Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

“Then you will simply have to live without the knowledge.”

The five underlords were very still for the length of a very long breath. They were communing, Pepsicolova suspected, by means of that ancient necromancy bearing the unlikely name of radio. At last the first underlord lowered its arms so that she would have an unobstructed view of the ruins of its face and said, “Shall we show her?”

“She will not like what she sees.”

“It will cause her great mental distress.”

“It will fill her waking hours with despair and her sleep with nightmares.”

“Follow us, Anya Alexandreyovna.”

The underlords led Pepsicolova down a series of corridors and through the great room where cigarettes were deconstructed, doctored, and repackaged. But the crates of cigarettes had been cleared away, along with everything else connected with that enterprise. Instead, the Pale Folk were lashing tight bundles of straw to sticks, creating something like a cross between a besom and a broom. These were dunked repeatedly into cauldrons of liquid paraffin, kept warm by small fires underneath, and then carefully set aside. Others were cutting and sewing leather into narrow curving cones as long as a human forearm, with straps and buckles at the open end. These they stuffed with dried herbs held in place by wads of cheesecloth.

A dozen or so figures already wore the leather cones strapped to their lower faces like masks. With the appearance of the underlords, the Pale Folk put aside their work and did likewise. Then they joined their masters, some before and some behind. One in ten of these bird-beaked homunculi picked up a torch and lit it from the warming fires. In solemn silence, they filed out of the great room, looking for all the world like some cultic religious procession out of the fevered hindbrain of ancient Rus.

“You’re making torches and masks now, instead of cigarettes.” Pepsicolova found this alarming on more than one level. “Why?”

No answer. “Do I need a mask?”

No answer.

They passed out of the installation. As they did, more and more Pale Folk joined the procession. They were a near-silent, shuffling mass, torchlit in outline, dark and unknowable at the core.

For over an hour, they passed through what, for lack of a better word, might be called farmlands. Here, passages and rooms had been filled with trays of human manure, on which grew pale blue mushrooms, tended by bird-beaked Pale Folk. The smell made Pepsicolova’s head swim, but she lit up a cigarette and the sensation went away. Occasionally, the underlords paused to hand something to a mushroom farmer. Maybe it was a vial. The torchlight was never steady enough for Anya to tell.

At last the subterranean farms were left behind. Down stairways and slanting passages the silent flow of bodies went, like an underground river seeking the center of the earth. Until, at a level far deeper than Pepsicolova had ever gone before, they came to a metal wall. In its was a crudely cut hole. Metal shavings littered the floor.

One at a time, the underlords ducked within. Pepsicolova followed. The Pale Folk stayed behind.

The space within was perfectly lightless.

Pepsicolova waited for her eyes to adjust, but they could not. She could sense the underlords to either side of her, but she could not see a thing.

“If you want to show me something,” she said at last, “you’re going to have to get one of your flunkies in here with a torch.”

“Ah, but first we must prolong your mental agony, Anya Alexandreyovna.”

“It must surely be excruciating already.” “But it can still get worse.” “Much worse.’

“Trust us.”

Silence stretched as taut as a violin string about to snap. Pepsicolova could feel the hatred crackling soundlessly in the air about her. It was almost a physical force. As was the conviction that she was about to be shown something unspeakable. The moment went on and on until, just as she was about to burst into hysterical laughter, one of the Pale Folk stepped into the room, bearing a torch.

“Behold, Anya Alexandreyovna, the weapon with which we shall destroy Moscow, Muscovy, and all Russia as well.”

Pepsicolova stared in disbelief.

Back in the Hotel New Metropol, Arkady found that he was still unable to purge the images from his mind. The things he had done! His stomach churned at the thought of them. Yet, at the time, his traitorous body had gloried in those filthy actions. “I don’t understand, holy one,” he said to Koschei. “There were men present and I used them as I would a woman. And I…” His voice thickened with shame. “I…I let them use me in the same manner.”

“Why does this puzzle you, my son?” “Because I am not…” “Yes?” “Not…well…one of them.”

“One of whom?”

Arkady blushed red as a beet and blurted out, “An ass-bender! Okay? I’m not a goddamned faggot!”

“The human body is a vile thing, when you reflect on it, is it not?” Koschei said. “An ancient prophet wrote that Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement-and what is that place of excrement but the Earth? The world is a dung heap, and those who crawl about on it are vermin who are fortunate only in that their stay upon it is brief.

“In such a world, the greatest blessing is never to have been born. Failing that, it is a short life. But it is not God’s will that we should escape His testing, and so there is Hell. All suicides go to Hell, and that wicked place is the most loathsome world in all existence. Which is to say that it is exactly like this Earth in every detail save one. This far from insignificant detail is that Hell is totally divorced from God. Is this not so?”

“So you have taught me, holy one.”

“How, then, can we tell that this world is not indeed Hell? From the fact that pleasure exists here, as it cannot in the Infernal Place. First and foremost, there is the experience of religious ecstasy, which is the highest of all pleasures. Second, there is the experience of being persecuted by the unjust, which is a pleasure second only to that of God’s presence. Very few are fortunate enough to experience the first or pious enough to appreciate the second. Yet there is also a third such proof, and that is the pleasure of sex, which is available to all. Though the deed be disgusting, the pleasure it engenders is pure. It comes not from the flesh, which is to be abhorred, but from the Spirit, which all human souls must embrace or be damned. Therefore, no pleasure is wicked or wrong or to be avoided, however much the mind may flinch away from it. Do you understand me, son?”

“Yes, kindly father.” “Then kneel and receive your blessing.”

Arkady complied. He closed his eyes and waited for the monk’s hand on his head. But it did not come. Instead, he heard the sound of Koschei’s robe sliding to the floor. Oh, he thought.

Surplus helped Zoesophia into the carriage and then went around to the far side and climbed in, leaving the footman to shut the door behind him. The interior was dark and snug, and the cushions deep and soft. There was not a hand’s-breadth of distance between the two of them. Yet Zoesophia held herself with such a frosty reserve that it might as well have been miles. The coachman shook the reins and the horses started off. “You are quiet today, O Dark Flame of the West.”

For a time, Zoesophia stared out the window at the passing buildings. Then, without turning, she said, “You must never touch any of the other Pearls.”

Affecting a wounded tone, Surplus said, “Madam, I am a gentleman! Which is as good as to say that I am a devout believer in serial monogamy.”

“In my experience, what a gentleman believes and what he does are seldom the same thing. But let me ask you this. Suppose you were to kiss one of my sisters-Olympias, let us say-ever so lightly upon her fingertips, and those fingertips did not blister. What do you think she would do then?”