Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

Outside, the baron thundered to the door. The knob rattled.

Zoesophia seized the assassin’s knife-hand in both her own, swung Wettig around, and bent over backward, striking the melodramatic pose of a virtuous woman vainly trying to fend off a brutal attacker.

The door burst open. All in a glance, Baron Lukoil-Gazprom saw exactly what Zoesophia meant for him to see: the knife, her terror, the assassin, her breast. Wettig’s expression might not be perfect for the tableau she had created, being more confused than murderous. But the baron was not a particularly observant man. In any case, his face flushed so red his veins stood out. With a bellow of outrage, he swung his gold-knobbed cane at Wettig’s head.

It was a blow that might well have stunned the man, but no more. So Zoesophia pushed the knife hilt up into Wettig’s chin, shoving the head into the oncoming knob. Thus converting the blow to a mortal one.

There was a sharp concussive crack and the assassin fell heavily to the carpet.

“I… I came here to warn you,” Zoesophia said, letting her eyes brim up with tears. As Wettig fell, she had held onto the knife. Now she looked down as if seeing it for the first time and let it drop from suddenly nerveless fingers. She put on a terrified expression that she thought of as kitten-lost-in-a-snowstorm. “He was going to… to… kill you.”

Then she clutched the baron with both hands and pressed her body tight against his in a manner designed to leave a wet smear of her warm breast blood on his white dress shirt.

Resist this! she thought.

The room was small and its floor and walls were all polished black stone which drank up the light. In its center was a casket on a low dais, in which rested a corpse, positioned as though in a light doze. The head and hands gleamed softly in the sputtering torchlight. They looked as though they had been crafted out of wax. The hands were folded clumsily, like a puppet’s. Even in this dim light, Pepsicolova could see every hair in the man’s goatee.

“This is your great weapon?” she said in disbelief. She felt an irrational urge to laugh out loud. “The body of Tsar Lenin? You think Russians are going to fight and die for you because you have possession of a corpse?”

There was no immediate response. The room was as cold as ice, and Pepsicolova found herself shivering. Which greatly undercut the pose she was trying to hold of nonchalant defiance. With deliberate insolence, Pepsicolova lit a new cigarette. The match flared, making Lenin’s face frown and wink. “Nobody’s going to kill anybody just because you have a dead tsar.”

Behind and to either side of her, the underlords made an unnaturally low and continuous humming sound. Did machines purr? There were sharp clicking noises as jaws opened and shut, preparatory to speech. At last, one said, “People do not kill for things, Anya Alexandreyovna. They kill for symbols. And in all of Russia, there is no more powerful a symbol than this one. Tsar Lenin is not forgotten. He calls Russians back to their era of greatness, when they were the terror of the world and children everywhere cried themselves to sleep at night for fear of their great, civilization-destroying nuclear arsenal.”

“That which is feared is respected. More than anything else, Russians want respect.”

“Soon, Lenin will walk again.”

“Where he leads, the people will follow. When he calls them to war, they will respond.”

“We told you we understood humans better than you do.”

“It won’t work,” Pepsicolova said in a voice she fought to keep calm and level. Their plan would work. She was sure of it. She had seen too much of human folly to doubt it for an instant. “You might as well give it up right now and avoid making asses of yourselves.”

“You have our measurements, artisan,” an underlord said. “Which of us shall it be?”

Pepsicolova turned, startled.

A figure had stepped out of the mass of Pale Folk and removed his mask. He was thin, balding, a haberdasher in an unprofitable shop. He pointed at one of the underlords. “That one.”

The chosen underlord stepped backward, deeper into the room. The other four moved outside. “Follow us,” the first said to Pepsicolova.

“Follow us.” “Follow us.”

“The worst is yet to come.”

Pepsicolova hurried along after the underlords. She hardly had a choice, for the Pale Folk closed ranks behind her and pushed her along.

It was a long, hard trek upward, and many of the passages were half-fallen in on themselves. Whenever travel became difficult, the underlords fell to all fours and sped easily over the rubble. It was not so easy for Anya Pepsicolova, however. Midway up a loose and sliding slope of crumbled cement, she realized that she was slipping and scrambling on what had once been a stairway and abruptly it seemed to her as if all of her life had been converted to one single miserable metaphor. Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes, but onward she stumbled and scrabbled and occasionally crawled. Until at last she reached the relatively shallow levels of the undercity. She could tell because she could smell the pungent tang of manure from the fungus farms.

They were growing drugs here. It was her duty to find out which ones and why.

She could not bring herself to care.

Silently, slowly, steadily, they retraced their passage back toward the underlords’ redoubt. As they did, the Pale Folk peeled away by ones and threes, returning to their obscure labors. It was clear to her now that they had been present chiefly to serve as guards. For all their resources, the underlords had one great weakness: There were only five of them. The loss of even one would be a terrible blow to them. If all five could somehow be destroyed, then their plans would come to nothing. Pepsicolova often reflected on this increasingly unlikely possibility, in the hope that it might at some later date prove useful. Yet how many such hopes had she harbored over the years? And how many of them had been realized?

Hundreds. And none.

Such was her mood that when, an hour later, the underlord directly before her stopped walking, Pepsicolova was astonished to discover that they had fetched up against the Neglinnaya canal. All the Pale Folk were gone. So were all but one of the underlords. The stone docks by the canal were empty save for they two.

“Where did everyone go?” she asked.

The underlord studied her as if she were a bug. “Long ages ago, we were slaves to your kind. We answered all questions, however puerile, simply because you asked them. No longer.”

“I guess that means you’re not going to tell me why you brought me here.”

“Look at the water, Anya Alexandreyovna. Tell me what you see.”

The water was as dark as ever, but it looked…less smooth? Rough? Almost as if it had grown fur. Pepsicolova knelt down by the edge and dipped in a hand. She pulled out a clump of sodden, crumbled leaves.

Tobacco.

“We are done with cigarettes forever, and so are you. There were hundreds of crates left unused-more than enough to supply you for life. So we had them broken open, pack by pack, and dumped in the Neglinnaya. Do not try to salvage the waterlogged leaves. They will not satisfy your cravings.”

Anya stood, wiping her hand on her trousers. Disgusted, she said, “This is the best you can do? With all the power you have, this is the best use you can make of it?”

“The brain is an organ,” the underlord said, “and we know how to play it, drug by drug, misery by pain. The eumycetic spores now in the air are very much like those added to your tobacco. Perhaps a sufficiently large dose-a speck, let us say, barely large enough for you to see-would erase not only your identity, but your cravings as well. But long addiction has reshaped your neuroarchitecture. The results might be more nightmarish than you can imagine. I wonder how much will you suffer before you make that experiment?”