Dancing with Bears

by Michael Swanwick

  “Holy father!” She ran her fingers through the strannik’s beard. “It has been so long since I have known the joy of your body.”

  Arkady’s eyes all but bulged. Outlander though he might be, he was not so ignorant as to not know that a woman dressed as this one was, with such makeup as she wore, and behaving as she did, could be only one thing. The combination of astonishment and alarm brought to the surface his inherent arrogance. “Why have you brought this… this… harlot here?”

  The crimson woman looked at him with open amusement. The strannik clucked his tongue in disapproval-not of the whore, but of him!

  “Is not God everywhere?” Koschei demanded. “One who cannot see God in a harlot is unlikely to find Him anywhere else.” He turned back to the woman. “Take off your clothing, my child.”

  Arkady had thought he could not possibly be more amazed than he already was. He was wrong. For the whore immediately did as the pilgrim commanded, revealing a body that more than fulfilled the promise made by her low-cut gown. Clothed, she had been a cheap and obvious bit of goods. Naked, she was infinitely desirable.

  Provided one did not look at her face.

  As Arkady did not.

  “You are confused,” Koschei said. “This is good. Confusion is the first step on the road to salvation. It tells you that your understanding of the world is faulty. Your thoughts and the conventional religious teachings of your family and village say to you that this dear woman is filthy and disgusting. Yet your eyes tell you otherwise. As does your body. Which, then, should you trust? Your thoughts, which are of your own devising? Your education, which is the work of men? Or your body, which is the work of God?”

  “I… hardly know what to think.”

  “That is because up until this moment, you have been living in a dream. You looked at things and saw only what you projected upon them. You have never known reality. You have never known love.”

  This last statement filled Arkady with indignation, for he knew it was not true. “I love Aetheria!”

  “You are in love with your idea of her, and that is a very different thing from loving the woman herself. There is a real person there, assuredly, but you do not know her. Tell me her likes and dislikes. Relate an incident from her girlhood. Reveal to me her soul. You cannot! The songs you sing to her praise superficialities-her eyes, her hair, her voice-beyond which you have not sought. Your love has been a delusion, a mirage existing only within your mind. It is the work of the Devil. It must be rejected and put behind you.”

  “I, however, am real.” The doxy cupped a breast and lifted it slightly. “Touch me, if you doubt it. Place your hand or any other part of your body wherever you like. I will not stop you.”

  There was no comparing this strumpet’s merely carnal beauty with Aetheria’s unearthly perfection. Still, she was a woman. And naked. And present. She moved so close to Arkady that he could smell the musky scent of her sex. “I-”

  The strannik had turned away and was rummaging in his leather medicine pouch. “Your education to date has been all words. It is time they were put into action.” He emerged with a vial and shook from it two black specks. “But before you do anything else, you must each take one of these pills.”

  The whore stuck out a small pink tongue to receive hers.

  “What is it?” Arkady asked.

  “You have seen it in action before. This was the drug that brought Prince Achmed back to life, though only briefly. It is called rasputin, after a holy man of the Preutopian era. It will give you tremendous strength and stamina. But more importantly, it will break down the barriers that divide the physical realm from the spiritual, your thoughts from the pneuma, your mind from the divine.” The strannik brushed it onto Arkady’s tongue with his thumb. “Everything I have told you to date is mere theory. This will show you the reality.”

  A strange metallic taste flooded Arkady’s mouth, and he felt a few brief twinges of pain in his abdomen. Then nothing. He waited for what seemed an eternity. Still nothing. “I don’t think this is-” working, he was going to say. Then he felt all the air going out of his lungs in a great whoosh. Out and out it gushed, a river of breath, showing no sign it was ever going to stop. Then it did. He inhaled, and suddenly he was filled with energy. He felt strong enough to wrestle a Neanderthal and win. Wonderingly, he took the dinner table by one of its legs-it was carved of ebony or some similarly dense wood-and lifted it above his head. So it was true! The strength he felt was not an illusion.

  Gently, even delicately, he returned the table to the floor.

  Then a pinpoint of light came calmly into existence at the center of his brain. Unhurriedly, it expanded, filling him from the inside with an all-encompassing warmth. He felt a deep and profound love for everyone and everything in the universe, combined with a sense of wholeness and oneness with life itself. It was as if the sun had risen in the middle of the night to kindle his soul.

  The whore favored Arkady with a knowing look. But her eyes shone with a spiritual light that was the twin of his own. “Take off your clothes and come to me,” she said, “and I will teach you what it feels like to fuck God.”

  The parade ended up at the new Byzantine embassy, an ivory-and-yellow Preutopian mansion on Spasopeskovskaya ploschad’. There, Surplus grandly descended from his carriage and, after the Neanderthals had safely escorted the Pearls within, went to inspect the embassy grounds. Tents of shimmering spider silk sheltered tables heaped high with refreshments. String quartets played soothing music. By the gates, hired thugs squeezed into traditional Russian costumes checked the identity of the guests against long lists of invitees.

  Surplus had been very careful to invite all the best people in Moscow to a space that would comfortably handle three-quarters of them. So he was not surprised to find the grounds overflowing with women in empathic gowns shifting toward the darker shades of the emotive spectrum and men whose suits reflexively bristled with short, sharp spines when others got too close. All of them complaining bitterly about how they were being treated. He strolled by the fenced yard, carefully just out of reach of their outstretched hands and voices, and did not glance their way.

  “Sir! Sir!” The majordomo came running up, quite beside himself.“The caterers are serving vodka from samovars and say it is at your direction. Sir, you cannot serve vodka in samovars. It’s simply not possible!”

  “It is eminently possible. A samovar holds liquid. Vodka is liquid. I fail to see the problem.”

  “People will think you are completely ignorant of Russian culture!”

  “So I am. I hope to learn much during my stay in your delightful country.”

  “But a samovar is for tea!”

  “Ah. I understand.” Surplus put an arm over the man’s shoulders in the friendliest possible manner and said,“If anyone asks for tea, please direct the caterers to make it for them.”

  Then he went inside the mansion.

  If the gardens outside held the best of Moscow society, the rooms within held the worst. These were the people who really mattered-the plutocrats and ministers and financiers who, subordinate only to the mighty duke himself, actually ran Muscovy. They were not crowded together as were those without. They gathered in the ballroom in threes and fours, chatting amiably with colleagues they saw every day, while waiters drifted by with drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Nor did Surplus’s entry make much of a stir. The grandees looked up or did not, nodded or failed to do so, and occasionally smiled in the serene knowledge that they were so powerful and the event so inconsequential that not even the most judgmental would think they were trying to ingratiate themselves to a mere foreigner.

  A waiter held out a tray holding triangles of toast and an enormous bowl of caviar. “Beluga, sir?”

  Surplus leaned forward and sniffed. “Why does this smell fishy? It’s clearly gone bad. Throw it in the alley.”

  “But Excellency…!”

  “Just do it,” Surplus said, pretending not to notice the shocked and amused reac
tions of those near enough to overhear.

  At the far end of the ballroom, a newly built partition stretched from wall to wall. It was solid from the floor to waist-height and scrollwork filigree above, with a mesh screen behind it to ensure that nothing but air, sight, and sound could pass from one side to the other. Through it could be dimly glimpsed the alluring figures of the Pearls as they entered the space behind and peered about eagerly. There Surplus went.

  “So these are the famous Russian women,” Olympias said. “They look like cows.”

  “Compared to you and your sisters, O Daughter of Perfection, all women do. Though to be fair, those present are ministers and gene-barons and the like, along with their wives and husbands. No doubt many of them have daughters or lovers who are more fetching. In an uncultured and rough-hewn sort of way, of course.”

  “Don’t,” Olympias said, “condescend.”

  “Will the duke be here?” Russalka interjected.

  “He has been invited, of course. Whether he will attend in person or not…” Surplus shrugged.

  “I am avid to see him.”

  “I am avid to do a great deal more than that with him,” Nymphodora added.

  “We are all avid to begin our new lives,” Zoesophia said.“In fact, if we are not presented to the duke soon, I promise you that things will get ugly.”

  “I shall of course make it my first priority to…”

  “More ugly than you can imagine,” Zoesophia emphasized.

  Surplus returned to his guests. It suited his purposes to meet the Duke of Muscovy, and the sooner the better. The ultimatum the Pearls had just issued did not bother him in the least.

  Until, that is, he mentioned his errand to the Mistress of Protocol, and she burst into a short, sharp bark of laughter. “The Duke of Mus-covy-here? Whyever in the world would he come here?”

  “He was expressly invited.”

  The State Mistress frowned like a bulldog. “The duke never responds to invitations. It would be absurd. They are all discarded, unread. That is, in fact, a significant part of my job.”

  “Then allow me to seize the opportunity, since you are here, of arranging a private audience. I am most eager to meet him.”

  “Meet the Duke of Muscovy! My dear Ambassador, nobody can meet that perfect man! Oh, such underlings as are ordered to his chambers to receive orders or offer accountings. And Chortenko, of course. But the duke does not socialize. Nor does he see foreigners of any ilk.”

  “But, you see, it is my duty to give him a present from his cousin the Caliph of Baghdad, which is of such surpassing-”

  “Yes, yes. I’m sure it’s wonderful. If you leave it with the Office of the Treasury, they’ll give you a receipt, and it will be put on display in the Cathedral of the Dormition for a month and then relegated to storage.”

  “This is not the sort of present that-”

  “Exactly.” The minister turned away.

  Minutes later, Count Sputnikovitch-Kominsky shook his head sympathetically. “You’re in something of a fix, young fellow. The duke is no ordinary ruler, you see. He thinks of nothing but the good of the state, and he engages in no activities other than its governance. He never leaves the Terem Palace in the Kremlin, nor does he ever see guests. Even I, who am of an old family and have served him well, have never laid eyes on the great man.”

  “All the more reason for him to accept this gift! Too much work will dull even the sharpest of minds. An hour spent with only one of the Pearls of Byzantium would be as good as a month’s vacation. A weekend with all seven will make a new man of him.”

  “Give up this mad ambition. Chortenko himself could not arrange it.”

  So it went. General Magdalena Zvyozdny-Gorodoka shook her red curls with disdain. The Overseer of Military Orphan-Academies smiled pityingly and made little tsk-ing noises. “Ridiculous!” snapped the State Inspector of Genetic Anomalies. Nobody thought it even remotely possible to arrange a meeting with the duke.

  Surplus was beginning to feel baffled and frustrated when a stocky man wearing dark blue-glass spectacles and trailed by two dwarf savants approached him and said, “You are a very clever fellow, Ambassador.”

  “How do you mean?” “The business with the samovars.”

  “Eh?”

  “For a feast celebrating the opening of an embassy, you knew that your guests would expect exotic foods and exotic drink. Obviously, you could not transport such quantities of provisions all the way across Asia Minor. So the food was prepared from local ingredients to Levantine recipes. That was simple enough. Even if the cooks got it wrong, who would know? But then there is the question of drink. You could not provide the fabulous story-wines of Byzantium, and the fantasies brought on by Georgian wines are so squalid they would make a cow weep. How then could you make mere vodka an experience worth telling one’s grandchildren about? Obviously, by being so extremely foreign as not to understand-or, rather, to seem not to understand-the nature of a samovar. So you are, at a minimum, clever. Later, you displayed a similar ignorance by sending away the only bowl of caviar I saw in evidence here. It is evident to me that these festivities have strained your budget. Therefore you economized, by means which lead me to suspect that you are downright devious.”

  This struck too close to home for Surplus’s liking. But he hid that fact. “And who, sir, might you be?”

  “Sergei Nemovich Chortenko. At your service.”

  “I am Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux. An American originally, but now a proud citizen of Byzantium.” They shook. “I have heard much about you, Gospodin Chortenko.”

  “I but serve a minor function at the Kremlin.”

  “You are too modest. I am told that you are the head of the duke’s secret police, his chief wizard-catcher, and de facto inquisitor. Further, and not coincidentally, that you are one of the most powerful men in Muscovy and thus in all of Russia.”

  “A glorified errand boy is all I am, really.” Chortenko shook open a handkerchief and took off his glasses, revealing the fact that he was bug-eyed. Surplus tried not to stare.

  “I see you’re fascinated by my eyes.”

  Indeed, Surplus was. The eyes were each hemispherical and, on examination, divided into thousands of glass-smooth facets. “Do they allow you a 360 degree field of vision? Or perhaps they help you make your way through the dark?”

  “Perhaps. Chiefly, they ensure that I cannot be outstared,” Chortenko said. “I never blink, you see.” He wiped his eyes with the handkerchief and restored the glasses to his face. “Nor have I any need for tears. But you, obviously, have extra-species borrowings of your own.”

  “Not at all. Though it was modified in various ways in order that I might move easily in human society, my genome is entirely that of the noble dog.”

  “How curious. Why, exactly, was that done?”

  “Such things are common in America.” Surplus coughed politely, to signal a change of subject. “On an unrelated matter, I wonder if-”

  “I know what you are going to ask. But I cannot help you to see the duke. Consider that matter closed. However, perhaps I may be of assistance in other ways. I can, for example, help you to recover your book.”

  “Book?” Surplus said blankly.

  “The book that was stolen from you during the parade.”

  “You baffle me, sir. There was no theft, so far as I know, during the parade, save possibly those committed by the pickpockets who will inevitably work the crowd in such an event.”

  “No? Well, perhaps my informants were not up to their usual standards.” Chortenko smiled blandly and turned away. His two dwarf savants followed in his wake.

  Surplus returned to the ballroom to find several men gathered at the partition to converse with the not-at-all-unapproachable Pearls. At a nod, the Neanderthals-now properly clad in formal garb-emerged from obscurity to intimidate them away. Then he took their place, where he could speak through the scrollwork-and-mesh to Zoesophia.

  “Well?
” she asked.

  “The Duke of Muscovy sent his extreme regrets that urgent affairs of state keep him away. He is, however, understandably eager to meet his new brides and has ordered that a suite of rooms with appropriately luxurious furnishings be prepared for you at the Terem Palace.” Surplus paused to take in the gratifying responses of at least six of his audience.

  But Aetheria pushed to the front of the group and pouted. “Where is Arkady? Why has he stopped visiting us?” Then, before Surplus could respond, “This is your doing, Ambassador de Plus Precieux. The only thing that would keep him away from an event allowing him to be this close to me would be if you locked him out.”

  At that moment, Surplus chanced to glance back toward Chortenko and his dwarf savants. They were all three staring fixedly at Surplus.“We have, I suspect, seen the last of Arkady Ivanovich,” he said distractedly.

  A short, sharp hiss of indrawn breath alerted Surplus to his mistake. Even through the screen he could see that Aetheria’s face had turned a deathly white. Her eyes were black and unblinking.“If you do not produce my young man before this party is over, I will tell the Neanderthals that you tried to place your filthy paws on my body. And they will tear you apart. And it will serve you right.”

  Inventing quickly, Surplus said, “You misunderstand me, O Paragon of Beauty. I stipulated that we were unlikely to see the lad again because his body has already been handed over to the Ministry of Public Investigations.”

  “What!”

  “It is a sad, sad story. He was torn between his love for you and his knowledge that you and he could never be together. So he threw himself from the Great Stone Bridge into the Moscow River. It is for the officials to decide whether the fall killed him or he drowned. But there is no doubt whatsoever that he committed suicide.”

  Eulogia and Euphrosyne, who were closest to Aetheria, hugged her tightly. Since they were identical twins in all respects save that the one’s skin was richest black and the other’s white as snow, this made for a distractingly lovely tableau.

  “That is so romantic!” cried one.