eyelids falling
across my pupils. Then I opened my eyes and looked round the
apartment through the Twilight.

Not the slightest trace of any magic. Not even on the guitar,
although a good instrument that has been in the hands of an
Other or a potential Other remembers that touch for years.

And there was no trace anywhere of blue moss, that parasite of
the Twilight that feasts on negative emotions. If the owner of the
apartment ever fell into a depression, then he didn't do it here.
Or else he had such a genuinely good time that it burned away
all the blue moss.

I sat down and started carving the rest of the salami. To be on
the safe side, I checked through the Twilight to see if it was really
a good idea to eat it.

The salami turned out to be all right. Gesar didn't want his
agent to go down with food poisoning.

 

'Now that's the right temperature,' said Las, removing the wine
thermometer from the open bottle. 'We didn't leave it in for too
long. Some people cool vodka to the consistency of glycerine, so
that drinking it's like swallowing liquid nitrogen. Here's to our
meeting!'

We drank a glass and followed it with salami and crispbreads,
which Las had brought from my apartment – he explained that
he hadn't bothered to get any food in that day.

'The entire building lives like this,' he explained. 'Well, of course
there are some people who had enough money to finish their
places and furnish them as well. Only just imagine how wonderful
it is living in an empty building. There they are, waiting for the
petty riff-raff like you and me to finish our places off and move
in. The cafés aren't working, the casino's empty, the security men
are freaking out from sheer boredom . . . two of them were sacked
yesterday – they started shooting at the bushes in the yard. Said
they'd seen something horrible. They probably did too – they were
as high as kites.'

And so saying, Las took a pack of Belomor cigarettes out of his
jacket pocket and gave me a cunning look:

'Want one?'

I hadn't been expecting a man who poured vodka in such good
style to fool around with marijuana.

I shook my head and asked:

'Do you smoke many?'

'This is the second pack today,' Las sighed. And then he suddenly
realised. 'Hey, come on, Anton! These are Belomor! Not dope! I
used to smoke Gitânes before, until I realised they were no different
from our very own Belomor.'

'Original,' I said.

'What's that got to do with anything?' Las said, offended. 'I'm not
trying to be original. You only have to be a bit different, not like
the rest, and straight away they say you're putting on airs. But I like
smoking Belomor. If I lose interest a week from now, I'll give up.'

'There's nothing wrong with being different,' I said, putting out
a feeler.

'But really being different is hard,' Las replied. 'Just a couple of
days ago I had this idea . . .'

I pricked my ears up again. The letter had been sent two days
earlier. Could everything really have come together so neatly?

'I was in this hospital, and while I was waiting to be seen, I
read all the price lists,' Las went on, not suspecting a trap. 'And
what they do there is serious stuff, they make artificial body parts
out of titanium to replace what people have lost. Shinbones, knee
joints and hip joints, jawbones . . . Patches for the skull, teeth and
other small bits and pieces . . . I got my calculator out and figured
out how much it would cost to have all your bones totally replaced.
It came out at about one million seven hundred thousand bucks.
But I reckon on a bulk order like that you could get a good
discount. Twenty to thirty per cent. And if you could convince
the doctors it was good publicity, you could probably get away
with half a million!'

'What for?' I asked. Thanks to my hairdresser, my hair wasn't
able to stand up on end.

'It's just a fascinating idea,' Las explained. 'Imagine you want to
hammer in a nail. You just raise your fist and smash it down, and
the nail sinks into concrete. Those bones are titanium. Or say
someone tries to punch you . . . nah, of course, there are drawbacks.
And artificial organs aren't coming on too well yet. But the
general trend of progress looks good to me.'

He poured us another glass.

'It seems to me the trend of progress is in a different direction,'
I went on, sticking to my guns. 'We need to make greater use of
the potential abilities of our organisms. All those amazing things
that lie hidden inside us. Telekinesis, telepathy . . .'

BOOK: The Twilight Watch
4.79Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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