The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko Page A

two-story mansion house with columns-Makar asked, “Are you going to tell the duty teacher?”
    “About what?” I laughed. “Nothing happened, did it? We just had a quiet stroll along the path…”
    He stood there sniffing loudly for a second, then repeated his apology, only this time far more sincerely: “I’m sorry. That was a stupid stunt I tried to pull.”
    “Take care of that knee,” I advised him. “Don’t forget to wash it and dab it with iodine.”

Chapter four
    -«?»—
    I COULD HEAR WATER SPLASHING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL-THE duty camp leader had excused himself and gone out to get washed after I woke him up. He’d been dozing peacefully to the hissing of a trashy Chinese tape recorder. I don’t understand how anyone can possibly sleep to the sound of Vysotsky’s songs, but I suppose that heap of junk wasn’t fit for playing anything else.
    There’ll be poems and math,
    Honors and debts, unequal battle…
    Today all the little tin soldiers
    Are lined up here on the old map.
    He should have kept them back in the barracks,
    But this is war, like any other war,
    And warriors in both armies fall
    In equal numbers on each side.
    “I’m done, sorry about that…” the duty leader said as he came out of the tiny shower room, still wiping his face with a standard-issue cotton waffle-cloth towel. “I was exhausted.”
    I nodded understandingly. The tape recorder carried on playing, obligingly making Vysotsky’s voice even hoarser than ever:
    Perhaps it’s the gaps in their upbringing Or the weakness of their education? But neither one of the two sides Can win this long campaign. All these accursed problems of conscience: How not to do wrong in your own eyes?
    Here and there, the tin soldiers on both sides, How do we decide who ought to win…
    The duty leader frowned and turned the volume down so low I couldn’t make out the words any longer. He held out his hand: “Pyotr.”
    “Alisa.”
    His grip was as firm as if he were shaking hands with a man. It immediately gave me a sense of distance: a strictly professional relationship …
     
    Well, that was fine. I didn’t feel particularly inspired by this short, skinny man who looked like a juvenile himself.
    Naturally, I was intending to take a lover for the period of my vacation, but someone a bit younger and better looking would suit me better. Pyotr must have been at least thirty-five, and even without any Other abilities I could read him like an open book. An exemplary family man-in the sense that he was almost never unfaithful to his wife, and didn’t drink or smoke much and devoted the appropriate amount of time to his children-or rather, his only child. A responsible man who loved his work, he could be trusted with a crowd of snot-nosed kids or teenage hooligans without any concern: He would wipe away the kids’ snot, have a heart-to-heart talk with the hooligans, take away their bottle of vodka, lecture them on the harmfulness of smoking, and pile on the work, the play, and the morality.
    In other words, the perfect embodiment of the Light Ones’ dream-not a living human being at all.
    “I’m very pleased to meet you,” I said. “I’ve dreamed about working at Artek for so long. It’s a shame it has to be under these circumstances…”
    Pyotr sighed. “Yes, it’s a sad business. We’re all very upset for poor Nastenka… Are you a friend of hers?”
    “No,” I said and shook my head. “I was two years behind her in college. To be honest I can’t really remember her face…”
    Pyotr nodded and began looking through my documents. I wasn’t worried about meeting Nastya. She would probably remember my face-Zabulon is always very thorough about details. If there wasn’t a single Other anywhere in Artek, then someone would have come from Yalta or Simferopol, stood close to Nastya for a moment or two… and now she would remember me.
    “Have you worked as a Pioneer leader before?”
    “Yes, but… not in Artek, of