‘Wow, you sure do have a lot of books,’ he said. ‘Over where we are, at VDNKh, I don’t think you could collect as many in the whole library. I finished reading them all a long time ago. It’s rare that something good shows up. Only my stepfather brings anything worth reading, and the itinerant merchants bring nothing but miscellaneous rubbish in their suitcases, all sorts of detective novels. Half the time, you can’t tell what’s going on in them anyway. That was another reason I dreamed of entering Polis, because of the Great Library. I just can’t imagine how many there must be up there if they built such a huge place to keep them,’ and he nodded towards the drawing over the table.
The eyes of both of them were shining already. Daniel, flattered by Artyom’s words, leaned over the table and said, with great gravity:
‘They don’t mean a thing, all those books. And the Great Library was not built for them. And it’s not books that are stored there.’
Artyom looked at him with surprise. The Brahmin opened his mouth to continue, but suddenly rose from his chair, went to the door, cracked it open and listened. Then he quietly closed the door, sat back down and whispered the rest of what he wanted to say:
‘The entire Great Library was built for the one-and-only Book. And it alone is hidden there. The rest are needed to help hide it. In reality, it is this book that is being sought. And it is being guarded,’ he added, and squirmed.
‘What kind of book is it?’ asked Artyom, also lowering his voice.
‘An ancient folio. A book of pages, black as anthracite, where all of History is recorded in gold letters. To the end.’
‘So why are people searching for it?’ whispered Artyom.
‘You really don’t understand?’ said the Brahmin, with a shake of his head. ‘ “To the end” means to the very end. And there’s still some way to go before then… So whoever has this knowledge…’
A translucent shadow flashed behind the blinds, and Artyom, even though he was looking Daniel in the eye, noticed it and gave him a sign. Interrupting his tale in mid-sentence, Daniel jumped from his seat and darted to the door. Artyom bolted after him.
There was nobody on the platform, but retreating footsteps could be heard from the direction of the passage. The sentries slept peacefully on chairs on both sides of the escalator.
When they returned to the room, Artyom waited for the Brahmin to continue his story, but the latter had sobered up and only glumly shook his head.
‘We’re forbidden to relate this,’ he snapped. ‘That part of the Testament is only for the initiated. The alcohol loosened my tongue,’ he said, wincing fretfully. ‘And don’t even think of telling anyone what you heard. If it gets out to anyone that you know about the Book, then there’ll be no end of trouble for you. And for me, too.’
And then Artyom suddenly understood why his palms had started sweating when the Brahmin had told him about the Book. He remembered.
‘But aren’t there several of these books?’ he asked, his heart coming to a standstill.
Daniel cautiously looked him in the eyes.
‘What do you mean?
‘Fear the truths hidden in ancient folios… in which the words are lettered in gold and the viper-black paper does not rot,’ he recited, while Bourbon’s expressionless face loomed in a foggy haze before his eyes, mechanically uttering alien and incomprehensible words.
The Brahmin stared at him fixedly in amazement.
‘How do you know that?’
‘A revelation. There’s not just one Book… What’s in the others?’ asked Artyom, looking at the drawing of the Library as if under a spell.
‘Only one is left. There were three folios,’ said Daniel, surrendering finally. ‘The Past, the Present, and the Future. The Past and the Present disappeared irrevocably centuries ago. Only the last and most important one remains.’
‘And where is it?’
‘Lost somewhere in the Main Stack Archives. There are more than forty million volumes there. One of them – a completely ordinary book by all appearances, in a standard binding – is It. To recognize It, you have to open the book and skim through it. According to legend, the pages of the folio actually are black. But you’d have to spend seventy years of your life without sleep or rest to skim through all the books in the Main Stack Archive. Yet people can’t stay there for more than a day, and second, nobody will let you stand around quietly and look through all the books that are stored there. And that’s enough about that.’
He laid some bedding on the floor, lit a candle on the table, and turned off the light. Artyom lay down unwillingly. For some reason, he didn’t want to sleep at all, although he could not remember the last time that he managed to get some rest.
‘I wonder, can you see the Kremlin when you go up to the Library?’ he asked the emptiness, because Daniel had begun to fall asleep.
‘Of course you can see it. Only, you can’t look at it. It draws you in,’ he muttered.
‘What do you mean “it draws you in”?’
Daniel lifted himself onto his elbows, and his face, knitted in displeasure, was illuminated by the yellow spot of light.
‘The stalkers say that you can’t look at the Kremlin when you go out, especially not at the stars on the towers. As soon as you look, you can’t tear your eyes away. And if your gaze lingers for a while, the Kremlin starts to draw you inside. There’s a reason all the gates stand wide open. That’s why stalkers never go up into the Great Library by themselves. If one happens to glance at the Kremlin, the other will snap him out of it immediately.’
‘What’s inside the Kremlin?’ whispered Artyom, swallowing hard.
‘Nobody knows, because nobody who’s ever gone in has ever come out again. Up there on the shelf, if you like, there’s a book with an interesting history of stars and swastikas, including the ones on the Kremlin towers.’ He got up, groped the book from the shelf, opened it to the correct page, and got back under his blanket.
Daniel was asleep within a couple of minutes, but Artyom moved the candle closer and started to read.
‘… being the smallest and least influential of political groups that fought for influence and power in Russia after the first revolution, the Bolsheviks were not considered serious competitors by any of the opposing sides. They enjoyed no support from the peasantry and relied only on a small number of supporters among the working class and in the navy. V. I. Lenin, who studied alchemy and the invocation of spirits in secret Swiss schools, was able to find his principal allies on the other side of the barrier between worlds. It is precisely in this period that the pentagram emerges for the first time as the symbol of the communist movement within the Red Army.
‘As is known, the pentagram is the most widespread and accessible portal between worlds for novices, allowing demons to enter our reality. At the same time, if the creator of a pentagram uses it skilfully, he can control the demons summoned into our world, and they must obey him. Normally, in order to better control a summoned creature, a protective perimeter is drawn around the pentagram, preventing the demon from escaping beyond the ring.
‘It is not known how, exactly, the leaders of the communist movement were able to achieve that which the most powerful black magicians of all ages had sought: establishing links to the demon lords who commanded the obedience of hordes of their lesser brethren. Experts are convinced that the lords themselves, sensing the forthcoming war and the most horrible bloodshed ever in the history of mankind, drew nearer to the boundary between worlds and summoned those who could permit them to collect a harvest of human lives. In exchange, they promised support and protection.
‘The story of how the Bolshevik leadership was funded by German intelligence is true, to be sure, but it would be foolish and superficial to believe that it was only thanks to his foreign partners that V. I. Lenin and his comrades-in-arms were able to tip the scales in their favour. Even then, the future communist leader had protectors who were immeasurably more powerful and wiser than the military intelligence officials in the Kaiser’s Germany.