Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

“Put your clothes on,” she said.“Our story is that we stayed up all night negotiating. You, of course, gave in on every point. Don’t bother saying a word. I’ll take care of it all. Just keep silent and look hangdog. That shouldn’t be hard for you.”

Surplus obeyed without demur. This was, in Zoesophia’s abundant experience, how men inevitably reacted to being thoroughly bested in the sexual arena-with a quietly sulky submissiveness born of humiliation and the hope that it might happen again soon. It was such a primitive, animal response as to make her wonder if the old legend wasn’t true, that men-even dog-men-were descended from apes, while women were descended from the Moon.

Still, there was an amused glint in the corner of the ambassador’s eye that Zoesophia could not account for.

“Before we go down, let me see to your clothing.” With a few deft tugs, Zoesophia made Surplus look subtly bedraggled. “That’s better.”

“Shall I unlatch the trap door now?”

“What an extraordinary question.” Zoesophia widened her eyes in astonished hauteur. “I’m certainly not about to do it for myself.”

When Surplus and Zoesophia came down the spiral stairs-Zoesophia like a goddess floating downward to Earth and Surplus like a man cast out of Heaven-they found the Pearls waiting for them all in a row. Six hard stares of accusation and angry speculation formed a wall of resentful pique. Behind them, the Neanderthals shuffled in embarrassment.

“Well?” Russalka demanded. The word might have been carved from ice.

“Ambassador de Plus Precieux was a firm and energetic negotiator,” Zoesophia said solemnly, “and he held out far longer than I had expected him to. But in the end, I wore him down. His determination wilted while I was still prepared to go on for as long as it took. The results, I am pleased to report, were everything that might be desired.”

Russalka crossed her arms in a manner which would have thoroughly befuddled a male. “Yes, but what are they?”

“In brief, the ambassador and I are going to the Terem Palace together this very next Tuesday morning. We will meet in private with the Duke of Muscovy, at which time I will present him with whatever proofs it takes…” She paused for emphasis. “Whatever proofs it takes to convince him that he would be completely mad not to bring us all to his bedchamber before moonrise that night.”

The squeals of delight that arose from the Pearls were so shrill and prolonged that even the Neanderthals winced.

There were five underlords in all.

Though the bodies they inhabited were human, it was not difficult to detect the machines within, for they so despised the flesh they wore that they would not condescend to wear it well. Their metal parts were not proportioned properly for the bodies they had gutted for disguise, but they refused to alter those mechanisms, simple though that would be for them to do. Gleaming steel stuck through here a shoulder and there a cheek, and an alert eye could occasionally glimpse tiny sparks of electricity through an open mouth or an empty eye-socket. They hunched when they stood, glided with an unnatural smoothness when they walked, and folded their arms tidily up and together before them, like unused tools, when they were still.

Anya Pepsicolova knew immediately that something had gone seriously wrong when she showed up at the underlords’ conference room to discover all five of her inhuman masters gathered together to confront her. One was enough to conduct any business they might have. They showed up in force only when human suffering was in the offing.

There had only been one when she’d looked down from the Whisper Gallery not half an hour ago. She’d been kept waiting after she made her roundabout route to the underlords’ stronghold. Obviously, they had assembled for her.

She lit a new cigarette from the stub of the old one and flicked away the butt without bothering to put it out. The smoke helped, a little, to cover the stench of their decaying bodies. “You sent for me. You must have something to say.”

One of the underlords leaned forward over the ancient mahogany conference table, placing its hands flat on the smooth surface. The velvet hangings on the wall behind it had been ripped and shredded by time, and the clothes it wore were only slightly less tattered. Candles flickered in brass sconces which had once held electric lights, casting a meager and gloomy light over the scene.

Slowly the second underlord leaned forward, beside the first. Then the third, the fourth, the fifth. The first creature’s mouth clacked open and shut twice in its lifeless white face. At last it said, “Do you fear us?”

“You obey us.” “But obedience is not the same as fear.” “You must fear us.”

“Tell us that you fear us, Anya Alexandreyovna.”

“More than you can imagine,” Pepsicolova said insincerely. In fact, she did fear them-some. Only not as much as they required from her. Nobody who answered directly to Sergei Nemovich Chortenko could entirely fear demon machines that had stitched themselves into human corpses. They might be sadistic, homicidal, and driven by unreasoning and unquenchable hatred, but since it was their nature rather than their choice, they still fell short of absolute evil. That was only Pepsicolova’s opinion of course-but by now, she was something of an expert on such matters.

“If you truly feared us, you would be filled with dread and terror to learn that we no longer require your services.”

“But you find us faintly comic, do you not?”

“Terrifying but also laughable, in a bleak, nihilistic way. Do not try to deny it.”

“We understand human beings better than humans do themselves.”

“Nevertheless, you are indeed filled with dread and terror at the prospect of what we might do now that you are no longer useful to us.”

Pepsicolova drew deeply on her cigarette, buying time to think. She was sure she could kill one and with luck maybe two of the underlords, before the others could take her down. But never all five. Despite their grotesquely misshapen bodies, those things could be blindingly fast when need arose. She was as good as dead, if they wished her so. “This has something to do with the stranniks, doesn’t it? Something to do with the satchel of vials they brought you.”

The underlords grew very still. “You are bluffing.”

“Somehow you discovered that stranniks brought us a satchel of vials.”

“This would not be impossible to learn.” “Stranniks talk too freely.”

“What do you know about the stranniks?”

“Enough.” Pepsicolova blew a smoke ring at her interrogators. It floated almost to their faces before dissolving in the air. Making up lies at random, she said, “I’ve known two of them for years. The third I met only recently, but after I confessed my sins to him, he called me his ghostly daughter and swore he would be my guardian angel and protector in all things from that day onward.”

“This is consistent with the known behavior of stranniks.”

“Religion is superstition and stranniks are superstitious.”

“The feelings of superiority an older man would have, hearing in detail the socially unsanctioned behavior of a younger woman, would be conducive to his emotionally bonding with her.”

“Possibly they would then fornicate.”

“You will immediately tell us everything you know.”

“What’s my incentive?” Pepsicolova said defiantly. “Are you promising to kill me quickly and painlessly if I do?”

The first underlord pulled back, dragging its hands across the conference table. Steel claws left ten deep gouges in the wood. The others followed suit. “No, Anya Alexandreyovna, we will not. We hate you too deeply for that.”