I DECIDED TO RETURN THE BMW AFTER I GOT BACK FROM LEAVE. AFTER all…

The road surface was brand-new-the road here used to be all potholes, with a few connecting stretches of highway. Now it was stretches of highway, occasionally interrupted by potholes, so the car coasted comfortably at seventy-five miles per hour.

It's good to be an Other.

I knew I wouldn't get caught in a traffic jam. I knew a dump truck with a drunk driver wouldn't suddenly leap out in front of me. If I ran out of gas, I could pour water into the tank and turn it into fuel.

Who wouldn't want a life like that for his own child?

What right did I have to blame Gesar and Olga for anything?

The stereo system in the car was brand-new, with a slot for music disks. At first I was going to stick Combat Implants into it, then I decided I was in the mood for something more lyrical.

I put on White Guard.

I don't know what you have decided.

I don't know how things are there with you,

An angel has sewed the sky shut with thread,

Dark blue and light blue…

I don't remember the taste of loss,

I have no strength to resist evil,

Every time I walk out the door,

I walk toward your warmth…

My cell phone rang. And the intelligent stereo system immediately turned down its volume.

"Sveta?" I asked.

"You're hard to get through to, Anton."

Svetlana's voice was calm. That meant everything was all right.

And that was the most important thing.

"I couldn't get through to you either," I admitted.

"Must be fluctuations in the ether," Svetlana laughed. "What happened half an hour ago?"

"Nothing special. I had a talk with Gesar."

"Is everything okay?"

"Yes."

"I had a premonition. That you were walking close to the edge."

I nodded, watching the road. I have a clever wife, Gesar. Her premonitions are reliable.

"And everything's all right now?" I asked, just to make sure.

"Now everything's all right."

"Sveta…" I asked, holding the wheel with one hand. "What should you do when you're not sure if you've done the right thing? If you're tormented over whether you're right or not."

"Join the Dark Ones," Svetlana replied without any hesitation. "They're never tormented."

"And that's the whole answer?"

"It's the only answer there is. And all the difference there is between Light Ones and Dark Ones. You can call it conscience, you can call it a moral sense. It comes down to the same thing."

"I have this feeling," I complained, "as if the time of order is coming to an end. Do you understand? And I don't know what's coming next. Not a dark time, not a light time… not even the time of the Inquisitors…"

"It's nobody's time, Anton," said Svetlana. "That's all it is-nobody's time. You're right, something's coming. Something's going to happen in the world. But not right this minute."

"Talk to me, Sveta," I asked her. "I've still got half an hour to drive. Talk to me for that half hour, okay?"

"I haven't got many minutes left on my cell," Svetlana answered doubtfully.

"I can call you right back," I suggested. "I'm on an assignment, I've got a company cell phone. Gesar can pay the bill."

"And won't your conscience torment you?" Svetlana laughed.

"I gave it a good drilling today."

"All right, don't call back. I'll put a spell on my cell," said Svetlana. Maybe she was joking, maybe she was serious. I can't always tell when she's joking.

"Then talk to me," I said. "Tell me what's going to happen when I get there. What Nadiushka's going to say. What you're going to say. What your mother's going to say. What's going to happen to us."

"Everything's going to be fine," said Svetlana. "I'll be happy, and so will Nadya. And my mother will be happy…"

I drove the car, contravening the strict rules of the state highway patrol by pressing the cell phone to my ear with one hand. Trucks came hurtling toward me and past me on the other side of the road.

I listened to what Svetlana was saying.

And in the speakers the quiet female voice carried on singing:

When you come back, everything will be different,

How shall we recognize each other…

When you come back,

But I am not your wife or even your friend.

When you come back to me,

Who loved you so madly in the past,

When you come back,

You will see the lots were cast long ago, and not by us…

Story Two

Vacations in the country outside Moscow have always been the prerogative of the rich or the poor. It's only the middle class that prefers Turkish hotels on inclusive tariffs offering "as much drink as you can get down," a torrid Spanish siesta, or the neat and tidy sea coast of Croatia. The middle class doesn't like to take its vacations in central Russia.

But then, the middle class in Russia isn't very big.

In any case, the profession of biology teacher, even in a prestigious Moscow grammar school, has nothing whatsoever to do with the middle class. And if the teacher is female, if her swine of a husband left her three years ago for another woman who has absolutely no intention of encroaching on the mother's right to bring up her two children, then Turkish hotels are no more than an idle fantasy.

It was a good thing the children had not yet reached the terrible teenage years and were genuinely delighted by the old dacha, the little stream and the forest that started just at the back of the fence.

What was not so good was the way the elder child, a daughter, took her senior status so seriously. At the age of ten you can be pretty good at keeping an eye on your little five-year-old brother splashing about in the stream, but there's no way you ought to go wandering deep into the forest with him, relying on the knowledge you've gleaned from the Nature Studies textbook.

However, ten-year-old Oksana had no idea that they were lost yet. She walked blithely on along the forest path that she could barely even make out, holding her brother tightly by the hand as she told him a story.

"And then they hammered more pine stakes through him. They hammered one stake into his forehead, and another into his stomach! But he got up out of his coffin and said, 'You can't kill me anyway. I've been dead for a long time already. My name is…'"

Her brother started whining quietly.

"All right, all right, I was joking," Ksyusha said seriously. "He fell down and died. They buried him and went off to celebrate."

"I'm f-f-frightened Ksyusha," Romka confessed. He wasn't stammering because he was afraid, though-he always stammered. "Don't t-tell me any m-m-more, all right?"

"All right," said Ksyusha, looking around. She could still see the path behind them, but ahead it was completely lost under the fallen pine needles and rotting leaves. The forest had suddenly become gloomy and menacing. Nothing at all like it was near the village where their mother had rented their summer dacha, an old house that no one lived in anymore. They'd better turn back, before it was too late. As a caring older sister, Ksyusha realized that. "Let's go home, or Mom will give us a scolding."

"A doggy," her brother said suddenly. "Look, a doggy!"

Ksyusha turned around.

There really was a dog standing behind her. A large, gray dog with big teeth, looking at her with its mouth open-just as if it were smiling.

"I want a doggy like that," Romka said without stumbling over the words at all and looked at his sister proudly.