Dancing with Bears

by Michael Swanwick

  Her only concern was finding more smokes.

  It was the most grotesque journey Kyril had ever made. The Pale Folk drove the underpeople before them like cattle, thrusting forward their fiery torches whenever their captives lagged. The scrawny denizens of the underworld, in their turn, capered and joked as they were prodded along. Somebody stumbled and fell and didn’t get up even when poked with a torch, so one of the Pale Folk stamped down hard on the fallen body, snapping the spine, and walked unhurriedly on.

  Great gusts of laughter swept through the throng like wind.

  Sickened, Kyril looked away. He was rapidly losing faith in Darger’s plan. Despite the man’s assurances, no chance to slip away had presented itself. Nor did it look like it was going to. They came to the collapsed end of the motorway and were herded through a side-entrance into a smaller tunnel, one lined with smooth ceramic tiles half as old as time. Here they were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder. Twice, they passed dark doorways. In each one stood one of the Pale Folk, torch in hand, preventing egress.

  Darger glanced over his shoulder and, taking in Kyril’s dispirited posture, grinned. Then the sonofabitch began to sing!

  “Do your hopes hang low? Have you no place to go? Then just keep your eyes open, and watch out for the foe. The race goes to the bolder so behave just like a soldier.

  For escape will never beckon, if your hopes hang low!”

  Kyril placed the beak of his mask up over Darger’s shoulder so he could be heard: “Stop singing like that, you madman!”

  Carelessly, Darger pushed him away. Then, changing his tune to a hornpipe, he sang:

  “Listen to me, if you want to be free, Says your only friend the madman. Your mouth you must shut or they’ll rip open your gut,

  Says Darger the musical madman.”

  Just then, the tunnel opened out into a foyer. Hallways led out from it, and there were faded signs reading SURGERY and X-RAY and OUTPATIENT REGISTRATION and LABORATORY and RADIOLOGY, with arrows pointing in different directions. Not all of the words or symbols made sense to Kyril, but enough of them did for him to recognize this place.

  It was a hospital. One that had not been used in a very long time.

  Clearly this was a revenant of some ancient defense installation, built underground to render it safe from the wars of the Preutopian era, with their explosions and great machines. Kyril had run across stranger things under Moscow and was not greatly surprised. Though he did feel a twinge of regret that he had not chanced upon this place earlier, when he could have scavenged it for things to sell on the gray market.

  The great river of incoming bodies here split into several streams. Kyril found himself carried along, like a cork in the current, down a hallway, up a set of stairs, and into yet another dim hallway. There the pressure eased somewhat as Pale Folk grabbed and pushed individuals into short lines before the open doors of what must have originally been rooms for the hospital’s patients. In each room were rotting gurneys. In some the Pale Folk were strapping their blissful captives onto them. In others, they were performing surgery. Without anesthesia, Kyril judged from the sounds he heard.

  “Go to the last room in the hall,” Darger sang, gesturing theatrically at the furthest doorway. Through it could be glimpsed, by the light of a single candle, a single figure bent low over a body that struggled and giggled and choked all at once.

  “The one that’s got no line at all. Do as I say, and we’ll be okay,

  We won’t ask her, we’ll unmask her and she’ll fall.”

  Lacking any plans of his own, Kyril shoved Darger before him, toward the final doorway. Luckily, there was a great deal of jostling and confusion in the throng. Some of the captives doubled over with merriment, overtopped, collapsed to the ground, and had to be goaded back to their feet. Others clung to each other to keep from falling. So he drew no particular notice. When they were in the near-lightless room, Darger slapped his knee, apparently overcome by some joke known only to himself and bumped the door half-closed with his bum. Straightening, he staggered backward, and the door slammed shut.

  The surgeon didn’t notice. With emotionless intensity, she was drilling a hole in the skull of a man who, for his part, was making a strangled, wheezing noise-though whether of pain or amusement, probably not even he could say. Darger raised his eyebrows and put a finger to his pursed lips. Obediently, Kyril stood and watched. He had seen some rough sights in his short life. Several steps of this operation, however, made him want to throw up.

  But at last it was over. The pale surgeon unstrapped her patient. She did not place a mask like her own on him. On a table by the gurney was a bowl of silver-gray marbles. She took one and stuck it in the man’s ear.

  The new unit of the Pale Folk stood up. His expression was blandly happy and perfectly without volition. He went to the door, paused briefly as if puzzled at finding it shut, then carefully opened it and left. Kyril kicked it shut again with the back of his heel, before any of the lost souls outside could start forming a new line before it.

  The surgeon looked at Darger and then gestured toward the gurney.

  Now Darger shuffled forward, smiling as if he wanted nothing more than to have his skull drilled through and his brain operated upon. When he was motioned to lie down, he giggled. Then he wrapped his arms about the surgeoness, holding her motionless. “Quickly! Remove her mask!” he commanded.

  Kyril did so. Soon, the surgeon was lost in whatever pallid shadow of joy the Pale Folk were capable of experiencing.

  Darger released her. Then, with a whimsical little flip of his wrist, he plucked two of the marbles from the bowl. He held one to his ear, and for an instant all amusement fled from his face. But it very quickly returned, and when it did, he offered the second marble to Kyril.

  Warily, Kyril raised the thing to his ear. Exit the room, a tinny voice said. Turn left. Follow the others to the Pushkinskaya docks.

  He whipped his hand away and stared down at the metal device. “What the hell?”

  “It is an ancient form of scrying or telepathy called radio.” Darger stuck his marble in his ear. “Well? Put it in, boy, put it in! Then we shall know exactly where the mysterious forces behind all this misbehavior wish us to go.” He winked in a comically exaggerated manner. “Knowing which, we can then go in the opposite direction.”

  Reluctantly, Kyril followed suit. Exit the room, the voice repeated. Turn left. Follow the others to the… Doing his best to ignore it, he said, “Tell me something.”

  “Anything, thou most inquisitive of underage ruffians! Anything at all.”

  “How do you know what to do? I mean, how can you? Everybody else, they’re so happy you can cut their throats and they don’t care. Hell, even I was like that after a few minutes. Without this mask, I’d be a giggling idiot. What makes you different from the rest of us?”

  “Ahhh, but you see,” Darger said, “I am a depressive. There has been many a morning when my life seemed so hopeless that I lacked the will even to get out of bed. Perforce, I developed the strength of character to confront the savage black dog of despair and get about my business anyway. Compared to that, ignoring happiness is a jolly walk in the park.” As if to demonstrate which, he began to skip in a little circle, clapping his hands rhythmically.

  “Stop that!” Kyril said.

  It was like following in the trail of a vengeful army. Everywhere Pepsicolova went, she found the remains of squats that had been emptied out by the Pale Folk. The cardboard shanties were all ripped open and their contents scattered and trampled underfoot. If there’d been a campfire, the meager treasures of the squatters had been piled atop it until it was smothered, leaving a smoldering heap of blankets and trash. The pettiness and pointlessness of this vandalism-by any human standard-told her that it had been done by command of the underlords.

  Pepsicolova scrabbled through the charred piles of clothing and the crushed cardboard boxes, but in none of them did she find what she was looking for.

  She was skulk
ing down a long, narrow passage, sucking on the butt of her final cigarette when a gingerly extended leg touched an invisible strand of barbed wire stretched knee-high from wall to wall. Cautiously, she knelt to touch it. Taut. Such a defensive measure meant that she was coming up on a settlement. So there would be a lookout nearby.

  Who would of course be incapacitated by whatever had rendered everybody in the City Below but Anya Pepsicolova and a few fellow tobacco addicts into giggling half-wits.

  She stepped over the wire.

  Something came slashing toward her out of the darkness. With the barbed wire behind her, she couldn’t move away from it. So she stepped forward, rising to grab the wrist and arm of her attacker just under the weapon and guide the thing down and to one side while she twisted frantically out of its path.

  Metal clashed on concrete, sending up sparks. Pepsicolova released her attacker’s wrist and kicked, sending the weapon clattering away.

  Then she had both her hands about a throat and was choking hard.

  Arms thrashed wildly, clawed at her face, tried to choke her in return. But finally the body went limp in her arms. Pepsicolova lowered it to the ground.

  Breathing heavily, more from the shock than the exertion, she searched out the weapon. It was a crowbar as long as her forearm that had been sharpened along one edge for most of its length. Nasty little bugger. She threw it away. Then she went back to the lookout she had throttled and lit a match so she could examine him. He was, she now saw, a weak old man with toothpick arms and a face as wrinkled as an apple in January. Harmless, so long as he didn’t catch you by surprise. Pepsicolova bent low over his foul-smelling, toothless hole of a mouth and could hear him breathing. So he was still alive.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

  There was an empty pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. In a nearby puddle formed by the slow drip of a leaky water paper, five cigarette butts floated uselessly. Pepsicolova chose to interpret this as a hopeful sign that she was getting closer to her goal.

  All senses alert, she continued down the passage. It dead-ended at the top of a rotting metal ladder that she doubted would hold her weight. Firelight flickered from below. Pepsicolova looked out and down into a large and irregular storage space hacked out of the bedrock and forgotten centuries before she was born.

  Some twenty feet below was a incongruously homey scene: A dozen or so men sitting on a circle of crates and rickety wooden chairs around a small campfire. A stretch of rock wall behind them had been covered with floral wallpaper. To one side was a clothesline hung with freshly washed trousers and shirts. To the other was a stack of scrap lumber and busted-up furniture for firewood. A wisp of blue smoke disappeared through a grate in the ceiling.

  Pepsicolova recognized the squat. It belonged to the Dregs-one of whose members she’d recently had to kill, just to get through their territory. They were all male (in Pepsicolova’s experience, there was something fundamentally wrong with any group that couldn’t attract a single woman, no matter how degraded), and they had a reputation for being completely mad. But they looked peaceful enough now. They were passing around a jar of what had to be bootleg vodka.

  Then the thing she had been praying for happened: Somebody got out a cigarette and lit it. He took a long drag and passed it after the jar.

  Pepsicolova’s nostrils flared. She recognized the smell. It was the real stuff!

  Even better, she could see a large stack of familiar white packs arranged neatly against the wallpapered bedrock. So they had tobacco to spare. Best of all, she’d dealt with the Dregs before, and instilled in them a healthy fear of her abilities. She could negotiate with them.

  Things were going her way at last.

  Which made it particularly ironic that the Pale Folk chose that very moment to attack.

  There was a sudden clanging of two metal pipes being repeatedly slammed together. It was obviously a lookout raising the alarm, for the men below instantly leaped to their feet and snatched up weapons. Pepsicolova saw one take the cigarette from his lips and ditch it in the fire. She could have wept.

  The clanging cut off abruptly. Pale Folk came running into the squat in force. There were at least eight of them for every one of the squatters. The Dregs, no cowards, ran to meet them.

  The fight itself didn’t interest Pepsicolova. She had seen enough gang battles to know that the side having the eight-to-one advantage (as the Pale Folk did) would inevitably win. However, she found it encouraging that the Dregs fought at all. The Dregs were mercenaries who had learned early that a captive could be traded for cigarettes, and had been ruthless enough in providing such captives to amass a fortune in smokes. Which in turn had, at least temporarily, bought them freedom.

  So much, Pepsicolova thought, for the notion that tobacco was inevitably bad for you.

  At first the advantage was to the Dregs. They had homemade blades and metal pipes. Somebody brandished what looked like a handgun. There was a flash of black powder and one of the Pale Folk fell.

  But the attackers had not come unprepared. Some of them carried a device that looked something like an atomizer in reverse, with a glass jar at the top and a bellows affixed to its bottom. Inside the jars was a fine black powder. When squeezed, the bellows emitted a puff of dry smoke.

  Perhaps it was a new drug. Or a dosage of the happy dust in such quantity as to overwhelm the Dregs’ resistance to it. In any case, those inhaling it instantly lost all desire to fight. In minutes the battle was over. The squatters, smiling happily, were prodded away. Three Pale Folk had been killed. Their bodies were left where they’d fallen.

  But before they left, the Pale Folk gathered up all of the Dregs’ possessions and threw them upon the campfire. It blazed up like a bonfire, so hot that its flames licked the blackened ceiling.

  Into this inferno, they threw the cigarettes. All that beautiful smoke went roaring up through the vent and away.

  …13…

  The Pearls Beyond Price were ready at last to fling themselves- gracefully, of course-at the feet of their noble bridegroom.

  Almost.

  The Neanderthals had drawn lots to decide who would stand guard outside the dressing room and which four would stand within, fetching and carrying for their charges. Enkidu, Beowulf, Kull, and Gargantua had lost. They watched, a little dazed, as fabrics, furs, and leathers flew through the air, silk stockings were donned and shucked, lips glossed in layers, eyelashes curled, nails buffed and painted and rebuffed, hair piled high and then brushed out flat again, perfumes sprayed, imaginary roughnesses pumiced.

  “Uh, maybe we shouldn’t be here,” Beowulf mumbled when Eulogia began applying blush to Euphrosyne’s nipples. I mean, you know…us being male and all.”

  “Oh, you don’t count!” Eulogia put down the makeup brush. “Are my elbows ugly? Be honest now.”

  “You’re perfect up and down, Missy. All this fussing and primping ain’t really necessary. Anybody would fall in love with you with just one glance.”

  “You’re sweet. What do you know?”

  The Pearls were determined that everything be just right. They started with tremendous natural advantages over other women, of course. But first impressions were important, so they had to be all things to the Duke of Muscovy simultaneously: demure and wanton, mysterious and straightforward, artlessly exquisite, calculatedly natural, strong and yet easily overmastered, spontaneous and aloof, docile and passionate, jaded, unspoiled, perfumed, unscented, submissive, and defiant. All topped off with a big fluffy dollop of innocence. The kind of innocence that secretly yearned to be taught all the corrupt and filthy things a man might want to do to a woman. Or, in this case, six.

  It was not an easy look to achieve.

  “Does this make my bottom look big?”

  “Oh, no. Well, yes, but in a nice way.”

  “Does this make me look sluttish?” “Oh, yes. But not in a nice way.” “Does this make me look like I’ve completely lost my mind?”

 
; “Um… in a nice way or not?”

  Also, everything had to coordinate with everything else. Many an outfit which any ordinary woman would have killed for had been donned and then ripped off and trampled underfoot because it clashed with another’s costume or because the shoes that were absolutely right for it simply wouldn’t go with the underwear.

  “Am I wearing too much jewelry?” “I don’t think such a thing is even possible.” “Yes, it is.” “But on her it looks good.”

  “Mascara! Must I wait?

  Gargantua lumbered forward with the tray of cosmetics. A hand whose fingers glittered with diamonds and whose nails glistened red as blood moved up and down the lines of delicate little pots, then waved them all away. “Not these mascaras! The ones I had made up to match my eyes.”

  “Those are mine, I think. But I don’t want them either.”

  “Is it too late to commission a new selection? It is? Well, perhaps I’ll just change the color of my eyes.”

  “Oh, but you mustn’t! Then I’ll have to change mine, and I just now got them to go with my hair and stockings both.”

  “No fighting, girls. Unless the duke likes that sort of thing. But even if he does, not now. Later.”

  “If he wants me to fight, I’m going to need a completely different set of makeup.”

  There were other considerations as well. “How does this look?” Olympias asked, and the others paused to critically examine an outfit that showed enough of her to hold any man’s interest but not so much as to make her look as if she were trying to do so. It dazzled the eye without drawing it away from her face. It clung, but not in a needy way.