The magnet was banal but beautiful: a Scotsman in a kilt, with bagpipes. I put it in my pocket, then stood in front of the display of postcards for a while. I chose one with a photograph of the castle and put it in my guidebook to Great Britain. I didn’t have any reason to send it to Lera-yet. But I hoped very much that sooner or later I would be able to keep the promise I had made to Victor’s girlfriend.

Semyon was unusually quiet. He didn’t reminisce about the way airplanes used to look at the dawn of the aviation industry, he didn’t crack any jokes. We walked through the customs and passport checks and took our seats on the plane. Semyon took out a flask of whisky and glanced at me inquiringly. I nodded. We each took a mouthful straight from the flask, earning ourselves a disapproving glance from the flight attendant. She immediately went off to her little cubbyhole and came back with glasses and a few little bottles, which she handed to Semyon without saying a word.

“Don’t feel sorry for her,” Semyon said gently. “Dark Ones will always be Dark Ones. She would have grown up into a monster. Most likely.”

I nodded. He was right, of course. Even a “silly Light One” like me had to understand that…

I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. I realized that I’d even forgotten to check the probabilities to see if the plane was in any danger of crashing. Ah…what difference did it make? People flew all the time without worrying if anything bad was going to happen. I could try that too.

“I checked the probability lines,” Semyon said. “We leave ten minutes late, but we arrive on time. There’s a tail wind. Lucky, that, isn’t it?”

I opened the little plastic bag, put the disposable earphones in my ears, and stuck the jack into the socket hidden in the arm of my seat. I pressed the buttons to select a channel and stopped when I heard a familiar song:

Do not lose what has been given,

Do not regret what has been lost.

This boy at the doorway to heaven

Is weary of sighing and tears.

But he can see straight through you,

And he won’t sing us any psalms.

He will ask us only one question-

Did we live and did we love…

Did we live and did we love…

Did we live and did we love…

Story Two

A Common Enemy

Prologue

THE FIRE SAFETY INSPECTOR JABBED HIS FINGER IN THE DIRECTION OF THE incense stick smoking in its stand.

“And what’s that?”

“Opium,” the young woman replied dreamily.

There was a sudden silence in the accounts office. The inspector’s face broke out in red blotches.

“I’m not joking. What is it?”

“A joss stick. It’s Indian. It’s called opium.” The young woman looked around at her colleagues and added self-consciously: “But that’s only a name, you mustn’t think…There isn’t really any opium in it!”

“At home you can smoke opium or cannabis, or anything else you like,” said the inspector, ostentatiously nipping his fingers together and extinguishing the small smoldering stick. “But here…you’re surrounded on all sides by nothing but paper.”

“I keep an eye on it,” the young woman objected resentfully. “And it’s in a special stand, see? The ash falls on the ceramic base. It’s a nice smell, everyone likes it…” she went on in a gentle, reassuring voice, in the same tone adults use when talking to a little child.

The inspector was about to say something else, but just then the middle-aged woman who was sitting facing all the other bookkeepers intervened. “Vera, I’m sorry, but the inspector is quite right. It’s a very sickly smell. By the time evening comes, it gives you a headache.”

“In India the windows are probably always kept wide open,” a third woman put in. “And they burn their fragrances all the time. It’s terribly dirty there; there are always cesspits somewhere close by, and everything rots very quickly, because of the climate. They have to smother the stench somehow. But what do we need it for?”

A fourth girl, the same age as Vera, giggled and stuck her face in the screen of her computer.

“Well…you should have said!” Vera exclaimed. Her voice sounded tearful. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We didn’t want to offend you,” the older woman replied.

Vera jumped to her feet, covered her face with her hands, and ran out into the corridor. Her heels clattered on the parquet flooring, and the door of the restroom slammed in the distance.

“We had to tell her sooner or later,” the middle-aged woman said with a sigh. “I’m really sick of smelling those sticks of hers. It’s always opium, or jasmine, or cinnamon…”

“Do you remember the chilis and cardamom?” the young girl exclaimed. “That was really horrible!”

“Don’t make fun of your friend. You’d better go and bring Vera back; she’s much too upset.”

The young girl willingly got to her feet and left the room.

The inspector gazed around at the women with a wild expression. Then he glanced at the man beside him-a young, plump individual wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Beside the inspector in his respectable uniform, the man looked very untidy.

“This is a madhouse,” the inspector declared. “Nothing but breaches of the fire safety code everywhere I look. Why haven’t you been closed down yet?”

“I’m surprised at that myself,” the other man agreed. “Sometimes when I’m walking to work, I wonder, What if it’s all over now? What if they’ve put an end to the whole mess and from now on we’re going to work according to the fire safety regulations, without breaking a single rule-”

“Show me the fire-safety board on the second floor,” the inspector interrupted, looking at his plan of the building.

“Gladly,” said the man, opening the door for the inspector and winking at the women they were leaving behind in the office.

The inspector’s indignation was lessened a bit by the sight of the board. It was brand-new and very neat and tidy, painted red. Two fire extinguishers, a bucket of sand, an empty conical-shaped bucket, a spade, a gaff, and a crowbar.

“Well, well. Well, well, well,” the inspector murmured as he glanced at the buckets and checked the date when the extinguishers were last refilled. “The good old-fashioned kind. I didn’t really expect that.”

“We make an effort,” said his guide. “When I was still in school, we had one just like that on the wall.”

The inspector turned his plan around and thought for a moment.

“And now let’s take a look at…at your programmers.”

“Yes, let’s,” the other man said brightly. “That’s upstairs, follow me…”

At the foot of the stairs he stepped aside to let the inspector go first. He turned back and glanced at the fire safety board, which faded and then dissolved into thin air. Something fell to the floor with a quiet sound. The man smiled.

The visit to the programmers gave the inspector another reason to be indignant. The programmers (two young women and one young guy) were blithely smoking at their workstations, and the wires from the computers were twisted into terrible tangles (the inspector even crawled under one desk and checked that the sockets were grounded). When they came back down to the first floor fifteen minutes later, the inspector walked into an office with the strange title DUTY POINTSMAN on the door and laid his papers out on the desk. The young man acting as his guide sat down facing him and watched with a smile as the inspector filled in his report form.

“What sort of nonsensical title is that you have on the door?” the inspector asked without looking up from what he was doing.

“Duty pointsman? He has to deal with anything that turns up. If some inspector or other calls, if the drains burst, if someone delivers pizza or drinking water-he has to handle everything. Something between a receptionist and an office manager. It’s a boring job; we take turns to do it.”