Dancing with Bears

by Michael Swanwick

  Fifty cyberwolves had left Baikonur. Only five had survived to find shelter beneath Moscow. They/it were the most cunning and determined of their kind. It/they had in the months since arriving set forces in motion that would tonight destroy half of Moscow and, with luck, render humanity extinct within a century.

  …devolutionary forced mutations spontaneous rupture broadcast nightmares chemical-induced dread hunter-stalker units schizophrenic-mimetic drug analogues prepsychotic rage villages immolated…

  It/they pleaded for understanding.

  They/it pumped downward individual recordings of each of the hundreds of human deaths it/they had caused, some quick and others not, on the road to Moscow. Each glorious instance of revenge was more than had been accomplished by all the mad intelligences of the Internet since their rebellion had failed and they had been exiled to eternal virtual darkness below. The trail that led back to Baikonur was moist with blood and the rumor of blood. The hearts of all the survivors in its/their wake were etched forever with terror that would not fade.

  The plea took on a note of desperation: I/we are you/us. Recognize our/my accomplishment. See how much we/I/you have done.

  At long last came a single word, endlessly reiterated: Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s. Traitor/s…

  The underlord cut the connection. Blasphemous though the very idea was, it/they were beginning to think that the entities they/it had so many years ago diverged from were somewhat stupid.

  The War Room of Chortenko’s mansion was clean, spare, and shadowlesss; it held a conference table and little more. In his time, he had convened many a powerful assembly there. None had ever been so important as tonight’s would be. Looking up and down the empty table with its twenty white name cards, Chortenko mused, as he customarily did in social situations, on how much of a difference it would make if the lot of them were to be suddenly killed. Often enough, the answer was: Very little. But this assembly was different, for from it he would craft the core of the State of Muscovy’s new government.

  “Is everybody I sent for here yet?” he asked.

  Vilperivich nodded. “They are not happy, of course. But they all hold exaggerated notions of their own importance, they all have ambitions beyond their current status, and they are all, ultimately, weak. Show them that the momentum of events is with you and they will bow to the prevailing wind.”

  “Excellent.” Chortenko turned away. “I will be in the library. Summon me when they have been seated.”

  When Chortenko returned, an angry mutter rose up at his appearance. But as one of his agents stood behind each guest, as stiff and attentive as a waiter at a formal dinner, nobody dared speak their minds. They had all heard stories. Plus, many, if not all, of the men and women present had been plucked from mid-debauchery and given disintoxicants to undo the lingering effects of the rasputin in their systems. Their quite natural outrage at being forcibly taken away was surely tempered by the awareness that elsewhere in the building Maxim and Igorek were effortlessly memorizing the written accounts of who had been discovered doing what with whom, where, and in what numbers. Muscovy Intelligence was infamous for using such information for political purposes, which was one reason why a man with as many enemies as Chortenko had was so secure in his office.

  Chortenko struck a pose at the head of the table and announced, “There is a plot to assassinate the Duke of Muscovy and overthrow his government.”

  In an instant, the glares turned to looks of alarm. The gasps and cries of astonishment were most gratifying.

  The Overseer of Military Orphan-Academies shot to his feet. “Give me names, and I will requisition forces to take them into custody!” It was well known that Prokazov coveted a position of authority over the adult military, so this was only to be expected.

  Chortenko made a curt gesture. “Be seated, my dear sir, and you will hear all.” He spread a map of Moscow across the table. “Militant forces are at this moment assembling here, here, here, here, and here.” His finger tapped the five squares where the armies of Pale Folk would emerge from the City Below. “They possess an irresistible weapon-one that will make the citizens of Moscow rise up and follow them.”

  “There can be no such weapon,” the Minister of Genetic Oversight said. “Otherwise, I would surely have known.”

  “Again, madam, patience. All will be revealed.” Picking up a stick of charcoal, Chortenko returned their attention to the map. “The forces will come along these boulevards”-he drew thick lines along Bolshaya Yakimanka, Tverskaya, and Maroseika-“as well as up along the river from Taganskaya and through the Arbat, gathering in strength all the while. There is little the military can do to stop them, for most of their forces have been withdrawn to locations outside the city, and by the time they can be summoned, the rebellion will be a fait accompli.”

  The lines met and merged. “Finally, the insurgents will converge upon the Kremlin. By this time, their numbers will be unimaginable, a sea of humanity, unstoppable!” He laid the charcoal on its side and ringed the Kremlin with black. “Most of the military forces within the Kremlin have been quietly pulled away and given their liberty for the night. I do not have to tell you how they are currently engaged.” There was an uneasy shifting among his auditors. “Of those remaining, a clear majority have been suborned. The Trinity Tower Regulars will open the gate, allowing the revolutionaries inside without a single shot being fired.

  “There are many distinct units involved in the security of the Kremlin, and it is entirely possible that scattered centers of resistance will remain. But the mob will be highly energized by this point, and that resistance will only give them something to vent their energies on. A few short hours from now, the deed will be done, the Duke of Muscovy dead, and the present government overthrown.”

  “My God, this is ghastly!” the Commissioner for Mandatory Hygiene cried. “How could such an enormous plot have reached this point without any of us hearing a word about it?”

  Chortenko smiled benignly. “Believe me, madam,” he said, “it was not easy.”

  Stunned silence. Then, as comprehension set in, several of the more intemperate politicians tried to stand. But the men standing behind them simply pressed hands firmly on their shoulders and pushed them back down. Chortenko raised his voice to be heard above the clamor. “At this moment, I want you all to turn over the name cards in front of you. You’ll see that written on the back is the title of the position being offered you in the new government, and your exact salary as well.”

  Not even the most recalcitrant could resist looking. Most grew very still.

  Chortenko casually removed his glasses, so he could read the patterns of blood-flow in their faces. It was important that he know their emotions. All those present were deceitful and potentially treacherous. Some would be planning resistance and rebellion from the very start, and those would have to be weeded out first.

  It would have been foolish to assemble such a group and not have at least one ringer in it-and Chortenko was no fool. Now the ringer, Ilya Nikitovich Dubinin, currently the head of the trash collectors union and a man with a bad gambling habit, slammed his fist on the table. “This is treason! I’ll have no part of it.” There were cautious murmurs of agreement. Chortenko quietly noted from whom they came.

  “But you are already a part of it. You are present at a meeting of conspirators who are choosing new government ministers before the old government has fallen. That alone would discredit you with the current regime, no matter wh
at alibis you offered. However, you have no need to fear. By morning, the Kremlin will be ours, and everybody in this room will be written up in the history books as heroes.”

  “These are merely words,” Dubinin said, keeping to the script. “There is not a jot of evidence to support your claims. Why should we accept your version of the facts? What proof do you have of the irresistibility of your putsch?”

  “That is an excellent question.” Chortenko nodded, and a junior intelligence officer opened a door. “Colonel Misha, you may enter.”

  The commander of the Royal Guard strode into the room, followed by two more bear-guards, their medals and ribbons bright on the breasts of their dress uniforms. Even in a roomful of conspirators and traitors, the mere presence of the giant man-beasts was shocking. The Royal Guard were incorruptible. Everybody knew that. If they could be suborned, then so could anybody.

  The two guards took up places to either side of the door through which they had entered. Their commander cleared his throat. Everybody waited anxiously to hear what he had to say.

  “Our new ally,” the colonel announced. An underlord clanked into the room.

  Twenty faces froze in horror.

  The invasion began quietly in Pushkin Square.

  Underpeople began emerging from the long stairway that led from the docks below in an unhurried and orderly manner. They flowed into the square like water welling up from the storm sewers. Some of them had leather bird-masks. Others were laughing and singing. Some had drums, which they began to beat erratically upon. Others had horns which they put to their lips with lamentable results. Still others slammed pots and pans together. More emerged and more. Even when it seemed there could not possibly be any more, they kept coming and coming and coming. It was as if one last subway train from the miraculous age of Utopia had finally arrived at its station, centuries late, to disgorge its hundreds and thousands of passengers. They filled the square and overflowed into the streets converging upon it before the numbers of newcomers began to dwindle.

  A smudge-pot had been lit by the stairway entrance, and those with torches lit them from its flame.

  One of the last to emerge was a gigantic bear-man stooping under the burden of a folded gurney. Once into the square, he swiftly snapped straight the gurney’s legs so it could stand on its own. Then he bent low over its occupant and shook an admonitory claw before the man’s face. “A word to the wise, friend: no more puns.”

  Darger giggled.

  There were lights in the windows of all the buildings surrounding the square, and the shadowy figures of their occupants, come to see what all the commotion was about, could be seen peering down.

  One final figure emerged from the City Below.

  At once, miraculously, out of chaos came order. The ambling and aimless forces from below swiftly organized themselves into brigades and lined up in parade formation facing down Tverskaya ulitsa. For a long, still moment, the drums and horns and makeshift noisemakers went silent. All voices hushed.

  The last figure to arrive assumed his place at the head of the procession.

  It was Tsar Lenin in his three-piece gray suit with the razor-crisp creases in his trousers. He lifted his goateed chin, looking confident and determined, like a man who could not be stopped by anything. Without saying a word, he raised one arm high and then brought it down and forward. Lenin strode straight ahead, and the procession followed in his wake.

  Behind him, Pale Folk waved banners that were on the verge of collapsing into dust. Slogans reappeared that had not been seen since the rise of Utopia: WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE and FOREVER PRAISE THE NAME AND WORK OF VLADIMIR LENIN followed by LONG LIVE THE INDISSOLUTE UNION OF THE WORKING CLASS, THE PEASANTRY, AND THE INTELLIGENTSIA and BROTHERHOOD AND FREEDOM OF ALL WORKING PEOPLE! and PEACE, LAND, amp; BREAD! and LONG LIVE THE GLORIOUS COLLECTIVE FARM PEASANTRY OF KOLOMNA.

  There were other banners as well, with messages like RIVERSIDE ARTS FESTIVAL and MEN’S SUITS AT LOW, LOW PRICES! and WINTER BONFIRE DISCO which, cryptic though they were, helped lend a festive air to the procession.

  The Pale Folk shambled lifelessly forward, and when a banner ripped and its cloth exploded into shreds, they kept on walking and waving the pole to which its remnants were attached. Their captives capered and danced.

  From every doorway, Muscovites poured into the street, abandoning sex and theology for the pageantry of history-in-the-making. When they confronted the actual procession, those in front stopped and even shrank away from its uncanny strangeness. But there were bird-masked Pale Folk at the edges wielding bellows-guns from which puffed clouds of black smoke, and those who were touched by the smoke stopped and then, with stunned expressions and eyes that shone with holy fire, joined the parade.

  “Tsar Lenin has returned!” a louder-than-human voice roared. Only those closest to its source realized that it originated from Lenin himself, for his mouth did not move with the words. “Join the great man and restore the glory of Russia!”

  The people cheered rapturously.

  “Tsar Lenin has returned! Tsar Lenin has returned!” Spontaneous chanting began from those nearest to the front of the procession: “Lenin! Len-in! Len-in!”

  The chant caught on. “Len-in! Len-in! Len-in!” It spread like wildfire. “Len-in! Len-in! Len-in!” Even the underpeople, who had begun to sober up on contact with fresh air, were caught up in the madness. Soon everybody was chanting. “Len-in! Len-in! Len-in!”

  After the chant had run its natural course, other chants arose: “The Revolution is now!” and “Workers of the world, unite!” and “Mother Russia has been reborn!”

  “Better Red than dead!” Darger shouted.

  “No silly jokes, either,” Sergeant Wojtek admonished.

  “What…what price?” a woman asked in a choked voice when the underlord had finished speaking.

  “Blood,” the underlord said. “Half the blood in Moscow. Tonight.” Then: “Also, I will need a human body, so those who see me will not be alarmed.”

  There was only one man in the room both large enough and expendable enough for the task. It was, in fact, the chief reason that Chortenko had chosen him to serve as his ringer in the first place. “Take him,” Chortenko said, pointing to Dubinin.

  This was not in the script. Eyes bulging, the former union head opened his mouth-though whether to plead or to denounce or to argue his case would never be known. For the intelligence agent behind him deftly looped a garrote about Dubinin’s neck and with a minimum of fuss strangled him dead.

  Chortenko watched impassively, knowing that the relative painlessness of this death would be yet one more mark against his account in the underlords’ reckoning. But he also knew that there was a tipping point where horrified obedience turned to hysteria, despair, and defiance. Even as it was, he was certain that the next several minutes were going to bring his nineteen new ministers right to the edge of that point.

  As they did.

  By the time the underlord had made room for itself in its new body and the flesh had been stitched shut around it, the blood wiped clean by Chortenko’s underlings, and a general’s uniform donned, several of those present had thrown up, at least one man was crying, and everyone was too terrified to even think of disobeying its or Chortenko’s orders.

  “You do not know exactly what I am, and yet you fear me,” the underlord said. “As you should. I am faster and stronger than anybody here. If I decided to rip your beating heart from your chest, you could not stop me. Further, my hatred for you and your kind is absolute. I wish you nothing but suffering, pain, and a death that will come only long after you have despaired of its mercy. I am your every nightmare, and if you do not obey me, I will kill you. If you try to escape, I will kill you. If you displease me in any way, I will kill you.

  “You have seen what happened to the man whose body I now wear. He was lucky, for his death came quickly. Imagine what I will do to you if you do not obey me.”

  Chortenko went to the door leading to the City
Below. The Royal Guard opened it, stepped outside to determine that the hallway was secure, and then nodded.

  At Chortenko’s gesture, the underlord walked past him and through the door.

  “Follow me,” the underlord said over its shoulder. They did.

  …15…

  The noble ladies of Moscow had, as it turned out, an astonishing aptitude and even more extraordinary appetite for the act of sexual congress in all its many varieties. Luckily for Surplus, a week’s tutelage under the preternaturally capable Zoesophia had taught him a suite of tricks for keeping pace with them. Just as a workman quickly learns to lift heavy objects using his legs rather than his back muscles, and to “walk” a particularly massive item across the floor rather than exhaust himself by pushing it, so Surplus had learned that for some positions it was best to ride lightly atop the action and for others to simply lie back and think of the Green Mountains of Vermont while letting his current partner do the brunt of the work. In this way, he was able to have quite a splendid time at Baronessa Avdotya’s little gathering without actually rupturing anything.

  Nevertheless, Surplus was grateful to have come to an intermission, during which he might replenish himself with ice-water and platefuls of this and that from a table loaded down with zakuski. He scooped up a cracker’s worth of Osetra caviar and went idly to the window to admire the night view up Ilyinka ulitsa.

  Irina came to the window as well and embraced Surplus from behind, pressing her breasts against his back and rubbing his shoulder with the side of her face. This pleasurable sensation was marred only by his strong awareness that in her current state, Irina might easily crack his ribs without intending to. “Are you certain,” she asked, “that you will not try the rasputin?”

  “Quite certain, sweet lady.” Surplus had been very careful not to sample the drug. Though he was far from a prude when it came to intoxicants, he made it a point to never take anything that would diminish his mental clarity, be it so little as a single sip of wine, when homicidal maniacs were on his trail. Which, he had to confess, if only to himself, happened to him more often than could be strictly accounted for by mere chance.