Dancing with Bears

by Michael Swanwick

  Luckily, that would suffice.

  Step one would be to get some sense of Sergeant Wojtek’s character.

  “Sergeant, I fear that my wallet, being overstuffed with banknotes, is digging into my hip. I wonder if you could possibly-”

  Sergeant Wojtek looked down at Darger with enormous scorn. “You don’t know much about the Royal Guard if you think that one of us can be so easily bribed as that.”

  “Well, indeed, I am a foreigner and thus woefully ignorant of many important matters. Still, my situation is horribly uncomfortable. Couldn’t you let me up? I can give you my word as a gentleman that I will not attempt to escape.”

  “So you can. But does that mean you’ll keep it? No, I think that, if you don’t mind, I’ll simply obey the orders I was given.”

  “Your logic is impeccable,” Darger said. “And yet, this position remains most damnably painful.”

  With a sigh, Sergeant Wojtek upended the gurney, folded its legs shut, and then leaned it against a nearby wall so that Darger was upright. “There. Is that better?”

  Surprisingly, it was. In addition to doing much to restore his circulation, simply being upright again, after so long a time on his back, filled Darger with hope. “Thank you, Sergeant.” He mentally counted to twenty and then said, “Do you play chess?”

  Sergeant Wojtek stared at him. “What kind of a question is that? I’m a Russian.”

  “Then I’ll start. Pawn to d4.”

  After a moment’s astonished silence, Sergeant Wojtek relaxed slightly and said, “Knight to f6.”

  Which was, if not a beginning, at least an opening.

  By the time the game was played through, Darger and the sergeant were, if not chums, at least on an amicable footing. “Well played, Sergeant Wojtek,” Darger said.

  “You’d have had me, if it hadn’t been for that one bungled move in the endgame.”

  “My attention wandered.” This was only a half-untruth, for though Darger had planned to lose from the outset, there had also been a distracting incident. “That man in the odd gray costume who walked by us. He looked exactly like-”

  “Tsar Lenin. I assure you that he not only looks like Lenin, he is Lenin.”

  “But how is that possible?”

  “We live in strange times. Let it rest at that. Tsar Lenin has returned from the dustbin of history and by morning all Moscow will be his.”

  The army of Pale Folk and Muscovites was pouring from the square, as it had been for some time. Still, the square remained crowded. Sergeant Wojtek made no move to join those leaving. Apparently he was content to bring up the rear.

  “Tell me something,” Darger said. “You and your fellows have clearly switched allegiance from the current government to whoever or whatever this seemingly impossible figure from ancient history might be. But I would have thought that the Royal Guard would be programmed to be unshakably loyal to the Duke of Muscovy.”

  “A common misapprehension. We are actually programmed to be loyal to Muscovy itself. It simply never occurred to anybody before now that the duke and the state might not be one and the same thing.”

  “If I may ask, sir, and meaning no offense. Exactly how were you-”

  “You were about to say ‘bought’-which would have been a mistake, for we were not bought but persuaded.” The sergeant splayed one paw and extended his claws, one by one, as far as they would go. Then he relaxed it. “Consider our situation. Though we do nothing now but stand guard at the center of the greatest stronghold in Russia over a ruler whom no one dare attack, the bear-guards were designed and created to be warriors. Chortenko simply pointed out to us that a war was in the best interests of Muscovy. Then he promised us one. Thus satisfying both patriotism and personal inclination.”

  “Ahhh, yes. Of course.” Darger had never acquired a taste for war, but he understood that certain others-he did not call them madmen-were happiest when in its embrace.

  “He also promised us real names,” Wojtek said with unexpected bitterness. “With patronymics. The names we have now are only fit for teddy bears.”

  By this point, however, the square was finally beginning to clear out. “Well,” Sergeant Wojtek said. “I suppose we should move on.”

  “If I may, sir,” Darger said. “I see a tavern across the way whose lanterns are lit, suggesting that its proprietor remains at his post. This gurney could not easily fit through the door, but your orders say nothing about it per se, only that I be kept bound. You could tie all but one of the straps about my body, leaving only one lower arm free, and then fashion the last strap into a kind of leash, which you could tie to your wrist to make certain that I did not escape. In that way, you would stay true to your orders, while still allowing me to buy you a drink.”

  “Well…” Sergeant Wojtek said. “Perhaps. One drink couldn’t possibly do any harm. But no more than one, mind you. And then we really must be joining the others at the Kremlin.”

  “Absolutely.” Darger did not quite smile, for he knew exactly how far he still was from freedom. But in his experience, once you got a soldier to drinking, the battle was half won.

  Across the city, on the far side of the Moscow River, at the bonfire-lit intersection where Bolshaya Yakimanka ulitsa angled into Bolshaya Polyanka ulitsa, General Magdalena Zvyozdny-Gorodoka was handing out klashnys to her gaggle of prostitutes. She very carefully examined each weapon before surrendering it, to make certain it was not loaded. Then she instructed the bawds in how to use them as clubs.

  “You want to put your opponent down so he doesn’t come back up at you. That means you must strike at the head. Hold your klashny like this.” She demonstrated. “Butt forward. The top of the skull is thick, so if you hit there, your weapon may well bounce off. Smash somebody in the face, and he’s still conscious and thrashing around. The best strategy is to clip them behind the ear. Out they go, and often enough they’re dead. So: Lift your klashnys like this.”

  The trollops obeyed. “Strike slightly downward and inward. Thus.”

  They imitated her thrust, with varying results.

  “Then return your klashny to its original position. One, two, three. Very simple. Are there any questions?”

  A whore raised her hand. “But how do we know this pleases God?”

  “Eh?”

  “God is goodness and God is love. I didn’t used to think so, but now I’m sure of it. We all are.” The other harlots were nodding in agreement. “So I don’t know if He would like us to be hurting and killing people.”

  “Katya’s right. If God is everywhere, how can we do such acts in His presence?”

  The general’s expression was pained. “Do it lovingly. The way the apostles would. Behind the ear, remember!”

  Meanwhile, the baron’s forces had all affixed bayonets to their weapons. Some of them were drunk, and the rest were so lit up on drugs they all but glowed. Still, training would tell. Baron Lukoil-Gazprom ranged up and down the ragged collection of soldiers, shouting and cursing until, out of sheer habit, they found themselves in a wedge formation, bayonets forward. They were facing the oncoming mob, which was still several blocks away, still invisible but already audible. They had been through this drill so often they did not flinch.

  The conscripts had neither drum nor drummer among them, so a sergeant was given the duty of counting cadence. The baron had just finished giving the man his instructions when General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka came striding up.

  “I’ll run these fat sluts around and up to that side street there.” She pointed. “When the mob passes us, start your men forward. I’ll wait until your wedge splits them and then send the girls running into their flank. If that doesn’t cause panic, I don’t know what will. They’ll run every which way, and I don’t think they’ll be eager to come back for more.”

  “It’s a good plan,” the baron said. “I think it will work.”

  The two returned to their respective forces.

  All the while, Zoesophia had been standing at the sideline
s, watching. Though her knowledge of military history and tactics was unsurpassed, she recognized that the general and the baron both operated from long experience. In this situation, there was little she could do for them, other than to keep out of their way.

  But that did not mean her brain had stopped working. In every action so far, Zvyozdny-Gorodoka had taken the lead and the baron had followed her. Worse, the rank-and-file soldiers had witnessed this fact. Which meant that when this was all over, provided they were still alive, the hero of the night would not be the baron, but the red-haired general.

  Something would have to be done about that. Tonight.

  …16…

  The Duke of Muscovy dreamed of fire. He twisted and turned in impotent fury. His beloved Moscow was in danger! All his conscious life, since the day his designers had deemed him sufficiently well programmed to govern, he had looked after it, dreaming of alliances and diplomatic interventions, repairs to the sewage system, improvements in food distribution, new health regulations, the reengineering of peregrine messenger falcons, trade treaties, bribes, the deployment of armies, discrete assassinations, the suppression of news items, construction projects, midnight arrests. The machinations of the underlords, of Chortenko, of Zoesophia, of Koschei, of Lukoil-Gazprom, and even of the false Byzantine ambassador with the improbably long name he had watched ripen, for the reports from Chortenko’s people were very thorough, and his powers of extrapolation uncanny. The actions of lesser players he had intuited. The movements and emotions of the masses were statistical certainties. But then the messengers came less and less frequently, and finally they ceased whispering in his ear altogether. A steadily growing blindness hindered his dreams. His ignorance grew.

  As the State of Muscovy’s flow of information was disrupted, its duke could no longer integrate, hallucinate, and comprehend his realm. Which was to him an agony. Though he had no conviction that Moscow actually existed, he had known better than anyone else exactly what was going on in his city at any given instant. No more.

  But he knew there were fires.

  There were fires because fires were inevitable. They broke out in the best of times, and to fight them the duke had established volunteer brigades for every neighborhood in Moscow. But this was far from the best of times. Drunks were building bonfires in the streets. Drugged religious zealots were abandoning their prayers and debaucheries, leaving candles and lanterns untended, to join processions headed they knew not where.

  Underpeople were scurrying about the passages beneath the city carrying torches like so many mice with wooden matches clenched between their teeth. It was impossible that there not be fires.

  To make matters worse, tonight only a handful of fire brigades, police stations, or active military units were functional. Chortenko had asked the Duke of Muscovy how to inactivate the greatest possible percentage of them, and the duke had spelled out the process, step by step, in careful detail. That was why and how he had been created in the first place: to answer all questions put to him as fully and truthfully as his more-thanhuman powers of analysis and integration could make possible. He could no more withhold his counsel than he could tell a lie.

  Yet, like an intellectual who had read so deeply and knowledgeably into a great novel that he had gone mad and believed its characters real, the Duke of Muscovy had fallen in love with the citizens whose fates had been entrusted into his safekeeping. He cared about their small, imaginary lives more than he did his own. He had been created to be their protector, their spiritual father. Now he was the only responsible official aware of Chortenko’s partnership with the metal demons and of the evils plotted by this hellish alliance. No one but he knew what had to be done to stop them.

  Moscow must not burn.

  But the Duke of Muscovy was powerless to protect his people. He was held captive in chains of sleep and could not break free. No one came to listen to his mumbled instructions-not even the traitor Chortenko. The Royal Guards kept carefully out of earshot, lest they overhear something they would rather not.

  He groaned aloud.

  The bear-guards-those few who still remained on duty-covered their ears.

  The Zamoskvorechye incident-for “skirmish” was, in context, too elevated a word for it-was over in what felt like only minutes. The procession came flowing down the boulevard like a river, and like a river it looked at first to be unstoppable and irresistible. But Baron LukoilGazprom’s wedge of soldiers marched steadily up the boulevard to meet them, bayonets extended. Since most of the marchers came from the City Above and, however drugged, were still capable of fear, the sight of the advancing bayonets did much to discomfort them. Their chants turned to cries of alarm. The front of the procession stopped and eddied in confusion.

  Then, before the underlord commanding this arm of the invasion could put into action a counter-strategy, General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka’s harlots burst from the side street where they had been waiting in ambush. The marchers had flowed smoothly to either side of the bonfire at the center of the intersection, but its flames temporarily blinded them, so that their attackers seemed to come out of nowhere.

  Five minutes’ training was not enough to turn a rabble of whores into a disciplined military force. Intoxicated by the unfamiliar taste of violence, the doxies swung their klashnys every which way, clubbing wildly at the marchers with the kind of abandon that Zoesophia very much doubted they displayed in their regular work. Nevertheless, their assault was effective. The procession lost any semblance of order as screaming citizens broke and ran, scattering like jackdaws into the surrounding darkness.

  Baron Lukoil-Gazprom followed his wedge of soldiers closely on horseback. Zoesophia rode to his side and one step behind. “You should unsheathe your saber,” she said quietly. “Brandish it and shout encouragement at your men.”

  “That is not necessary. These are disciplined soldiers. They know what to do.”

  “Do it anyway. We must think of your political future.” Zoesophia’s tone and manner were so carefully modulated that even as the baron unsheathed his sword, he did not notice that she was giving him orders and he was obeying them.

  “Keep going, men! Straight and steady!”

  It had to be admitted that Baron Lukoil-Gazprom looked every inch the military hero. Unfortunately for Zoesophia’s plans, when his soldiers hit the procession, splitting it and sending the fragments fleeing into the side streets, they were so effective they did not have to kill anybody at all.

  Which was disastrous. For at the exact same time, the redheaded general was right in the thick of the fray, dispatching Pale Folk (who stayed where the citizens fled) with her sword, and laughing as she did so. Her floozies, inexperienced though they were, fought an unarmed and unprepared foe and thus met with no resistance. Further, with their inhuman strength and total lack of restraint, they were crushing ribcages and exploding skulls in a manner which, though morally lamentable, was undeniably dramatic.

  Worst of all, such extreme exertion could not fail to dishevel the clothing worn by the tarts, and since most of them wore low-cut dresses, several breasts had leaped into public view. There would be oil paintings of this clash, Zoesophia knew, based on the accounts of eyewitnesses, and they would not focus on the comparatively drab figure of the baron.

  Then, from the shadowy heart of the mob, there flashed a metal beast.

  It leaped over the panicking citizens, running on all fours and using their heads and shoulders for purchase. Straight at the baron it flew, firelight reflecting bright from its gleaming surfaces. For a brief, bright instant, Zoesophia felt hope. “Stand firm,” she told her companion, “and when it is almost upon you, thrust hard.” She leaned close, so that should the baron’s aim go awry she could seize his arm and correct it. One more second, she thought, and my little man will be a mighty figure in every account of this night.

  But then two whores reached up simultaneously from the scrim and seized the underlord, hauling it forcibly down to the street. They lifted it up overhead, e
ach one holding it by two legs. Then they pulled in opposite directions.

  In a shower of sparks, the beast was torn in two.

  The explosion shed light on the upturned faces of the gleeful sluts. One of the two was exceedingly comely. The other was naked from the waist up.

  Zoesophia sighed inwardly. Nothing was going right tonight.

  In minutes, the street was empty save for soldiers, prostitutes, and corpses. Baron Lukoil-Gazprom dismounted and General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka sheathed her sword. They slapped each other on the back, roaring congratulations.

  Modestly, Zoesophia stood off to the side, hands clasped and head down, making it clear that she claimed no part, however small, in this victory.

  Leaving a small number of soldiers to ensure that the marchers did not re-form, the general and the baron and their collective forces returned to their makeshift headquarters at the whorehouse, where the madam shooed her happily chattering employees upstairs and the soldiers were set to work securing the block. The parlor, with its chintz curtains and stained-glass oil-lamp shades, seemed deceptively homey. It smelled of hard soap, talcum powder, and hair oil. The map of Moscow still lay open on the great table where they had plotted out their strategy.

  The baron threw himself heavily into an overstuffed easy chair and lit up a cigar. “That was not badly done,” he said. “Not badly done at all.”

  It was then that messengers arrived from four other sectors of the city to report further invasions.

  The four messengers arrived almost simultaneously, one on the spurs of another, carrying tidings of uprisings in Smolenskaya, Taganskaya, Krasniye Vorota, and Pushkinskaya. Tens of thousands of Muscovites had taken to the streets, and there were not the forces to contain a fraction of them. One artillery unit had set up its gun on the Astakhovsky bridge, just above where the Yauza flowed into the Moscow, determined to hold back and break up the Taganskaya mob, should it try to cross the river, as seemed inevitable.