I shrugged. There was nothing really surprising about it. If Geser wanted to present me with a surprise he always had a huge range to choose from. There's an awful lot that I don't know. And this...
'Its annoying,' said Geser. 'Sit down, Gorodetsky'
I sat down facing Geser, folded my hands on my knees and even lowered my head, as if I felt guilty about something.
'Anton, a good magician always finds his powers when he needs them,' said the boss. 'Until you become wiser, you won't become more powerful. Until you become more powerful, you won't master higher magic. Until you master higher magic, you won't go into places that are dangerous. Your situation is unique. You were affected by' - he frowned - 'the spell of the Fuaran. You became a Higher Magician when you weren't ready for it. Yes, you do have the Power. Yes, you do know how to control it... and what you used to find hard to do is no problem at all to you now. How long were you down on the fourth level of the Twilight? And now you're sitting there as if it was nothing special. But the things that you couldn't do before...'
Geser stopped.
'I'll learn, Boris Ignatievich,' I said. 'After all, everyone says I'm making good progress. Olga, Svetlana
'You are,' Geser admitted willingly. 'You're not a total idiot, you're bound to develop. But right now you remind me of an inexperienced driver, someone who has driven a Lada around for six months and then suddenly finds himself at the wheel of a Ferrari racing car! No, worse than that, a dump truck in a quarry. A huge BELAZ truck weighing two hundred tonnes, creeping up round a spiral road on its way out of the quarry... with a hundred-metre drop at one side! And there are other dump trucks driving down below it. If you make one false move, turn the wheel too sharply, or let your foot slip on the pedal ?then everyone's in trouble.'
'I understand,' I said, with a nod. 'But I never asked to be a Higher Magician, Boris Ignatievich. It was you who sent me after Kostya...'
'I have nothing to reproach you with and there are a lot of things I'm trying to teach you,' said Geser. And then he added, rather off the point: 'Although you did once reject me as your teacher!'
I said nothing.
'I don't even know what to do...' Geser drummed his fingers on the file lying in front of him. 'Send you out on routine assign ments? "A schoolgirl has seen a hobo werewolf," "A vampire has shown up in Butovo," "A witch is casting real spells," "There's a mysterious tapping sound in my basement"? Pointless. With your Power, nonsense like that is no problem for you. You'll never have to learn anything new. Leave you to rot behind a desk? That's not what you want, anyway. Or what then?'
'You know what to do, Boris Ignatievich,' I answered. 'Give me a genuine assignment. Something that will force me to develop and mature.'
Geser's eyes glittered ironically.
'Sure, coming right up. I'll organise a raid on the special vault of the Inquisition. Or I'll send you to storm the Day Watch office...'
He pushed the file across the desk:
'Read that.'
Geser himself opened an identical file and immersed himself in the study of several pages from a school exercise book, covered in writing.
Why did we have these old cardboard files with tatty lace bind ings in our office anyway? Did we buy several tonnes of them last century, or had we picked them up a little while ago from some charitable organisation providing work to housebound invalids? Or were they produced in some ancient factory that belonged to the Night Watch in the provincial city of Flyshit?
But anyway, it was a fact that in the age of computers, photo copiers, transparent plastic folders and elegant, robust files with convenient clips and pins, our Watch still used flaky cardboard and string... What a disgrace ?we should be ashamed to look our foreign colleagues in the eye!
'It's easier to apply protective spells that prevent long-distance sensing to files made of organic materials,' Geser said. 'It's the same reason why we only use books for studying magic. When a text is typed into a computer, it doesn't retain any of the magic'
I looked into Geser's eyes.
'I never even thought about reading your mind,' the boss said. 'Until you learn to control your