Day Watch

Anton got up, nodded to his friends, and made for the boss's office on the third floor.

He was feeling really sick at heart, not looking forward at all to the approaching New Year festivities that people everywhere around the planet were anticipating so eagerly, as if the number 2000 could change anything. What did it all really matter? But when Anton reached the door of the office, he felt a faint stirring of interest.

The magical defenses there were very strong. The Night Watch building itself was protected against observation, and the employees' offices and conference halls had additional screening. But it seemed like today Gesar had put in a lot of extra effort to ensure confidentiality: The air in the corridor was still and stifling, saturated with energy. And this invisible wall extended into the Twilight, much farther down than the first two levels that were accessible to Anton.

He walked into the office and closed the door firmly behind him. He sensed a slight movement behind his back as the defensive field closed together after being torn for a moment.

"Sit down, Anton," said Gesar, and asked in a perfectly friendly voice: "Tea, coffee?"

"Thanks, Boris Ignatievich," Anton replied, calling Gesar by his human name, "but I've just had one."

"A mug of beer then?" Gesar asked unexpectedly.

Anton had to stop himself rubbing his eyes or even pinching his arm. Gesar had never shu

But there was one thing Gesar never did, and that was to hold parties at the workplace. The ten members of the analytical section who drank a bottle of cognac to celebrate the birthday of Yulia, the watch's youngest enchantress and a universal favorite, had been punished with genuinely brilliant originality. Not even an intercession by Olga, who had been involved in the misdemeanor along with the others, had helped. The punishment had been devised individually for each of them, and it had been the most hurtful possible. Yulia, for instance, had been made to stay away from the Watch offices for a week and instead attend an ordinary school with teenagers her own age, go to the ice-cream parlor with the girls in her class, and go to the movies and discotheques with the boys. Yulia had returned to the Watch, fuming with indignation, and for ages she'd kept repeating: "God, if you only knew how stupid they all are! I hate them."

For those three words "I hate them!" she received another day's penalty and a long lecture from Gesar on the subject of "Can a Light enchantress entertain negative feelings for people?"

So now Anton was standing there in front of Gesar, frozen over the chair he'd been about to sit down in. He'd forgotten what he was doing.

"Sit down, will you?" Gesar prompted him. "No point in standing. So will you have a beer?"

"It's not quite the weather for it," Anton replied, indicating the window with his eyes. Outside there were large, heavy flakes of snow swirling through the air. A genuine Christmas blizzard. "Not the right weather… and not the right place?"

He surprised himself by making the last phrase sound like a question.

Gesar thought for a moment. "Yes, we could go to some amusing little place," he said, with a note of real interest in his voice. "For instance, that little cafe in the South-West district, where all the dentists go. Can you imagine it? The favorite cafe of Moscow 's tooth-pullers? And there's a little pizzeria at the Belorussian station, that's a real blast…"

"Boris Ignatievich," Anton asked, unable to resist, "where do you dig all these places up from? The mountain-skiers' restaurant, the lesbians' bar, the plumbers' snack bar, the philatelists' pelmeni joint…"

Gesar shrugged and spread his arms: "Anton, my dear fellow, let me remind you once again what we work with. We work with…"

"The Dark Ones," Gorodetsky blurted out and sat down in the chair.

"No, my boy, you're wrong. We work with people. And people are not a herd of cloned sheep who chew their grass in synchronized motion and all fart at the same time. Every human being is an individual. That is our joy, because it makes the work of the Dark Ones harder. And it's also our misfortune, because it makes our work harder too. In order to understand these people, whose souls, after all, are what the endless battle between the Watches is fought over, we have to know them all. It's not just that I have to, you understand. We have to! And we have to understand every one of them-from the pimply-faced kid who chews Ecstasy tabs at the discotheque to the ancient professor who's the last in a dying line of blue-blooded aristocrats and spends all his time growing cacti… Oh, by the way, the bar where cactus-lovers get together has rather interesting cuisine and highly original decor. But you and I can't go anywhere right now. Did you sense the defenses?"

Anton nodded.

"Believe me, I had good reason to install them. And sound security arrangements in a crowded place would be far more complicated. I don't think I can really afford to waste that much Power at the moment…" Gesar rubbed his hand across his face and sighed. He looked really tired, all right. "By the way… take this. A small present."

Anton accepted the small object from his boss's hands with a surprised expression. It was something like a globe: a ball that was made out of thin needles of bone… yes, it was bone… bent into arcs and stuck into two little disks of wood at the poles. The ball was empty… But no, it wasn't. It was full of Power. Power that was sleeping, constrained.

"What is it?" Anton asked, almost in a panic.

"Don't worry. It's not liquefied bliss."

"Er… what's liquefied bliss?"

Gesar sighed: "How should I know? It was a joke. A figure of speech. A turn of phrase. A metaphor. I'm not even sure that bliss exists, let alone whether it can be liquefied. What you're holding in your hands is something like a magical white noise generator. If you need to have an absolutely-let me emphasize that-absolutely secret conversation, one that nobody can listen to, no matter what means they use, simply break the ball in your hand. You'll probably cut your hand, that's just the unavoidable price. But then for the next twelve hours there'll be no way anyone can monitor or check what's happening in a sphere ten meters across, with you at the center, no matter what technical or magical means they use."

"Thanks," Anton said gloomily. "Somehow a present like this fails to inspire me."

"You'll thank me again for it yet. So, will you have a beer or not?"

"Yes. But why does it have to be beer?"

"To avoid too serious a violation of my own rules," Gesar said with a contented smile. "We're at work, after all."

He pressed a button on the intercom and said quietly: "Olya, bring us some beer."

Nothing in the world was going to surprise Anton now. But Gesar released the button and explained anyway.

"Galochka's a magnificent secretary. But she's a fourth-level enchantress. And she could give information away to the enemy without even realizing it. So just for today I changed my secretary."

A minute later Olga came in with a tray on which there were two immense glass mugs full of light-colored beer, an impressive crystal jug holding about two liters of the same drink, and a plate with an assortment of cheeses.

"Hi there, Antoshka," Olga said in a very friendly tone of voice. "You like Budweiser, don't you?"