This is a fan translation of School Oversight (Школьный надзор) by Sergei Lukyanenko and Arkady Shushpanov. The novel is a spin-off of the Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko.
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
Note: The word "надзор" can also be translated as "watch" or "supervision". I chose "oversight" because it seemed more fitting and worked with the title "overseer".
Also, footnotes can be found at the end of the chapter.
Epigraph
This text is considered to be uneducational by the forces of Light.
Night Watch
This text is considered to be uneducational by the forces of Darkness.
Day Watch
This text is not recommended to underage Others.
Inquisition
Part I
Other Literature
Prologue
First Fyodor made a pause the way a good tenor produced a high note. Then he began talking, "Breaking the law, are you, Ms. Golubeva? Not good. Not good at all."
"Are you…" Anna Golubeva squirmed, "a prosecutor?"
If the case file were to be believed, she was going to be fourteen in a month.
The room looked nothing like a prosecutor's office. Then again, if he were honest, Fyodor had never been to a prosecutor's office, to say nothing of his "client".
The colorful paintings on the walls threw the guests out onto a beach on an ocean lagoon. The soft rug on the floor didn't allow anyone to take a few steps without feeling relaxed. Fyodor and Anna Golubeva weren't separated by anything, they were sitting in chairs across from one another. Fyodor's chair was positioned to always put him to the right of his visitors. The assumption was that it would make him more trustworthy.
Through the transparent covers of the back and the seat, one could see that inside the chairs were multicolored half-deflated balloons instead of foam rubber or springs. They were pretty strong as long as no one deliberately punctured them. Any visitor was bound to quickly change their attitude in such a chair.
The only sharp corners in the office belonged to the tablet on Fyodor's lap.
"No, not a prosecutor," Fyodor answered truthfully. Then he lied, "A psychologist."
"I didn't know we were going to a shrink…" The girl straightened. She had auburn hair, and there was a hint of slyness in the curve of her lips. "I'm normal."
"Of course you are!" Fyodor informed her. "Otherwise you wouldn't be here. I said I was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. Do you feel the difference? After our conversation, I'm going to decide who else you're going to meet. Who knows? It could be a prosecutor after all."
"I didn't do anything!" the girl raised her voice. "I didn't steal anything!"
"Keep your voice down," Fyodor whispered, lowering to her a little.
He was nearly two meters tall, and the bow was reminiscent of a construction crane maneuver.
The girl began to speak in a lower voice and also bent a little forward, "I didn't steal anything. It appeared on its own, honest! But no one believes me."
There was a glint in her eyes. Fyodor realized that whatever façade the girl was trying to present, she was scared and confused.
That was when he said, "I believe you."
"You're all lying!" Anna leaned back forcefully, causing the balloons to squeak in protest.
"I do believe you," Fyodor repeated calmly, mentally recalling the Latin phrase "Credo quia absurdum" [Footnote 1]. "You didn't take any of these things. They appeared on their own."
"How can you believe me?" came from the other chair. "You don't even know—"
"I don't need to know. I can see you're not lying. Your pupils, breathing, complexion — all that is telling the truth."
The girl looked around in search of a mirror. To confirm what he'd said and to also make sure her pupils weren't going to say something she didn't want them to.
The mirror was far away, and Anna was too shy to get up.
Fyodor really didn't like lying. Especially to children. Then again, he wasn't really lying right now. Just speaking half-truths. Of course, the lack of lying in Anna's words was also being shown by the microexpressions, and Fyodor had learned to be extremely observant. Even without the use of magic.
But the truth was being demonstrated by her aura in a much greater way. But he had to bring up the concept of an "aura" to the girl very gradually. Anna had no idea what she really was, and that was the most curious thing of all.
"Will… will you tell them I didn't steal anything?"
"I will," Fyodor said. "If you behave yourself."
She'd been tested for drugs, and she wasn't in a risk group. An ordinary teenager raised by a single parent. Her mother was a teacher at a music school. She was the one who'd brought her daughter to the police when items she'd never be able to afford began appearing at home at regular intervals. Naturally, she hadn't even listened to her daughter's claims that it appeared on its own.
"I will." Anna looked at Fyodor sullenly.
"Excellent. So how are you doing this? Like this cell phone, for example."
"I draw. I can't actually draw. I just turn off the lamp, light the candles, and spread paint on paper."
"Too bad you didn't bring anything with you."
"I didn't know!"
"Fine," Fyodor thought he was going to have to study her drawings.
"I call it 'malaria."
"Ah. You think I'm crazy? It's malaria?" Fyodor smiled. "It happened. It happened in Odessa…"
"'See you at four,' Maria said. Eight. Nine. Ten," [Footnote 2] Anna echoed.
"You know Mayakovsky?" Fyodor couldn't keep himself from quickly glancing at her file. Indeed, she was thirteen.
"Just the two-volume collection," Anna replied without batting an eye. "The red one…"
"Marvelous!"
To be honest, to Fyodor it was a greater marvel than an apartment filled with items that had appeared out of thin air and a girl that had taught herself how to do magic.
"So you draw what's going to appear?"
"No. I told you, it's 'malaria'. I draw whatever's in my head. Just colorful spots. Sometimes I see some weird diagrams… Then something appears. I don't even think about it, sometimes I don't want to, and then I look, and it's already there."
"And that's it?"
"That's it! You've already checked. Nothing that was found is listed as missing. I can even return it all. I didn't break any laws!"
"You did break." Fyodor's statement came out rounded rather than sharp. "A law."
"What, what law?" Anna stretched out in a string. She was already skinny, so the comparison turned out to be apt.
"Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov's. And Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier's. They discovered it independently."
"Can someone be charged with that?" Anna asked with either surprise or a challenge.
She didn't know what the law of conservation of mass was. She also didn't know that even modern human physics didn't treat it as one hundred percent true. As for… hmm… let's say inhuman physics, the limitations of the law had been known for a long time.
"Not yet," Fyodor said. "But, as you can see, it does make you a person of interest."
"I don't know that law…" Anna confirmed Fyodor's conclusion.
"Ignorance is no excuse, my dear. That's from a different law. A legal one, not physical."
"So what's going to happen to me?" The position of the balloons under Anna changed again.
"I see two possibilities. First, you continue your malarian experiments and, sooner or later, get yourself in very big trouble. And second, you follow my recommendations. I'm recommending that you be sent to a certain educational institution for gifted children like you."
"Is that a closed facility of some kind?"
"No, it's fairly open, but getting in isn't easy. Because it's not for everyone."
"It's probably not cheap…"
"It's full board. You'll even be getting a stipend."
"And you're going to make me sign an agreement that I won't be breaking the law again?"
Fyodor again wanted to double-check if Anna Golubeva's case file had the right date of birth and age.
"No need. Which option is more to your liking?"
"Option two."
Fyodor rose, slid across the rug, and opened the door to the reception, "Tatiana!" He turned to Anna, "I'm going to write my conclusion. You can come back with your mom on Thursday. I would advise against coming down with 'malaria'. You should read a physics textbook instead. Maybe read ahead, all grades."
"Will do!" Anna leapt out of her chair. The balloons sent her off with an exhale.
When the door closed, Fyodor took an object out of his pocket. One of those produced by Anna's 'malaria'. No one was missing this so-called artifact. No one was supposed to have it. At most, it would be stored in a lab of some global and power corporation. Like the one with the logo of a bitten apple. A single unit, a prototype. But it had never been there either. Although they probably would've paid a lot to have it.
The Watch's experts wracked their brains and told Fyodor that a cell phone like that had probably not been invented yet.
But a thirteen-year-old girl managed to materialize it. He really needed to take a look at what she'd been drawing.
Fyodor went back to his office to prepare a referral. One could be an Other, one could consider oneself to not be human, but no one was ever free from filling out mountains of paperwork.
Footnotes
1) "I believe because it is absurd."
2) This is from a poem titled "Clouds in Trousets" by Vladimir Mayakovsky.
