Dancing with Bears

by Michael Swanwick

  The ambassador smiled beatifically.“My duty…is done.” Then he grew extremely still.

  Koschei leaned over the ambassador and placed his ear upon his chest. Then he straightened and, with his thumbs, closed Prince Achmed’s eyelids. “He is in Hell now.”

  “Well,” said Enkidu heavily. “I guess we got no choice here.”

  “Wait!” Darger cried. He lifted the orange paper from the ambassador’s chest. “I insist that you read the decree first.”

  The Neanderthal glared at Darger. “Pettifogger.” But he snatched up the paper and held it up to his eyes. His lips moved. At last he said, “Hey. This ain’t what the ambassador told you to write down.”

  “No, it is not,” Darger said. “Earlier today, at our direction, Zoesophia wrote out a deed of transfer on a sheet of smart paper. When she fell upon the ambassador’s chest, she was hiding it under her vest. It was the easiest thing in the world, then, for her to substitute the one document for the other. Prince Achmed placed his thumb not on a death-warrant, as he intended, but on a decree appointing a new ambassador in his stead.” He turned to Surplus and bowed. “Your Excellency.”

  There was a moment’s startled silence, and then spontaneous applause from all present-including even the Neanderthals. Several of them, indeed, were grinning widely, the first time Surplus could ever recall seeing them do so. Meanwhile, those locals standing near the windows were shouting the news out into the yard, so that there was a second burst of laughter and cheers. Gulagsky grabbed Darger in a bear hug and absolute strangers pounded Surplus on the back and shook his paw warmly.

  Then, when all was chaos and jubilation, a woman screamed.

  Voices hushed. Heads turned. In the center of the room Aetheria was staring in horror at her hand. On her wrist were raw red welts: some the exact size and shape of fingers and one that was the perfect image of a pair of lips.

  Into the horrified silence, Arkady stammered, “I…I only seized her hand and k-kissed the back of her wrist. I meant nothing bad by it. I was simply happy that she would live.” He glared about him. “Anybody else would have done the same!”

  “Oh, you fool,” Surplus said.

  It took some while to clear the house of all who did not belong there. By then, the Pearls were safely upstairs and the Neanderthals back on guard. Arkady had just been knocked to the floor for the second time by an angry blow from his father. There he lay, burning with anger and guilt and love-sickness.

  Surplus helped him to his feet. “Now you understand why we tried so hard to keep the Pearls away from men. They burn at our touch. The Caliph’s psychogeneticists implanted commands to that effect in order to preserve the young ladies’ virginities.”

  “They cannot be unfaithful to their intended groom,” Darger amplified. “Any male’s touch other than his, however light, blisters their skin. A kiss would char their lips to cinder. As for intercourse…well, they would be dead in minutes.”

  Koschei, who had been silent and watchful through the entire affair, now spoke. “I have salves that will heal the young woman. Though some discoloration may remain.”

  “Give them to the Neanderthals, who will pass them along to Aetheria,” Darger said. “You, being a man, cannot be allowed to touch her, of course, celibate though you presumably are.”

  Gulagsky sat down heavily in a green leather armchair and clutched his head in an agony of emotion. The others remained standing. At last he said, “Arkady Ivanovich, you are to be banished from your home for the period of one full year. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” The young man stood stiff and straight.

  “These fellows are going to Moscow. You will go with them.”

  “No,” Darger said. “That simply cannot be allowed. The young man is still in love with Aetheria and her presence will be a constant temptation to him.”

  “You think I would knowingly put her life in peril?” Arkady asked, outraged.

  “I think your coming with us would not be wise.”

  “It might not be wise,” Gulagsky said, “but it is the only option I have. These are dangerous lands, and it will be months before the next wagon train of traders stops here. If I sent him out alone, it would be to his certain death.” He bared his teeth furiously at his son. “Death! That is what you have been playing with, you blockhead! Oh, how could I have sired such an idiot?”

  “As the new ambassador,” Surplus said, “it is my duty to act in the best interest of my charges.”

  “One ambassador has already died in my house. If you do not do as I say, a second may well follow.”

  They stared at each other for a long time, until finally Surplus concluded that the man was adamant. “I see we have no choice,” he said with a sigh.

  “We will depart in the morning.”

  “And I,” Koschei said, “will come with you, to look after the boy’s moral education.”

  “Oh, for the love of God!” Surplus exclaimed involuntarily. But a dark look and a clenched fist on Gulagsky’s part silenced any further exposition.

  “Precisely.” Koschei smiled piously. “For the love of God.”

  The caravans left at dawn. In stark contrast to their festive arrival, nobody turned out to see them off. Darger and Surplus rode horses, while Arkady and Koschei strode along on foot.

  Surplus cantered back and glared down from his mare at the strannik. “This is all your doing, you rascal! You manipulated Arkady’s exile in order to force us to take you to Moscow.”

  “Blame God, not me. He has work for me there. He made it possible for me to go. That is all.”

  “Pah!” Surplus spurred his horse forward again.

  Not long after, the caravan trundled past the field where Prince Achmed’s body had been flung. Crows covered it, fighting for bits of flesh. Surplus turned away from the sad spectacle. Riding beside him, Darger said, “Wasn’t this the same field where the cyberwolf was supposed to be thrown?”

  “I believe it is.” “Then where is it?”

  Strangely enough, the corpse was nowhere to be seen.

  “An animal might well have scavenged the carcass,” Surplus suggested.

  “But then there would be machine parts left behind-as there are not. No man would desire such a thing, nor would anybody bury it. Who, then, or what, could have taken it away? It makes no sense at all.”

  The town-whose name, Surplus abruptly realized, he never had learned-faded behind them, and that for them was the last of Gorodishko. Save for one small incident, barely noticed and almost immediately forgotten.

  On a low hillock, far across the fields, a lone man stood in silhouette against the rising sun, watching them leave. Was it only Surplus’s imagination that, just before he disappeared in the distance, the man fell to all fours and trotted away?

  …4…

  The parade rumbled down Tverskaya ulitsa, as splendid as thunder and infinitely more costly. Three weeks the company had spent camped in the ruins of Rublevka to the west of the city while merchants and messengers came and went, lines of credit were established with all the major banks in Muscovy, an appropriate building was found for the embassy, and an entrance was prepared which, under happier circumstances, would have satisfied even the late, notoriously hard-toplease Prince Achmed.

  First came a marching orchestra, performing Ravel’s Sheherazade, followed by a brass band playing “The Great Gate of Kiev,” from Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky, so that the tunes tumbled over one another, clashing and combining in a way that suggested an exotic and barbaric music evoking both Muscovy and Byzantium. That was the theory, anyway.

  In actual practice, the music shrieked and disharmonized, cat-wailing and whale-groaning like the collective denizens of the Caliph’s House of Penitence and Forgiveness being taught to accept responsibility for whatever crimes they might eventually be accused of. The Muscovites loved it, however. It fit their conflicted ideas of Byzantium, which they despised as savage, pagan, and vulgar and yet whose heirs they considered
themselves to be.

  The parade included flightless griffins with gilded beaks and claws, spider-legged elephants, three-headed giraffes, and even a small sea serpent in a tank of cloudy water, all rented for the day from a local circus, whose tumblers, aerialists, and other performers had dug deep into their costume trunks to re-create themselves as Byzantine lords and courtiers. A team of African unicorns as white as bed sheets and bulkier than water buffalos pulled a float on which the Pearls Beyond Price stood, sat, or reclined, each according to her whim, wearing flowing silk chador in a variety of bright pastels, so that collectively they formed a sherbet rainbow. As modesty dictated, only their flashing eyes were left uncovered, but if a vagrant breeze now and again pressed the silk so close to here a breast or there a thigh as to leave no doubt of the sweet desirability of their bodies…well, it was a passing thing no man could be entirely sure he had seen in the first place.

  “I feel like Tamburlaine, riding in triumph through Persepolis.” Surplus threw a handful of chocolate coins wrapped in gold and silver foil from the window of his carriage. He wore a dazzlingly white turban such as would have been the envy of any Commedia dell’arte sultan, decorated with a tremendous glass ruby. The crowds cheered lustily at the sight of him and (thinking the coins real) dove frantically for the largesse he scattered.

  “It is fine, is it not?” Though Darger sat at his friend’s side, he leaned back against the cushions, in the shadows, in order to remain unremarked from the street. “Even Arkady Ivanovich seems to be enjoying himself.”

  He gestured toward the street ahead where Koschei and his young protege walked alongside the Neanderthals-who were, for the occasion, shirtless and snarling-ringing the float carrying the Pearls. Arkady smiled and waved broadly, while the older man thumped his staff on the paving stones, scowling his disapproval at the wickedness of the crowd.

  Abruptly, the strannik seized Arkady by the nape of his jacket, bringing him to a sudden halt. He swung them both about ninety degrees and strode into the crowd, pulling the young man after him. It was an uncommonly deft maneuver. Had Darger blinked, he would have missed it.

  “We appear to have lost our two charges.”

  “The ladies will most likely miss Arkady mooning about and singing love songs. The Neanderthals will surely be glad to see the last of him. And I…well, he was a likeable enough fellow. But as he spent most of his time huddled with Koschei, absorbing the pilgrim’s doubtless fanatical theology, I had no opportunity to form any great attachment to him.”

  “You sum up the situation succinctly. But now I see that the crowds are as large as they are ever likely to be. So I too must leave.”

  “Do you have the book?”

  Darger placed a hand inside his jacket. Then, with a roguish smile, he flung open the door and, brandishing the book high over his head, leaped free of the carriage. He plunged into the crowd and disappeared.

  Behind him, he heard Surplus shout at the top of his lungs, “Halt the carriage!” A quick glance over his shoulder revealed Surplus leaning far out of the open carriage door, an anxious arm extended toward the distant fringes of the crowd. “Stop him! Stop that thief! A hundred solidii to whoever returns me that book!” Then, in apparent response to the puzzlement on the faces of those nearby, “Ten thousand gold rubles! To anybody who restores to me that book, ten thousand rubles-in gold!”

  The crowd stirred and eddied. Men began to run where they thought the fugitive had gone. More joined them and, because not all were clear on who was being sought, fights broke out among them.

  But Darger had not fled. Immediately upon entering the crowd, he had stopped and turned to face the procession. He then took a few jostling steps to the side and there remained, craning his neck, as if he were just another citizen anxious to see the spectacle. The book he slipped back in his jacket. Darger was blessed with a forgettable face, and it was his particular genius to be able to fade into the background wherever he was. Searchers ran past him and he turned to gawk but did not join in the pursuit.

  Shortly thereafter, the carriage started forward again. Inside it Surplus sat, arms crossed, ostentatiously glowering and sullen. The procession continued down the street.

  After a while, the crowds broke up and dwindled away.

  Darger pulled a slouch hat over his head and joined the general dispersal. He walked randomly at first, choosing the shabbier streets over the better. Always he considered the bars, taverns, and unlicensed purveyors of basement-brewed beer. As he strode along, he casually drew a square of paper from his pocket, extracted two pills, and swallowed them. By the time he finally selected a low dive that looked particularly dreary and unattractive, his eyes had turned from gray to green and his hair was bright red.

  He went inside.

  Two or three broken-down rummies sat slouched in the gloom. A man who was no discernible improvement over them wiped a filthy rag over a filthier bar. Standing just within the doorway, Darger exclaimed, “Dear Lord, this must be the vilest and most squalid bar in all Moscow!”

  The bartender looked up resentfully. “This here’s a drinking establishment, bud. If you want the kinda bar where faggots sit around discussing philosophy and plotting revolution, you shoulda gone to the Bucket of Nails.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Darger said. “Could you tell me where I might find that august establishment?”

  Of all the places Koschei might have taken them, the most unexpected was this-a luxuriously appointed suite in the New Metropol, which even a provincial such as Arkady knew to be the single best hotel in Moscow. He watched in astonishment as liveried servants filled a porcelain bathtub with buckets of hot water, lit candles in the sconces above it, added scented bath oils, and deposited great fluffy stacks of towels on a stand alongside it.

  “I’ve sent for a barber and a tailor. You will need appropriate clothing if you are to move in the social circles your holy mission will require,” Koschei said.“Later this evening, one will come who will initiate you into the next stage of your religious education. But for now, relax. Wash off the stains of travel.”

  “Surely you should have the tub first, holy pilgrim.”

  “Pah! If the soul is clean, the condition of the body means nothing. I am in a state of perfect grace, and therefore it wouldn’t matter if I stank like a horse. Were I dying of leprosy, I would yet smell sweet to the nostrils of God. You, however, are weak of spirit, and so you must bathe. Do as I say. We have a great deal to accomplish, and I do not expect you will get much sleep tonight.”

  “Blessed father, you have not yet told me why we have come to Moscow.”

  “Later.” “And for that matter, however in the world are we paying for all this?”

  “Later, I said! Will you force me to beat you? Go! Bathe!”

  Lying in the warm water with soap bubbles billowing about him, Arkady felt as though he had fallen into a fairytale. He floated in a golden dazzle of comfort and luxury. Surely in the real world, pilgrims did not treat outcasts so? Koschei had spoken of a holy mission. Only in a dream would a spiritual journey begin in such surroundings. Yet he could hear the strannik stomping about the suite, unpacking their knapsacks and arranging the few modest possessions they had brought with them. He could hear the mutter of the good man’s prayers. So, evidently, this was how they did things in Moscow.

  He closed his eyes, smiling. This could not possibly last. But he would enjoy it while it did.

  After the bath, room service brought in what seemed to be a hundred small white plates of zakuski-smoked fish, caviar, cured meats, salads, cheeses, pickles, and more. There were also pitchers of kvass and mors, and more bottles of vodka than Arkady had ever seen set out for two diners before. He attacked them all with a vengeance. Yet he could not come close to matching Koschei’s appetite. Vast quantities of food and alcohol disappeared into the strannik’s maw without his showing the least sign of satiety or intoxication. It was astonishing.

  When they had eaten, the tailor came by to take Ark
ady’s measurements. Koschei questioned him closely as to what the young people of the upper classes were currently wearing, and ordered a dozen suits of clothing, suitable for a variety of occasions, along with boots, gloves, hats, canes, and other incidentals such as a gentleman required.

  Arkady tried to object that this was far too generous. But then the barber arrived, bringing with him a manicurist, and soon thereafter he found himself shaved and shorn and polished and powdered to within an inch of his life.

  Koschei examined him critically afterward. “I thought of hiring a tutor to teach you comportment and manners. But it would be like putting a dress on a camel. Nobody could fail to see what lay underneath.”

  “Yes, holy one,” Arkady said humbly.

  “You are from the provinces-we cannot pretend otherwise. But for a season that touch of exoticism will be sufficient to make a parvenu such as you welcome in polite society. Act like yourself, and that will be enough.”

  “Enough to do what? I think the time has come for me to learn exactly what my mission entails. You have something planned for me, I can see that. But what it is, and how it could possibly require”-he swept out a hand to take in the room, the bath towels, the candles, and the table which had already been efficiently and deferentially cleared of the emptied plates-“all this…well, that is completely beyond my understanding.”

  “Yes. You are exactly right. The truth is completely beyond your comprehension. But I can tell you that-”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Ah! Here she is! Answer that, will you?”

  When Arkady opened the door, a woman rushed past him and flung herself into Koschei’s arms. She kissed him deeply and passionately. Then she knelt down and kissed his feet. He raised her up with a smile. “Little daughter!”