Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

Dmitri’s finger jabbed. “That one.”

Kyril turned the card over. It was a deuce. He flipped over a second card. Also a deuce. The red queen he turned over last.

“Here! Lemme see that!” Dmitri snatched up the red queen and examined it suspiciously. But as it was only a pasteboard card, there was nothing to be discovered, and so Dmitri returned it to the table.

But as he did, he bent up one corner of the card.

Kyril swept the ruble coin to the side, along with the bills, and began manipulating the cards again. He did not appear to notice that the queen had been altered.

Dmitri turned away to give the crowd a broad smirk and a wink. Then he dug deep into his pockets and came up with a grimy five-ruble note. “Here! This is all I got. Gimme one more chance.”

“Everyone’s money is good. We have a player. Five’ll get you ten, ten rubles for five. Watch the cards. The hand moves faster than the eye. Here’s the queen and over she goes. She dances with one, she dances with his brother. Everybody dances, everybody wins. Annnnd-make your pick!”

Dmitri pointed at the card with the bent corner. “That one.”

“Are you sure?” Kyril switched the other two around and then flipped up one. A black two. “Double your bet and I’ll let you choose the other card.”

“Naw. I want that one.”

With a shrug, Kyril flipped over the remaining two cards, showing the queen where his friend had pointed. Then he brushed two banknotes to the front of the table. Dmitri waved them triumphantly in the air and then, pocketing the money ostentatiously, swaggered off.

“Ten’ll get you twenty, fifteen thirty.” Kyril flipped the cards face down, face up, face down again. “Who’ll play, who’ll play? Thirty gets you forty, fifty a hundred.” The queen was still turned up at the corner.

“I’ll play!” A gent with gold-rimmed pince-nez fumbled several banknotes from his wallet and, face gleaming with greed, laid them down. “Fifty rubles says I can find the queen.”

“Everyone’s money is good,” Kyril said. “Here’s the queen, watch her go. She dances with the deuce, she dances with his brother…” As he slid the cards back and forth, he smoothed down the corner of the queen with his thumb, and bent up the corner on one of the deuces. Now all he had to do was let the mark choose the wrong card and sweep in the winnings.

“Caught you!” Muscular arms wrapped themselves around Kyril, holding him motionless. “You’re under arrest, you vicious little swindler.” It was a goat-and in uniform, too! How had the lookouts let him get so close without whistling a warning?

Looking wildly about, Kyril saw Stephan and Oleg, standing too close to have been doing their jobs, take to their heels. Saw, too, Lev snatch up the white cloth with all the money on it, and run as well. At least he was doing his duty. But that still left Kyril in the strong grip of the policeman.

“Lev!” he shouted. “Remember what you promised!”

But instead of throwing the money in the air, Lev clutched it tight.

“Lev!”

Kyril saw his faithless friend disappear into the crowd.

Desperately, then, Kyril snarled over his shoulder, “Get your mitts off me, you ass-fucker. I’m not gonna be your butt-boy, no matter how much you beg me.”

The goat’s ugly face twisted in outrage. He pulled back one fist to give Kyril a hard punch in the face.

But Kyril had a hand free now and that was all he needed. He plunged it into his pocket, pulled out the wad of money and, snapping the thread, flung it into the air.

Pandemonium.

Just as the Englishman had predicted, everyone-even the goat-was snatching at the banknotes fluttering down from above. Bodies slammed into bodies. Grown men crawled after bills lying on the ground. Somebody shoved somebody else, and fights broke out.

Weeping hot tears of anger, Kyril fled to freedom.

“They none of them stood up for me. Not Oleg or Stephan-hell, they was supposed to be keeping a lookout and didn’t. Dmitri wasn’t no use either. And Lev! I shouted for him to throw up the money, but did he? No. I fucking begged him. I got down on my fucking knees. He was gonna let me go to prison, just so he could keep a few lousy rubles!”

“You will remember that I cautioned you that your associates were of unknown mettle,” Darger said gently. He set down the Telegonia in order to give the urchin his full attention. “This is a hard lesson to learn at such a tender age, and yet a necessary one as well. Most people are untrustworthy and, as a rule, only in it for themselves. Better you know that now than not at all.”

“Well, it sucks!” Kyril said. “It sucks big fat donkey dicks!”

“Your bitterness is natural. But you must not let it distract you from learning your games.”

“Games! What good are games, if I ain’t got no friends?”

“No friends?” Darger said in a tone of mild astonishment. “Why do you think I’ve been teaching you a trade, if not out of friendship?”

“You’re just doing it so you can keep all these-” Kyril spat out the word as if it were an obscenity-“books.”

“Oh, my dear chap! You don’t imagine that I’ll be allowed to keep these books, do you? No, no, no. As soon as it is discovered I have found them, the Duke of Muscovy-or rather his people-will take them away from me. Nor will I be offered any sort of adequate recompense or reward. This is simply the way of the world. The strong take from the weak, and afterward they call it justice.”

“Then what the fucking hell are you doing here?”

“It would take some time to spell out the workings of the operation in which I am engaged. Suffice it to say that I have a trusted associate who will pretend to set a trap for me. The great powers of Muscovy will bait that trap with what I trust will be enormous wealth. And in the natural course of things, there will come a fleeting, magical moment when that bait is solely in my associate’s control. The rest, I trust, you can work out for yourself.”

“You’d better watch out your pal doesn’t grab everything and skip out on you.”

“My associate has proved himself a hundred times over. This is what I was trying to explain to you earlier: Not that friends are unreliable, but that a reliable friend is a pearl beyond price. I would walk through fire for him. As, I truly believe, he would for me.”

“Yeah, well, I ain’t walking through fire for nobody,” Kyril said intensely. “I’m not putting myself out for nobody ever again.”

“Then you’re not half the fellow I believe you to be. Incidentally, did you bring today’s papers with you?”

“Don’t I always? I set ’em down over there.”

“And there’s my proof! Even in your heightened emotional state, you have demonstrated your reliability. Look here. It is true that this is a very bad world. It is true that the strong feed upon the weak, and the weak feed upon each other. But not all the weak are content to remain so. Some few-such as you and I, Kyril, you and I!-employ our wits to better our lot and to regain some fraction of what was stolen from us long before we were born.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I shall be leaving you soon, and without so much as a word of farewell, as often is necessary in our trade. But before I do, I would like to impart to you a few words of fatherly wisdom. If…” Darger stopped, thought, and began again. “To do well in this world, this is what is required of you: First of all confidence, patience, and the ability to keep your head when those around you are mad with hysteria. You must learn to present a bland face in the presence of lies and hatred. Let others underestimate you. Take care not to look too good or to sound too wise. Spin dreams for others, but don’t get caught up in them yourself. Plan for triumph and prepare for disaster. There will be times when you lose all you have; pick yourself up and start over again, and don’t whine about it afterward.