‘Hello, Alya.’ She nodded to me as if I were an old friend. And in a certain sense, I was – they had obviously given her a false memory. ‘Look what’s happened now …
I stopped looking round at the room – there was nothing special about it anyway. An ordinary little camp leader’s room: a bed, a cupboard, a table and a chair. The little Morozko fridge and the cheap black-and-white television looked like luxury items here.
But then, I’m not fussy …’
‘Nastya, everything will be all right,’ I promised her with false sympathy. The girl nodded wearily, the way she must have been doing all day long.
‘It’s good you were able to fly down so quickly.’ She picked up the bag that was already packed, but Pyotr immediately took it. ‘Have you worked at Artek before?’
‘No.’
Nastya frowned. Maybe whoever implanted the false memory had got something confused, but she had no time to worry about that now.
‘I’ll be in time for the morning flight, Petya,’ she said. ‘Is the bus going to Simferopol?’
‘In an hour,’ Pyotr said with a nod.
The former camp leader turned her attention to me again:
‘I’ve already said goodbye to the girls,’ she told me. ‘So no one will be surprised. Tell them I love them all very much and I’ll definitely … I’ll try to come back.’
For an instant tears glinted in her eyes – evidently at the thought of one of the possible reasons for a rapid return.
‘Nastya,’ I said, putting my arm round her shoulders.
‘Everything’s going to be all right, your mum will get better.’
Nastya’s little face crumpled into a grimace of pain.
‘She’s never been ill!’ The words seemed to burst out of her. ‘Never.’
Pyotr delicately cleared his throat. Nastya lowered her eyes and stopped talking.
Of course, there had been various different ways I could have been sent to work at the Artek camp. But Zabulon always prefers the simplest possible methods. Nastya’s mother had suddenly suffered a massive heart attack, so now she was flying back to Moscow, and another student had been sent from the university to replace her. It was elementary.
Most likely Nastya’s mother would have suffered a heart attack anyway: maybe a year later, maybe five. Zabulon always calculates the balance of power very thoroughly. To provoke a heart attack in someone who is perfectly healthy is a fourth-grade intervention that automatically gives the Light Ones the right to respond with magic of the same level.
Nastya’s mother would almost certainly live. Zabulon is not given to senseless cruelty. Why kill the woman when the necessary effect can be produced simply by a serious illness?
And so I could have comforted my predecessor. Except that I would have had to tell her too much.
‘Here’s the notebook I wrote a few things in.’ Nastya held out a slim school exercise book with a brightly coloured cover showing a popular singer grinning moronically on stage. ‘Just a few details, but it might come in useful. A few of the girls need a special approach.’
I nodded. Then Nastya suddenly waved her hand through the air and said:
‘I don’t need to tell you all this. You’ll manage just fine.’
But she still spent another fifteen minutes introducing me to the subtle details of the camp regime and asked me to pay special attention to some girls who were flirting with the boys too precociously. She advised me not to demand silence after lights out: ‘Fifteen minutes is long enough for them to talk themselves out, half an hour at the most.’
Nastya only stopped talking when Pyotr pointed to his watch, without speaking. She kissed me on the cheek, then picked up a small bag and cardboard box – maybe she was taking some fruit to her sick mother?
‘All the best, Alisa.’
And at last I was left alone.
There was a pile of clean bed-linen lying on the bed. The electric light bulb glowed feebly under its simple glass shade. Pyotr and Nastya’s steps and their simple conversation quickly faded away.
I was left alone.
But not absolutely alone. On the other side of two thin walls, just five steps along the corridor, eighteen little girls aged ten or eleven were sleeping.
I suddenly started trembling. It was a rapid, nervous trembling, as if I were an apprentice again, trying for the first time to extract someone else’s power. Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert would probably have trembled the same way in my place.
But then, compared to what I was going to do now, his passion for nymphets was nothing but childish naughtiness.
I switched off the light and tiptoed out into the corridor. How I missed my Other powers!
I would just have to make do with the human powers I had left.
The corridor was long and the floorboards squeaked. The threadbare carpet runner was no help, my steps could easily be heard. I could only hope that at this early hour the girls were still sleeping and dreaming.
Simple, straightforward, uncomplicated children’s dreams.
I opened the door and went into the dormitory. For some reason I’d been expecting some kind of state institution, halfway between a children’s home and a hospital – iron bedsteads, the dull glow of a night lamp, depressing curtains and children sleeping as if they were standing to attention.
But in fact it was all very nice. The only light came from the lantern on the pillar outside. The shadows swayed gently, a fresh sea breeze blew in at the open windows and I could smell the scent of wild flowers. A television screen glowed dully in the corner and the walls were covered with drawings in coloured pencil and watercolours that looked bright and cheerful even in the semi-darkness.
The little girls were sleeping, sprawled out across their beds or tucked right up under the blankets, with all their things neatly arranged on their bedside lockers or scattered untidily on the headboards of the beds and the backs of the chairs – swimming costumes that were still wet, skirts, little pairs of jeans and socks. A good psychologist could have walked through that dormitory at night and come up with a full character portrait of each of those girls.
But I didn’t need one.
I walked slowly between the beds, adjusting blankets that had slipped off, lifting up arms and legs that had dropped down to touch the floor. The girls were sleeping soundly. Soundly and with no dreams …
I only got lucky with the seventh girl. She was about eleven years old, plump with light hair. An ordinary little girl whimpering quietly in her sleep.
Because she was having a bad dream …
I knelt down beside her bed, reached out my hand and touched her forehead. Gently, with just the tips of my fingers.
I felt power.
As I was now without any Other powers, I couldn’t have read an ordinary dream. But sensing the opportunity to nourish yourself is a different matter. It all takes place at the level of instinctive animal reaction, like an infant’s sucking reflex.
And I saw it …
It was a bad dream. The girl was dreaming that she was going home, that their session at camp wasn’t over yet, but she was being taken away because her mother had fallen ill, and her gloomy, frowning father was dragging her towards the bus and she hadn’t even had time to say goodbye to her friends, she hadn’t had any time for a last dip in the sea, or to take some little stones that were very important … and she was struggling and asking her father to wait, but he was just getting more and more angry … and saying something about disgraceful behaviour, about how girls her age shouldn’t have to be beaten, but since she was behaving like this, she could forget about his promise not to punish her with his belt any more …
It was a really bad dream. Nastya’s departure had affected the little girl very badly.