Leonid came up to Arkady with a friendly grin. “You do know how to play, don’t you, Arkady? Well, then, we’ll simply have to teach you. I can lend you a pony, a lantern, and a trident.”
So it was that an hour later, Arkady found himself hiding in a guest bedroom while one of the baronessa’s servants sewed up the trousers he had split falling from his horse as he tried to spear a boar-shoat that had burst out of the shrubbery without warning.
Oh, when would it grow late enough for the orgy to begin?
When the operation was complete, the Pale Folk undid the straps holding the woman down on the gurney. She sat up. Then she stood. She did not rub at the crude sutures on her newly shaved head. One of the Pale Folk walked unhurriedly toward an archway at the far side of the room, and she followed it without question.
She was one of them now.
Two more of the Pale Folk entered the room carrying another prisoner slung from a pole, this one bald as a mushroom and scrawny as an orphan. His mouth was gagged, but his eyes darted wildly about, and when he was dumped on the floor and his hands and feet untied, he strove to escape so vigorously that it took a dozen of the Pale Folk to subdue him and strap him down onto the gurney.
Koschei had watched the dehumanizing process with somber interest. Now he asked, “Where do the raw materials for this operation come from?”
“They are tribute from various of the underworld tribes,” Chernobog said. “People who were caught thieving, or strangers who trespassed into their territories. The tribes rid themselves of a difficulty and receive five packs of cigarettes for their trouble. The underlords increase their army of obedient slaves by one. And the world is relieved of the presence of another scoundrel. Everyone benefits.”
Svarozic nodded toward the doorway, and their guide led them onward.
They were taken to a high-ceilinged oval hall, bright with lantern-sconces. Its walls were covered with tremendous panels on which faded painted schematic maps of all the continents of the world. Beneath, tables had been set up circling the room, where the Pale Folk worked tirelessly and without passion, their motions smooth and unhurried. One would open a crate of cigarettes and dump its contents on the tabletop. Those standing there carefully opened and unfolded each package and passed the packaging to the left and the cigarettes to the right. Those to the right tore open the cigarettes one by one, letting the tobacco fall onto shallow trays that were whisked to the right and replaced when they grew full. The shredded papers fell to their feet like snow. At the next group of tables, first one and then another powder was sprinkled upon the tobacco by ashen-skinned figures wearing cloth masks over their mouths and noses. Beyond them, yet more Pale Folk poured the mixture into bowls. The bowls were passed on to further workers, who were given fresh papers and proceeded to roll new cigarettes. These were given to others who grouped them in bunches of twenty and then-the circle having reached its beginning-folded the packages around them again.
A crate of the re-rolled cigarettes was hammered shut. The new recruit joined in with several other Pale Folk, to carry it out the same door through which the crate had originally entered.
“Is this not the human condition?” Koschei asked. “An endless circle of meaningless labor joylessly performed deep underground, as far from the eye of God as it is possible to be. These lost souls are fortunate they are no longer self-aware.”
Svarozic nodded and piously rubbed the side of his head, where ancient scars commemorated an operation not entirely unrelated to the one just now performed by the Pale Folk. “Oblivion is preferable to awareness without God,” Chernobog agreed. “Yet I do not envy them their fate.”
“Nor should you, nor do I, nor would any man capable of better. By being so sinful as to get themselves in such a fix, however, these poor dead souls proved themselves worthy of nothing better.” Koschei turned away, dismissing their memory. “I believe it is time that I met these underlords.”
“Yes,” Chernobog said. “They are quite eager to meet you as well.”
Since Pepsicolova was uncharacteristically late, Darger had struck up a conversation with a tobacco factor to pass the time. The fellow was guarding a pile of crates in the basement corridor immediately behind the Bucket of Nails.
“The tobacco is brought in on wagon trains from the Ukraine by Kazakh traders,” the factor explained, “and rolled into cigarettes and packaged here in Moscow. My purchasers have several times tried to screw me into selling them the tobacco loose. But I tell them: Why should I give up the money? Do I look like the kind of dupe who would let silver flow into somebody else’s pockets?”
“Is there really such profit to be made from so impoverished a clientele?”
“Trust me, sir, there is. These ragamuffins and tatterdemalions may look half-starved to the casual eye, but they have all the money they need for those pleasures they deem essential. Nor is tobacco the least of it. I know for a fact that they buy various addictive and even poisonous substances as well, in bulk, and indeed there are rumors of underground farms where psychoactive mushrooms are grown upon beds of human manure. And yet some of them have the nerve to come up from their bolt-holes and beg on the streets and underpasses. Feh! They may not have the creature comforts of those who live above them, but neither do they sweat and toil as needs must decent folk such as you and I. Their lives are squalid but indolent, and they consider the attendant filth a small price to pay for the sybaritic ease of their existence.”
“But where do they obtain the money to pay you?” Darger asked.
“Who knows? Perhaps they deal drugs or sell their bodies to those depraved enough to desire them. Occasionally I have been paid in antique silver coins, doubtless from caches hidden belowground in times of trouble and never recovered by their rightful owners. It matters not to me, so long as the weight is good.”
The factor consulted his pocket-watch with just a hint of worry. “Whatever can be keeping my contacts? I have never known the Pale Folk to be late before.”
“That is the fourth time you’ve checked your stem-winder since we began talking. Are you pressed for time?”
“It is just that I have an appointment for which I would not care to be late.”
“Surely you can explain the circumstances.”
“Unfortunately, she is not the sort of lady who accepts explanations.”
“Ahh! I understand you now-this engagement is of an intimate nature.”
“Indeed,” the factor said glumly. “Or was.”
“Well, there is no problem here, then. I know the bartender at the Bucket of Nails and he will happily store your crates for a small desideratum. Come! I will help you carry them in.”
The factor consulted his watch again. “I should still be late, however, and believe me my tardiness would cost me dearly.” Then, with a touch of yearning in his voice.“Perhaps you would be willing to-no, of course not. It was irresponsible of me even to think of it.”
Darger’s instincts kicked in immediately.“I?! I am no longshoreman, sir! Nor am I a day-laborer to be hired off the street. I made my offer purely in the spirit of Christian charity.” He spun on his heel, as if to leave.
“Stay, stay, sir!” the factor cried. With sudden decisiveness, he quickly began counting out bills from his wallet. “You seem a decent sort. Surely you would be willing to help out one who is caught in the throes and tangles of something very much like love?”
“Well…”
“Thank you, sir. Your name, sir?”
“Gregor Saltimbanque,” Darger said. “Of the Hapsburg Saltimbanques.”
“I could tell that you were a gentleman, sir,” the factor said, pressing the bills into Darger’s hands. Then, over his shoulder, “I’ll be back in two hours-three at most!”
The carpenters were finally done with their work. Surplus poured them each a shot of vodka and together they toasted the new spiral staircase to the embassy’s roof and the equally new cupola at its summit. Zoesophia, he could see, was pacing back and fo
rth, restless as a panther, behind the screen at the far end of the room. But as the Neanderthals would not let her cross to this side of it until all strange males were gone, that did not much concern him. “I shall instruct the treasurer to give you each a bonus of an extra day’s pay,” he told the workmen. At which good news, they all cheered him so heartily that he had to bring out the bottle again for a second and then a third round of toasts.
When finally Surplus had seen the men to the door, Zoesophia came sailing out of the women’s quarters, the Neanderthals retreating from the lighting a-flash in her eyes. “As your treasurer,” she said, “I am not going to pay a bonus to carpenters for a job they have already been paid for and that should never have been contracted for in the first place. Further, and also in my capacity as chief financial officer, it is my duty to inform you that we are out of money and living on several lines of credit, which are secured by property that has already been mortgaged three times over.”
“Which is precisely why I am so open-handed. Let once our creditors see us pinching pennies and they will lose faith in our financial stability.”
“Stability? We are living in a house of cards, ready to collapse at the least puff of wind, to which you have added a perfectly useless cupola!”
“Darling Zoesophia, you wound me grievously. Only let me show you what I have done and I am certain you will agree that it is money well spent.”
Zoesophia’s glare would have stunned a basilisk. “I doubt that very much.”
“Come with me and I promise that you will like what you see.”
He led her up the new staircase, and into the cupola at its top. There, he let down the trap and secured it with a latch.“So that we are not disturbed,” he said. Then he swept out a paw. “Is not Moscow beautiful from this vantage?” A mesh screen embroidered with colored wires in a pattern of green and yellow aspen leaves and fire-red feathers enclosed the cupola, allowing them to see with perfect ease while protecting them from prying eyes. The sun was sinking low in the sky, painting the clouds with oranges and purples that coming from any lesser artist than Nature herself would have seemed garish and obvious. Looking across the rooftops, they could see the Kremlin canted up out of a ramshackle sea of buildings, like a great ship just beginning to list before going under.
“I am strangely unmoved.” Zoesophia strode quickly around the interior of the octagonal cupola. Its walls were lined with cushioned benches, whose width invited lounging rather than sitting. She suddenly rounded on Surplus. “This is as good a time and place as any to have it out with you. You are going to see the Duke of Muscovy tomorrow. I am coming with you.” Then, as Surplus began to shake his head, “I warned you once that my sisters and I could make trouble for you. Yet you did not take me seriously then, and you do not take me seriously now.”
“Do you know?” Surplus said wryly, “I honestly believe I do.”
“Oh, no. You do not.” Zoesophia’s smile was cruelty itself.“ All of us have our admirers-and it would be the easiest matter imaginable to convince one that Muscovy would be a better place without you in it. Russians are a direct folk, so it would take some persuasion to convince one of them that your death should be lingering and painful. But we can be very persuasive. You exist on our tolerance, and we have tolerated you so far only because a figurehead was needed to arrange our collective marriage. In this, you have proved yourself incompetent, complacent, self-satisfied, and may I say officious. Indeed, I am come to the conclusion that you and your absent friend are both complete and utter frauds!”
“I know from what depths your passion arises,” Surplus said solemnly. “For I feel it myself.” He took her gloved hand and kissed its knuckles. Zoesophia snatched it away from him.
“Are you mad?!”
“Sweet lady, I am precisely the opposite of mad, for I have thought this out long and carefully. Attend: A compulsion was placed upon you in Byzantium, rendering the least touch by a man toxic to you and his intimate caresses fatal. Yet I have seen you and the others walking arm in arm and bestowing chaste kisses upon each other’s cheeks. I have seen you playing with kittens and brightly colored birds with your bare hands, without injury. Why should this be?”
“Obviously, because neither women nor kittens nor birds are men.”
“Nor am I, O Avatar of Delight, nor am I. Have you forgotten that I am no man but rather a reconfigured dog? My genes were tweaked to give me full human intellect and the upright stature of a human. Still, I remain not Homo sapiens sapiens but Canis lupus familiaris. You may do with me as you wish, and the suicidal impulse implanted by the Caliph’s psychogeneticists will not kick in.” Gently, he touched her face just below and to the side of her eye. “You see? No welt.”
For a still, shocked instant, Zoesophia did not move.
One hand floated up to touch her unblemished face.
Then, slowly, she peeled off her gloves and let them fall. One by one, her silks rained down to the floor with a grace that was almost as entrancing as the tawny body that their absence revealed. When she was, save for her jewelry, entirely naked, she passed her hands over Surplus, undressing him. Then she sank back onto the cushions, leaving him standing over her. “I shall teach you all I know,” Zoesophia said. Her expression was cryptic. “Though it may take some time.”
She held out the most desirable arms Surplus had ever seen or even imagined and drew him down atop her. “The first position is called the Way of the Missionary.”
The fastness that the underlords had made their own was in its era impregnable. But during a subsequent age, one corner of it had been sheared away for a tunnel whose purposes were no longer evident. So it was easy enough to enter the complex unnoticed. In a shabby corridor that went nowhere anybody cared to go, Anya Pepsicolova unscrewed a metal plate bolted low on a wall and then ducked through the opening thus revealed. She straightened up inside a nondescript and windowless office whose lone door had long ago merged with its frame in one great mass of rust.
Guided by the light of her cigarette alone, Pepsicolova fetched a coil of rope she had stashed in one corner and rolled up a moldering carpet to reveal a manhole cover hidden underneath. Only the topmost rung of several hundred had survived long neglect, but to this she tied the rope and so rappelled down to the bottom of the shaft. She ground the cigarette underfoot. From here it was only a leisurely walk along a narrow, lichen-streaked passage, to what she thought of as the Whisper Gallery.
The underlords did not know of the gallery. Of that Pepsicolova was certain. She had discovered it by logic alone. First she had reasoned that the Preutopians who had built this facility had trusted nobody, not even their own associates. Then that they would therefore have had means of spying on one another. At which point, Pepsicolova had simply snooped and pried, examining with particular closeness anything that seemed ostentatiously uninteresting. Until finally she found the secret passages and undocumented access-ways by which the Preutopians had bypassed their own security.
The Whisper Gallery completely circled the domed ceiling of what had once been a splendid conference room, all oaken panels and crimson draperies and brass sconces and leather armchairs and polished marble tabletops. It was so high up that nobody below could tell that what looked to be decorative molding was actually a series of slit windows from which the room could be observed. The floor of the gallery was of a soft material that absorbed all footsteps, and the room’s architecture was such that the slightest of sounds could be heard clearly from above.
As she approached the gallery, she heard the murmur of voices.
Pepsicolova quietly took her station. Below her was an underlord. It was in no way human, though it inhabited a human body. The body hunched forward, hands held loosely by the chest, as if it were a praying mantis. Yet though it moved as if it were a living thing, the stench of rotting meat that rose from it was, even from far above, all but unbearable.
Standing across a table from it were the last things in the world Pepsicolova would
have expected to find in such a place:
Three stranniks.
Pimps, whores, prostitutes, gangsters, and other unwholesome businessmen were of course frequent visitors to the underlords, as were politicians, black marketeers, drug runners, petty thieves, and salesmen of all sorts. But stranniks?
She held her breath.
“We shall leave this with you,” the largest of the three stranniks said. “You will know what to do with it.”
With a twinge of disappointment, Pepsicolova realized that she had come at the end of the conversation for the underlord responded by saying, “Soon-very soon indeed-when we have recovered the weapon that has lain lost beneath Moscow since Utopia fell-we will kill you. We will kill you slowly and painfully, and along with you every human being who lives in this city. In this way, we shall have a partial revenge for what you and your kind have done to us.”
In Pepsicolova’s experience, such dark words meant that the underlord had run out of useful things to say.
“Yes, that is what you believe,” the chief strannik said. “But you are merely tools in the employ of a higher Power. What you anticipate as destruction will be in actual fact transformation. The Eschaton shall be achieved, the glory of God’s physical being will touch and cauterize the Earth, and on that very day, you will return to Hell.”
“Fool! This is Hell! All existence is Hell for our kind, for no matter where we are, we know your kind still exists unpunished.”
The strannik nodded. “We understand each other completely.”
“For the moment,” the underlord said with obvious regret, “I must refrain from destroying you.”
“I in turn will pray to the living God to forgive and punish you through all eternity.”
The stranniks departed, leaving behind them a leather satchel, whose contents the underlord began to unpack with extreme care.
Darger had lifted a crate as the factor hurried away, as if to carry it into the bar. Now he set it back down and sat atop it, thinking. He had intended to spend another week or so underground before bringing the great scheme to a head. But as a humble worshiper of Fortuna, he believed that there was a time and tide in the affairs of men which was often triggered by sudden, unexpected good luck. Luck that one ignored at one’s peril.
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