"Sergei Lukyanenko - Night Watch 03 - Twilight Watch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lukjanenko Sergey)

TV'ILIGH.T WATCH
SERGEILUKVANENK
miramax books
IHhyperionI
NEW YORK
This text contains extracts from songs by the following groups:
The Hibernation of Beasts (Zimovie zverei), Belomor,
The White Guard (Belaya gvardiya) and Picnic; and also by
Alexander Ulyanov ("Las"), Zoya Yashchenko, andKirill Komarov.
Copyright © 2007 Sergei Lukyanenko
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in
any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher.
Printed in the United States of America. For information address
Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023-6298
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and
incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales
or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
ISBN: 1-4013-6021-1 ISBN 13: 978-14013-6021-4
First Edition 10 987654321
This text is of no relevance to the cause of the Light.
The Night Watch
This text is of no relevance to the cause of the Darkness.
The Day Watch

Story One
NOBODY'S TIME
Prologue
The genuine old Moscow house yards disappeared sometime be-tween the two popular bards Vysotsky and
Okudzhava.
A strange business. Even after the revolution, when for purposes of the struggle against "the slavery of the
kitchen" they actually did away with kitchens in housing, nobody tried to get rid of the yards. Every proud
Stalin block displaying its Potemkin facade to the broad avenue beside it had to have a yard—large and
green, with tables and benches, with a yard keeper sweeping the asphalt clean every morning. Then the age
of five-story sectional housing arrived and the yards shriveled and became bare. The yard keepers who had
been so grave and staid changed sex and became yard women who regarded it as their duty to give
mischievous little boys a clip around the ear and upbraid residents who came home drunk. But even so, the
yards were still hanging on.
Then, as if in response to the increased tempo of life, the houses stretched upward. From nine stories to
sixteen or even twenty-four. And as if each building were given the right to a certain volume of space—not
an area of ground—the yards withered back to the entrances and the entrances opened their doors straight
onto the public streets, while the male and female yard keepers disappeared and were replaced by
communal services functionaries.
4 Sergei Lukyanenko
Okay, so the yards came back later, but certainly not to all the houses. It was as if they'd taken offense at
being treated so scornfully before. The new yards were bounded by high walls, with fit, well-groomed
young men sitting in the gate lodges, and parking lots concealed under the English lawns. The children in
these yards played under the supervision of nannies, the drunken residents were extracted from their
Mercedes and BMWs by bodyguards accustomed to dealing with anything, and the new yard keepers tidied
up the English lawns with little German machines.