Hearing yet another hissed ancient Indian word, Artyom sighed heavily. It was unlikely he'd remember all these difficult t.i.tles right off. However, Daniel did not pay attention to this and continued his narrative: 'Obviously, only two castes enter into the Council, ours and the kshatriyas, though as a matter of fact, we just call them "war doggies",' he said to Artyom, with a wink.

'So why do they tattoo two-headed birds on themselves?' asked Artyom. 'You, at least, have books. That makes sense. But birds?'

'That's their totem,' said Brahmin Daniel, and shrugged. 'I think that formerly it was a guardian spirit of the radiological defence forces. An eagle, I believe. After all, they believe in some strange thing of their own. Generally speaking, the castes around here don't get along particularly well. There was a time they even feuded.'

Through the blinds, they could see that the station lights had been dimmed. Local night was falling. Artyom started to gather his things.

'Is there a hotel here where I can spend the night? Because I have a meeting tomorrow at nine at Arbatskaya, and I've nowhere to stay.'

'If you want, stay here,' said Daniel, shrugging. 'I'll sleep on the floor, I'm used to it. I was just about to prepare dinner. Stay and you'll tell me what else you've seen along the road. Because, you know, I don't ever get away from this place. The guardian vows do not allow us to travel further than one station.'

After thinking about it, Artyom nodded. It was comfortable and warm in the room, and Artyom had taken a liking to his host from the very beginning. They had something in common. In fifteen minutes, he was already cleaning mushrooms, while Daniel was cutting salt pork into small slices.

'Have you ever seen the Library even once with your own eyes?' asked Artyom, his mouth full. They were eating stewed pork with mushrooms from aluminium mess dishes.

'You mean the Great Library?' asked the Brahmin, dourly.

'I mean the one up there . . . It's still there, right?' said Artyom, pointing his fork at the ceiling.

'Only our elders go up into to the Great Library. And the stalkers, too, who work for the Brahmins,' answered Daniel.

'So, they're the ones who bring books down from above? From the Library? I mean, from the Great Library,' Artyom said, hurriedly correcting himself as he saw his host scowl once more.

'They do, but only by order of the caste elders. It is not within our power to do so ourselves, so we must use mercenaries,' the Brahmin explained grudgingly. 'According to the Testament, we should have been doing that, preserving knowledge and imparting it to seekers. But in order for knowledge to be imparted, it must first be obtained. Yet who among us will dare to go in there?' he said, lifting his eyes upward with a sigh.

'Because of the radiation?' said Artyom, comprehending.

'That too. But mainly because of the librarians,' said Daniel in a subdued voice.

'But aren't you the librarians? Or, at least, the descendants of the librarians? That's what I've heard.'

'You know? Let's not talk about this at the table. In fact, let someone else explain it to you. I don't like to talk about this subject, really.'

Daniel started to clear the table and then, after thinking for a moment, moved some books from a shelf off to the side, revealing a gap between the volumes standing in the back row, in which a round-bellied bottle of moonshine gleamed. Table gla.s.ses were found among the dishware.

After some time, Artyom, who had been examining the shelves with delight, decided to break the silence.

'Wow, you sure do have a lot of books,' he said. 'Over where we are, at VDNKh, VDNKh, I don't think you could collect as many in the whole library. I finished reading them all a long time ago. It's rare that something good shows up. Only my stepfather brings anything worth reading, and the itinerant merchants bring nothing but miscellaneous rubbish in their suitcases, all sorts of detective novels. Half the time, you can't tell what's going on in them anyway. That was another reason I dreamed of entering Polis, because of the Great Library. I just can't imagine how many there must be up there if they built such a huge place to keep them,' and he nodded towards the drawing over the table. I don't think you could collect as many in the whole library. I finished reading them all a long time ago. It's rare that something good shows up. Only my stepfather brings anything worth reading, and the itinerant merchants bring nothing but miscellaneous rubbish in their suitcases, all sorts of detective novels. Half the time, you can't tell what's going on in them anyway. That was another reason I dreamed of entering Polis, because of the Great Library. I just can't imagine how many there must be up there if they built such a huge place to keep them,' and he nodded towards the drawing over the table.

The eyes of both of them were shining already. Daniel, flattered by Artyom's words, leaned over the table and said, with great gravity: 'They don't mean a thing, all those books. And the Great Library was not built for them. And it's not books that are stored there.'

Artyom looked at him with surprise. The Brahmin opened his mouth to continue, but suddenly rose from his chair, went to the door, cracked it open and listened. Then he quietly closed the door, sat back down and whispered the rest of what he wanted to say: 'The entire Great Library was built for the one-and-only Book. And it alone is hidden there. The rest are needed to help hide it. In reality, it is this book that is being sought. And it is being guarded,' he added, and squirmed.

'What kind of book is it?' asked Artyom, also lowering his voice.

'An ancient folio. A book of pages, black as anthracite, where all of History is recorded in gold letters. To the end.'

'So why are people searching for it?' whispered Artyom.

'You really don't understand?' said the Brahmin, with a shake of his head. ' "To the end" means to the very end. And there's still some way to go before then . . . So whoever has this knowledge . . .'

A translucent shadow flashed behind the blinds, and Artyom, even though he was looking Daniel in the eye, noticed it and gave him a sign. Interrupting his tale in mid-sentence, Daniel jumped from his seat and darted to the door. Artyom bolted after him.

There was n.o.body on the platform, but retreating footsteps could be heard from the direction of the pa.s.sage. The sentries slept peacefully on chairs on both sides of the escalator.

When they returned to the room, Artyom waited for the Brahmin to continue his story, but the latter had sobered up and only glumly shook his head.

'We're forbidden to relate this,' he snapped. 'That part of the Testament is only for the initiated. The alcohol loosened my tongue,' he said, wincing fretfully. 'And don't even think of telling anyone what you heard. If it gets out to anyone that you know about the Book, then there'll be no end of trouble for you. And for me, too.'

And then Artyom suddenly understood why his palms had started sweating when the Brahmin had told him about the Book. He remembered.

'But aren't there several of these books?' he asked, his heart coming to a standstill.

Daniel cautiously looked him in the eyes.

'What do you mean?

'Fear the truths hidden in ancient folios . . . in which the words are lettered in gold and the viper-black paper does not rot,' he recited, while Bourbon's expressionless face loomed in a foggy haze before his eyes, mechanically uttering alien and incomprehensible words.

The Brahmin stared at him fixedly in amazement.

'How do you know that?'

'A revelation. There's not just one Book . . . What's in the others?' asked Artyom, looking at the drawing of the Library as if under a spell.

'Only one is left. There were three folios,' said Daniel, surrendering finally. 'The Past, the Present, and the Future. The Past and the Present disappeared irrevocably centuries ago. Only the last and most important one remains.'

'And where is it?'

'Lost somewhere in the Main Stack Archives. There are more than forty million volumes there. One of them - a completely ordinary book by all appearances, in a standard binding - is It. To recognize It, you have to open the book and skim through it. According to legend, the pages of the folio actually are black. But you'd have to spend seventy years of your life without sleep or rest to skim through all the books in the Main Stack Archive. Yet people can't stay there for more than a day, and second, n.o.body will let you stand around quietly and look through all the books that are stored there. And that's enough about that.'

He laid some bedding on the floor, lit a candle on the table, and turned off the light. Artyom lay down unwillingly. For some reason, he didn't want to sleep at all, although he could not remember the last time that he managed to get some rest.

'I wonder, can you see the Kremlin when you go up to the Library?' he asked the emptiness, because Daniel had begun to fall asleep.

'Of course you can see it. Only, you can't look at it. It draws you in,' he muttered.

'What do you mean "it draws you in"?'

Daniel lifted himself onto his elbows, and his face, knitted in displeasure, was illuminated by the yellow spot of light.

'The stalkers say that you can't look at the Kremlin when you go out, especially not at the stars on the towers. As soon as you look, you can't tear your eyes away. And if your gaze lingers for a while, the Kremlin starts to draw you inside. There's a reason all the gates stand wide open. That's why stalkers never go up into the Great Library by themselves. If one happens to glance at the Kremlin, the other will snap him out of it immediately.'

'What's inside the Kremlin?' whispered Artyom, swallowing hard.

'n.o.body knows, because n.o.body who's ever gone in has ever come out again. Up there on the shelf, if you like, there's a book with an interesting history of stars and swastikas, including the ones on the Kremlin towers.' He got up, groped the book from the shelf, opened it to the correct page, and got back under his blanket.

Daniel was asleep within a couple of minutes, but Artyom moved the candle closer and started to read.

'. . . being the smallest and least influential of political groups that fought for influence and power in Russia after the first revolution, the Bolsheviks were not considered serious compet.i.tors by any of the opposing sides. They enjoyed no support from the peasantry and relied only on a small number of supporters among the working cla.s.s and in the navy. V. I. Lenin, who studied alchemy and the invocation of spirits in secret Swiss schools, was able to find his princ.i.p.al allies on the other side of the barrier between worlds. It is precisely in this period that the pentagram emerges for the first time as the symbol of the communist movement within the Red Army.

'As is known, the pentagram is the most widespread and accessible portal between worlds for novices, allowing demons to enter our reality. At the same time, if the creator of a pentagram uses it skilfully, he can control the demons summoned into our world, and they must obey him. Normally, in order to better control a summoned creature, a protective perimeter is drawn around the pentagram, preventing the demon from escaping beyond the ring.

'It is not known how, exactly, the leaders of the communist movement were able to achieve that which the most powerful black magicians of all ages had sought: establishing links to the demon lords who commanded the obedience of hordes of their lesser brethren. Experts are convinced that the lords themselves, sensing the forthcoming war and the most horrible bloodshed ever in the history of mankind, drew nearer to the boundary between worlds and summoned those who could permit them to collect a harvest of human lives. In exchange, they promised support and protection.

'The story of how the Bolshevik leadership was funded by German intelligence is true, to be sure, but it would be foolish and superficial to believe that it was only thanks to his foreign partners that V. I. Lenin and his comrades-in-arms were able to tip the scales in their favour. Even then, the future communist leader had protectors who were immeasurably more powerful and wiser than the military intelligence officials in the Kaiser's Germany.

'Naturally, the details of the secret compact with the powers of darkness are not accessible to modern researchers. However, their result is clear: after a short time, pentagrams appear on banners, on the headgear of Red Army soldiers, and on the armour of its still spa.r.s.e military equipment. Each of them opened a gate into our world to a demon protector, who guarded the wearer of the pentagram from external violence. The demons received their pay, as usual, in blood. In the twentieth century alone, according to the most conservative estimates, around thirty million inhabitants of the country were sacrificed.

'The Compact with the lords of the summoned powers quickly justified itself: the Bolsheviks seized and consolidated power, and although Lenin himself, who had been the intermediary between the two worlds, could not endure and died only fifty-four years after his birth, eaten from within by the fires of h.e.l.l, his followers unhesitatingly continued his work. Soon after followed the demonization of the entire country. Schoolchildren pinned their first pentagram to their chests. Few know that, from the outset, the ritual of initiation into the Little Octobrists intended the badge's pin to be used to pierce the child's skin. The demon of the Little Octobrist "star" would thus taste the blood of its future host, entering into a sacral union with its host once and forever. Growing up and becoming a Pioneer, the child would receive a new pentagram, and a part of the essence of the Compact would be revealed to those experiencing insight: a gold-imprinted portrait of the Leader was wrapped in flames, in which he disappeared. Thus, the rising generation was reminded of the heroic deed of self-sacrifice. After that was the Komsomol, and finally, the way was cleared for the chosen to enter into the priestly caste, the Communist Party.

'Myriads of summoned spirits protected everyone and everything in the Soviet state: children and adults, buildings and equipment, while the demon lords themselves took up residence in the giant ruby pentagrams on the Kremlin towers, willingly agreeing to confinement for the sake of their increased power. It was precisely from here that invisible lines of force spread over the entire country, holding it back from chaos and collapse, and subordinating its inhabitants to the will of those who occupied the Kremlin. In some sense, the entire Soviet Union was turned into one giant pentagram whose surrounding protective perimeter became its national boundary.'

Artyom tore himself away from the page and looked around. The candle had burned down and had started to smoke. Daniel was sound asleep, with his face turned to the wall. Artyom stretched, and then returned to the book.

'The supreme test for Soviet power became the clash with National Socialist Germany. Protected by powers no less ancient or powerful than was the Soviet Union, the armour-fettered Teutons were able to penetrate deeply into our country for the second time in a thousand years. This time, their banners were inscribed with a reversed symbol of the sun, light, and prosperity. To this very day, fifty years after the Victory, tanks with pentagrams on their turrets continue in perpetual battle against tanks whose steel bears the swastika, in museum panoramas, on television screens, on sheets of graph paper torn out of school notebooks . . .'

The candle flickered one last time and went out. It was time to go to sleep.

If you turned your back to the monument, you could see a small section of the high wall and the silhouettes of the sharp-pointed towers in the gap between the half-ruined houses. But, as had been explained to Artyom, you couldn't turn around and look at them. And it was also forbidden to leave the doors with the steps unattended because if something were to happen, you'd have to sound the alarm, but if you so much as peeked - that's it, you're done for, and the others suffer, too.

Consequently, Artyom stood still, although the desire to turn around kept eating at him. Meanwhile, he examined the monument, whose bottom had been overgrown with moss. The monument depicted a gloomy old man, sitting in a capacious armchair and leaning on an elbow. Something dripped slowly and thickly from his pitted bronze pupils onto his chest, giving the impression that the monument was crying.

It was unbearable to look at this for very long. So, Artyom went around the statue and attentively looked at the doors. Everything was tranquil, there was complete silence, and there was just the slightest sound of the wind rambling between the picked-over carca.s.ses of buildings. The detachment had departed some time ago, but had not taken Artyom along. They ordered him to stay and stand guard, and if anything happened, to go down into the station and give warning of what happened.

Time pa.s.sed slowly, and he measured it with steps, which he took around the bottom of the monument: one, two, three . . .

It happened when he got to five hundred: a clatter and growling broke out to his rear, behind his back, where he could not look. Something was nearby, and it could rush at Artyom at any moment. He froze, straining his ears, then dropped to the ground and pressed himself against the base of the statue, holding his weapon ready.

Now it was close at hand, apparently, on the other side of the monument. Artyom distinctly heard its husky animal breathing. Moving around the side of the statue's base, he gradually moved closer to the sound. He tried to stop his hands from shaking and to keep his sight on the place where the creature would appear.

But the breathing and the sound of steps suddenly began to retreat. But when Artyom looked out from behind the statue to take advantage of the opportunity to fire a burst into the back of his unknown enemy, he immediately forgot about both his enemy and everything else.

The star on the Kremlin tower was clearly visible even from here. The tower itself remained only a vague silhouette in the unsteady light of a partially cloud-covered moon, but the star stood out clearly against the sky, riveting the attention of any who looked at it for a completely understandable reason. It glittered. Not believing his eyes, he took out his field binoculars.

The star burned a fierce bright-red colour, illuminating several metres of the s.p.a.ce around it, and when Artyom looked closer, he noticed that its fire was irregular. It was as if a tempest was confined inside the giant ruby; it brightened in fits and starts, as if something inside was flowing, seething, flaring . . . The sight was of fantastic beauty not possible in this world, but it was poorly visible from such a distance. He had to get closer.

Shouldering his weapon, Artyom ran down the stairs, jumped over the cracked asphalt in the street, and stopped at the only corner from where he could see the whole Kremlin wall . . . and the towers. A red star beamed from each one of them. Hardly catching his breath, Artyom again looked through the eyepieces. The stars flared with the same seething irregular glow, and he wanted to look at them forever.

Concentrating on the closest of them, Artyom still admired its fantastic flows, until he suddenly seemed to feel as if he could distinguish the shape of whatever was moving inside, under the crystal surface.

To better make out the strange outlines, he had to get a little closer. Having forgotten about all dangers, he stopped in the middle of the open s.p.a.ce and now kept his binoculars glued to his eyes, trying to understand what he had managed to see.

The demon lords, he remembered at last. The marshals of an army of unclean spirits that had been summoned to defend the Soviet state. The country, and the whole world as well, had fallen to pieces, but the pentagrams on the Kremlin towers had remained untouched: the governors who had entered into a compact with the demons were long dead, and there was n.o.body left to free them . . . n.o.body? What about him?

I need to find the gates, he thought. I need to find a way in . . .

'Get up! You have to go soon.' Daniel shook him.

Artyom yawned and rubbed his eyes. He had just dreamed something incredibly interesting, but the dream had faded instantly, and he could not recall what he had seen. All of the lights had already been lit in the station, and he could hear the cleaning women sweeping the platform while merrily bantering.

He put on his dark gla.s.ses and shuffled off to wash up, having tossed over his shoulder a not-very-clean towel his host had given him. The toilets were located at the same end as the bronze panel, and the line of people waiting to get in was not short. Having got in line, continuing to yawn, Artyom tried to recall at least some of the images from his dream.

The line stopped moving forward, for some reason, and the people in it started to murmur loudly. Attempting to understand what was the matter, Artyom looked around. All eyes were fixed on a bolted iron door. It was now open, and a tall man stood in the frame. Seeing him, Artyom, too, forgot why he was standing there.

It was a stalker.

He had imagined them to look exactly like this, both from his stepfather's stories and the rumours gleaned from itinerant merchants. The stalker wore a stained protective suit, scorched in places, and a long, heavy body armour vest. His shoulders were broad; a light machine gun was casually slung over the right one, while a gleaming, oily belt of ammunition hung like a baldric from the left. He wore rough, laced boots with the pants legs tucked into the top, and there was a large canvas rucksack on his back.

The stalker took off his round special forces helmet, pulled off the rubber face piece of his gas mask, and stood there, flushed and wet, talking to the post commander about something. He was no longer young. Artyom saw grey stubble on his cheeks and chin, and silvery strands in his short black hair. Yet the man radiated power and confidence; he was completely at ease and collected, as if even here, in a quiet and cheerful station, he was ready to meet danger at any moment and not let it catch him unawares.

By now, only Artyom continued to unceremoniously examine the arrival. The people behind him in line first tried to urge him forward, and then simply started to walk around him.

'Artyom! What's the delay? You'll be late if you don't watch out!' Daniel came up to him.

Hearing his name, the stalker turned towards Artyom, looked at him intently, and suddenly took a broad step toward him.

'You from VDNKh?' VDNKh?' he asked, in a deep resonant voice. he asked, in a deep resonant voice.

Artyom nodded silently, and felt his knees start to shake.

'You the one looking for Melnik?' the stalker continued.

Artyom nodded once more.

'I'm Melnik. You have something for me?' The stalker looked Artyom in the eye.

Artyom hastily groped around his neck for the cord with the cylindrical case that it now felt odd to part with, as if with a talisman, and extended it to the stalker.

The stalker pulled off his leather gloves, opened the cover and carefully shook something out of the capsule into his palm. It was a small sc.r.a.p of paper. A note.

'Come with me. I couldn't make it yesterday. Sorry. The call came when we were already on our way to the surface.'

Having said a quick goodbye and thanks to Daniel, Artyom hurried after Melnik, up the escalators that led to the pa.s.sage to Arbatskaya.

'Is there any news from Hunter?' he asked, awkwardly, barely keeping up with the long-striding stalker.

'Haven't heard a thing from him. I fear you'll have to ask your dark ones about him now,' said Melnik, looking back over his shoulder at Artyom. 'On the other hand, you could say there's too much news from VDNKh.' VDNKh.'

Artyom felt his heart start beating more forcefully.