“Agreed,” said Arina. “All right, listen.”
“Are you sure this is the right place for a private conversation?” I asked. “There are plenty of Russian tourists in here.”
“The waitress is from Riga, and she has excellent Russian too,” Arina answered. “Don’t worry, no one will hear us.”
I hadn’t noticed anything like a Sphere of Negation or any other privacy spell, but I believed Arina. Witches, even ex-witches, have their own magic.
“Then tell me,” I said.
“Anton, the main prophecies must be fulfilled. They absolutely must. The Twilight demands it . . . life itself demands it.”
“Is that so?” I asked in surprise. “And I thought the Twilight tried to obstruct the Prophets.”
“That’s a mistake,” said Arina, shaking her head. “Does it not surprise you that, for all his omnipotence, the Tiger moves so slowly?”
“Well . . .”
“The Tiger is the spur, the lash urging the Prophet on. The Tiger hurries him along, trying to make him pronounce his main prophecy as quickly as possible.”
“A bold conclusion,” I said.
The waitress brought us two more beers. She looked slightly bewildered—first, in pubs you’re supposed to buy beer at the bar yourself, and second, Arina hadn’t bothered to pay. I handed the girl a tenner without saying anything.
“I think we’d better start from the basics. Who is a Prophet?” Arina asked me. Then she answered her own question: “He’s not just an Other who is capable of forecasting the lines of probability, so that he can ‘look into the future.’ At that level all of us can ‘foresee the future,’ to a greater or lesser degree. In the right set of circumstances, even ordinary human beings are capable of similar prescience.”
“A Prophet is qualitatively different,” I said. “Another kind of Other, pardon the pun.”
“Ah, but he isn’t,” Arina laughed. “The difference is quantitative. A Prophet reads the lines of probability for the whole world, not only his own or the lines of people close to him. A Prophet informs us which direction humankind will move in, only not in the form of a learned treatise but with just one single fact that at first glance seems insignificant. Take the year 1956, for instance. At the age of sixty-two, the French Prophet André Lafleur utters his first prophecy, his main one—it happened that way because he was initiated late in life . . . The prophecy is absolutely crazy: ‘Soon shall the girl Mary shorten skirts and the world shall be adorned with naked legs.’ ”
I snorted.
“There, exactly,” said Arina. “Those who heard the prophecy quite reasonably suspected that André had gone senile and lapsed into lascivious fantasies in his old age. And note—only a year later the first Sputnik was launched into space! But here was a Frenchman muttering something about Mary, who would clip skirts shorter . . . But then in 1963 Mary Quant—a Londoner, by the way—showed her collection of miniskirts. They shook the world. And the result? The sexual revolution, emancipation, a significant increase in the birth rate in the Old World. So what was more important, the Sputnik or the miniskirt?”
“The Sputnik,” I said resentfully, although I myself had defended the importance of miniskirts to Gesar.
Arina laughed.
“It was all important. The Sputnik was prophesied too, but space flight was a generally anticipated important development. No one foresaw those twenty centimeters of cloth being snipped off, and they could only appreciate how important they were many years later. That’s the way a Prophet works—he foresees great upheavals and forewarns us of them through small events.”
“Then perhaps you know what was so remarkable about an Australian who died as an infant . . .”
“Alistair Maxwell? Yes, I know. The boy’s death broke up his parents’ marriage. In the late 1970s his mother had another child, by another man. That boy lives a perfectly ordinary life . . . but at the age of fifteen he pulled a little girl who was drowning out of the water. The situation didn’t seem like an emergency, he didn’t even realize that he had actually saved someone’s life. But now that little girl is one of the most powerful enchantresses in the Australian Day Watch. They forecast a great career for her. But if that infant hadn’t died . . .”
“I get it,” I said. “It’s just like in the joke.”
“What joke?” asked Arina.
“Well, this guy has died and he asks God: ‘What was the meaning of my life?’ And God answers: ‘Remember, in 1972 you were traveling in a train and you passed the salt to someone in the restaurant car? Well then . . .’ ”
Arina laughed.
“Yes, right. Sometimes it can be just like that. But if you really go into them thoroughly, all those strange prophecies can be explained.”
“And you’ve gone into them.”
“Yes. It’s important.”
“All right, prophecies are important,” I said, nodding. “No one’s arguing with that. But does a Prophet really create the future? Does whether he is heard or not really determine the way the world will be? I’ve heard various different theories.”
“To be honest, I don’t know,” Arina admitted reluctantly. “Maybe the prophecy shouted into the hollow of an old elm tree was fulfilled anyway. And maybe not.”
“Oak,” I said. “Erasmus entrusted his prophecy to an oak tree. He doesn’t really like elms.”
“Ah, what a finicky druid . . .” Arina laughed. “So oak trees are dearer to his heart, are they? I don’t know if a prophecy works without listeners or not, Anton. That’s like the question about whether a tree falling in a remote forest makes any sound or not. Probably not—that’s what most researchers agree. But one thing that’s quite definite is that a prophecy can be changed.”
“Well now, that’s a real turn-up,” I said wryly. “Everyone’s convinced that prophecies are the ultimate instance of truth, that they’re unchangeable, unlike mere predictions. And only you know the truth.”
“Yes, only I know it,” Arina replied perfectly calmly. “Because I have already changed prophecies.”
“Right, from this point on, let me have more detail,” I told her. I thought for a second and got up. “And, you know what . . . let’s go somewhere else.”
“Are you going to invite me to a hotel?” Arina laughed.
“I don’t think I ought to do that. Let’s sit in the park.”
“They’re just about to close it for the night,” replied Arina. “But then, what difference does that make to us?”
Drinking beer in a children’s playground is an old Soviet tradition. Where else could young people go when they wanted to drink . . . let’s say beer? They had no money for restaurants in the USSR, there weren’t any pubs and bars, the tiny apartments were all packed with mum, dad, granny, brothers, sisters, and relatives from the country who had come to town to buy salami . . . no way you could get it on there. So the overaged children, who not so long ago were scrabbling about in the sandpits, sat on the children’s benches and swings in their own courtyards to drink their beer . . .
The USSR passed on, RIP, but the apartments didn’t get any bigger and young people didn’t get any more prosperous. Where the children’s playgrounds survived, they still served two shifts—infants during the day and senior-school pupils and students in the evening. The more stupid evening gatherings were rowdy, they dropped litter, played loud music and were aggressive with people walking by—for which they were dispersed by old grannies, who knew no greater joy than to ring the militia. The more cultured gatherings sat there quietly, concealed their alcohol, greeted passersby politely and cleared up their own litter. I used to sit in one of those gatherings too.
Well, at least it seems to me that our gathering was cultured and polite, and it didn’t get on anyone’s nerves. But, of course, it’s quite possible that the inhabitants of the houses round about might have had a completely different opinion.
Anyway, one thing I could never have imagined, neither as a young idler, nor even after
I became a Light Other, was that late one evening I would find myself sitting in Princess Diana’s playground in Kensington Gardens, London, drinking beer with an ancient witch!
“Luckily for me the prophecy was pretty clear,” said Arina. “Masha was a diligent girl and she prophesied like that too—neatly. Only she tried to rhyme everything. She had it fixed in her head that a prophecy had to be in verse. So there I am, sitting in front of this nitwit and wondering what I should do. If I hadn’t understood who it was all about, I wouldn’t have taken any notice. What’s the point of complaining about what can’t be changed . . . right? But I did understand. It was 1915—everything was quite transparent: ‘With the loss of his heir, the tsar is deranged, Bolsheviks are hanged in the cells. War lasts nine years, Moscow is consumed by flames, and the country partitioned as well. Little Russia is German land, Siberia comes under the Japanese hand, a third of the people die of starvation, the world absorbs the rest of the nation.’ ”
“A genuine apocalypse,” I said sarcastically.
“I think that’s what it would have been,” said Arina. “The death of the Tsarevich Alexei could have affected Nicholas in an unexpected manner. He could have crushed the revolution . . . and then lost the First World War. And Russia would effectively have ceased to exist. The Japanese in the Far East, the Germans in the West.”
“It’s kind of hard to believe,” I remarked.
“It was a prophecy, Anton. It ought to have come true, people had heard it. But I intervened.”
“You cured the tsarevich?”
“Well, I didn’t cure him . . . let’s just say I prolonged his life. Nicholas dawdled and lost his nerve, the Bolsheviks took power. Blood was spilt, of course . . . but it could have been worse.”
“So we could call you the salvatrix of Russia,” I said acidly. “And a Hero of the Soviet Union into the bargain, since you helped the revolution to happen.”
“Well, yes, pretty much,” Arina said modestly.
The children’s playground that we had unashamedly occupied was luxurious. Standing at the center was a wooden ship that looked as if it had sailed here from Never-Never Land and been abandoned by Peter Pan. During the day there was no space to draw breath on the ship, with squalling hordes of children clambering up the masts and the rope ladders, but now the two of us were sitting there, a Magician and a Witch, each clutching a bottle of beer that we hadn’t touched in ages.
“Let’s suppose I believe you,” I said. “Let’s even suppose that you’re not wrong and it was a prophecy and you managed to change it. Then what?”
“The Watches have been messing about with petty nonsense for ages,” said Arina. “Stewing in their own juice. Even their conflicts are basically make-believe.”
“Would you like a war?” I taunted her. “Which team are you playing for this season, the Light Ones? And what about the Treaty—do we honor it?”
“I don’t want war,” Arina replied seriously. “We Witches are a peaceful crowd. And Light Witches especially . . . Remind me of the Great Treaty, will you, Anton?”
I shrugged and recited what everyone is taught in their first lesson as an Other—no matter if it’s in the Night Watch or the Day Watch.
We are Others
We serve different powers
But in the Twilight there is no difference between the absence of darkness and the absence of light
Our struggle is capable of destroying the world
We conclude the Great Treaty of truce
Each side shall live according to its own laws
Each side shall have its own right
We limit our rights and our laws
We are Others
We create the Night Watch
So that the forces of Light might monitor the forces of Darkness
We are Others
We create the Day Watch
So that the forces of Darkness might monitor the forces of Light
Time will decide for us
“Excellent,” said Arina. “The Treaty, you will observe, does not prohibit intervention in human life. It only limits the struggle between Light Ones and Dark Ones.”
“So what?” I was beginning to get fed up. “The Dark Ones have intervened, the Light Ones have intervened . . . who should know better than you? And what came of it? How many wars have been unleashed by experiments to create the ideal society? Communism, fascism, democracy, autocracy, glasnost, globalization, nationalism, multiculturalism—how much of all this is human, and how much is ours? We prod people in one direction, then in the other. We observe how things have turned out. Then we cross out the result and start all over again. Ah, it doesn’t work . . . well, let’s try it in a different country, in a different culture, with different social attitudes . . . What, communism was hopeless? I don’t think so. But we got tired of that toy. What, democracy is false through and through? Hardly. But we’ve given up playing with that, too. But you know, it’s all the same to people what they die of—the building of communism or the introduction of democracy or the struggle for rights and freedoms. And I reckon the best thing we could do for human beings is leave them in peace! Let them live their own lives, think up their own rules, learn from their own mistakes!”
“Do you think I shouldn’t have intervened in the fate of Russia?” Arina asked.
“Yes! No! I don’t know . . .” I said, and shrugged. “But what if after all those upheavals the outcome had been better? If there hadn’t been any World War Two, for instance?”
“I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing,” said Arina. “And I couldn’t ask anyone for advice. Not Gesar, not Zabulon—they would both have tried to turn the situation to their own advantage. But you’re different, I can talk things over with you. You’re normal. You’re still human.”
“I’m not so sure anymore . . .” I said, glancing at the black-skinned security guard walking along the edge of the children’s playground. He looked attentively at the roundabouts and the swings, then his glance slid over us without seeing and he walked away.
“We are all human, Anton. Some more so, some less so. Yes, there are situations that aren’t clear, when you don’t know if you ought to intervene. But there others that are absolutely clear, unequivocal!”
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“Anton, Prophets only appear rarely. Eight instances in the whole of the twentieth century. And it’s even rarer for their first prophecy to be documented before it becomes known to people and comes into force. If you know the boy’s prophecy . . .”
“No, I don’t know it. I swear.”
“But can you find out what it is?” Arina asked specifically.
“Yes, probably. What’s more, it’s possible that I can find out what Erasmus’s first prophecy was. Although, after all these years, it has probably been realized already.”
“That’s not certain,” said Arina. “Gagarin’s flight into space was prophesied in the seventeenth century . . . Anton, you really astound me, in the best sense of the word.”
“Since you changed color, you’re simply itching to do good,” I said.
“Maybe so. But aren’t you? Anton, no one in the Watch would dare to do anything like this. I’m prepared to try. And I swear to you that if the prophecy turns out to be good, or unclear—then we won’t do anything. Let it come true. But what if we’ve suddenly been given a chance to steer people’s lives in a better direction?”
“ ‘We,’ ” I snorted. “The last time you said ‘we’ was when you were with Edgar and Saushkin. They came to a bad end.”
“You don’t trust me, and that’s right,” Arina said, nodding. “But with you I’ll have the chance to do something genuinely important, not just drudge away aimlessly in a Watch.”
“I’m almost certain you told Edgar the same thing,” I replied somberly.
“Think, Anton,” said Arina, opening her handbag and taking out a little sphere. “For the time being, I’ll go back to . . . my place. Pardon me for not invit
ing you—the Minoan sphere only transports one.”
“I thought it was a single-use item,” I said.
“No, it’s a single-charge unit,” Arina said, with a smile. “And I know how to recharge it. I’ll come to visit you in the morning, if you don’t mind?”
I shrugged. Arina smiled, grasped the sphere tightly in her fist—and disappeared.
I sighed, picked up the empty beer bottles, and started climbing down off the little wooden ship. Unlike the witch, I would have to make my way to the hotel on foot.
On the way into the playground Arina had opened the gate with some method of her own, by crumbling dry grass in her fingers and sprinkling it on the lock, but I’d never liked fiddling about with the spell “Bilbo” and I decided to bypass the fence in the Twilight. To my surprise the playground was locked on the first level of the Twilight too, and on the second it was surrounded by something like a line of wizened trees, with prickly branches protruding out towards the park. I examined this apparently dead hedge curiously. Dry tree trunks like that were more often encountered on the third level, but there they were scattered about chaotically, while these looked as if they had been planted deliberately. Or perhaps fixed into the ground. Fortunately, there was no need to go any deeper—this barrier was only a hindrance if you were trying to get into the playground, not get out of it. Whoever the Other was who had worked on the playground, he had certainly done a thorough job. I squeezed through the branches, walked away a bit and returned to the real world. After the cold and silence of the Twilight, the London park seemed warm and full of sounds. Somewhere in the distance I heard the subtle song of a reed pipe. I set off through the park, intending to leave it at some point closer to my hotel. On the way I came across a garbage can that had considerately been emptied before the park’s evening closing, and I lowered the two empty beer bottles into it.
What could be more delightful than an evening stroll through a deserted park?
The artless melody sounded closer and closer. And suddenly I saw the musician. Sitting there on the crooked trunk of an immense tree that had been bent over by the wind a long time ago and had carried on growing like that, almost parallel to the ground, was a little boy dressed in some kind of fanciful rags. The boy was playing his reed pipe, completely absorbed. Huge fireflies circled round him, as if they were dancing.