No, it was stupid. If I was being tracked seriously, they would trace the call. And I didn’t want to give anyone that chance. After all, if there was some emergency, Svetlana would call my cell herself.
The witch situation wasn’t clear yet. I could only hope that today they would get together at their Sabbath and choose a new Grandmother of Grandmothers. I had to wait.
And I had to report.
I took out my phone and it rang in my hand. A photo of the boss appeared (don’t ask me how I managed to photograph him; Gesar can’t stand photos and videos) and rousing music started playing.
Ta ta-ta ta ta-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta ta-ta
Ta-ta ta-ta, ta-ta ta-ta ta-ta ta ta
All Higher Ones are posers in their own way. The Grandmother of Russian witches worked in a kindergarten and washed out dirty potties. The senior Light One of Moscow didn’t like to be called on the phone—he preferred to call you, just a second before you decided to call.
“Hello, Gesar.”
“How did the talk with your Grandmother go?” the boss asked.
“Hmm . . .” I wondered for a moment if the boss was trying to speak in conspiratorial fashion or if he hadn’t noticed the vagueness of his own words.
“Grandmother says that her Grandmother, Arina, is alive and no one can take the place of a living Grandmother,” I replied. “But today Grandmother is planning to spend the evening with her friends and they’ll have a good talk about it.”
“So it’s Arina,” said Gesar. “I was almost certain of it. I see.”
“I can’t hear you very well, boss,” I said, dissembling shamelessly. “Are you far away?”
“In Prague, I told you.”
So Gesar had traveled to Prague via a portal. Such a long distance and so quickly—the portal must have been prepared in advance. But why was I surprised by that? It would have been strange if it hadn’t.
“How’s the pussycat?” I asked.
“The pussycat? The Grandmother’s pussycat?” I had unexpectedly managed to perplex Gesar. “You mean that fat-bellied Herman?”
“No, I meant the other pussycat,” I said cautiously. “You know, the one with the congenital dental problems.”
I heard mumbling and muttering in the background. Gesar said something brief in a language I didn’t understand before he spoke to me again.
“Hena asked me to tell you that a pair of large fangs is no problem at all. Quite the opposite. And if you have any doubts, he politely invites you on a hunting trip.”
“My apologies to the highly respected Hena,” I said, then looked in the rearview mirror and stuck my tongue out at myself.
Damn, who could have known that Hena was right there?
“And did the highly respected Hena inform you if he is the undisputed leader of . . . Er . . . His own . . . His . . .”
“The supremely amiable Hena said that he is the most senior member of his kind,” said Gesar. “He also said that they do not have, never have had, and never will have an overall leader, since that contradicts their very nature. He told me this firmly and clearly, in the language of mammoth hunters, which had absolutely no concept of untruth.”
“I see,” I said disappointedly.
“So the ‘takers of form’ aren’t shape-shifters. Think, Anton.”
The boss cut off the call.
I sat there for a few seconds, looking straight ahead stupidly. Not shape-shifters. That was a real bummer. Witches, yes; vampires, yes. But the shape-shifters weren’t included; what a shame. No one loved the poor old shape-shifters. Even schoolgirls preferred the glamorous vampires.
Someone tapped gently on the glass at my side of the car. I turned to look. An overweight, middle-aged traffic cop smiled at me sweetly and gestured, inviting me to lower the window.
I hastily pressed the button and the glass slid down. A little column of ash dropped straight onto my trousers—the cigarette I’d lit five minutes earlier had burned out in my fingers.
“Dammit,” I said, and flung the butt out at the traffic cop’s feet in a reflex response.
“Hey there, don’t push your luck too,” the cop exclaimed excitedly. “Have you totally lost it? You’re parked under a No Parking sign. So okay, with the emergency lights on . . . I can see you’re talking on the phone . . . Well now, I’m not some kind of lunatic, am I? All sorts of things happen. Am I some kind of lunatic?”
“No, you’re not,” I agreed in embarrassment.
“I pull up behind you . . .” the traffic cop continued.
I glanced in the mirror, and there it was, a patrol car with its flashing light on, standing right behind me. It had obviously been there a long time.
“I sit there and wait,” the cop went on. “And I think: this man’s conscience will awaken any moment now! But no, it doesn’t. You even stuck your tongue out at me in the mirror. Listen, you’re a reasonable adult. Do you have a conscience?”
“I do, honestly I do!” I exclaimed.
“You finished talking,” said the cop, continuing with the list of my transgressions. “And you kept sitting there! All right, I’m not proud. I got out of the car and knocked politely . . . And what do you do? You open the window and fling your cigarette butt at me!”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Stopping under a sign. Littering from a car . . .” The cop hesitated for a moment. “I honestly don’t know what the penalty for that is.”
“Fine me,” I said. “I’m guilty through and through, I won’t argue. Fine me if you like, confiscate my license if you like.”
“No reason to take the license,” the cop said. “Not drunk, are you?”
“No.”
“You’ve got a look on your mug as if you’ve been drinking.”
“Check it,” I said. “That’s just the way my mug is. That’s my life for you.”
The traffic cop looked at me for a while. Then he leaned down and sniffed. I breathed out.
“What happened?” he asked with a sudden note of sympathy.
“My wife, my daughter . . .” I said, and then immediately corrected myself. “No, nothing like that, they’re alive and well, only . . .”
“Only a long way away,” said the traffic cop.
“Yes. Well, and . . .”
“Were you talking to them?”
“No. To my boss.”
“Got a real earful, did you?”
“Something like that.”
“Things bad at work?”
“A crisis.”
The cop nodded and made a suggestion.
“Call your wife. Call her first.”
“I can’t,” I said. “Her phone’s switched off.”
The traffic cop sighed.
“I see. But you can’t stay here.”
“I won’t.”
“And stop smoking,” the cop added. “We’ve got a campaign against smokers in this country. Against smoking, that is. The prime minister gave up smoking, and he’s got a pretty nerve-wracking job. So you can too.”
“I can,” I said with a nod. “I only smoke on rare occasions. I just got upset.”
The traffic cop wagged a warning finger at me.
“And look in the mirror! It’s not just there for decoration, is it?”
“No, the mirror’s not just there for decoration,” I agreed.
“That’s right. It’s not supposed to reflect your bruised and battered image, but something more important.”
I didn’t answer, just gaped stupidly at the traffic cop.
“Sure you haven’t been drinking?” he asked.
“You can’t even imagine what an important thing you just said,” I declared. “You can’t possibly understand. Thank you so much! Thank you!”
The traffic cop took a step back and shook his head.
“You get yourself home. Do you hear me? Drive home calmly and slowly. Your head’s crammed full of other stuff, you shouldn’t be driving right now. If you like, I’ll drive in front and you follow me.”
The traffic cop shook his head again and set off back to his car.
I raised the window.
And looked in the mirror.
And I spoke out loud.
“What an idiot I am. The Mirror.”
CHAPTER 3
I REACHED THE ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENTS EXHIBITION DISTRICT nineteen minutes later, which by Moscow standards is totally unreal and, bearing in mind the state of the winter roads and the fact that it was the afternoon, was absolutely inconceivable. If that nice traffic cop had seen the way I drove after he let me go, he would have cursed me.
I drove all the way with my car concealed by a Sphere of Inattention—no one could see me, but they still gave way to an empty space. And at the same time I viewed the lines of probability—constantly.
Most of the lines ended with a totally shattered car, a pillar of smoke, and a traffic jam several miles long. This wasn’t exactly encouraging, but I extracted every scrap of information I could from my prescient visions.
Change lane here, overtake, change lane again, skip into the opposite side of the road, overtake a beemer speeding along the outside lane and then move back into the outside lane right under the nose of a Kamaz truck hurtling down on me . . .
Brake here and plod along an empty road for two minutes, because some smart-ass has poured the wrong anti-icing agent on it and the road has turned into a skating rink.
And step hard on the gas here. Along a narrow side street. Ignoring the No Entry sign.
Simply because I know that no one will come the other way and no one will dart out into the road.
Well okay, I drive this way because it’s an emergency and I’m a Higher Other. But why the hell do ordinary people drive like this—like twenty-year-old kids whose dads have given them cars in a fit of stupidity?
And it was just when I reached the Exhibition district, as I was passing the old Cosmos Hotel, that my phone rang—fortunately I had already connected it to the car’s music system.
“Hello,” I said.
“Anton, this is Pasha,” said the operations duty officer, whom I had phoned earlier.
“I’m listening.”
“Egor Martynov, twenty-eight, uninitiated, works as an illusionist, winner of—”
“Keep it short!”
“He’s not in Moscow,” Pasha said resentfully; he liked thorough reports.
“Where is he?”
“At present he lives and works in Paris, he performs—”
“Is he there right now?” I demanded.
“Yes. If you only knew what an effort it cost me . . .”
I made a U-turn above the tunnel that runs under Galushkin Street. It would have been more dramatic to swing around across a double solid line, but I was out of luck—the normal U-turn was closer. I could have tried to get there around the Moscow Orbital Highway, but it was jammed solid right now—a truck had skidded and blocked off three lanes.
“Pasha, all the information about how to find him—e-mail it to me. And book a ticket on the next flight to Paris. When is it?”
“I already checked, in an hour and twenty minutes. From Sheremetievo.”
“Get a ticket. That flight mustn’t leave without me.”
“Only business class,” said Pasha. “Will Gesar sign your expenses? Will you come in to collect your travel allowance?”
I laughed.
“Pasha, get me the ticket. My passport details are in the database.”
“I wish someone would send me on trips like this,” Pavel grumbled. “I’ve already got the ticket. In fact I got it before I called.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll bring you a little magnet.”
“A bottle of cognac,” Pasha replied.
Paris isn’t all that far from Moscow. Although the plane has to make a detour to fly around the long-suffering land of Ukraine. I sincerely hoped that Gesar, preoccupied with his own business in Prague, would only find out about my journey when I was already in France. Or perhaps even when I got back.
Unlike the packed economy-class cabin (Pavel hadn’t been lying), business class was half empty. The seat beside me was free, and in the next row only the end seat, beside the window, was taken by a fat, respectable-looking man who had put on an eye mask even before we took off and was dozing. In contrast, I drank the complimentary champagne and had lunch (or dinner—it depends what you’re used to calling it). I asked for a glass of cognac and wondered if I should doze for a couple of hours too.
It was a tempting thought. I couldn’t expect any peace for the rest of the day, so . . .
I turned my head. Gesar was sitting in the seat beside me, gazing at me somberly.
“Boss,” I exclaimed and prodded Gesar cautiously with my finger. To my amazement my hand didn’t pass straight through him.
My finger sunk into the striped cardigan that Gesar had been sporting for a week. The cardigan was fancy schmancy, made of some kind of fine wool, with elongated wooden buttons, and it was a present to the boss from Olga—basically quite a recognizable item.
“Drunk, are you?” Gesar asked.
“Boss, that’s not fair,” I protested indignantly. “The traffic cop said the same thing, but you . . .”
“Ah, you’ve got a look on your face as if you’ve just been drinking,” Gesar growled, and I decided that if everything worked out, I’d go to see a cosmetician. What was all this about my face?
“There,” I said, holding out my glass. “That’s all I was planning to drink.”
Gesar sniffed the cognac and pressed the button to call the flight attendant. She appeared beside us straightaway—and immediately started gazing around wildly.
“This is business class, please go back to your place,” she said imploringly.
“You’re an intelligent woman, with a good memory, Raisa Alexeevna,” said Gesar. “You remember all the passengers who walked past you and you know that I wasn’t on the plane when it took off.”
The flight attendant smiled in confusion.
“This is one of those cases the girls used to talk about in the training college,” Gesar continued calmly. “The passenger from nowhere. No need to be afraid, it really is a good sign, the flight will go smoothly, without any incidents. In fifteen minutes I won’t be here. Bring me a glass of cognac and sit in your cubbyhole for a bit.”
The flight assistant nodded and dashed to the front of the cabin. There was a clinking of glass and she appeared beside us again—with a full glass of cognac.
“Everything will be all right,” Gesar murmured. “And Darya Leonidovna has a benign tumor; don’t worry about her. That’s all, go now.”
“Gesar, what’s the point of all this posing?” I asked when Raisa Alexeevna had disappeared. “It would have been easier for you to convince her that you’re a passenger. But you read her memory and checked someone’s destiny . . . Whose?”
“Her aunt’s. But she raised her. She’s almost like her mother.”
“But what for?”
“Why does the head of the witches of Moscow work as a common teacher in a kindergarten?” Gesar asked. “Swabbing the dirty floor with a mop and wiping the children’s dirty bottoms? Why, in addition to the Inquisition, does Hena work as a volunteer?”
“In a society for the protection of animals?” I asked, unable to resist.
“In a hospital for the mentally ill. Anton, all of us, Light Ones and Dark Ones, need to show off to some extent. We all deny our human nature, but at the same time we fuss over people, we help them . . . Or harm them. And we show off to them.”
“Even you, Boris Igatievich.”
“Even me, Anton.”
We said nothing for a moment, looking at each other. Then we brought our glasses together silently and drank a sip of cognac. The engines throbbed on a deep bass note. Gesar frowned and waved his hand; the sound retreated to the distant boundar
y of audibility.
“I’m getting old and deaf already, I don’t like noise,” Gesar explained.
“Trakh-tibidokh,” I said.
“What do you mean by that?” Gesar asked with a frown.
“Nothing much . . . Watch the film Old Khottabich sometime.”
Gesar didn’t reply. He looked at me quizzically.
“Why did you come here?” I asked. “It must be hard to do that, straight into a flying plane . . .”
“That’s putting it mildly,” said Gesar. “But it was flying over Prague, it was in my field of vision, that made the job a lot easier.”
“Boss, I’m planning to come back tomorrow.”
“I realize that. Why didn’t you report in to me?”
I shrugged.
“The Assumer of Appearance. The Mirror.” Gesar nodded. “Yes, it’s a possibility. We’ve been working on it since early this morning. It was the main working hypothesis, alongside the shape-shifters. But since the shape-shifters have now fallen away, we focused on the Mirror.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“What for?” Gesar asked in surprise. “Anton, you’re not a solitary hero. You’re working in a team. And the fact that your wife and daughter and you yourself are caught up in what is happening doesn’t change a thing. You’re part of a team! Do you understand? And you mustn’t just go shooting off in the middle of the workday and fly to Paris on urgent business!”
“Gesar, Egor’s in Paris.”
Gesar sighed.
“I know, Anton.”
“The boy that you . . . we exploited. Stabbed in the back.”
“Anton, he’s one of us. A low-level Other, potentially a Light One. And potentially a Mirror. In that situation, which, let me remind you, led to you marrying Svetlana and Nadezhda being born, we had to make use of someone.”
“We should have used an adult.”
“We needed an uninitiated Other with the potential of a Mirror Magician. You don’t find those very often.”
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