After all, we didn’t even know what the magical Power that we used was. Our scientists were all, to a man, poor magicians, but with wise heads, and they had investigated this matter throughout the twentieth century and carried on in the twenty-first. Our scientists—meaning not only Light Ones and not only Russians. Others throughout the world had sought to understand their own nature, when necessary even involving human scientists and feeding precisely calculated crumbs of information to the Pentagon, the CIA and secret Soviet research institutes. Specially trained Others had collaborated with human scientists, demonstrating certain facets of their abilities—too little for them to be taken with unconditional seriousness, but enough to inflame curiosity and get entire laboratories with multimillion-dollar budgets set to work.

Nothing.

There is a Power that we can sense. It is emitted by all living things, but to the greatest extent by humans. (They are followed by whales, dolphins, pigs, dogs, and rats—as it happens, monkeys don’t even make the top ten.) Others can sense Power, see it as an aura, they can assess it and record it. And also consume it, naturally—amass it within themselves. So that later, by entering the Twilight, or simply summoning up its mental image, they can perform magical actions.

How? The Chinese magician was quite right—how did the Twilight, which was nonmaterial, transform Power, which was not registered by any instruments, into a perfectly material fireball or a Triple Blade that sliced through metal and stone? Our thoughts and desires were only the switches. Or, to use computer terminology, the commands. But all the invisible work that allowed us to work miracles took place beyond our awareness and beyond our control. It was carried out by the Twilight. So, the Twilight was either an inconceivable nonmaterial computer, tuned to carry out the desires of Others—but then that raised the question of who created it and programmed it—or an inconceivable nonmaterial rational being. A superbeing . . .

In principle, there wasn’t really any great difference here. A machine consisting of energy fields, say, or an equally exotic supermind. Was it all-powerful?

Probably not. By definition, only God was omnipotent and omnipresent. I wasn’t prepared to believe that if the Supreme Being existed, He was concerned with realizing the desires of a bunch of Others. That contradicted both theology and common sense. And the facts that we had at our disposal, too. The Tiger or a Mirror, for instance, were not like a manifestation of divine will, almighty and omnipotent. But they were like the behaviour of a very powerful and intelligent being. The behavior of God? No, not by a long way.

And what was it that every living creature feared?

That was an easy one.

Death.

So . . . that meant that one way or another, the boy Kesha’s prophecy was dangerous for the Twilight. And that was why the Tiger didn’t want it to be heard.

Logical?

Yes.