Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

Some twenty feet below was a incongruously homey scene: A dozen or so men sitting on a circle of crates and rickety wooden chairs around a small campfire. A stretch of rock wall behind them had been covered with floral wallpaper. To one side was a clothesline hung with freshly washed trousers and shirts. To the other was a stack of scrap lumber and busted-up furniture for firewood. A wisp of blue smoke disappeared through a grate in the ceiling.

Pepsicolova recognized the squat. It belonged to the Dregs-one of whose members she’d recently had to kill, just to get through their territory. They were all male (in Pepsicolova’s experience, there was something fundamentally wrong with any group that couldn’t attract a single woman, no matter how degraded), and they had a reputation for being completely mad. But they looked peaceful enough now. They were passing around a jar of what had to be bootleg vodka.

Then the thing she had been praying for happened: Somebody got out a cigarette and lit it. He took a long drag and passed it after the jar.

Pepsicolova’s nostrils flared. She recognized the smell. It was the real stuff!

Even better, she could see a large stack of familiar white packs arranged neatly against the wallpapered bedrock. So they had tobacco to spare. Best of all, she’d dealt with the Dregs before, and instilled in them a healthy fear of her abilities. She could negotiate with them.

Things were going her way at last.

Which made it particularly ironic that the Pale Folk chose that very moment to attack.

There was a sudden clanging of two metal pipes being repeatedly slammed together. It was obviously a lookout raising the alarm, for the men below instantly leaped to their feet and snatched up weapons. Pepsicolova saw one take the cigarette from his lips and ditch it in the fire. She could have wept.

The clanging cut off abruptly. Pale Folk came running into the squat in force. There were at least eight of them for every one of the squatters. The Dregs, no cowards, ran to meet them.

The fight itself didn’t interest Pepsicolova. She had seen enough gang battles to know that the side having the eight-to-one advantage (as the Pale Folk did) would inevitably win. However, she found it encouraging that the Dregs fought at all. The Dregs were mercenaries who had learned early that a captive could be traded for cigarettes, and had been ruthless enough in providing such captives to amass a fortune in smokes. Which in turn had, at least temporarily, bought them freedom.

So much, Pepsicolova thought, for the notion that tobacco was inevitably bad for you.

At first the advantage was to the Dregs. They had homemade blades and metal pipes. Somebody brandished what looked like a handgun. There was a flash of black powder and one of the Pale Folk fell.

But the attackers had not come unprepared. Some of them carried a device that looked something like an atomizer in reverse, with a glass jar at the top and a bellows affixed to its bottom. Inside the jars was a fine black powder. When squeezed, the bellows emitted a puff of dry smoke.

Perhaps it was a new drug. Or a dosage of the happy dust in such quantity as to overwhelm the Dregs’ resistance to it. In any case, those inhaling it instantly lost all desire to fight. In minutes the battle was over. The squatters, smiling happily, were prodded away. Three Pale Folk had been killed. Their bodies were left where they’d fallen.

But before they left, the Pale Folk gathered up all of the Dregs’ possessions and threw them upon the campfire. It blazed up like a bonfire, so hot that its flames licked the blackened ceiling.

Into this inferno, they threw the cigarettes. All that beautiful smoke went roaring up through the vent and away.

The Pearls Beyond Price were ready at last to fling themselves- gracefully, of course-at the feet of their noble bridegroom.

Almost.

The Neanderthals had drawn lots to decide who would stand guard outside the dressing room and which four would stand within, fetching and carrying for their charges. Enkidu, Beowulf, Kull, and Gargantua had lost. They watched, a little dazed, as fabrics, furs, and leathers flew through the air, silk stockings were donned and shucked, lips glossed in layers, eyelashes curled, nails buffed and painted and rebuffed, hair piled high and then brushed out flat again, perfumes sprayed, imaginary roughnesses pumiced.

“Uh, maybe we shouldn’t be here,” Beowulf mumbled when Eulogia began applying blush to Euphrosyne’s nipples. I mean, you know…us being male and all.”

“Oh, you don’t count!” Eulogia put down the makeup brush. “Are my elbows ugly? Be honest now.”

“You’re perfect up and down, Missy. All this fussing and primping ain’t really necessary. Anybody would fall in love with you with just one glance.”

“You’re sweet. What do you know?”

The Pearls were determined that everything be just right. They started with tremendous natural advantages over other women, of course. But first impressions were important, so they had to be all things to the Duke of Muscovy simultaneously: demure and wanton, mysterious and straightforward, artlessly exquisite, calculatedly natural, strong and yet easily overmastered, spontaneous and aloof, docile and passionate, jaded, unspoiled, perfumed, unscented, submissive, and defiant. All topped off with a big fluffy dollop of innocence. The kind of innocence that secretly yearned to be taught all the corrupt and filthy things a man might want to do to a woman. Or, in this case, six.

It was not an easy look to achieve.

“Does this make my bottom look big?”

“Oh, no. Well, yes, but in a nice way.”

“Does this make me look sluttish?” “Oh, yes. But not in a nice way.” “Does this make me look like I’ve completely lost my mind?”

“Um… in a nice way or not?”

Also, everything had to coordinate with everything else. Many an outfit which any ordinary woman would have killed for had been donned and then ripped off and trampled underfoot because it clashed with another’s costume or because the shoes that were absolutely right for it simply wouldn’t go with the underwear.

“Am I wearing too much jewelry?” “I don’t think such a thing is even possible.” “Yes, it is.” “But on her it looks good.”

“Mascara! Must I wait?

Gargantua lumbered forward with the tray of cosmetics. A hand whose fingers glittered with diamonds and whose nails glistened red as blood moved up and down the lines of delicate little pots, then waved them all away. “Not these mascaras! The ones I had made up to match my eyes.”

“Those are mine, I think. But I don’t want them either.”

“Is it too late to commission a new selection? It is? Well, perhaps I’ll just change the color of my eyes.”

“Oh, but you mustn’t! Then I’ll have to change mine, and I just now got them to go with my hair and stockings both.”

“No fighting, girls. Unless the duke likes that sort of thing. But even if he does, not now. Later.”

“If he wants me to fight, I’m going to need a completely different set of makeup.”

There were other considerations as well. “How does this look?” Olympias asked, and the others paused to critically examine an outfit that showed enough of her to hold any man’s interest but not so much as to make her look as if she were trying to do so. It dazzled the eye without drawing it away from her face. It clung, but not in a needy way.

Russalka walked around it slowly. When she had made one full circuit, she abruptly grabbed the blouse’s neckline with both hands and yanked. Olympias stumbled forward. “No good. If the duke seizes you passionately, it won’t rip off.”

Aetheria held up another blouse. “How about this one?”