Last Watch

by Сергей Лукьяненков

  “Well, good for Gesar! I was thinking about ringing him myself…to ask for protection.”

  “You’re serious? You’ll allow it?”

  Svetlana looked at me and nodded. Then she added, “While I’m with her, Nadya’s in no danger. Believe me, I’ll make mincemeat of any three Higher Ones. But it’s best to take precautions. When’s your flight?”

  “In five hours. From Sheremetievo.”

  “Semyon will get you there in an hour. So you still have two hours left. You can have something to eat, then we’ll pack your things. How long are you going to be there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then how much underwear and how many pairs of socks shall I put in?” Svetlana asked reasonably. “I can’t imagine you washing anything while you’re away.”

  “I’ll buy new ones and throw the old ones away. Gesar promised to give me heaps of money.”

  “I wonder how much ‘heaps’ is for him,” Svetlana replied doubtfully. “I’ll pack five pair of underwear. Sit down at the table, I’m serving the soup.”

  “Daddy!” Nadya called from the sitting room.

  “What, my little daughter?” I answered.

  “Daddy, will Uncle Afandi give me the beads for a present?”

  Svetlana and I looked at each other, then walked quickly into the sitting room. Our daughter was still watching the cartoons. The screen showed a group of different-colored animals gathered around a campfire.

  “What uncle do you mean, Nadya?”

  “Uncle Afandi,” said our daughter again, without looking away from the screen.

  “Who’s Afandi?” Svetlana asked patiently.

  “What beads?” I asked.

  “The man Daddy’s going to see,” Nadya told us, with that how-stupid-you-grown-ups-are! intonation. “And the beads are blue. They’re beautiful.”

  “How do you know who Daddy’s going to see?” asked Svetlana, continuing the interrogation.

  “You were just talking about it,” Nadya replied calmly.

  “No, we weren’t,” I objected. “We were talking about me going on an assignment to Uzbekistan. That’s a beautiful country in the East. Gesar used to live there once. Do you remember Uncle Gesar? But we didn’t say anything about an Afandi.”

  “I must have misheard, then,” Nadya replied. “There isn’t any uncle.”

  Svetlana shook her head and looked at me reproachfully. I shrugged: OK, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have butted in. Mommy would have got a lot more out of her.

  “But the beads are real anyway,” Nadya suddenly added inconsistently. “You bring them, all right?”

  There was no point in asking any more about Uncle Afandi. Nadya had had “fits” of clairvoyance ever since she was three, if not two. But she was absolutely unaware that she was prophesying, and as soon as you started asking “How do you know that?” she clammed up.

  “My fault,” I confessed. “Sorry, Sveta.”

  We went back to the kitchen. Svetlana poured me some soup without saying a word, sliced the bread, and handed me a spoon. It sometimes seems to me that she plays the role of a perfectly ordinary wife with emphatic irony. But after all, it was her choice. Gesar would be absolutely delighted if Svetlana came back to the Watch.

  “Rustam has had a lot of names…is that what Gesar said?” Svetlana asked thoughtfully.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, slurping my soup.

  “We can assume that now he’s called Afandi.”

  “Anything’s possible.” I wasn’t exactly counting on it, but in my situation I couldn’t afford to ignore even the slimmest lead. “I’ll ask around.”

  “It’s good that Alisher will be with you,” Svetlana observed. “You let him do the talking as often as possible. The East is a subtle business.”

  “Now, there’s an original thought…,” I said sourly. “Sorry. I’ve been hearing wise thoughts about the East all day long today. The rivers of eloquence have already flooded the lake of my awareness, O Turkish delight of my heart!”

  “Daddy, bring back some Turks and some delight!” my daughter called out immediately.

  I didn’t meet Alisher often at work. He preferred working in the field-he was always out on patrol and usually only appeared in the office in the morning, with his eyes red from lack of sleep. I once heard that he was having an affair with some girl from the accounts department, and I knew he was a seventh-level Other, but apart from that I knew very little about him. He was naturally reserved, and I don’t like to force my friendship on anyone.

  However, Semyon seemed to be on friendlier terms with him. When I went down and got into the car, Semyon was just finishing telling a joke. As I sat beside him, he was leaning back over his seat and saying, “All right, Daddy, let’s go the long way around. Bring me a little scarlet flower, please!”

  Alisher laughed first and then held his hand out to me.

  “Hi, Anton.”

  “Hi, Alisher.” I shook his hand and passed my bag back to him. “Dump it on the backseat, I don’t want to bother with the trunk.”

  “How’s Sveta? Did she scold you?” Semyon asked as he drove off.

  “No, of course not. She wished me luck, fed me a delicious dinner, and gave me heaps of useful advice.”

  “A good wife always keeps her husband happy,” Semyon declared cheerfully.

  “You’re in a good mood today,” I remarked. “Is Gesar sending you to Samarkand too?”

  “As if he would,” Semyon said with a histrionic sigh. “Listen, lads, why are you going to Samarkand? The capital’s Binkent, I remember that for certain!”

  “ Tashkent,” I corrected him.

  “Nah, Binkent,” said Semyon. “Or isn’t it? Ah, I remember! The town’s called Shash!”

  “Semyon, you’re not old enough to remember Binkent,” Alisher scoffed. “Binkent and Shash were ages ago-only Gesar remembers that. But we’re flying to Samarkand because that’s where the oldest Light Other who works in a Watch lives. The Watch in Tashkent is bigger, they have all the swank of a capital city, but most of them are young. Even their boss is younger than you are.”

  “Well, how about that…,” said Semyon, shaking his head. “Incredible. The East-and everyone in the Watches is young?”

  “In the East the old men don’t like to fight. The old men like to watch beautiful girls, eat pilaf, and play backgammon,” Alisher replied seriously.

  “Do you often go home?” Semyon asked. “To see your family and friends?”

  “I haven’t been there even once in eight years.”

  “Why’s that?” Semyon asked in surprise. “Don’t you miss your home at all?”

  “I haven’t got a home, Semyon. Or any family. And a devona’s son doesn’t have any friends.”

  There was an awkward silence. Semyon drove without speaking. Eventually I just had to ask, “Alisher, if this isn’t too personal a question…Your father, was he a man? Or an Other?”

  “A devona is a servant whom a powerful magician creates for himself.” Alisher’s voice was as steady as if he were giving a lecture. “The magician finds some halfwit who has no family and fills him with Power from the Twilight. He pumps him full of pure energy…and the result is a stupid, but very healthy man who possesses magical abilities… No, he’s not quite a man anymore. But he’s not an Other-all of his power is borrowed, inserted into him by the magician at some time. A devona serves his master faithfully, he can work miracles…but his head still doesn’t work any better than it did before. Usually the magician chooses people who are mentally retarded, or have Down syndrome-they’re not aggressive and they’re very devoted. The power inserted into them gives them good health and a long life.”

  We didn’t say anything. Neither of us had expected such a frank answer from Alisher.

  “The common people think a devona is possessed by spirits,” he went on. “And that’s almost true: It’s like taking an empty, cracked vessel and giving it new content. Only, instead of intelligence it is usually f
illed with devotion. But Gesar’s not like all the others. Not even like other Light Ones. He cured my father. Not completely…even he can’t do absolutely anything. At one time my father was a total idiot. I think he suffered from imbecility-obviously owing to some kind of organic damage to the brain. Gesar healed my father’s body, and in time he acquired normal human reason. He remembered that he had once been a complete imbecile. He knew that if Gesar didn’t fill him with fresh Power regularly, his body would reject his reason again. But he didn’t serve Gesar out of fear. He said he would give his life for Gesar because he had helped him to become aware. To become a man. And also, of course, because a mindless fool like him now had a wife and a son. He was very afraid that I would grow up an idiot. But it was all right. Only…only the people remember everything. That my father was a devona, that he had lived too long in this world, that once he was an imbecile who couldn’t even wipe his own nose-they remembered all that. My mother’s family rejected her when she left to join my father. And they didn’t acknowledge me, either. They forbade their children to play with me. I am the son of a devona. The son of a man who should have lived the life of an animal. I have nowhere to go back to. My home is here now. My job is to do what Gesar tells me to do.”

  “Wow…” Semyon said quietly. “That’s a tough deal…really tough.” Then he subtly changed tack. “I remember how we drove back those counterrevolutionary bandits, the basmaches. You don’t mind me saying that, do you?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Well, maybe now they’re not bandits any longer, but national heroes…”

  “When Gesar was a commissar in Turkestan, my father fought in his detachment,” Alisher said with pride.

  “He fought there?” Semyon asked excitedly. “What year was that in?”

  “The early twenties.”

  “No, I was later…In Garm, in twenty-nine, when the basmaches broke through from abroad.”

  They launched into a lively discussion of events from days of long ago. From what I understood, it seemed that Alisher’s father and Semyon had almost crossed paths: They had both fought alongside Gesar when he was on active military service in the Red Army. To be quite honest, I didn’t really understand how Gesar could have taken part in the events of the Civil War. The Great Light One couldn’t possibly have bombarded the White Guards and the basmaches with Fireballs! Apparently not all Others had been indifferent to that revolution. Some of them had taken one side or the other in the struggle. And the great Gesar and his comrades had gone dashing about the steppes of Asia to fight whoever had taken the other side.

  And I also thought that now I could probably guess why Gesar and Rustam had quarreled.

  Chapter 2

  EARLY IN THE MORNING IS THE RIGHT TIME TO ARRIVE IN A NEW CITY. By train, on a plane-it makes no difference. The day seems to start with a brand-new leaf.

  On the plane Alisher became taciturn and thoughtful again. I half-dozed almost all the way through the flight, but he looked out the window as if he could see something interesting on the distant ground, enveloped in night. Then just before we landed, when we flew out into the morning and the plane started its descent, he asked, “Anton, would you mind if we separate for a while?”

  I gave the young magician a curious look. Gesar’s instructions hadn’t involved anything of the kind. And Alisher had already told me everything about his family and friends-or, rather, about the fact that he didn’t have any.

  But then, it wasn’t hard to guess what a young guy who had left his homeland at the age of just over twenty might be thinking about.

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “Adolat,” he replied without trying to deny anything. “I’d like to see her. To know what happened to her.”

  I nodded and asked, “Does that name mean something?”

  “All names mean something. Didn’t you ask Gesar to give you knowledge of the Uzbek language?” Alisher asked in surprise.

  “He didn’t suggest it,” I mumbled. But really, why hadn’t I thought of it? And how could Gesar have goofed so badly? We Others learn the major languages of the world as a matter of course-naturally, with the help of magic. Less common languages can be lodged in your mind by a more powerful and experienced magician. Gesar could have done it. Alisher couldn’t.

  “That means he didn’t think you needed it,” Alisher said thoughtfully. “Interesting…”

  It seemed as if Alisher couldn’t imagine Gesar making a mistake.

  “Will I really need the Uzbek language?” I asked.

  “It’s unlikely. Almost everyone knows Russian… And anyway, nobody would take you for an Uzbek,” Alisher said with a smile. “Adolat means ‘justice.’ A beautiful name, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “She’s an ordinary human being,” Alisher murmured. “But she has a good name. A Light name. We went to school together…”

  The plane shuddered as the undercarriage was lowered.

  “Of course, go and see her,” I said. “I think I can find the way to the Watch office on my own.”

  “Don’t think it’s only because of the girl,” Alisher said, and smiled again. “I think it would be best for you to talk to the members of the local Watch yourself. You can show them Gesar’s letter and ask for their advice… And I’ll get there an hour or an hour and a half later.”

  “Weren’t you on very friendly terms with your colleagues, then?” I asked quietly.

  Alisher didn’t answer-and that answered my question.

  I walked out of the airport terminal building, which had clearly been reconstructed recently and looked absolutely new. The only things I had with me were my carry-on bag and a small plastic bag from the duty-free shop. I stopped and looked around. The sky was a blinding blue and the heat was already building up, although it was still early in the morning. There weren’t many passengers-our flight was the first since the previous evening, and the next one wasn’t expected for about an hour. I was immediately surrounded by private taxi drivers, all offering their services in their own particular way:

  “Come on, let’s go, dear man!”

  “I’ll show you the whole city, you’ll see the sights for nothing!”

  “Where are we going, then?”

  “Get in, my car’s comfortable, it has air-conditioning!”

  I shook my head and looked at an elderly Uzbek taxi driver who was waiting calmly beside an old Volga with the black-and-white checkerboard squares of a taxi stenciled on its side.

  “Are you free, Father?” I asked, rather formally in deference to his age.

  “A man’s free as long as he believes in his own freedom,” the taxi driver replied philosophically. He spoke Russian very well, without any accent at all. “Get in.”

  There you go. I had barely even arrived, and already I’d called someone “Father,” and the taxi driver had replied with the typical florid wisdom of the East. I asked, “Did one of the great ones say that?”

  “My grandfather said that. He was a Red Army soldier. Then an enemy of the people. Then the director of a Soviet farm. Yes, he was great.”

  “Did he happen to be called Rustam?” I inquired.

  “No, Rashid.”

  The car drove off and I turned my face to the breeze from the window. The air was warm and fresh, and it smelled quite different from the air in Russia. And the road was good, even by Moscow standards. A wall of trees along the side of the highway provided shade and created the impression that we were already in the city.

  The taxi driver said thoughtfully, “An air conditioner. Nowadays everyone promises their passengers coolness. But what did our grandfathers and great-grandfathers know about air conditioners? They just opened the windows in their cars and they felt fine!”

  I looked at the driver in bewilderment.

  “It’s just my joke. Have you flown in from Moscow?”

  “Yes.”

  “No baggage at all…Ai-ai-ai!” He clicked his tongue. “Don’t
tell me they lost it!”

  “An urgent business trip. There was no time to pack.”

  “Urgent? Nothing’s urgent in our city. There was a city standing here a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, three thousand years ago. The place has forgotten what urgent means.”

  I shrugged. The car was certainly taking its time, but it didn’t bother me.

  “So where are we going? There’s the Hotel Samarkand, the Hotel-”

  “No thanks. I didn’t come here to sleep. I need the marketplace. The Siabsky Market, in the Old City.”

  “That’s the right way to do it!” the driver said warmly. “The man knows where he’s going and what for. The moment he lands, he goes straight to the market. No luggage, no wife, no problems-that’s the right way to live! But did you bring money to go to the market?”

  “I did,” I said, nodding. “How can you go to the market with no money? How much will I owe you? And what do you take-soms or rubles?”

  “Even dollars or euros,” the driver replied nonchalantly. “Give me as much as you think you can spare. I can see you’re a good man, so why haggle? A good man is ashamed not to pay a poor taxi driver enough. He pays more than my conscience will allow me to ask.”

  “You’re a good psychologist,” I laughed.

  “Good? Yes…probably. I did a PhD in Moscow. A long time ago…” He paused and then said, “But no one needs psychologists nowadays. I earn more as a taxi driver.”

  He paused again, and I couldn’t think of anything to say in reply. But we were already driving through the city, and soon the driver began listing all the places I had to visit in Samarkand. Three madrasahs that made up the Registan, a single architectural ensemble; the Bibi-Khanym Mosque…All this, as it happened, was right beside the finest market in Samarkand, the Siabsky, which, as the driver now realized, was famous even as far away as Moscow. And I also had to visit the market, even before anything else. It would be a sin not to see it. But a good man like me wouldn’t make a mistake like that…