Dancing with Bears

by Michael Swanwick

  He staggered to his feet. “My father!”

  The dirt square before the city gates was thronged when Ivan Arkadyevich Gulagsky rode through the great thorn-hedge wall into town with three brightly-painted caravans in tow, a mounted stranger to either side, and the battered remains of a cyberwolf dragged on a rope behind him. His back was straight and his grin was wide, and he waved broadly to one and all. From the rear of the crowd, Arkady scowled with admiration. The old blowhard knew how to make an entrance-you had to give him that.

  “Friends!” Gulagsky cried. “Neighbors! Townspeople!” Then he launched into a long-winded account of his exploits, to which Arkady paid little attention, for he was distracted by the sight of narrow win-dow-slides snapping open in the sides of the caravans. It was dark inside, but there was a shimmer of movement. What was in there? Prisoners? Animals of some kind? Freaks of nature or the gene vat? Arkady slipped lithely through the crowd, bent over almost double so as to avoid drawing attention, until he was crouching by one of the wagons, just beneath a slide. He straightened to look inside.

  A huge hand clamped itself over his face, and he was thrown back onto the dirt. He found himself staring up at an enormous beast-man.

  “Think you’re pretty cute, dontcha, chum?” the mountain of muscles snarled. By his accent, he’d acquired Russian from a tutorial ale. “Well, get this: You so much as touch the wagon and I’ll rip off your hand. Peek inside and I’ll squeeze both eyes out of your head and feed ’em to you for breakfast. Understand?”

  Arkady nodded meekly and made no attempt to rise as the behemoth strode scornfully away. “Things are in the saddle,” he muttered when he deemed himself safe again, “and ride mankind.”

  Poetry made all things bearable.

  But then a dark-robed figure reached down and effortlessly hauled Arkady to his feet. He found himself staring up into the fierce and unblinking eyes of Koschei, the strannik-wanderer, pilgrim-who had come to town out of the wastelands a few weeks ago and who so far showed no signs of ever leaving. This close, his body odor was overwhelming.

  “God does not love a cowardly little sneak,” Koschei said. “Sin boldly, or not at all.” Then he spun about, robes swirling, and thumped away, lashing angrily at the earth with the great staff he so obviously did not need for support.

  Arkady stared after him until the apparition disappeared in the crowd. Then he turned away and found himself face to face with his father, newly descended from the wagon and surrounded by men who were pounding his back and shaking his hand. A great surge of emotion washed through Arkady. He threw himself into his father’s arms.

  “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.”

  And indeed, in short order the pantry was cleared and made into a sickroom. Into it were brought first a featherbed, then the ailing Prince Achmed, and finally two long-bearded doctors.

  (“They are the best doctors in town,” Gulagsky remarked to Darger under his breath, “but only because there are no others.”)

  The doctors had scarcely closed the sickroom door behind them when two Neanderthals lumbered down from their post at the top of the stairs. “Only those who belong here can stay,” one announced.“Anyone who tries to go upstairs will be killed.” With a hulking menace that was perilously close to grace, they cleared the ground floor of all but Arkady and his father, the doctors, and his father’s two new friends.

  Finally, when this chore was accomplished and all was still, a third Neanderthal descended the stairs, followed closely by a dark panther of a maiden-tall, slim yet strongly built, with flashing gray eyes, ebony hair, and an imperious manner. Hers was a beauty so rare as to be encountered only once or luckily twice in a human lifetime. Being indoors and in a house, moreover, requisitioned specifically for her and the other Pearls-which made it, for the nonce, an honorary palace-she had discarded her chaste and concealing chador for the immodest and diaphanous silks of Byzantium.

  “Zoesophia,” Darger said warmly, though not, Arkady suspected, with total sincerity. “Your beauty dazzles our eyes and ennobles our drab and humdrum lives.”

  Zoesophia’s face was like finely chiseled stone. One of the Neanderthals grinned and cracked his knuckles threateningly. Unfolding a sheet of paper, the Pearl said,“I have compiled a list of a few small things we require. To begin, a basket of kittens, several packs of playing cards, balls of yarn in every color and seven pairs of knitting needles, preferably ivory, six dozen long-stem roses without thorns-”

  “Roses without thorns?” Darger asked bemusedly.

  “Nymphodora always manages to prick herself.” Zoesophia scowled as Surplus turned away, hiding his mouth with a hastily drawn handkerchief. “So there must be absolutely no thorns.”

  “I know where roses are to be found,” Arkady said. “Dark red, rich-scented, and in full bloom. I shall be happy to remove the thorns myself.”

  As if no one had spoken, Zoesophia continued, “We also require scented soaps, clothing such as fashionable Russian women wear, in a variety of sizes, at least three seamstresses to make adjustments, a cobbler-female, of course-to make us all new shoes, a balalaika, sheet music in both popular and traditional styles, and enough books to fill several shelves, on a variety of topics both frivolous and intellectual.”

  Gulagsky cleared his throat. “The only books we have are in Russian.”

  Zoesophia’s stare would have stunned a basilisk. “We all read Russian perfectly, thank you.”

  “That will require rather a lot of money,” Surplus observed.

  “I have no doubt of that. See that it is spent.” Zoesophia handed the list to the first Neanderthal, who handed it to the second, who handed it to Darger. Then she turned, revealing a back that was both wholly admirable and almost entirely naked, and ascended the stairs again, to the intense interest of all four men.

  Somebody sighed as the door closed on her perfect if thinly covered backside. There was a long moment of silence.

  “Well,” said Darger, when all had recovered themselves. “That leaves us with a problem. Our money is in a lock-box controlled by the Neanderthals, whose programming is such that they will not open it, however great the need, without explicit permission of the ambassador. Who is, I fear, in no condition to grant it.”

  “Whatever shall we-” Surplus began to say, when suddenly there came a great booming knock at the front door. It sounded like somebody was trying to knock it down with a sledgehammer.

  Arkady was closest. A little fearful, but determined not to show it, he unlatched the door.

  It swung open, flinging Arkady aside.

  Into the house, like a beast from the desert, strode Koschei, a leather pouch slung over his shoulder. When Magog, the Neanderthal standing guard in the vestibule, stepped into his path, he shoved the brute to the side. Leaning his staff against the wall so forcefully that it left a mark on the wallpaper, the strannik turned his dark glare on Gulagsky. “You have impaled the machine-beast on a sharpened pole by the city gate and left it there to rot,” he said.“Remove that ungodly abomination and throw its body into the fields outside the city to be eaten by ravens and crows.”

  Surplus gestured to Magog not to interfere. Gulagsky pushed out his chest. “I meant that to serve as a deterrent for our enemies, and I think-”

  “I do not care what you mean or think. I only care that you obey.” The strannik rounded on Darger. “I will see your prince. There is a service he must do me.”

  “Regrettably, that’s not possible.” “Nor do I care what you regret. He must take me to Moscow.”

  “It simply cannot be done.”

  “It will be done.” Koschei’s eyes blazed. “Moscow is the second Babylon, and this city of whores and heretics must be cleansed-with the word of God if possible, but if not, then with fire!”

  Surplus gestured toward the sickroom. “What my friend means is that the ambassador is not conscious. The doctors are with him now. But he is gravely ill, and I fear they can do him little good.”

  “Oh?” In three strides, Koschei was in the sickroom and had pulled shut the door behind him. Two voices rose in protest, but if the wanderer made reply, Arkady could not hear it. For several minutes the voices clamored louder and more agitatedly until suddenly the strannik emerged again, hoisting the doctors up by the napes of their coats, so high that their feet struggled and failed to reach the ground. One after the other, he threw them out the front door. Then he fetched their bags and
threw them after. Magog bemusedly closed the door on the two. “They are impious men,” Koschei said. “You can expect no good from them.”

  “Good pilgrim, I must protest!” Surplus cried. “Those men were needed to heal the ambassador.”

  “The power to heal him belongs to God alone, and from what I have seen of the ambassador, I do not think that Mighty Gentleman will deign to do so.” Koschei unslung his pouch and dropped it at his feet. “Yet I have medicines of my own, and I know much about the human body that your doctors do not. If you wish, I have every confidence that I can return this lost soul to consciousness for a time, so that he might put his affairs in order.”

  Darger and Surplus looked at one another. “Yes,” said one of them. “That would be desirable.”

  By now, Arkady was finding the conversation almost unbearably tedious. The Pearls required flowers! There was a girl who perhaps-he was ashamed to admit it, even to himself-still had reason to think he was romantically attached to her, and her mother grew the finest roses in town, great hedges of them. They would neither of them miss a few dozen, provided he was careful not to cut many from the same area.

  As he edged out the door, he heard the strannik say, “This will take some time. I will require your patience and your silence.”

  The town was much quieter when Arkady returned an hour later. So was the house. The gapers and onlookers had all retired for the night and there was only one dim lantern burning on the ground floor. On the front stoop, a small glowing coal and the smell of tobacco identified a great hulking shadow as a Neanderthal sitting guard, smoking a pipe. Yet the second floor was ablaze with oil lamps. The Pearls were apparently too excited by their release from the confines of the caravans to sleep. He could hear a sudden peel of girlish laughter, and then the screech of a heavy piece of furniture being drawn across a bare wood floor. The soft sound of bare feet ran swiftly from one side of the house to the other.