Dancing with Bears

by Michael Swanwick

  Quartus: To do so in the fleeting hours during which Moscow’s guardians were distracted or off-duty would require some form of transportation. A saddle horse would hardly suffice, for it would too greatly limit the potential volume of valuables he could hope to snatch up. Therefore he needed a carriage. The baronessa’s troika no longer existed. So the question presenting itself was, where could he rent, borrow, or steal such a thing?

  He gazed thoughtfully after Lenin, striding confidently toward the speaker’s platform, where an uncomfortable line of dignitaries awaited him. One notable was conspicuous by his absence. Once brought to mind, however, he was the obvious solution to the problem now faced.

  Who else should Surplus turn to in time of need but his good friend, Sergei Nemovich Chortenko?

  As she rose up above the masses onto the platform, Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma had an epiphany. Everything she had ever done with her life-the parties and entertainments, the gifted and witty lovers, the clothes and crafts and furniture and houses that no merely wealthy woman could afford, in short everything-was a weak substitute for political power. It had never before occurred to her that the purposes to which her husband had devoted his life were anything other than a means to wealth. Yet now that she’d had the merest taste of it, she realized that power was good. Power was good and more power was better. She wanted all of it she could get.

  She wanted, too, the love and adulation that were raining down on Tsar Lenin at this very instant. And why shouldn’t she get it? She was still young. She was willing to work hard. She could learn to be ruthless. Her beauty would not hurt her, and neither would her wealth.

  Lenin could not live forever.

  He would need a successor.

  The new government of Muscovy, a line of mediocrities and dunces (Avdotya knew them all), sat on folding chairs along the back of the platform, looking neither happy nor comfortable. It was obvious that not a one of them would be there had they been given the choice. At their very center was an empty chair, which the baronessa took.

  Tsar Lenin had taken the dais. The mob went wild.

  He gestured for silence-once, twice, a third time-and then finally received it.

  “Comrades!” Lenin shouted. He then paused as a series of barrel-chested men in the blue-and-orange uniforms of the Public Address Service raised their megaphones and repeated his word one after the other, relaying it to the very back of the crowd. “The long, slow war for the unification of Mother Russia has been simmering for more than eight years. And as each year, as each month, as each day of the war goes by, it becomes clearer and clearer to every thinking mind that unless there are drastic changes, our country will not be reunited in our lifetimes.” After each sentence he paused, so it could be relayed throughout the Alexander Garden and from there to the crowds in Red Square and beyond.“It is becoming more evident by the day that the Duke of Muscovy moves our armies sluggishly from place to place, as if he were engaged in a game of chess. But war is no game! It is a terrible and desperate enterprise which, if we are to engage in it at all, were best gotten done and over with quickly.”

  Pandemonium. Lenin waited for it to subside.

  “The Duke of Muscovy hides in his palace in the Kremlin. Who has ever seen him out on the streets, inspecting his city, or his armies, or his navy? Moscow is burning, Russia is ablaze, the world stands on the brink of annihilation, and where is he? Where? He is in there!” Lenin made a quarter turn and jabbed his hand up at the Kremlin.

  “Why have we never seen him? Why does he not walk among us, reassuring us as only a supreme ruler can, sharing in our sorrows and rejoicing in our triumphs? We are born and he is not at our christenings, we marry and he does not attend our weddings, we die and at the funeral we are alone.”

  There was a ripple in the crowd which the baronessa noticed only in passing, as four more gigantic bear-men of the Royal Guard muscled their way through, escorting a slightly podgy little man wearing glasses whose lenses, seen by torchlight, were two cobalt disks.

  Chortenko.

  The head of the secret police came up on the platform and walked straight toward the baronessa. Leaning down, he said in her ear, “You have taken my seat, Baronessa. But no, no, no, you must keep it. I will stand here behind you.” He placed a hand on her shoulder.

  Even in her elated state, Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma could not help but shudder.

  “When leadership is weak and ineffective. When it is invisible and unheard, why then a time must come for it to be replaced. That time has finally arrived. That time is now.” Tsar Lenin paused to let the applause roll over him. Then, gesturing for silence, he said, “A new compact must be made with the Russian people. You will give me your loyalty, your labor, your dignity, your bodies, your blood, your lives, your sons and daughters…”

  His silence, though brief, seemed to stretch on forever.

  “In exchange, I will take you in my hand, mold you together into one indistinguishable mass, and of this new matter create a single tool, a single weapon, a hammer greater and more powerful than anything the world has ever seen. This hammer I will bring down upon our enemies. Upon those who stand in our way. Upon those who are weak and traitorous. Upon all who oppose our greatness. Our armies will sweep across the continent and nations will fall before us. This will be only the beginning…”

  The speech was quite literally hypnotic. Lenin’s actual words hardly mattered; the experience of solidarity they created was all. So intent was the baronessa on Lenin’s radiant vision of the future that she did not realize at first that the buzzing in her ear was Chortenko talking to her. With an effort, she managed to focus on his words. “. .. and in the morning, a private get-together at my mansion.”

  She turned, astonished. “What did you just say?”

  Chortenko stroked her hair. “The two of us, Baronessa, alone. I’ll show you my kennels.”

  Darger and Kyril made a wide circumnavigation of the Kremlin, searching for an approach that was not blocked by prodigious crowds. But though they circled almost two-thirds of the way around the fortress, always there were impenetrable thickets of humanity in their way.

  In Kitai-Gorod, they had just taken a shortcut through a narrow and lightless alleyway when someone-or something-came running up behind them.

  Darger whirled about and then flinched back from an astonishing apparition: two people, one riding on the other’s back and clutching him so tightly that they seemed a single, if misshapen, two-headed creature. “Whoa!” cried a woman’s voice, and the chimera came to a halt. Its two faces were filthy with mud or worse.

  “Don’t be afraid, sweeties,” the woman crooned. “Old Baba Yaga means you no harm. She won’t rip off your tongues and gouge out your eyes. She wouldn’t eat a fly.”

  “Don’t believe her!” a man said in a terror-choked voice. “She’s killed two-”

  But the warning was cut short. The man made a strangled noise. Then the grotesque figure collapsed into its component parts, the man tumbling down to the ground unconscious and the woman leaping free. “So much for him,” she said. “They have no stamina, these modern youngsters. It was the invention of fire that did it. Fire and edged tools have made them all as weak as porridge.”

  Darger opened his mouth and shut it again.

  “Alcohol?” Kyril said brightly, extending the bottle.

  “Yes!” The alarming woman snatched it out of his hand. “And that rag you’re wearing as well.”

  The kerchief whisked itself from Kyril’s neck. There was a long silence.

  At last Darger said, “Are you in need of assistance, madam? Perhaps we can…” His voice trailed off. Waving his hands through the murk before him to make sure, he said, “She’s gone.”

  “Good. That crazy bitch stole my bottle!”

  “The chap she was riding seems not to be injured. His breathing is steady.” Darger examined the man’s face. “Huh!”

  “Something wrong?”

  “No, no, it’s just that I know the
fellow. Well, he is nobody of any consequence, and so we may safely forget him.” He hoisted the dark form into a sitting position, and left the man leaning against the side of a building. Then he said, “Is there any approach at all we haven’t tried yet?”

  “Well… There’s still the south wall. I never heard of there being a way in there. But what the fuck do I know?”

  “If it’s a possibility, however remote, we must explore it. Diligence, Kyril! Diligence is all.”

  Koschei sat on a wooden chair he had carried from his hotel room to a quiet spot on the Kremlin’s south wall, by the Annunciation Tower, smoking a pipe. His klashny was a reassuring weight in his lap. God was a burning presence in his brain.

  He waited.

  The strannik’s part in tonight’s activities was simple. When the demonic Tsar Lenin was safely in power, he was to give up his contemplation of the Moscow River and stroll across the Kremlin grounds to the ramparts overlooking Red Square. There, he would start shooting people at random. Meanwhile, from their perches atop Goom and St. Basil’s, Svarozic and Chernobog would do the same. This would create panic and help to trigger a riot that would quickly spread to engulf the city. Thus they would do their small bit to bring about the Eschaton. In all likelihood none of them would live to see God striding the streets of Moscow. But Koschei was confident that they would all die having done what piety required.

  “You are silent,” observed the devil crouching at his feet. “We have nothing to discuss,” Koschei said.

  “You were not always so reluctant to talk to us.”

  “There was a time when I sought for grains of truth hidden in your lies, like a sparrow picking oats from a steaming horse-turd. This being my last night before my soul is translated into the afterlife, however, I prefer to spend my time in prayer and meditation.”

  “There is no afterlife. You will die into eternal oblivion.”

  “God says otherwise.”

  “Where is this God? Show him to me. You cannot. The steppes of Russia are vast and empty. I crossed them on foot and he was not there. On my journey I killed every human being I encountered. Angels did not descend from the sky to stop me. The city of Moscow is thronged with people of every sort and not a one of them has ever met with God. The history of Russia stretches far into the past and there is in all of it not a shred of evidence for the existence of such an entity.”

  “I feel His holy presence within me even now.”

  “Your temporal lobe has been stimulated by drugs we provided you.”

  “Intending evil, you achieve good. Such is the irresistible power of the Lord.”

  “The power, rather, of self-delusion.”

  Koschei frowned down at the scoffer. “Why are you even here?”

  “At this moment, there are few places in Moscow that are safe for my kind. One of us died leading the uprising in Zamoskvorechye. When that happened, three of the remaining four deemed it best to leave our uprisings to continue on their own momentum. Only Tsar Lenin is still in public view.” “But why here? With me.”

  “Does my presence offend you?” “Yes.”

  “Then that is reason enough.”

  Some time passed in uncompanionable silence. Then Koschei said, “What are you looking at so intently?”

  The metal demon rose up on its haunches, like a hound. It pointed downward, across the road that ran just below the wall. A few scattered pedestrians, gray in the moonlight, hurried toward the gathering in the Alexander Garden. There were no carriages. “You see that small pump-house by the river?” It was practically invisible, but the strannik’s sight was good. He nodded. “It is built on the site of the ancient outlet of a hidden tunnel which leads into the Beklemshev Tower, and from there into the Terem Palace. Its existence has for ages been the subject of rumor and speculation, though most believe that it leads to the Secret Tower, and is in fact commonly held to be the reason for the tower’s name.”

  “You know everything-and nothing. Why bring up this useless fact?”

  “Because there is a rider on the road.” “Oh?”

  “Traveling fast.”

  Koschei stood and fixed his keen eyes on the woman leaning low over her steed. Her hair flew out behind her as if her head were on fire. The horse was gasping and overheated. “You should be happy, demon.”

  The metal gargoyle did not look up. “How so?”

  “That woman is killing the poor beast with overexertion. Another dumb animal dead, and a soul on its way to Hell for her wicked deed. Surely that elates you.”

  “You know nothing of Hell. Is your klashny loaded?”

  “It is. Why do you ask?”

  “Because the rider is none other than General Magdalena Zvyozdny-Gorodoka. In the temporary web of alliances that we have woven, she is our common enemy. The only possible destination she can have is the pump house entrance to the Beklemshev Tower tunnel. The only possible reason for her to enter the Kremlin is to see the Duke of Muscovy.”

  “So?”

  “If she speaks to the duke, he will tell her of all our plans. Inevitably, she will demand to know how they can be thwarted. No one else could possibly answer such a question. Yet for the Duke of Muscovy, extraordinary feats of analysis are possible. I am instructing my brothers to hurry to his side and kill him first.”

  “That is hardly necessary,” Koschei said, rising from his chair.

  He raised his klashny and took careful aim.

  The first shot sent up sparks by the horse’s front hooves. A little too forward and several feet too low, then. The second shot disappeared into the night. Probably too high. But the third shot took the horse right in the chest. It stumbled and fell, sending the general flying.

  Koschei waited until she stopped rolling, and then placed eight shots in her unmoving body.

  The Pearls Beyond Price were finally, completely ready. Their clothes and jewelry were perfect from tiaras to slippers, and their hair and makeup were works of art. They looked each other over minutely and were pleased with what they saw.

  Then they had their escorts assemble before them.

  Enkidu saluted. “We got the six carriages lined up outside. Decorated with swags of flowers, the way you said. Plus the horses’ manes are all plaited and their hooves gilded too.”

  “It wasn’t easy painting them hooves either,” Atlas said. “They didn’t much care for it.”

  Making a dismissive gesture, Russalka said, “We’ve changed our minds. We only need three coaches. That way there will be one of us at each window to wave to our adoring subjects-to-be, whichever side of the street they happen to be standing on. You may send the others away.”

  “Are you planning on going out dressed like that?” Nymphodora asked.

  Enkidu looked down at his navy blue uniform. Behind him, the other Neanderthals stood fidgeting and shifting from foot to foot like so many schoolboys. “Well, yeah, kinda.” His voice fell. “Ain’t we?”

  Speaking one after the other, Eulogia, Euphrosyne, and Olympias said:

  “No. You most definitely are not.” “You must change into the new livery we had made up for you.” “Those lovely mauve-and-chartreuse outfits.”

  Gargantua looked stricken. “The poofty little hats, too?”

  “They’re called berets,” Aetheria said. “Yes, of course you do. It would hardly be a proper ensemble without them. They’re in that chest over there. Now-chop-chop!-strip down and get dressed.”

  Blushing, Magog said, “You mean… get naked… right in front of you ladies?”

  “Of course. We have to make certain you put the clothes on correctly.”

  “Don’t worry,” Nymphodora said, “you won’t be revealing anything we haven’t seen before. In our imaginations, anyway.”

  None of the Pearls smiled, exactly. But their eyes all glittered.

  The two underlords entered the Terem Palace by way of the long underground passage that led from Chortenko’s mansion. They had re-configured their bodies, reverting to four
legs, as though they were still cyberwolves. When they slunk into the Duke of Muscovy’s chamber, the last remnants of the Royal Guard raised their halberds in alarm. “Nobody is allowed in the Terem Palace uninvited,” one of their number said, his fur standing on end. “You must leave immediately.”

  “No,” one of the creatures said. “You leave.”

  “Or die,” said the other.

  This was not the first time the Royal Guards had met the underlords. Chortenko had arranged a series of vivid demonstrations in his basement, wherein one of their number had displayed its strength and speed upon selected political prisoners. Afterward, Chortenko had urged them to remember exactly how long it had taken those prisoners to die.

  By common consent, the bear-guards left.

  The underlords took up positions to either side of the duke, one by each ear. “Your guards have deserted their posts,” said one.

  “Your government is as good as fallen.”

  “Chortenko is in charge now. As soon as Tsar Lenin’s speech is finished, he will seize the Kremlin.”

  “There will be no resistance.”

  The duke’s noble face grimaced in agony. His great head turned from side to side. But of course he could not awaken, try though he might.

  “General Magdalena Zvyozdny-Gorodoka attempted to reach the Terem Palace in order to rescue you.”

  “You would have called her effort heroic.” “We had her killed.”

  “With her died your last chance of stopping the revolution.”

  “In gratitude for all we have done, Chortenko has given us permission to kill as many of your citizens as we wish tonight, in numbers up to half of the total population of your city.”

  “It is not enough.”

  “But it is a start.”

  The sleeping duke lifted one arm so that the back of it covered those eyes which had never once in his life been open. “No,” he murmured. “Please… do not.” It was clear he was trying to awaken and, as ever, could not.