Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

A crate of the re-rolled cigarettes was hammered shut. The new recruit joined in with several other Pale Folk, to carry it out the same door through which the crate had originally entered.

“Is this not the human condition?” Koschei asked. “An endless circle of meaningless labor joylessly performed deep underground, as far from the eye of God as it is possible to be. These lost souls are fortunate they are no longer self-aware.”

Svarozic nodded and piously rubbed the side of his head, where ancient scars commemorated an operation not entirely unrelated to the one just now performed by the Pale Folk. “Oblivion is preferable to awareness without God,” Chernobog agreed. “Yet I do not envy them their fate.”

“Nor should you, nor do I, nor would any man capable of better. By being so sinful as to get themselves in such a fix, however, these poor dead souls proved themselves worthy of nothing better.” Koschei turned away, dismissing their memory. “I believe it is time that I met these underlords.”

“Yes,” Chernobog said. “They are quite eager to meet you as well.”

Since Pepsicolova was uncharacteristically late, Darger had struck up a conversation with a tobacco factor to pass the time. The fellow was guarding a pile of crates in the basement corridor immediately behind the Bucket of Nails.

“The tobacco is brought in on wagon trains from the Ukraine by Kazakh traders,” the factor explained, “and rolled into cigarettes and packaged here in Moscow. My purchasers have several times tried to screw me into selling them the tobacco loose. But I tell them: Why should I give up the money? Do I look like the kind of dupe who would let silver flow into somebody else’s pockets?”

“Is there really such profit to be made from so impoverished a clientele?”

“Trust me, sir, there is. These ragamuffins and tatterdemalions may look half-starved to the casual eye, but they have all the money they need for those pleasures they deem essential. Nor is tobacco the least of it. I know for a fact that they buy various addictive and even poisonous substances as well, in bulk, and indeed there are rumors of underground farms where psychoactive mushrooms are grown upon beds of human manure. And yet some of them have the nerve to come up from their bolt-holes and beg on the streets and underpasses. Feh! They may not have the creature comforts of those who live above them, but neither do they sweat and toil as needs must decent folk such as you and I. Their lives are squalid but indolent, and they consider the attendant filth a small price to pay for the sybaritic ease of their existence.”

“But where do they obtain the money to pay you?” Darger asked.

“Who knows? Perhaps they deal drugs or sell their bodies to those depraved enough to desire them. Occasionally I have been paid in antique silver coins, doubtless from caches hidden belowground in times of trouble and never recovered by their rightful owners. It matters not to me, so long as the weight is good.”

The factor consulted his pocket-watch with just a hint of worry. “Whatever can be keeping my contacts? I have never known the Pale Folk to be late before.”

“That is the fourth time you’ve checked your stem-winder since we began talking. Are you pressed for time?”

“It is just that I have an appointment for which I would not care to be late.”

“Surely you can explain the circumstances.”

“Unfortunately, she is not the sort of lady who accepts explanations.”

“Ahh! I understand you now-this engagement is of an intimate nature.”

“Indeed,” the factor said glumly. “Or was.”

“Well, there is no problem here, then. I know the bartender at the Bucket of Nails and he will happily store your crates for a small desideratum. Come! I will help you carry them in.”

The factor consulted his watch again. “I should still be late, however, and believe me my tardiness would cost me dearly.” Then, with a touch of yearning in his voice.“Perhaps you would be willing to-no, of course not. It was irresponsible of me even to think of it.”

Darger’s instincts kicked in immediately.“I?! I am no longshoreman, sir! Nor am I a day-laborer to be hired off the street. I made my offer purely in the spirit of Christian charity.” He spun on his heel, as if to leave.

“Stay, stay, sir!” the factor cried. With sudden decisiveness, he quickly began counting out bills from his wallet. “You seem a decent sort. Surely you would be willing to help out one who is caught in the throes and tangles of something very much like love?”

“Well…”

“Thank you, sir. Your name, sir?”

“Gregor Saltimbanque,” Darger said. “Of the Hapsburg Saltimbanques.”

“I could tell that you were a gentleman, sir,” the factor said, pressing the bills into Darger’s hands. Then, over his shoulder, “I’ll be back in two hours-three at most!”

The carpenters were finally done with their work. Surplus poured them each a shot of vodka and together they toasted the new spiral staircase to the embassy’s roof and the equally new cupola at its summit. Zoesophia, he could see, was pacing back and forth, restless as a panther, behind the screen at the far end of the room. But as the Neanderthals would not let her cross to this side of it until all strange males were gone, that did not much concern him. “I shall instruct the treasurer to give you each a bonus of an extra day’s pay,” he told the workmen. At which good news, they all cheered him so heartily that he had to bring out the bottle again for a second and then a third round of toasts.

When finally Surplus had seen the men to the door, Zoesophia came sailing out of the women’s quarters, the Neanderthals retreating from the lighting a-flash in her eyes. “As your treasurer,” she said, “I am not going to pay a bonus to carpenters for a job they have already been paid for and that should never have been contracted for in the first place. Further, and also in my capacity as chief financial officer, it is my duty to inform you that we are out of money and living on several lines of credit, which are secured by property that has already been mortgaged three times over.”

“Which is precisely why I am so open-handed. Let once our creditors see us pinching pennies and they will lose faith in our financial stability.”

“Stability? We are living in a house of cards, ready to collapse at the least puff of wind, to which you have added a perfectly useless cupola!”

“Darling Zoesophia, you wound me grievously. Only let me show you what I have done and I am certain you will agree that it is money well spent.”

Zoesophia’s glare would have stunned a basilisk. “I doubt that very much.”

“Come with me and I promise that you will like what you see.”

He led her up the new staircase, and into the cupola at its top. There, he let down the trap and secured it with a latch.“So that we are not disturbed,” he said. Then he swept out a paw. “Is not Moscow beautiful from this vantage?” A mesh screen embroidered with colored wires in a pattern of green and yellow aspen leaves and fire-red feathers enclosed the cupola, allowing them to see with perfect ease while protecting them from prying eyes. The sun was sinking low in the sky, painting the clouds with oranges and purples that coming from any lesser artist than Nature herself would have seemed garish and obvious. Looking across the rooftops, they could see the Kremlin canted up out of a ramshackle sea of buildings, like a great ship just beginning to list before going under.

“I am strangely unmoved.” Zoesophia strode quickly around the interior of the octagonal cupola. Its walls were lined with cushioned benches, whose width invited lounging rather than sitting. She suddenly rounded on Surplus. “This is as good a time and place as any to have it out with you. You are going to see the Duke of Muscovy tomorrow. I am coming with you.” Then, as Surplus began to shake his head, “I warned you once that my sisters and I could make trouble for you. Yet you did not take me seriously then, and you do not take me seriously now.”