Dancing with Bears

by Michael Swanwick

  Reaching up and behind her, she took Chortenko’s hand in her own, and brushed her cheek with it. Too fleetingly for the act to be noticed by the crowd, she kissed his knuckles.

  She could sense his astonishment.

  Good.

  “As of this moment, the Duke of Muscovy no longer rules.”Lenin’s words, simultaneously shocking and thrilling, threw the crowd into prolonged applause. He waited it out with stoic patience.“History has done with him. The people are in command and have chosen me to… They have chosen me to…” His words trailed off. Tsar Lenin peered quizzically at the crowd. Which was, the baronessa suddenly realized, behaving oddly. What had been a still lake of rapt faces was now in swirling motion. People were screaming. They were running, as if in fear. It took her a second to realize that they were not running away from the platform and its legendary speaker but from something behind and above them both.

  She turned.

  It had been hours since Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma had first taken the rasputin and, though it still made her hypersensitive to all matters spiritual or emotional, its embers were burning low. So she felt not raptured but horrified astonishment at seeing, looming up over the rally, the gigantic face and figure of an archaic giant. The body was perfectly formed in every way. But the light from an uncountable number of torches was reflected back from its tremendous face in a ruddy glow that made it seem to shift and glower. This was not the visage of an omniscient, all-powerful, and loving deity.

  It was the face of an idiot.

  The baronessa felt as if a curtain had been lifted, revealing a higher reality far vaster and more terrifying than the island of sanity on which she had unknowingly lived all her life. Then the monstrosity was upon her, its gigantic foot descending to crush the platform and everyone upon it. The baronessa had risen from her chair. She was frozen with fear and unable to move.

  Tsar Lenin inexplicably dropped to all fours. Then he leaped.

  The foot came down right atop him, crushing the tsar and smashing the platform to flinders.

  Then it was gone.

  When by slow degrees the baronessa came to, she found herself lying on the ground on her back. There were chairs and splintered wood lying atop her, pinning her down, and she seemed to be tangled in the bunting. But she managed to struggle free. Frantically, she began searching, more by touch than by sight, for Lenin’s body. Perhaps he had survived. Perhaps he could still rule. With a strength that might have come from the dwindling effects of the rasputin or might have been simple frenzy, she blindly flung planks and beams out of her way, digging through the rubble in search of her nation’s beloved leader.

  Lanterns moved slowly here and there. It seemed she was not the only searcher. The members of the new government had assuredly fled, of course, like the poltroons and weaklings they were. But Chortenko’s people remained, their pale faces floating over the rubble as they worked with quiet efficiency. So too did several members of the Royal Guard, looking like gray round-backed snowbanks whenever they bent low over the wreckage.

  “Here!” somebody shouted. There was the sound of an armful of planking being thrown to the side. “We’ve found him!”

  The baronessa scrambled over the debris to join the circle crouching about a small, still form.

  “Pick up the tsar,” Chortenko told two of his underlings. “Perhaps he can be repaired.” Which seemed to the baronessa an extremely odd choice of words under the circumstances. Then, when a nondescript barouche had been brought around, Chortenko said, “What is this thing? I sent you to fetch my own coach. Why isn’t it here?”

  The man he addressed looked startled. “You lent it to the Byzantine ambassador, sir. So we requisitioned a coach from one of your neighbors.”

  “Lend my coach? I never did any such thing. Who told you that?”

  “The servants back at your mansion. Ambassador de Plus Precieux told them you’d given him its use, and so of course they… Well, who would dare claim such a thing if it weren’t true?”

  Chortenko looked grim. “I will deal with this when there is time. Right now, lift Lenin into the coach. Baronessa, you will ride with us. The rest of you, stay here and do what you can to establish order.”

  In the barouche, Tsar Lenin was laid across the forward-facing seat with his head in the baronessa’s lap. The noble head was surprisingly heavy. The baronessa took one of his hands in her own and stroked it. The skin was unpleasantly waxy, and as cold as a corpse. “Oh, my beloved tsar,” she said, and began to weep.

  “Stop that,”Chortenko snapped. “He’s not dead yet. Paralyzed, yes. But look at his eyes.”

  The baronessa did. The eyes were slightly open and there was a faint light to them, though it was dimming. Lenin’s lips moved, almost imperceptibly. “Half a hundred of us started out from Baikonur,” he said in a faint voice. “Now but I remain. And soon there will be none.” His eyes moved slowly to focus on Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma. “You…”

  Deeply moved, the baronessa leaned close to hear the tsar’s last words.

  “You should…” Lenin whispered.

  “Yes?”

  “Eat shit and die.”

  By the time Darger and Kyril had made a complete circuit of the Kremlin, the Alexander Garden was nearly empty and they were able to simply stroll up the Trinity Gate causeway. Darger led, feeling infinitely self-assured, and Kyril followed, muttering resentfully. “This is as crazy as drinking piss,” Kyril said. “We’re walking into what’s gotta be the most dangerous place in all Russia for people like us, in order to grab some books? I mean, if it were, I dunno, diamonds or some shit like that, I’d understand. But books?”

  “Don’t hunch your shoulders like that,” Darger said imperturbably. “I know you’re feeling exposed, but it makes you look suspicious. We go this way.”

  “I mean, you’re smart and all, I get that. But you’re bugfuck crazy. I gotta wonder if you’ve let your brains go to your head.”

  “Kyril, rescuing even one of those books would give my life a meaning I never expected it to have. Plus, the right collector would pay a fortune for it-and I hope to leave with an armful.”

  “Listen, there’s still time to turn back.”

  “Here’s the Secret Garden. The tower should be visible just around this bend.”

  The path twisted under their feet and they turned the corner just in time to see the Secret Tower go up in flames.

  “Dear Lord!” Darger cried. “The library!”

  He started to run toward the tower.

  Darger had not gone more than three or four strides, however, when his feet were snatched out from under him and he crashed painfully to the ground. For an instant, all went black. Then, when he tried to stand, he could not. A pair of bony knees dug into his back and Kyril spoke urgently into one ear: “Get ahold of yourself. Those books are gone and tough shit about that.”

  But they-” Darger felt tears of frustration well up in his eyes. “You have no idea what has just been lost. No idea at all.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure I don’t. But you ain’t gonna rescue one fucking page of them by running into a goddamned fire, okay? Those books are dead and gone. There’s not enough left of ’em by now to wipe your ass with.”

  Darger felt something die within him. “You’re…you’re right, of course.” With an act of sheer will, he pulled himself together and said,“Pax. Uncle. ’Nuff. You can get off me now.”

  Kyril helped him up.

  “So what do we do now?” the young bandit asked.

  A furry paw clamped down on Darger’s shoulder. “Caught up t’you at lasht!”

  “Oh, dear.” Darger had not thought this evening could possibly get any worse. Yet now it had. “Sergeant Wojtek.”

  “You don’ know musch about the Royal Guard,” the bear-man said, “if you think a mere dozen drinks or sho can put one of ush out for the night.” His speech was slurred, but he looked to be as strong as ever.

  “Indeed, you are a most remarkable fellow
, Sergeant,” Darger said. “I will confess that if I absolutely had to be recaptured, there’s less shame in it for me to be recaptured by you than by some ordinary soldier.”

  “You can shtop with the flattery. Nobodysh buying a word of it.” Sergeant Wojtek carried the folded gurney under one arm. Without releasing Darger, he shook it open. “Now I’m going to shtrap you in again. If you coop’rate and don’t try to get away, I promish I won’t bite off your face. But if you mishbehave all bets are off. You won’t get any fairer deal than that, now will you?”

  Darger sat down on the gurney, swung up his legs, and then lay flat. “How on earth did you…? No, don’t tell me. You managed to pull yourself partially out of your drowse before I left the bar. Though you were unable to summon the sobriety needed to stop me, you heard me talking with Kyril and so knew where we were headed.”

  “Right in one.” Sergeant Wojtek tightened the straps, one by one. “Hey! Shpeaking of your young partner in crime-where ish he?”

  “While I was distracting you with conversation, he quite wisely fled.” Darger felt a little sad to reflect that in all likelihood he would never see the young lad again. But at least he could take some consolation in the fact that he had put the boy’s feet on the path to a respectable career.

  “Well, no big deal. You, however, have to be kept shomewhere shecure.” Sergeant Wojtek thought for a moment and then grinned toothily. “And I know jusht the playzsch.”

  Across the Kremlin grounds he pushed the gurney and through a field of rubble that led to the most extraordinary breach in the side of the Terem Palace. (Fleetingly, Darger regretted that from his prone position, he could not get more than a glimpse of it, and so the nature of the catastrophe that had created it remained to him a mystery.) Then, hoisting the gurney onto his back, Sergeant Wojtek made his way across uneven floors, down into the basement, and through a doorway, where he was finally able to set the gurney down again.

  “If you don’t mind telling me…where are we going?”

  “This tunnel leads to Chortenko’s manshion. Ish probably the best protected playzsch in the city, now that the Kremlin’s in sush bad shape. I’m going to bring you there and then shtand guard over you until Chortenko pershonally accepts you into hish cusht’dy.”

  Darger had been thinking furiously. Now he said, “Is that wise?”

  Sergeant Wojtek eyed him suspiciously. “Waddaya shaying?”

  “You noticed that the crowds had dispersed? That means the revolution has failed.”

  “Well…maybe.”

  “Not maybe, but certainly. There is, as the Bard put it, a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune. That tide has turned and left you stranded in the shallows, an easy prey for the warships of the regime you opposed.”

  Sergeant Wojtek pushed on in stolid silence for a time. At last he said, “You’re right. I’m in a terrible fiksh.”

  “I can tell you how to get out of it.”

  The sergeant stopped. “You can?”

  “Absolutely. However, in exchange for my advice, you must promise to free me.”

  “How about I shimply promish not to kill you?”

  “No good. Leaving me for Chortenko to find accomplishes the same thing and in a more painful fashion.”

  It took Sergeant Wojtek several minutes to think through his options. Then, placing a paw over his heart, he said, “I shwear on my honor ash a member of the Royal Guard. Are you happy now?”

  “I am. Now, what you must do is to quickly obtain a great deal of easily negotiated wealth-gold, jewels, and the like. Then, straightaway go to a hostler-roust him from bed, if you have to-and buy a sturdy coach and six of the best horses he has. He will overcharge you, but what of that? Your life is at stake. Flee immediately, without waiting for morning, for St. Petersburg. There you can easily book passage to Europe, where the remainder of your loot will allow you to live in comfortable anonymity.”

  Sergeant Wojtek snorted. “Yeah, but wheresh a guy like me going to come up with that kind of money?”

  “I believe you will discover,” Darger said, “that the Diamond Fund is, briefly, unguarded.”

  A wondering light dawned in the sergeant’s eyes. “Yesh,” he said. “It would work.”

  “Then you may release me, and we shall part as friends.”

  “Hah! Let a shlippery bastard like you free? Not a chansh.” Sergeant Wojtek turned away and started back up the tunnel, leaving Darger strapped motionless to the gurney.

  “You gave me your word as a member of the Royal Guard!” Darger called after him.

  “Chump!” the sergeant said over his shoulder.“I shtopped being a Guard the inshtant I made up my mind to deshert.”

  To be chosen for one of the Kremlin troops was a great honor for a Muscovite soldier and one that only the best received. However, when the naked giant came crashing through the government buildings, supernatural dread had gone before him in a great wash of terror. Warriors who would have stood their ground in the face of superior forces and fought to the death, broke and ran. Those charged with defending their nation’s very center of power scattered in a panic.

  In their wake, Surplus drove Chortenko’s blue-and-white carriage up the Trinity Tower causeway and parked it before the Armory.

  Surplus knocked hard on the door with the heavy silver knob of his cane. Then, when there was no response, he pushed the door open. “This way,” he said, and entered the unguarded building.

  Arkady followed a step or three behind him, carrying the carpetbag of makeshift burglar tools and from time to time murmuring, “the Duke of Muscovy,” in the manner of a man trying to keep in mind some desperately important fact or duty.

  The Armory had from Preutopian times been kept as a museum of Muscovy’s and before that Russia’s greatest treasures. There was much to see here. But Surplus moved swiftly past the larger luxuries and won-ders-the gilded coaches and carved ivory thrones and the like-straight toward the Diamond Fund. “Come briskly, young man. We might as well get some use out of you…as a mule, if nothing else.”

  “The Duke of Muscovy,” Arkady mumbled. He shivered convulsively

  “You’re cold! And your coat is sodden. Have you been rolling about in puddles?” Surplus removed Arkady’s overcoat and replaced it with a ceremonial greatcoat that was thickly woven, intricately embroidered, and worth a fortune in any bazaar in the world. “There. That will keep you warm,” he said. Then, “Dear Lord! That awful grimace! Every time I look at you it gives me a fright. Here.” Using his cane, he hooked down a medieval helmet with a serene silver face-mask from the wall. He placed it over Arkady’s head, cinching the straps with particular care to the lad’s comfort. “Now try to keep up. We haven’t much time.”

  Down the lightless gray halls they scurried, pausing every now and again so Surplus could pick a lock (the tools taken not from the satchel but from the pocket case, which he had planned to use at the Pushkin) and so select some choice item. It would have been easier to smash the glass of the vitrines. But that would have been vandalism, and Surplus was no vandal.

  Quickly, he loaded down Arkady with the best of what he saw: the Imperial Crown, which was covered with nearly five thousand diamonds and topped by a red spinel, the second-largest such gemstone ever found; Catherine the Great’s scepter, which contained the famously large Orlov Diamond; a jewel-encrusted armored breastplate that he didn’t recall having read about but which looked respectably gaudy; and much more as well. Arkady’s greatcoat pockets he stuffed to overflowing with cunningly made jeweled eggs.

  “Can you see?”

  “The Duke of Muscovy.”

  “Yes, yes, most admirable. I commend you for your sense of duty. Try to focus on the moment, however. We have serious matters which must be dealt with first.” Surplus heaped Arkady’s arms to overflowing with damascened swords, platinum goblets, jewel-hilted daggers and the like. For himself, Surplus was careful to keep his arms unencumbered and his wits sharp. But w
henever he came upon loose gems, he slipped them into his pocket, until he had a good solid handful.

  Arkady’s load would make Darger and him rich beyond belief. The loose stones were only insurance.

  A museum was a spooky place at night, lit only by bioluminescent columns. Those small random noises indigenous to any old buildings were all too easily assigned patterns by a nervous mind. So when Surplus, who was far from a coward, first heard what might have been distant footsteps, he ignored them.

  Then came the sound of breaking glass.

  Surplus froze. Someone else had entered the Armory with the same intentions as he, and had just smashed open a display case.

  Well, there was more than enough wealth here for two; it would take weeks and wagons to remove it all. But the very act of looting, as he knew from experience, excited greed. And greed made men violent and unpredictable. “We must leave now, Arkady,” Surplus murmured. “I want you to follow me as quietly as you can. Do you think you can do that?”

  There was no response. “Arkady?” He looked around for the boy. But Arkady had disappeared.

  …19…

  The Pearls’ grand procession was a grave disappointment. The streets were at first empty, and then they were filled with unhappy-looking people, all hurrying away from the heart of the city. None looked festive. Some carried torches, true, but they didn’t look like the sort who could be trusted with them. Nobody cheered or threw flowers. After a few tentative waves were ignored, the Pearls withdrew from their windows and sulked.

  When at last they pulled up before the Great Kremlin Palace, there were no musicians playing and no ceremonial troops to greet them. The plaza was eerily dark and still.

  “Where is everyone?” Nymphodora said, when the Neanderthals had helped them down from their coaches. Neat lines of streetlamps burned quietly over desolately empty spaces.

  “I dunno,” Enkidu said. “But if it was up to me, we’d turn around right here and now and go home.” He held up his hands to fend off the Pearls’ glares. “I know, I know! I was just saying.”