Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

“Quite certain, sweet lady.” Surplus had been very careful not to sample the drug. Though he was far from a prude when it came to intoxicants, he made it a point to never take anything that would diminish his mental clarity, be it so little as a single sip of wine, when homicidal maniacs were on his trail. Which, he had to confess, if only to himself, happened to him more often than could be strictly accounted for by mere chance.

“I weep. I am desolate. I feel driven to the brink of suicide and other desperate acts. I may very well sulk. Half the evening you are a delightful partner, and yet-you waste the other half recovering your energy.”

“I am but a mortal, after all.”

“But you need not be. If only you would reconsider… Dunyasha!” she said, using the pet form of the baronessa’s name, “See if you can’t talk some sense into this dear, obstinate creature.”

Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma joined them, and Surplus turned so that they could all join hands (and paws) lightly, trustingly.“I honestly cannot understand,” the baronessa said, “why you would refuse an invitation to sample a substance that will give you direct and undeniable proof that an all-benevolent Divinity loves you intensely and personally. How can you possibly not wish to know?”

Which was another thing that surprised Surplus: that the ladies spoke rather more freely and often on the subject of God than a citizen of the Demesne of Western Vermont would think entirely proper to an orgy. Being an American, he was of course a deist, for, whatever their nationality, Americans were a rational people who prided themselves on their freedom from superstition. However, he did recognize that he was not in his homeland and that things might well be different here.

“Madam, no male gazing upon either of you as you are now could possibly doubt the existence of a benign Deity, nor fail to acknowledge the superiority of His or, as it may be, Her or even Its handiwork,” he replied gallantly.

“You are a terrible atheist,” Irina said with mock-sternness (but her eyes glittered merrily), “to speak of the living God in such cold and impersonal terms! I quake in fear for your immortal soul.”

“Impersonal? Why, the Supreme Being and I have always been on the best of terms. We understand each other perfectly. In fact, we have a gentlemen’s agreement, we two. I do not interfere with His running of the universe, and He doesn’t meddle with my little corner of it.”

“Oh, words, words, words! Your salvation will not be achieved with argument, I see now, but with action.” She brought her lips so close to those of her companion that when they moved to Irina’s ear, Surplus was caught by surprise. “Come, Irinushka,” she stage-whispered. “If the two of us cannot convert this rascal with all the passion and love at our disposal, then we must enlist help. I was thinking Serafima and possibly Elizaveta would enter enthusiastically into this worthy enterprise. Ksenija too. We shall make this infidel so ecstatic that he will stand in the crossroad and confess the goodness of God before all the world.”

“It is an inspired idea. But don’t you think the other men would object to his monopolizing so many women?”

“Oh, pooh on the men! They can watch. With any luck, they’ll learn something.”

That was the third thing that astonished Surplus: How unlikely enthusiasms would flare up and take over the ladies (and the gentlemen, too, he presumed, though he paid them far less attention) on an instant’s notice. In this way, if in no other, it was disconcertingly like being back among the Pearls again.

As the two hurried away, a man with a military bearing and an officer’s mustache paused in the replenishment of his glass of champagne, looked after their rumps with a little smile, and murmured, “Oh, Lord, get me behind thee.” Then, seeing he had been overheard, he raised the glass and said, “God is good, eh?”

“So I have been repeatedly assured, sir,” Surplus replied amiably.

He turned back to the window, pleasantly spent and more than a trifle bemused by the religiosity of his fellow orgiasts. Their evangelical mania, however, was a minor vice when held up to the commendable Christian charity with which they shared their bodies with whomever desired them. Surplus looked forward to the rest of the evening with glad anticipation, though he was certain that he would be wondrously sore come morning.

Then he saw the procession come flowing down the street.

A good quarter of the marchers held torches whose light bounced flickeringly off of waving red cloth banners, so that the procession appeared almost to be a river of fire. Then the sound of distant banging and blaring crossed the threshold of audibility, followed shortly after by the surf of human voices. As they came into focus, he saw that the marchers were waving their fists and chanting, and that many of them did not appear to be human at all.

“Huh,” he said wonderingly. “Will you look at this?”

Everyone gathered before the windows, a warm mass of naked bodies jostling together as comfortably as so many cattle in a barn. Hips bumped against hips, arms were placed about waists, and shoulders affectionately rubbed shoulders, without discrimination or preference for age, gender, or station. A strangely meaningful sense of community encompassed Surplus, a conviction that they were all of one flesh and shared a common self. The edges of the window panes glinted prismatically.

This was, the rational part of his mind argued, merely a contagious intoxication resulting from his inhalation of air tainted by the sweat or breath or other exudations of his drugged comrades. Nevertheless, he felt a genuine and abiding love for them all, and for the whole world as well. It hardly mattered whence it came.

Outside, the procession drew nearer. Surplus felt his eyes grow wide with wonder. In among the torch-carriers and banner-wavers were beggars and aristocrats, soldiers in uniform and unbloused bohemians, a white-clad giant or two, and great numbers of what looked to be some kind of chimeric bird-demons as well. As he watched, one of the banners suddenly disintegrated in a puff of red dust. Yet those carrying the staffs continued waving them from side to side, as if the banner were still there. Meanwhile, horn-blowers who could not play and drummers with no sense of rhythm filled the air with cacophonous noise.

It was a parade that would have dumbfounded Hieronymus Bosch. And, inexplicably, gazing down upon it, Surplus felt an internal tugging, a desire to add his small spirit to their turbulent river of souls. The sheer press of numbers called to him, much as a pebble streaking through space is drawn to a planet. He wanted to pour himself into their molten river of souls, to be melted down, lost, and mingled into their collective identity.

Windows slammed up and doors were flung open in the buildings that the procession passed by. People of all kinds poured out to join the march.

“He has come,” Baronessa Avdotya murmured. Her eyes glowed fanatically.

“Eh?” Surplus said. “Who has?”

“It does not matter. All that matters is that he is here at last.”

To Surplus’s bafflement, the others made noises of agreement, as if her cryptic statement had been a model of sense and logic. The baronessa pointed over the rooftops to a growing brightness arising in the distance, entirely distinct from the procession flowing by outside. “That is where he is now,” she said with inexplicable certainty. “In Pushkin Square.”

“We must join him,” Irina said.

“Yes,” agreed the mustachioed gent who, minutes before, had been admiring her bottom. “As soon as possible. No, sooner! We must go out into the street now, this minute. Where are my clothes? Somebody summon the serviles to find our clothes.”