Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

A waiter held out a tray holding triangles of toast and an enormous bowl of caviar. “Beluga, sir?”

Surplus leaned forward and sniffed. “Why does this smell fishy? It’s clearly gone bad. Throw it in the alley.”

“But Excellency…!”

“Just do it,” Surplus said, pretending not to notice the shocked and amused reactions of those near enough to overhear.

At the far end of the ballroom, a newly built partition stretched from wall to wall. It was solid from the floor to waist-height and scrollwork filigree above, with a mesh screen behind it to ensure that nothing but air, sight, and sound could pass from one side to the other. Through it could be dimly glimpsed the alluring figures of the Pearls as they entered the space behind and peered about eagerly. There Surplus went.

“So these are the famous Russian women,” Olympias said. “They look like cows.”

“Compared to you and your sisters, O Daughter of Perfection, all women do. Though to be fair, those present are ministers and gene-barons and the like, along with their wives and husbands. No doubt many of them have daughters or lovers who are more fetching. In an uncultured and rough-hewn sort of way, of course.”

“Don’t,” Olympias said, “condescend.”

“Will the duke be here?” Russalka interjected.

“He has been invited, of course. Whether he will attend in person or not…” Surplus shrugged.

“I am avid to see him.”

“I am avid to do a great deal more than that with him,” Nymphodora added.

“We are all avid to begin our new lives,” Zoesophia said.“In fact, if we are not presented to the duke soon, I promise you that things will get ugly.”

“I shall of course make it my first priority to…”

“More ugly than you can imagine,” Zoesophia emphasized.

Surplus returned to his guests. It suited his purposes to meet the Duke of Muscovy, and the sooner the better. The ultimatum the Pearls had just issued did not bother him in the least.

Until, that is, he mentioned his errand to the Mistress of Protocol, and she burst into a short, sharp bark of laughter. “The Duke of Mus-covy-here? Whyever in the world would he come here?”

“He was expressly invited.”

The State Mistress frowned like a bulldog. “The duke never responds to invitations. It would be absurd. They are all discarded, unread. That is, in fact, a significant part of my job.”

“Then allow me to seize the opportunity, since you are here, of arranging a private audience. I am most eager to meet him.”

“Meet the Duke of Muscovy! My dear Ambassador, nobody can meet that perfect man! Oh, such underlings as are ordered to his chambers to receive orders or offer accountings. And Chortenko, of course. But the duke does not socialize. Nor does he see foreigners of any ilk.”

“But, you see, it is my duty to give him a present from his cousin the Caliph of Baghdad, which is of such surpassing-”

“Yes, yes. I’m sure it’s wonderful. If you leave it with the Office of the Treasury, they’ll give you a receipt, and it will be put on display in the Cathedral of the Dormition for a month and then relegated to storage.”

“This is not the sort of present that-”

“Exactly.” The minister turned away.

Minutes later, Count Sputnikovitch-Kominsky shook his head sympathetically. “You’re in something of a fix, young fellow. The duke is no ordinary ruler, you see. He thinks of nothing but the good of the state, and he engages in no activities other than its governance. He never leaves the Terem Palace in the Kremlin, nor does he ever see guests. Even I, who am of an old family and have served him well, have never laid eyes on the great man.”

“All the more reason for him to accept this gift! Too much work will dull even the sharpest of minds. An hour spent with only one of the Pearls of Byzantium would be as good as a month’s vacation. A weekend with all seven will make a new man of him.”

“Give up this mad ambition. Chortenko himself could not arrange it.”

So it went. General Magdalena Zvyozdny-Gorodoka shook her red curls with disdain. The Overseer of Military Orphan-Academies smiled pityingly and made little tsk-ing noises. “Ridiculous!” snapped the State Inspector of Genetic Anomalies. Nobody thought it even remotely possible to arrange a meeting with the duke.

Surplus was beginning to feel baffled and frustrated when a stocky man wearing dark blue-glass spectacles and trailed by two dwarf savants approached him and said, “You are a very clever fellow, Ambassador.”

“How do you mean?” “The business with the samovars.”

“Eh?”

“For a feast celebrating the opening of an embassy, you knew that your guests would expect exotic foods and exotic drink. Obviously, you could not transport such quantities of provisions all the way across Asia Minor. So the food was prepared from local ingredients to Levantine recipes. That was simple enough. Even if the cooks got it wrong, who would know? But then there is the question of drink. You could not provide the fabulous story-wines of Byzantium, and the fantasies brought on by Georgian wines are so squalid they would make a cow weep. How then could you make mere vodka an experience worth telling one’s grandchildren about? Obviously, by being so extremely foreign as not to understand-or, rather, to seem not to understand-the nature of a samovar. So you are, at a minimum, clever. Later, you displayed a similar ignorance by sending away the only bowl of caviar I saw in evidence here. It is evident to me that these festivities have strained your budget. Therefore you economized, by means which lead me to suspect that you are downright devious.”

This struck too close to home for Surplus’s liking. But he hid that fact. “And who, sir, might you be?”

“Sergei Nemovich Chortenko. At your service.”

“I am Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux. An American originally, but now a proud citizen of Byzantium.” They shook. “I have heard much about you, Gospodin Chortenko.”

“I but serve a minor function at the Kremlin.”

“You are too modest. I am told that you are the head of the duke’s secret police, his chief wizard-catcher, and de facto inquisitor. Further, and not coincidentally, that you are one of the most powerful men in Muscovy and thus in all of Russia.”

“A glorified errand boy is all I am, really.” Chortenko shook open a handkerchief and took off his glasses, revealing the fact that he was bug-eyed. Surplus tried not to stare.

“I see you’re fascinated by my eyes.”

Indeed, Surplus was. The eyes were each hemispherical and, on examination, divided into thousands of glass-smooth facets. “Do they allow you a 360 degree field of vision? Or perhaps they help you make your way through the dark?”

“Perhaps. Chiefly, they ensure that I cannot be outstared,” Chortenko said. “I never blink, you see.” He wiped his eyes with the handkerchief and restored the glasses to his face. “Nor have I any need for tears. But you, obviously, have extra-species borrowings of your own.”

“Not at all. Though it was modified in various ways in order that I might move easily in human society, my genome is entirely that of the noble dog.”

“How curious. Why, exactly, was that done?”

“Such things are common in America.” Surplus coughed politely, to signal a change of subject. “On an unrelated matter, I wonder if-”

“I know what you are going to ask. But I cannot help you to see the duke. Consider that matter closed. However, perhaps I may be of assistance in other ways. I can, for example, help you to recover your book.”

“Book?” Surplus said blankly.

“The book that was stolen from you during the parade.”