Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

“Ah me!” he cried. “Thou art not-no, thou canst not be my sire. Heaven such illusion only can impose, by the false joy to aggravate my woes. Who but a god can change the general doom, and give to wither’d age a youthful bloom! Late, worn with years, in weeds obscene you trod; now, clothed in majesty, you move a god!”

“You’re drunk,” his father said in disgust.

“And you were dead,” Arkady explained. He punched his father in the chest. “You should have taken me with you! I could have protected you. I would have thrown myself in the wolf ’s slavering jaws and choked him with my own dying flesh.”

“Take this fool away from me,” his father said, “before I do him a violence.”

In a kindly manner, one of his father’s new friends took Arkady by the arm. “If I may,” he said.

One shrewd glance told Arkady that the fellow’s face was covered with fur and that his ears, snout, and other features were distinctly and undeniably canine. “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,” he declaimed. “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!”

“Young sir, there is no need for this hostility.”

Arkady flung his arms wide.“You! hypocrite lecteur! mon semblable,- mon frere!”

“Come now, that’s much better,” the dog-man said. “Only, you must call me Surplus.”

Arkady smiled broadly and extended his hand. “And you in turn must call me Ishmael.”

The procession, merry as a holiday carnival, wound its way up twisting streets lined with sturdy log houses, all beautifully decorated with millwork in the Preutopian style. Which was, Arkady acknowledged, backward-thinking and anachronistic. Yet they were vastly more handsome than the modern one-room shanties inhabited by the poor, which were grown from the ground like so many fairytale gourds. So this was probably the best aspect of his hometown to show these strangers. The throng flowed upward, concluding at the very center and highest point in the town, atop what would not be deemed a hill in any place less flat than this. There stood his father’s stone mansion, the grandest house of all, a full three stories high and topped with peaked roofs and multiple chimneys, its walls blackened with time and soot and yet its interior gleaming bright and warm through the windows. It was surrounded by oaks at least a century old and had a courtyard sufficiently large to hold all three wagons and enough outbuildings to house the Neanderthals as well. So at least his father’s hospitality would not bring disgrace upon them both.

Three beast-men went into the house and disappeared there for a time. When they reappeared the first of them growled, “Safe.” Then he and his comrades intimidated all bystanders away from the first caravan, donned their silk gloves, and politely knocked on the door. They stood aside as it opened from within.

Arkady watched with intense interest.

One by one, human figures emerged. Though they were clad head-totoe in chador, their slim forms were undeniably female. A breeze rippled through the courtyard, pressing cloth to bodies, and every man present sighed. One of the townswomen spat angrily on the ground.

A grin split Gulagsky’s beard, and he nudged Darger with his elbow. “Oho! So those are your precious Pearls! They are your treasure!”

Darger pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing. “Alas, sir, it is only too true.”

“All this fuss over mere women?” Arkady’s father said with amusement.

“They are more dangerous than you think.”

“I have outlived two wives-I know exactly how dangerous women can be.” Gulagsky clucked his tongue knowingly. “Yet, as I am your friend, I must tell you. They are not the sort of present that is well calculated to make the duke feel indebted to you. Bringing beautiful women to Russia is like carrying leaves to the forest or salt to the sea. They are not likely to make much of an impression on the great man.”

“The Pearls of Byzantium are far more dangerous than ordinary women,” Surplus assured him, “and their beauty is such as to astound even a Russian. The Caliph’s geneticists have made sure of that.”

“Geneticists? You mean they were…?”

“Created to be perfect courtesans. Beautiful, intelligent, strong, passionate, and so designed as to have a natural talent for the erotic arts.”

“I fail to see why you look so glum. They may not be…romantically available to you, but still such women sound like they would be delightful company, as conversationalists if nothing else.”

“Sir, they are virgins,” Darger said, “and they do not wish to be.”

“Ahhhhhh.” Gulagsky chewed his beard silently for a moment. Then, almost reluctantly, he said, “My friends. In my experience, once a woman no longer wishes… When she tires of…Well, the battle is over, you see. The deed is as good as done. She will do what pleases her, and nothing can prevent it. Not locks, not guards, not sermons. If there is a one of your Pearls who is still a virgin, well, the night is yet young.”

“Ordinarily, yes, that would be the case. But-”

Arkady had paid only the slightest of attention to the conversation as the women began to float down from the wagons and pass into his father’s house. Now he stopped listening altogether. Three of the Pearls had emerged from the first caravan and two each from the other two, for a total of seven. Their walk was like music, and no two had the exact same rhythm. The last of them lifted the hem of her garment as she descended the wooden steps, revealing three brief flashes of ankle and calf. Arkady was far from a sexual innocent, and yet each glimpse was a hammer-blow to his heart. He made a small, involuntary noise in the back of his throat.

The woman turned her head. All her face was hidden, save for her eyes, which were green as jungles within which tigers lurked. The skin about those eyes crinkled up adorably, as if she smiled in amusement. Then the sorceress raised a graceful hand to her veiled mouth and mimed blowing a kiss.

With a saucy wink, she was gone into the house. Arkady clutched himself with both arms.

He was deeply, madly, hopelessly in love.

As soon as the young ladies and their luggage had been settled into the upper stories of the house, Gulagsky took over the management of the ground floor, thundering through all its rooms giving orders to the housekeeper, Anya Levkova, and her two daughters (each of whom, Arkady recalled with rue, had at one time or another reason to believe he felt something for her) and the neighbors who dropped in to assist and the workers from his factories-the lore distillery, the poetry works, the furniture workshop, and the various cloneries where lumber was grown to length, and sausage by the link-with equal high-handedness. He issued directions and then contradicted them, assigning a task to one man and then giving it to another before sending in Anya Levkova to take it away from both, and in general created such an excess of confusion that nobody but he understood what anybody was supposed to be doing.

“Your father is an extraordinary man,” Surplus commented when Gulagsky was out of earshot.

“He has often said so himself. I have lost track of how many times he has said, ‘I have taken a town and made of it a kremlin,’” Arkady said carelessly. “But it is true that without his leadership, there would likely be nothing here but ruins.”

“Nevertheless, he seems intent on creating anarchy.”

“Oh, that is entirely intentional. By reducing an enterprise to chaos my father places himself solely in charge of it, and that means more to him than anything he might possibly accomplish.”

“Yes, but surely this is a roundabout way of-”

“This is Russia-you mustn’t apply foreign standards of logic to it. Be patient, and things will turn out well enough.”