already known for a long time what man is capable of. If people could read thoughts, levitate and do all that other nonsense, there'd be some proof.'

'If someone suddenly acquired abilities like that, they'd hide them from everybody else,' I said, and took a look at Las through the Twilight. 'A really different, Other kind of being would provoke the envy and fear of people around him.'

Las didn't betray the slightest sign of excitement. Just scepticism.

'Well, surely this miracle worker would want to give the woman he loves and his children the same kind of abilities? They'd gradually take over from us as a biological species.'

'But what if the special abilities couldn't be inherited?' I asked. 'Or they weren't necessarily inherited? And you couldn't transmit them to anyone else either? Then you'd have the normal people and these Others existing independently. And if there weren't many of the Others, then they'd hide their abilities from everybody else . . .'

'Seems to me like you're talking about a random mutation that produces extrasensory abilities,' Las said, thinking out loud. 'Only if that mutation is random and recessive, it's absolutely no use to us. But you can actually have titanium bones installed right now!'

'Not a good idea,' I muttered.

We both had a drink.

'You know, this is a pretty weird situation we're in here,' Las mused. 'A huge empty building, hundreds of apartments – and only nine people living in them . . . that's if we include you. The things you could get up to. It takes your breath away. And what a video you could shoot! Just imagine it – the luxurious interiors, empty restaurants, dead laundries, rusting exercise machines and cold saunas, empty swimming pools and casino tables wrapped in plastic sheeting. And a young girl wandering through it all. Wandering around and singing. It doesn't even matter what.'

'Do you shoot videos?' I asked cautiously.

'Nah . . .' Las frowned. 'Well . . . just the once I helped this punk band I know shoot one. They showed it on MTV, but then it was banned.'

'What was so terrible about it?'

'Nothing really,' said Las. 'It was just a song, nothing offensive about it, in fact it was about love. The visuals were unusual. We shot them in a hospital for patients with motor function disorders. We set up strobe lights in a hall, put on the song "Captain, captain, why have you left the horse?" and invited the patients to dance. So they danced to the strobes. Or they tried to. And then we laid the new sound sequence over the visuals. The result was really stylish. But you really can't show it. It has a bad feel somehow.'

I imagined the visuals and squirmed.

'I'm no good as a video producer,' Las admitted. 'Or as a musician . . . they played a song of mine on the radio once, in the middle of the night, in a programme for all sorts of hardcore weirdos. And what do you think happened? This well-known songwriter immediately called the radio station and said all his life in his songs he'd been teaching people about good, and about eternal values, but this had cancelled out his entire life's work . . . You heard one of my songs, I think – did you think it was encouraging people to do bad things?'

'I think it made fun of bad attitudes,' I said.

'Thank you,' Las said sadly. 'But that's exactly the problem – there are too many people who won't understand that. They'll think it's all for real.'

'That's what the fools will think,' I said, trying to console the unacknowledged bard.

'But there are more of them,' Las exclaimed. 'And they haven't perfected head replacements yet . . .'

He reached for the bottle, poured the vodka and said:

'You drop in any time you need to, don't be shy. And later I'll get you a key for an apartment on the fifteenth floor. It's empty, but it has toilets.'

'Won't the owner object?' I asked with a laugh.

'It's all the same to him now. And his heirs can't agree on how to share out the space.'

CHAPTER 3

I GOT BACK to my place at four in the morning. Slightly drunk, but remarkably relaxed. After all, you don't often come across people who are so different. Working in the Watch encourages you to be too categorical. This guy doesn't smoke or drink, he's a good boy. This one swears like a trooper, he's a bad boy. And there's nothing to be