But I can't.

Every action taken by Good grants permission for an active response by Evil. The Treaty! The Watches! The balance of peace in the world?

I have to live with it or go crazy, break the law, walk through the crowd handing out unsolicited gifts, changing destinies, wondering which corner I'll turn and find my old friends and eternal enemies, waiting to dispatch me into the Twilight. Forever…

«Anton, how's your mother?»

Ah, yes. As Anton Gorodetsky, the patient, I had an old mother. She had osteochondrosis and a full set of old folks' ailments. She was Svetlana's patient too.

«Not too bad, she's okay. I'm the one who's…«

«Lie down.»

I pulled off my shirt and sweater and lay down on the couch. Svetlana squatted down beside me. She ran her warm fingers over my stomach and even palpated my liver.

«Does that hurt?»

«No… not now.»

«How much did you drink?»

As I replied to the girl's questions, I looked for the answers in her mind. No need to make it look like I was dying. Yes… I had dull pains, not too sharp… After food… I'd just had a little twinge…

«So far it's just gastritis, Anton…« said Svetlana, taking her hands away. «But that's bad enough, you know that. I'll write you a prescription…«

She got up, walked to the door, and took her purse off the hanger.

All this time I was observing the vortex. There was nothing happening; my arrival hadn't triggered any intensification in the Inferno, but it hadn't done anything to weaken it either…

»Anton …« I recognized the voice coming through the Twilight as Olga's. «Anton, the vortex has lost three centimeters of height. You must have made a right move somewhere. Think, Anton .»

A right move? When? I hadn't done anything except invent a reason to visit!

«Anton, do you have any of your ulcer medicine left?» Svetlana asked, looking across at me from the table. I nodded as I tucked in my shirt.

«Yes, a few capsules.»

«When you get home, take one. And buy some more tomorrow. Then take them for two weeks, before sleep.»

Svetlana was obviously one of those doctors who believe in pills. That didn't bother me, I believed in them too. All of us—the Others, that is—have an irrational awe of science; even in cases when elementary magical influence would do the job, we reach out for the painkillers and the antibiotics.

«Svetlana… I hope you don't mind me asking,» I said, looking away guiltily. «Have you got problems of some kind?»

«Where did you get that idea, Anton?» she asked, continuing to write and not even glancing in my direction. But she tensed up.

«Just a feeling. Has someone offended you somehow?»

The girl put down her pen and looked at me with curiosity and gentle sympathy in her eyes.

«No, Anton. There's nothing. I expect it's just the winter. The winter's too long.»

She gave a forced smile and the Inferno vortex swayed above her head, shifting its stalk greedily…

«The sky's gray, the world's gray. And I don't feel like doing anything… everything seems meaningless. I'm tired, Anton. It'll pass when spring comes.»

«You're depressed, Svetlana,» I blurted out before I realized that I'd drawn the diagnosis out of her own memory. But she didn't pay any attention.

«Probably. Never mind, when the sun peeps out… Thanks for feeling concerned, Anton.»

This time her smile was more genuine, but it was still pained.

I heard Olga's voice whispering through the Twilight:

«Anton, it's down ten centimeters! The vortex is losing height! The analysts are working on it, Anton. Keep talking to her!»

What was I doing right?

That question was more terrifying than «What am I doing wrong?» Make a mistake, and all you have to do is make a sharp change of approach. But if you've hit the target without knowing how you did it, then you're in a real fix. It's tough being a bad shot who's hit the bull's-eye by chance, struggling to remember how you moved your hands and screwed up your eyes, how much pressure your finger applied to the trigger… and not wanting to believe that the bullet was directed to the target by a random gust of wind.

I caught myself sitting and looking at Svetlana. And she was looking at me. Seriously, without speaking.

«I'm sorry,» I said. «I'm sorry, Svetlana, forgive me. I came barging in late in the evening, and now I'm interfering in your private life…«

«That's all right, Anton. Actually, I like it. How would you like some tea?»

«Down twenty centimeters, Anton! Say yes!»

Even those few centimeters skimmed off the height of the vortex were a gift from the gods. They were human lives. Tens or even hundreds of lives snatched away from the inevitable catastrophe. I didn't know how I was doing it, but I was increasing Svetlana's resistance to the Inferno. And the vortex was beginning to melt away.

«Thanks, Svetlana. I'd love some.»

The girl got up and went into the kitchen. I followed her. What was going on here?

«Anton, we have a provisional analysis…«

I thought I glimpsed the white silhouette of a bird through the curtained window—it flitted on along the wall, following Svetlana.

»Ignat followed the usual plan. Compliments, interest, infatuation, love. She liked it, but it made the vortex grow. You're using a different approach —sympathy. Passive sympathy .»

No recommendations followed, which meant the analysts hadn't reached any conclusions yet. But at least now I knew what I had to do next: look at her sadly, smile sympathetically, drink tea, and say: «Your eyes look tired, Sveta…«

We'd be talking to each other like friends, right? Of course we would. I was certain of that.

«Anton?»

I'd been staring at her too long. Svetlana was standing by the stove, not moving, holding a kettle with its shiny surface dulled by condensation. She wasn't exactly frightened, that feeling was already beyond her, completely drained out of her by the black vortex. It was more like she was embarrassed.

«Is something wrong?» she asked.

«Yes. It feels awkward, Svetlana. I just turned up in the middle of the night, dumped my problems on you, and now I'm hanging around, waiting for tea…«

«Anton, please stay. You know, I've had such a strange day, and being here alone… Let's call it my fee for the consultation, shall we? That is… you staying for a while and talking to me,» she explained hastily.

I nodded. Any word might be a mistake.

«The vortex has shrunk another fifteen centimeters. You've chosen the right tactic, Anton!»

But I hadn't chosen anything, why couldn't those lousy analysts understand that! I'd used the powers of an Other to enter someone else's home; I'd interfered with someone else's memory so I could stay there longer… and now I was just going with the flow.

And hoping the current would bring me out where I needed to be.

«Would you like some jam, Anton?»

«Yes…«

A mad tea party! Move over, Lewis Carroll! The maddest tea parties aren't the ones in the rabbit's burrow, with the Mad Hatter, the Sleepy Dormouse, and the March Hare around the table.

A small kitchen in a small apartment, tea left over from the morning, topped up with boiling water, raspberry jam from a three-liter jar—this is the stage on which unknown actors play out genuinely mad tea parties. This is the place, the only place where they say the words that they would never say otherwise. This is where they pull nasty little secrets out of the darkness with a conjuror's flourish, where they take the family skeletons out of the closet, where they discover the cyanide sprinkled in the sugar bowl. And you can never find a reason to get up and leave, because every time they pour you more tea, offer you jam, and move the sugar bowl a bit closer…

«Anton, I've known you for a year already…«

A shadow, a brief, perplexed shadow in the girl's eyes. Her memory obligingly fills in the blanks, her memory hands her explanations for why a man as likeable and good as me is still no more than her patient.

«Only from my work, of course, but now… I feel I'd like to talk to you somehow… as a neighbor. As a friend. Is that okay?»

«Of course, Sveta.»

A grateful smile. It's not so easy to use the familiar form of my name. From Anton to Antoshka is too big a step.

«Thank you, Anton. You know… I just don't know where I am. For the last three days now.»

Of course, it's not so easy to know where you are when you have the sword of Nemesis hanging over you. Blind, furious Nemesis, escaped from the power of the dead gods…

«Today… never mind…«

She wanted to tell me about Ignat. She didn't understand what was happening to her, why a chance encounter had almost gotten all the way to the bed. She felt like she was going insane. Everybody who comes within the Others' sphere of activity has thoughts like that.

«Svetlana, perhaps… perhaps you've fallen out with someone?»

That was a crude move. But I was in a hurry. I didn't even know why myself; so far the vortex was stable, it was even shrinking. But I was in a hurry.

«Why do you think that?»

Svetlana wasn't surprised and she didn't think the question was too personal. I shrugged and tried to explain:

«It often happens to me.»

«No, Anton. I haven't fallen out with anyone. I've no one to fall out with, and no reason. It's something inside me…«

That's where you're wrong, girl, I thought. You've no idea how wrong you are. Black vortices the size of the one hanging over you appear only once in every hundred years. And that means someone hates you with the kind of power rarely granted to anyone… even to an Other.

«You probably need a vacation,» I suggested. «To get away somewhere… far away to the back of beyond…«

When I said that, I realized there was a solution to the problem after all. Maybe not a complete solution; it would still be fatal for Svetlana. She could go away. Out into the taiga or the tundra, to the North Pole. And then it would happen there—the volcano would erupt, the asteroid would hit, or the cruise missile with the nuclear warheads would strike. The Inferno would erupt, but Svetlana would be the only one to suffer.

It's a good thing that solutions like that are as impossible for us as the murder suggested by the Dark Magician.

«What are you thinking, Anton?»

«Sveta, what's happened to you?»

«Too abrupt, Anton! Steer the conversation away from that, Anton!»

«Is it really that obvious?»

«Yes.»

Svetlana lowered her eyes. Any moment I was expecting Olga to shout that the black vortex had begun its final, catastrophic spurt of growth, that I'd ruined everything, and now I'd have thousands of human lives on my conscience forever… but Olga didn't say a word.