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I GOT BACK TO MY PLACE AT FOUR IN THE MORNING SLIGHTLY DRUNK,

but remarkably relaxed After all, you don’t often co in the Watch encourages you to be too categorical This guy doesn’t sood boy This one swears like a trooper¡ªhe’s a bad boy And there’s nothing to be done about it Those are precisely the ones we’re ood ones as our support, the bad ones as a potential source of Dark Ones

But soet that there are all different sorts of people

The bard with the bass guitar didn’t know anything about the Others I was sure of that If only I could have sat up half the night with every one of Assol’s inhabitants, I could have formed an accurate opinion of all of the any such illusions Not everybody will ask you to co to you about obscure, abstract subjects And apart from the ten or so residents, there were hundreds of service personnel¡ªsecurity guards, plumbers, laborers, bookkeepers There was no way I could possibly check all of them in a reasonable amount of time

I took a wash in the shower¡ªI discovered a strange sort of hose in it that I could get a jet of water out of¡ªand then walked out into et so I’d try to come up with a new plan

"Hi, Anton," a voice said fronized the voice And I i, Kostya," I said The words of greeting sounded inappropriate so would have been even more stupid

"Can I come in?" Kostya asked

I walked over to theKostya was sitting on the outside sill with his back to s He was completely naked, as if to make obvious that he hadn’t cliantic bat

A Higher Vampire At not much more than twenty years old A talented boy

"I think not," I said

Kostya nodded and didn’t try to argue "As I understand it, we’re working on the saood" Kostya turned around and flashed a glea with you But are you really afraid of me?"

"No"

"I’ve learned a lot," Kostya boasted Just like when he was a kid and he used to declare, "I’ to learn how to turn into a bat! I’ to learn how to fly!"

"You haven’t learned anything," I corrected him "You’ve stolen a lot"

Kostya frowned "Words The usual Light word game Your people allowed me to take it, so I did So what’s the proble like this?" I asked I raised ation of non-life I’d been wanting for ages to find out if the ancient North African spells worked on modern Russian creatures of the Darkness

Kostya glanced warily at the incoht a whiff of Power "Are you allowed to breach your disguise?"

I lowered ht just risk it"

"No need If you say so, I’ll leave But right noe’re doing the same job we have to talk"

"So talk," I said, dragging a stool over to the

"You won’t let me in then?"

"I don’t want to be all alone in the ht with a naked man," I chuckled "Who knohat people will think? Let’s hear it"

"What do you make of the T-shirt collector?"

I looked at Kostya quizzically

"The guy on the tenth floor He collects funny T-shirts"

"He doesn’t know anything," I said

Kostya nodded "That’s what I think too Eight of the apartments here are occupied The owners of another six show up from time to time, but all the rest are very rarely here I’ve already checked out all the per They don’t know anything about us"

I didn’t ask how Kostya could be so sure After all, he was a Higher Vampire They can enter another person’s ician

"I’ll deal with the other six in the ," said Kostya "But I’estions?" I asked

Kostya shrugged "Anyone living here has enough money and influence to interest a vary one newly initiated So the list of suspects is pretty long"

"How many newly initiated lower Dark Ones are there in Mosco?" I asked I was amazed at how easily the phrase "lower Dark Ones" slipped off ue

I never used to call them that

I used to feel sorry for them

Kostya reacted calher Vampire In control, confident of himself

"Notchecked, don’t worry Everybody’s being checked All the lower Others, and even icians"

"Is Zabulon really concerned?" I asked

"Gesar isn’t exactly a model of composure," Kostya chuckled "Everyone’s concerned You’re the only one taking the situation so lightly"

"I don’t see it as a great disaster," I said "There are hus who knoe exist Not e the situation If he makes a sensation out of this, we’ll soon locate him andhas already"

"And what if he becomes an Other?" Kostya asked curtly

"Then there’ll be one ed

"What if he doesn’t becoenuine Other?" Kostya bared his teeth in a sht or Dark that doesn’t ician," I said

Kostya shook his head "Listen, Anton, I’m quite fond of you Even now But sometimes I’m amazed at just how naive you are" Kostya stretched¡ªhis ar of short fur, his skin turned dark and coarse "You deal with the staff," he said in a shrill, piercing voice "If you get wind of anything, call me"

He turned his face, distorted by the transforain "You know, Anton, a naive Light One like you is the only kind a Dark One could ever be friends with"

He jue bat flew off into the night, a little aardly, but quickly enough

There was a s on the outside sill¡ªa business card I picked it up and read it "Konstantin Research assistant, the Scientific Research Institute for Heical Problems"

And then the phone numbers¡ªwork, home, cell I actually re with his parents Most va fa to tell me?

Why all the panic?

I switched on the light, lay down on the les of the s

"If he becoenuine Other"

How did Others appear in the World? No one knew "A random mutation" Las had called it¡ªa perfectly adequate ter, you lived an ordinary life until one of the Others sensed your ability to enter the Twilight and puly and carefully coaxed into the required spiritual condition so that in a itation you would look at your shadow and see it in a different way See it lying there like a black rag, like a curtain you could pull up over yourself and then draw aside to enter another world

The world of the Others

The Twilight

And the state you were in when you first found yourself in the Twilight¡ªjoyful and benign or ry¡ªdetero on to draw froht that drinks Power froenuine Other"

There was always the possibility of coercive initiation, but only through the loss of life and transfor could become a vampire or a olf and he would be forced to s So there was a route for the Dark Ones but one that even they weren’t particularly fond of

Only what if it really was possible to becoician?

What if there was a way for any hu¡ªvery long¡ªlife and exceptional abilities There was no doubt many people would want to do it

And ouldn’t be against it, either There were soin the world orthy to becoht Others

Only the Dark Ones would start building up their ranks too

Suddenly it struck me It was no disaster that so It was no disaster that information could leak out It was no disaster that the traitor knew the address of the Inquisition

But this was a neist in the spiral of endless war!

For centuries the Light Ones and Dark Ones had been shackled by the Treaty We had the right to search for Others aht direction But ere obliged to sift through tons of sand in our search for grains of gold The balance was maintained

Then suddenly here was a chance to transform thousands, millions of people into Others

A soccer teaes across tens of thousands of exultant people, transforht Others

Then and there the Day Watch issues a command to the fans of the team that has lost¡ªand they’re transformed into Dark Others

That hat Kostya had had in mind The immense temptation to shift the balance of power in your own favor at a single stroke Of course, the consequences would be clear, both to the Dark Ones and us Light Ones The two sides would adopt new amends within acceptable lied to keep the nuclear arms race within bounds

I closed my eyes and shook my head Semyon had once told me that the arms race was halted by the creation of the ultimate weapon Two thermonuclear devices¡ªthat was all that was required¡ªeach of which could trigger a self-sustaining reaction of nuclear fusion The American one was installed soh to explode either one of them¡ªand the entire planet would be transformed into a ball of flame

Only that state of affairs didn’t suit us, so the weapon that was never meant to be used could never be activated But the presidents didn’t need to know that¡ªthey were only hus

Maybe the top coical bombs" like that? And that hy the Inquisition, which was in on the secret, policed the observation of the Treaty so fervently?

Maybe

But even so it would be better if it were impossible to initiate ordinary people

Even in ht What did this ed Other? There are Others, and there are hus¡ªand they’re second class They can never enter the Twilight, they’re not going to liveyou can do about it

Yes, that was exactly the way I’d started to think Finding a good hu him or her over to your own side¡ªthat was a joy But turning absolutely everyone into Others was puerile nonsense, a dangerous and irresponsible delusion

Now I had so to feel proud about It had takenhuan with contemplation of the mysteries of the shower stall Reason finally overcaot a shower¡ªwith , no less¡ªand then concocted a breakfast out of biscotti, sala uplifted by the sunshine, I settled down on the sill and breakfasted with a view of the Moscow River For so that vaht doesn’t actually burn thereeable sensation

But I had no tihts about my old acquaintances I had to search for for whoade Other? I was hardly in the best position to do that His huht, I decided We’ll proceed according to the strict laws of the classic detective novel What do we have? What we have is a clue The letter sent fro Unless perhaps soo There’s not much chance that they’d remember, of course

What a fool I was I even slapped race for an Other to forget about y Others aren’t very fond of complicated technical devices But I was a corounds of Assol were monitored by video cameras

I put on ne that Ignat had chosen for me the day before, dropped my phone into my inside pocket "Only dumb kids and sales assistants carry their cells on their belts!"¡ªthat was one of Gesar’s helpful little homilies

The cell was new and still unfaames in it, a built-in music-player, a dictaphone, and all sorts of other nonsense entirely unnecessary in a phone

I rode down to the vestibule in the cool silence of the new Otis elevator and iht before¡ªonly this ti brand new blue overalls with "Assol" written on the back, was explaining so to a confused elderly man dressed in the same way I heard what he said: "This isn’t a brooot here, okay! There’s a computer in it, it tells you how dirty the asphalt is and the pressure of the cleaning solution Come on, I’ll show you"

My feet automatically carried me after them

Out in the yard, in front of the entrance to the vestibule, there were two bright-orange road-sweeping machines¡ªwith a tank of water, round brushes, and a little glass cabin for the driver There was so toylike about the sht froirls and boys cheerfully clean their own miniature avenues

Las clambered nimbly into one of the machines and the elderly man thrust hi Las said, nodded, and set off toward the second orange cleaning unit

"And if you’re lazy, you’ll spend the rest of your life as a junior yard keeper!" I heard Las say His an spinning circles on the asphalt surface Before my eyes a yard that was already clean acquired an entirely sterile appearance

Well, would you believe it

So he worked as a yard keeper in the Assol complex, did he?

I tried to withdraw unobtrusively, so as not to embarrass the man, but Las had already spotted leefully The brushes started turning less vigorously

"So you work here then?" I asked I suddenly started having the most fantastic ideas, such as Las didn’t live in Assol at all, he’d simply moved into an ee residence like that would go cleaning the yard

"I earn a bit on the side," Las explained calas, I tell you Ride around the yard for an hour in theexercises, and they pay you wages for it And not bad wages, either!"

I didn’t say anything

"Do you like going on the rides in the park?" Las asked ies, where you have to pay ten dollars for threeyourself Or take those co that joystick about"

"It all depends on whether they make you paint the fence" I reed happily "But they don’tup the yard as Leo Tolstoy did froain after me¡ªunlike the count, whose peasants used to finish the job after hiet a bonus So, do you fancy riding around too? I could get you a job, if you like The professional yard keepers just can’t get the hang of this technical equipment"

"I’ll think about it," I said, exa out of the nickel-plated nozzles, the glea cabin Back ere kids, which of us didn’t want to drive a street-washing truck? Now, of course, after early childhood kids start drea as a banker or a hit ot work to do," Las said a, and sucking up dirt I heard singing froeneration of yard keepers and watchmen

Have lost each other in the vast expanse of winter

They’ve all gone back home now

In our time, when every third man is a hero,

They don’t write articles,

They don’t send telegrams

Dumbfounded, I went back to the vestibule I found out frouard where Assol’s own post office was located and set off The post office was open; there were three young fe behind the counter in the cozy little shop, and the ht there

The glass eyes of video ca

We could certainly use soators They would have coht a postcard of a young chick ju up and down in the tray of an incubator with the printed , but in any case I couldn’t ree where , so, with a mischievous smile, I sent the postcard to Gesar at home¡ªI did know his address

I chatted to the girls for a while¡ªworking in such an elite residential complex they had to be polite anyway, but on top of that they were bored¡ªthen left the post office and went to the security departht to use my abilities as an Other, I would have simply implanted in the security iven access to all the video recordings But I couldn’t reveal who I was, and so I decided to e anyone¡ªiven I put together a hundred dollars in rubles¡ªwell, no one could expect more than that, could they? I entered the duty office, and there was a young guy in a forreeted hi radiantly

The security man’s expression indicated co the day I cast a quick sideways glance at the es from at least ten television cameras He had to be able to call up a repeat run of any particular es were saved to a hard disk (where else could they be saved?), then a recording froht not have been transferred to the archive yet

"I have a proble letter"¡ªI winked at hiirl She lives here too, as far as I can tell"

"A threatening letter?" the securityup his ears

"No, no!" I protested "On the contrary But nito Could I take a look to see who posted letters at the post office three days ago?"

The securityabout it

And then I spoiled everything I put the rateful to you"

The young guy instantly turned to stone I think he pressed so with his foot