Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

Even in her elated state, Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma could not help but shudder.

“When leadership is weak and ineffective. When it is invisible and unheard, why then a time must come for it to be replaced. That time has finally arrived. That time is now.” Tsar Lenin paused to let the applause roll over him. Then, gesturing for silence, he said, “A new compact must be made with the Russian people. You will give me your loyalty, your labor, your dignity, your bodies, your blood, your lives, your sons and daughters…”

His silence, though brief, seemed to stretch on forever.

“In exchange, I will take you in my hand, mold you together into one indistinguishable mass, and of this new matter create a single tool, a single weapon, a hammer greater and more powerful than anything the world has ever seen. This hammer I will bring down upon our enemies. Upon those who stand in our way. Upon those who are weak and traitorous. Upon all who oppose our greatness. Our armies will sweep across the continent and nations will fall before us. This will be only the beginning…”

The speech was quite literally hypnotic. Lenin’s actual words hardly mattered; the experience of solidarity they created was all. So intent was the baronessa on Lenin’s radiant vision of the future that she did not realize at first that the buzzing in her ear was Chortenko talking to her. With an effort, she managed to focus on his words. “. .. and in the morning, a private get-together at my mansion.”

She turned, astonished. “What did you just say?”

Chortenko stroked her hair. “The two of us, Baronessa, alone. I’ll show you my kennels.”

Darger and Kyril made a wide circumnavigation of the Kremlin, searching for an approach that was not blocked by prodigious crowds. But though they circled almost two-thirds of the way around the fortress, always there were impenetrable thickets of humanity in their way.

In Kitai-Gorod, they had just taken a shortcut through a narrow and lightless alleyway when someone-or something-came running up behind them.

Darger whirled about and then flinched back from an astonishing apparition: two people, one riding on the other’s back and clutching him so tightly that they seemed a single, if misshapen, two-headed creature. “Whoa!” cried a woman’s voice, and the chimera came to a halt. Its two faces were filthy with mud or worse.

“Don’t be afraid, sweeties,” the woman crooned. “Old Baba Yaga means you no harm. She won’t rip off your tongues and gouge out your eyes. She wouldn’t eat a fly.”

“Don’t believe her!” a man said in a terror-choked voice. “She’s killed two-”

But the warning was cut short. The man made a strangled noise. Then the grotesque figure collapsed into its component parts, the man tumbling down to the ground unconscious and the woman leaping free. “So much for him,” she said. “They have no stamina, these modern youngsters. It was the invention of fire that did it. Fire and edged tools have made them all as weak as porridge.”

Darger opened his mouth and shut it again.

“Alcohol?” Kyril said brightly, extending the bottle.

“Yes!” The alarming woman snatched it out of his hand. “And that rag you’re wearing as well.”

The kerchief whisked itself from Kyril’s neck. There was a long silence.

At last Darger said, “Are you in need of assistance, madam? Perhaps we can…” His voice trailed off. Waving his hands through the murk before him to make sure, he said, “She’s gone.”

“Good. That crazy bitch stole my bottle!”

“The chap she was riding seems not to be injured. His breathing is steady.” Darger examined the man’s face. “Huh!”

“Something wrong?”

“No, no, it’s just that I know the fellow. Well, he is nobody of any consequence, and so we may safely forget him.” He hoisted the dark form into a sitting position, and left the man leaning against the side of a building. Then he said, “Is there any approach at all we haven’t tried yet?”

“Well… There’s still the south wall. I never heard of there being a way in there. But what the fuck do I know?”

“If it’s a possibility, however remote, we must explore it. Diligence, Kyril! Diligence is all.”

Koschei sat on a wooden chair he had carried from his hotel room to a quiet spot on the Kremlin’s south wall, by the Annunciation Tower, smoking a pipe. His klashny was a reassuring weight in his lap. God was a burning presence in his brain.

He waited.

The strannik’s part in tonight’s activities was simple. When the demonic Tsar Lenin was safely in power, he was to give up his contemplation of the Moscow River and stroll across the Kremlin grounds to the ramparts overlooking Red Square. There, he would start shooting people at random. Meanwhile, from their perches atop Goom and St. Basil’s, Svarozic and Chernobog would do the same. This would create panic and help to trigger a riot that would quickly spread to engulf the city. Thus they would do their small bit to bring about the Eschaton. In all likelihood none of them would live to see God striding the streets of Moscow. But Koschei was confident that they would all die having done what piety required.

“You are silent,” observed the devil crouching at his feet. “We have nothing to discuss,” Koschei said.

“You were not always so reluctant to talk to us.”

“There was a time when I sought for grains of truth hidden in your lies, like a sparrow picking oats from a steaming horse-turd. This being my last night before my soul is translated into the afterlife, however, I prefer to spend my time in prayer and meditation.”

“There is no afterlife. You will die into eternal oblivion.”

“God says otherwise.”

“Where is this God? Show him to me. You cannot. The steppes of Russia are vast and empty. I crossed them on foot and he was not there. On my journey I killed every human being I encountered. Angels did not descend from the sky to stop me. The city of Moscow is thronged with people of every sort and not a one of them has ever met with God. The history of Russia stretches far into the past and there is in all of it not a shred of evidence for the existence of such an entity.”

“I feel His holy presence within me even now.”

“Your temporal lobe has been stimulated by drugs we provided you.”

“Intending evil, you achieve good. Such is the irresistible power of the Lord.”

“The power, rather, of self-delusion.”

Koschei frowned down at the scoffer. “Why are you even here?”

“At this moment, there are few places in Moscow that are safe for my kind. One of us died leading the uprising in Zamoskvorechye. When that happened, three of the remaining four deemed it best to leave our uprisings to continue on their own momentum. Only Tsar Lenin is still in public view.” “But why here? With me.”

“Does my presence offend you?” “Yes.”

“Then that is reason enough.”

Some time passed in uncompanionable silence. Then Koschei said, “What are you looking at so intently?”

The metal demon rose up on its haunches, like a hound. It pointed downward, across the road that ran just below the wall. A few scattered pedestrians, gray in the moonlight, hurried toward the gathering in the Alexander Garden. There were no carriages. “You see that small pump-house by the river?” It was practically invisible, but the strannik’s sight was good. He nodded. “It is built on the site of the ancient outlet of a hidden tunnel which leads into the Beklemshev Tower, and from there into the Terem Palace. Its existence has for ages been the subject of rumor and speculation, though most believe that it leads to the Secret Tower, and is in fact commonly held to be the reason for the tower’s name.”