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'Thanks, Svetlana. I'd love some. '
She got up and went into the kitchen. I followed her. What was going on here?
'Anton, we have a provisional analysis . . . '
I thought I glimpsed the white silhouette of a bird through the curtained window – it flitted along the wall, following Svetlana.
'Ignat followed the usual plan. Compliments, interest, infatuation, love. She liked it, but it made the vortex grow. You're using a different approach – sympathy. Passive sympathy. '
No recommendations followed, which meant the analysts hadn't reached any conclusions yet. But at least now I knew what I had to do next. Look at her sadly, smile sympathetically, drink tea and say: 'Your eyes look tired, Sveta . . . '
We'd be talking to each other like friends, right? Of course we would. I was sure of that.
'Anton?'
I'd been staring at her too long. Svetlana was standing by the cooker, not moving, holding a kettle with its shiny surface dulled by condensation. She wasn't exactly frightened, that feeling was already beyond her, completely drained out of her by the black vortex. It was more like she was embarrassed.
'Is something wrong?' she asked.
'Yes. It feels awkward, Svetlana. I just turned up in the middle of the night, dumped my problems on you and now I'm hanging around, waiting for tea . . . '
'Anton, please stay. You know, I've had such a strange day, and being here alone . . . Let's call it my fee for the consultation, shall we? That is, you staying for a while and talking to me,' she explained hastily.
I nodded. Any word might be a mistake.
'The vortex has shrunk another fifteen centimetres. You've chosen the right tactic, Anton. '
But I hadn't chosen anything, why couldn't those lousy analysts understand that? I'd used the powers of an Other to enter someone else's home, I'd interfered with someone else's memory so I could stay there longer . . . and now I was just going with the flow.
And hoping the current would bring me out where I needed to be.
'Would you like some jam, Anton?'
'Yes . . . '
A mad tea party! Move over, Lewis Carroll. The maddest tea parties aren't the ones in the rabbit's burrow, with the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse and the March Hare round the table. A small kitchen in a small apartment, tea left over from the morning, topped up with boiling water, raspberry jam from a three-litre jar – this is the stage on which unknown actors play out genuinely mad tea parties. This is the place, the only place where they say the words that they would never say otherwise. This is where they pull nasty little secrets out of the darkness with a conjuror's flourish, where they take the family skeletons out of the closet, where they discover the cyanide sprinkled in the sugar bowl. And you can never find a reason to get up and leave, because every time they pour you more tea, offer you jam and move the sugar bowl a bit closer . . .
'Anton, I've known you for a year already . . . '
A shadow, a brief, perplexed shadow in Svetlana's eyes. Her memory obligingly fills in the blanks, her memory hands her explanations for why a man as likeable and good as me is still no more than her patient.
'Only from my work, of course, but now . . . I feel I'd like to talk to you somehow . . . as a neighbour. As a friend. Is that okay?'
'Of course, Sveta. '
A grateful smile. It's not so easy to use the familiar form of my name. From Anton to Antosha is too big a step.
'Thank you, Anton. You know . . . I just don't know where I am. For the last three days now. '
Of course, it's not so easy to know where you are when you have the sword of Nemesis hanging over you. Blind, furious Nemesis, escaped from the power of the dead gods . . .
'Today . . . never mind . . . '
She wanted to tell me about Ignat. She didn't understand what was happening to her, why a chance encounter had almost got all the way to the bed. She felt like she was going insane. Everybody who comes within the Others' sphere of activity has thoughts like that.
'Svetlana, perhaps. . . perhaps you've fallen out with someone?'
That was a crude move. But I was in a hurry. I didn't even know why myself, as so far the vortex was stable, it was even shrinking. But I was in a hurry.
'Why do you think that?'
Svetlana wasn't surprised and she didn't think the question was too personal. I shrugged and tried to explain:
'It often happens to me. '
'No, Anton. I haven't fallen out with anyone. I've no one to fall out with, and no reason. It's something inside me . . . '
That's where you're wrong, I thought. You've no idea how wrong you are. Black vortices the size of the one hanging over you only appear once in every hundred years. And that means someone hates you with the kind of power rarely granted to anyone, even to an Other.
'You probably need a holiday,' I suggested. 'To get away somewhere, far away to the back of beyond. '
As I said that I realised there was a solution to the problem after all. Maybe not a complete solution, it would still be fatal for Svetlana. She could go away. Out into the taiga or the tundra, to the North Pole. And then it would happen there – the volcano would erupt, the asteroid would hit, or the cruise missile with the nuclear warheads would strike. The Inferno would erupt, but Svetlana would be the only one to suffer.
It's a good thing that solutions like that are as impossible for us as the murder suggested by the Dark Magician.
'What are you thinking, Anton?'
'Sveta, what's happened to you?'
'Too abrupt, Anton! Steer the conversation away from that. '
'Is it really that obvious?'
'Yes. '
Svetlana lowered her eyes. Any moment I was expecting Olga to shout that the black vortex had begun its final, catastrophic spurt of growth, that I'd ruined everything and now I'd have thousands of human lives on my conscience for ever . . . but Olga didn't say a word.
'I betrayed . . . '
'What?'
'I betrayed my mother. '
She looked at me seriously, not a trace of the posturing of someone who's pulled some really low-down trick and is boasting about it.
'I don't understand. Sveta . . . '
'My mother's ill, Anton. Her kidneys. She needs regular dialysis, but that's only a half-measure. Well, anyway, they suggested a transplant to me. '
'Why suggest that to you?' I still didn't understand.
'They suggested I should give my mother one kidney. It would almost certainly be accepted, I even had all the tests done . . . and then I refused. I'm . . . I'm afraid. '
I didn't say anything. Everything was clear now. Something about me must have clicked, something about me had made Svetlana feel she could be totally open with me. So it was her mother.
Her mother!
'Well done, Anton. The guys are already on their way. ' Olga's voice sounded triumphant. And so it should – we'd found the Black Magician! 'Would you believe it, at first contact nobody felt a thing, they thought there was nothing to her . . . Well done. Calm her down, Anton, talk to her, comfort her. '
You can't stop your ears in the Twilight. You have to listen when you're spoken to.
'Svetlana, you know no one has the right to demand—'
'Yes, of course. I told my mother, and she told me to forget about it. She said she'd kill herself if I decided to go ahead with it. She said, what difference did it make to her, when she was going to die anyway? And it wasn't worth crippling myself for her. I shouldn't have told her anything. I should have just donated the kidney. She could have found out later, after the operation. You can even give birth with one kidney . . . there have been cases. '
Kidneys. What nonsense! What a petty problem! One hour's work for a genuine Light Magician. But we weren't allowed to heal people, every genuine cure gave a Dark Magician a permit to cast a curse or put the evil eye on someone. And it was her mother, her own mother, w
ho had cursed her, in a split-second emotional outburst, without realising what she was doing, while she was telling her daughter not even to think about having the operation.
And that had set the monstrous black vortex growing.
'I don't know what I ought to do now, Anton. I keep doing stupid things . . . Today I almost jumped into bed with a stranger. ' For Svetlana to tell me that must have been almost as difficult as telling me about her mother.
'Sveta, we can think of something,' I began. 'The important thing is not just to give up, not punish yourself unnecessarily. '
'I told her on purpose, Anton! I knew what she'd say! I wanted to be told not to do it! She ought to have cursed me, the damned old fool!'
Svetlana had no idea how right she was. . . No one knows what mechanisms are involved here, what goes on in the Twilight, and how being cursed by a stranger is different from being cursed by someone you love . . . by your child or by your mother. Except that a mother's curse is the most terrible of all.
'Anton, take it easy. '
The sound of Olga's voice sobered me up instantly.
'That's too simple, Anton. Have you ever dealt with a mother's curse?'
'No,' I said. I said it out loud, answering Svetlana and Olga at the same time.
'I'm to blame,' said Svetlana, with a shake of her head. 'Thanks, Anton, but I'm to blame and no one else. '
'I have,' the voice said through the Twilight. Anton, my friend, this looks all wrong! A mother's curse is a blinding black explosion and a large vortex. But it always dissipates in an instant. Almost always. '
Maybe so. I didn't argue with her. Olga was a specialist in curses and she'd seen all sorts of things. Of course, nobody would wish their own child ill . . . at least, not for long. But there were exceptions.
'Exceptions are possible,' Olga agreed. ''They'll check her mother out thoroughly now. But. . . I wouldn't count on this being over soon. '
'Svetlana,' I asked. 'Isn't there any other solution? Some other way to help your mother? Apart from a transplant?'
'No. I'm a doctor, I know. Medicine's not all-powerful. '
'What if it wasn't medicine?'
She was puzzled.
'What do you mean, Anton?'
'Alternative medicine,' I said. 'Folk medicine. '
'Anton . . . '
'I understand, Svetlana, it's hard to believe,' I added hastily. 'There are so many charlatans, conmen and psychos out there. But is all of it really lies?'
'Anton, can you show me one person who has cured a really serious illness?' said Svetlana, looking at me ironically. 'Not just tell me about him, but show him to me. And his patients too, preferably before and after treatment. Then I'll believe, I'll believe in anything. In psychics, and healers, in white magicians and black magicians . . . '
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