"Door into Darkness" by Sergei Lukyanenko, summary Automatic translate

This book is a collection of early fantasy fiction, centered on a debut young adult novel written in 1994 that deeply explores the complex boundaries between true friendship, duty, and betrayal. Under one cover, this major work and several independent short stories are combined. Each text confronts young protagonists with an incredibly difficult moral choice. The stories unfold in different worlds, but in all cases, the characters are forced to sacrifice what is most precious to save their loved ones.

The story “The Servant,” included in this collection, received the Interpresscon genre award in 1996 for best short story.

The Boy and the Darkness

Danka, an ordinary teenager with a cold, lies at home and sees a sunbeam stream into the room. Reflected off an antique mirror, the light takes on a fluffy form. Danka meets the Sun Kitten — an intelligent, cheerful creature woven from pure True Light. The Kitten easily finds the Hidden Doors in the wall of a city apartment, and together they step into another, unknown world. The door suddenly slams behind him. It turns out that the locals long ago sold their bright sun to interstellar traders who arrived from far away for earthly comfort and constant satiety. Danka finds himself in a universe where eternal, deep night reigns, and the sky is covered in an impenetrable gray haze.

Now the Flyers — stern servants of darkness, cloaked in flowing black robes — dominate the skies with impunity. They are desperately opposed by the Winged Ones — brave teenagers who use special symbiotic wings to protect human settlements from constant nighttime raids. Adults, as a matter of principle, do not participate in the battles. Danka narrowly escapes the Flyers in a rocky valley and meets Len, a local peer, forming a fighting partnership with him. During one of his aerial patrols, Danka clashes with a Flyer, but flatly refuses to finish off the fallen enemy. The enemy appears to be a completely ordinary person, pitifully begging for mercy.

For his flagrant violation of military law, the elder Winged Ones cruelly punish Danka. They cold-bloodedly blind the boy with a dagger right in the central city square. Sunny Kitten restores the child’s sight with the help of the miraculously preserved ancient Sunstone, a gift from old Gert. Danka gains the True Sight — a unique magical ability to see the true essence of things around him and the most hidden human intentions. Along with Len and Kitten, Danka is hired as an armed guard for the wealthy merchant Gabor.

During a long journey on foot, the caravan is attacked by Flyers who forcibly abduct Len. Danka secretly enters the enemy’s gloomy, high tower. He finds his tormented, faithful friend, into whom the tormentors have already poured smoking Black Fire to quickly transform him into a monster. Danka saves his comrade, collapsing a sturdy stone structure in the process. With great difficulty, Len suppresses the Darkness within his body. Reaching a brightly lantern-lit port town of merchants, Danka descends into the mystical Labyrinth of the Old Swordsmith. There, the boy undergoes a severe psychological test of his own fears and receives the True Sword — an absolutely indestructible weapon that can only be used once against a true enemy.

The heroes return to the Winged Ones. To force the peaceful townspeople into a general assault on the central tower of the Lord of the Flying Ones, Danka and Kitten devise a ruthless military plan. Len drops glass flasks containing the Black Fire on his hometown. Old Gert tragically dies in the ensuing fire. Provoked by the fire, the Winged Ones instantly forget their eternal fear and begin a full-scale, bloody war.

In the main mirror tower, Danka encounters the reincarnated Flying Kert, Lan’s former senior partner. In a grueling, exhausting battle, Kert cold-bloodedly kills Lan with a blow from his shadow blade. Danka refuses to use the True Sword, forcibly pushing Kert through the Hidden Door to Earth, where the direct rays of the sun instantly incinerate the monster. The Sun Kitten voluntarily sacrifices itself, absorbing the colossal energy from the deep deposits of the Sunstone.

The kitten soars skyward and transforms into a new, bright sun for this saved world. Those flying are petrified and die en masse. Danka uses her newfound True Light to completely heal and resurrect Lan. The revived heroes find a new Hidden Door among countless worlds and return to Earth together.

Servant

Eilar Vaas, the daughter of a powerful and domineering ruler, returns to her ancestral castle from a long hunt. Her father, Rand Vaas, possesses an ancient silver circlet that opens dimensional portals to other worlds. He brings back a young captive named Alexander from another distant expedition and immediately declares him a slave. The laws of their harsh society are unwavering, stating that under no circumstances can a free man be enslaved — the penalty for such a crime is immediate death. Eilar decides to examine the stranger carefully.

After spending time with Alexander in a magnificent garden, she asks him to tell her in detail about his home world. She easily understands that the young man was born free. Eilar falls head over heels in love with him, and it is impossible to love a slave physically or spiritually. Strictly following the immutable rules, she brings her father the family sword. Rand Vaas voluntarily stabs himself, openly admitting his fatal mistake. Eilar releases Alexander back to Earth, destroys the silver circlet forever, and declares to her arriving relatives that her actions are dictated by the immutable law of their ancient world.

The Road to Wellesberg

Teenagers Mikhail and Igor confidently call themselves roaders — eternal wanderers and vagabonds who reject the tranquility of life in a high-tech, well-fed society. They are joined by Dave, a runaway newcomer. Fleeing the cold weather, the trio stops for the night in the cozy home of linguist Evans. Mikhail is an artificial mutant "sniffer," capable of decomposing reality into distinct odors with astonishing accuracy. He quickly discovers that the hospitable host’s son, Timmy, possesses a rare gift of psychokinesis. Timmy secretly performs difficult remote surgeries, saving the terminally ill.

For a young organism, telekinesis results in unbearable, searing pain and slow destruction. Mikhail himself long ago escaped from the Wellesberg Genetic Center, unable to withstand the terrible torment of synthesizing the PKF drug, which awakens directed telekinesis. Shocked by Timmy’s daily, unchildlike dedication, Mikhail secretly abandons his sleeping friends and resolutely returns to Wellesberg. He wants to complete the dangerous experiment and give humanity a ready-made synthetic cure, forever freeing the little boy from this lonely, terrible burden.

My dad is an antibiotic

Alik, a boy, lives permanently with his father, a stern officer in the Marine Corps. His mother left them long ago, directly accusing her husband of turning into a mindless living machine, burning down rebellious human colonies. Returning from yet another brutal suppression of an uprising on the planet Tuan, his father gives Alik a trophy metal bracelet belonging to a slain rebel. Alik proudly places the tight ring on his wrist. Soon, the boy learns from official news and a videophone call from the dead teenager’s mother that his best friend, Arnis, died ingloriously on Tuan, having defected to the rebels.

Arnis wore an identical bracelet, which turned out to be a clever time bomb. The rebel leaders deliberately supplied the teenagers with a weapon that would inevitably explode exactly 24 hours after the wearer’s death. Realizing that the deadly mechanism on his arm was about to detonate, Alik went to his sleeping father. The experienced paratrooper instantly loaded his son into a high-speed flyer, rose high above the lake, and severed the boy’s hand with a well-aimed shot from a combat laser. He threw the arm, still wearing the bracelet, overboard just before a powerful plasma explosion. Alik, in shock, hysterically laughed at the consoling doctors, frantically repeating the offensive word "antibiotic" through his tears.

It’s almost spring

Eighteen-year-old Mikhail Kobrin, endowed with a unique, hypersensitive sense of smell, receives a disappointing verdict from a regional genetic center. He and his girlfriend, Katya, are deemed biologically incompatible and will never be able to legally have children together. In utter despair, Mikhail accepts an illegal, secret offer from scientist Edgar of the Temporal Institute. Edgar insistently asks him to find his biological son among thousands of teenagers using Mikhail’s phenomenal sense of smell. In exchange, the distraught scientist promises to secretly use a temporal probe to slightly alter the past of Katya’s ancestors at the end of the twentieth century and correct her genotype.

Mikhail successfully finds the right boy and then obediently travels back to 1992. In a dark autumn park, he eliminates his great-grandmother Katya’s annoying rival with a precise paralyzing blow, changing the course of history. Returning, Mikhail receives the coveted green stamp of biological compatibility. However, a devastated Edgar quietly reports that, due to this brutal meddling in time, reality has been completely restructured: his own son was never born. The tower of blocks has collapsed. Mikhail leaves forever for the waiting Katya, clearly realizing that they had mercilessly destroyed someone else’s life for the sake of their own momentary happiness.