magical bomb to destroy the entire world simply for the fun of it. He wasn't that kind of Other. But I could easily believe in Merlin as an experimenter who had invented a new amuse ment but had decided not to try it out.
What might happen if all the levels of the Twilight were united with the real world for a short time?
Would all Others die out?
Hardly.
In that case Merlin would surely have boasted of his power.
But he had thought up a kind of allegorical riddle for his message...
I recited the verse in a low voice as I watched Svetlana walking back quietly into the kitchen.
'The Crown of All Things is here concealed.
Only one step is left. But this is a legacy for the strong or the wise ?
You shall receive all and nothing, when you are able to take it.
Proceed, if you are as strong as I;
Or go back, if you are as wise as I.
Beginning and end, head and tail,
all is fused in one,
In the Crown of All Things.
Thus are life and death inseparable.'
'Trying to understand it?' Svetlana asked as she sat down beside me. 'You know what I was thinking ?why did we decide that the Twilight would come together with the world for ever? Most probably it would move back out again.'
'That's what I was thinking too,' I agreed. 'Like with the White Mist. But what would that lead to? Blue moss starting to grow in our world?'
Svetlana laughed.
'Wouldn't the botanists have a field day! A new form of plant life, and one that reacts to human emotions. They'd write millions of doctoral theses
'They'd open factories for processing blue moss,' I added. 'Start spinning threads out of it, making blue jeans...'
Svetlana suddenly turned serious.
'And what would happen to those who live in the Twilight?'
'The disembodied Others?' I asked.
Svetlana nodded.
'Life and death,' I said, and nodded too. 'I don't know. Do you suppose they might be ... resurrected? Come to life again in our world?'
'Why not? We know they live there. I even saw one on the fifth level, when I was fighting Arina...'
'And you didn't tell me,' I commented.
'You know it's best not to talk about these things. It's best not to know about it if you can't get there yourself. I'm not at all sure that everybody ends up there, perhaps it's only the most powerful. The Higher Ones, for example. Why should all the rest know that they won't have any existence after death?'
'Thomas the Rhymer said that down there on the lower levels of the Twilight there are magical cities, dragons and unicorns ?all the things that don't exist in our world, but could have done.'
Svetlana shook her head
'Thomas seems like a very good man to me. But he's a bard. A poet. You can't cure that, Anton. You talked to him when he was in his Twilight Form, dreaming about unicorns and fairies, and magical cities, Others who have built a world of their own and don't live as parasites on the human world. I wouldn't count too much on all that being true. Perhaps there are only little huts and wooden houses there. And no fairies and unicorns.'
'That's still not too bad,' I said. 'Very many people would gladly swap the heaven they desperately hope to get to some day for eternal life in a hut out in the countryside. There are certainly trees there.'
'The Other I saw didn't look very happy' Svetlana said. 'Of course, he was... well, kind of blurred, not very clear. But that's only natural, if his usual habitat is the seventh level of the Twilight. But he looked so ... creased and rumpled. And he ran towards me, as if he wanted to tell me something. But I had other things on my mind at the time, you understand.'
'And I saw a former Other on the first level,' I recalled. 'When I was hunting that wild White One, Maxim.* ( * This story is told in the second part of the book The Night Watch.)
He even gave me a bit of help, told me which way I should go.'
'It happens sometimes,' Svetlana agreed. 'Not often, but I've heard a few stories. And you already told me...'
Neither of us said anything for a while.
'Maybe they really would be brought back into our world,' Svetlana said. 'And that might be enough to make Edgar, Gennady and Arina work together. They must all have lost loved ones, not just Saushkin. And probably anyone who has lost loved ones would