Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

Worst of all, he could not appear in public. And a war-a true war, one involving millions-could not be fought with a leader who dared not show his face. The duke himself had confirmed this: Without a leader able to inspect troops, make speeches, and fire up the populace, the sacrifices required to raise an army of conquest simply would not be made.

No, the time had come for the duke to die. That had not been a part of Chortenko’s original plan. He had meant to let loose rumors that the duke had fallen ill, confirm those rumors, solicit the prayers of the Muscovian citizenry, declare a day of fast and penitence, orchestrate items in the newspapers: Doctors Fear Worst, followed later by Duke in Decline, a few variants of No Hope, Say Kremlin Insiders, a sudden and unexpected Miraculous Rally! and then at last Duke of Muscovy Dies, and Nation Mourns, and Succession Passes to Chortenko. After which, the still-sleeping former duke would have been quietly demoted to advisor.

However, his new friends were jealous allies, and viewed the Duke of Muscovy as a rival. The duke’s death was part of the price of their cooperation. Chortenko regretted that, for losing that brilliant mind would be a sacrifice equivalent to the slaughter of an entire battalion. But he was prepared to lose any number of battalions, if it meant gaining an empire.

“Just once, I would like… to see… my beloved city… of Moscow. I would be willing… to die… if that is what it cost.”

“Trust me, that will never happen.”

Chortenko descended from the dais with renewed confidence in the future. He rejoined his companions. Zoesophia’s expression was tense and distracted, as befit one who had just seen all her plans and future crumble before her face. Surplus looked unhappy and irresolute.

“This way,” Chortenko said, and led them down to the very bottom of the palace, to a door which none but he ever employed. “I told our driver not to bother waiting for us with the carriage. Instead, we will return through an underground passage that leads directly to the basement of my manor.”

Zoesophia nodded distractedly. She scowled to herself, lips twitching slightly, a woman in furious thought on matters that had little to do with her present situation. But if her reaction was disappointing, Surplus’s was not. He stiffened and looked about himself wildly, gripping his walking stick at its midpoint preparatory to using it as a weapon. His every muscle was tense. He was clearly terrified.

By prearrangement, six of the bear-guards closed ranks about the group.

At a gesture, Max unlocked the door. “After you, my dear Ambassador,” Chortenko said.

Surplus took a deep breath, and, when he exhaled, seemed to deflate. His shoulders slumped. His eyes dimmed and his gaze fell to the floor. All the fight had gone out of him.

With a shudder, he passed through the door.

Everywhere he went, Arkady was joyfully received. Women kissed his cheek and men hugged him fervently. Always he was urged to stay for a glass of tea or a shot of vodka. No one ever said aloud that an orgy might be in the offing, but the prospect was inevitably in the air.

Arkady would have liked to linger, but his holy mission would not allow that. He had to deliver rasputin to everyone on Koschei’s endless list-to noblemen, army officers, and heads of government agencies, to firefighters and police officers, to doxies and courtesans who snatched the vials from his hand, to hard men with prison tattoos on their fingers who slipped the drug into their pockets without a glance and soft men who received it with wondering eyes, to stock speculators and shopkeepers and dealers in fiery spirits, to priests and pharmacists and genetic surgeons, to college professors and unkempt poets, to night watchmen and munitions manufacturers and private security guards, to torch singers and dream-brewers and longshoremen, to parliamentarians in the Duma and bohemians in the Arbat and grim lords of biology in their cloneries just beyond the slums and brothels of Zamoskvorechye. Rumor of his sacred cargo had spread through Moscow like wildfire, so that to Arkady all the city was a sea of smiles and outstretched hands. His rented carriage sped from Kitai-Gorod to the slums of Gorky Park and as far out of town as the birch forests of Tsaritsyno. Everywhere, he dispensed his drugs like a fairy-tale prince scattering rubies, and was received with thinly disguised greed.

He felt like Grandfather Frost distributing presents to the children on New Year’s Eve.

It was exhausting work, but whenever he felt his energies flag, Arkady would open his walrus-hide satchel and plunge his face within, inhaling deeply of the air above the vials. Those microscopic fractions of the drug that had managed to slip past the wax seals would flow into his lungs and blood and brain and muscles, filling him with the strength and benevolence his mission required. It was nothing like the effects of a full dosage, of course, but it was sufficient to keep him going.

Periodically he returned to the New Metropol to refill his bag. Already he had given away far more of the drug than Koschei could possibly have brought with him to Moscow. Yet, like the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the more he gave, the more remained. It was a mystery as inexplicable and astonishing as the fact that God in His perfection should nevertheless love His flawed and sinful human children.

Or so it seemed. The mystery was solved when, coming back yet again to the New Metropol, Arkady saw two dead souls with albino skin and colorless rags for clothing leaving his suite. Their faces were lifeless, their bodies so thin he could not tell if they were male or female, and when they passed by him, Arkady caught a strong whiff of excrement. He entered the room and saw Koschei, Chernobog, and Svarozic prying open a newly delivered crate. Svarozic took the satchel from him and began methodically filling it with vials, straight from the crate, smiling beatifically all the while.

Arkady’s back ached just looking at the bag. All his good mood fled.

“This is too much!” he scolded. “There is enough here to drug every man, woman, and child in Moscow ten times over. Surely there is no need for it all to be distributed today.” He could not help thinking of all the beautiful young women in the city who were at this very moment giving themselves freely to everyone but him. Earlier that evening, he had turned down Yevgeny’s offer to help in the rasputin’s distribution, though it would have cut his time in half, because the task had been entrusted to him alone. Now he regretted that bitterly. “We should call it quits and start over again tomorrow.”

“It must be done today,” Koschei said, the God-light glowing in his eyes. His voice was low and thunderous, and when he spoke electricity seemed to crackle in the air about his head and beard. “Tomorrow will be too late.”

“What do you mean, too late?”

“Our labors are at long last come to fruition, praise God and all the Cherubim! For on this very day we will bring about the Eschaton and history will come to an end.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“No one can know what it means until it happens. We can only accept that it will.”

“I still don’t-”

“The Eschaton,” Chernobog said, “is the transcendent, uncreated, and spiritual apotheosis of humankind, the unending instant when the finger of God touches the Earth and all the immanent and phenomenal world is swallowed up in such wild glories as are experienced in each and every instant by the saints in Heaven.”

“But what are you talking about? What will it look like?” “You will know it when it comes,” Koschei said solemnly. “Yes,” Chernobog said, “and it will come soon.”