Dancing with Bears (26 page)

That pleasant thought helped to calm Chortenko and focus his thoughts. He drew in a deep breath, further stabilizing himself. Emotion was the enemy of effective action. He must restore his usual icy self-control.

Something, however, niggled and naggled at the back of his brain.

“Max, Igorek,” he said. “What have I forgotten?”

“You have forgotten most of the mathematics you learned in school,” Maxim said, “the combined and ideal gas laws, the names of the eighteen brightest stars in descending order of apparent magnitude as well as those of all the minor prophets in the Old Testament and most of the major prophets as well, the bulk of Mikhail Lermontov’s ‘The Sail,’ and the entirety of Anna Akhmatova’s ‘Requiem.’”

“Also,” Igor added, “the twenty-two major biochemical pathways of the human body, the proportions of the golden ratio, the formulae for green pigments, the names of most of your childhood friends, the location of your second-favorite fountain pen, and a vast effluvium of minutia and inconsequential personal history.”

“As well as—” Max continued.

With a touch of asperity, Chortenko said, “What have I forgotten that is not the common lot of others, I mean. Something I was supposed to do or look into.” This was, of course, too vague a set of parameters for the dwarf savants to work with, so they said nothing.

Vilperivich, who was one of his boldest and most trusted subordinates, chose this inopportune time to clear his throat. “We have not had the usual report from Pepsicolova today.” By the stiffness of the man’s delivery, Chortenko could tell that he was keenly aware of the danger he was in. That was good. He spoke anyway. That was even better. Taken together, the two facts would keep him alive long after his confederates were dead. “Perhaps that is significant?”

“No. I expected that,” Chortenko said. Then, thinking aloud: “I have ordered bleachers and a speaking platform erected on the street before the Trinity Tower entrance to the Kremlin. I have combed through my own forces and had everyone with a particular weakness for the pleasures of the flesh transferred to other departments. The rest I have put on full alert. I have dispatched my best assassin to take care of Lukoil-Gazprom. I have sent my regrets, which doubtless were received with enormous relief, to those politically ambitious enough to have invited me to their drug-fueled soirées tonight. I have compiled lists of those to be killed immediately after seizing full control of the government and those to be killed six, twelve, and eighteen months later, after their usefulness has been depleted. I have consulted with the Duke of Muscovy about…” Chortenko stopped.

“Oh, my.” This was as close to foul language as Chortenko ever came, but it was enough to terrify those who understood him well. “I forgot to order all artillery units away from the city.” Thinking furiously, he said, “Perhaps we can work around that, though. We could—”

A servile messenger chose that moment to scurry into the room and hand a sheet of paper to Vilperivich. He glanced down at it, and his face turned pale.

“Sir,” he said. “Wettig is dead.”

“And Baron Lukoil-Gazprom?”

With barely a tremble in his voice, the man said, “Alive.”

The corridor dead-ended into a vast, extended darkness held up by regular iron pillars on which weakly bioluminescent lichen grew. This ghostly background flickered with motion. Kyril stepped into it cautiously, tugging the idiotically giggling Darger after him. Ordinarily, Kyril avoided the motorway as being too open and having too few ready exits. Today, however, haste was all, so he went by the most direct route.

“So you think me a noodle, do you, young man?” Darger gestured broadly toward the flickering distance. “As you can see, I am not the only one who is feeling uncommonly merry.”

The lichen-light was so feeble that Kyril had to stare hard to make out what Darger was talking about. With concentration, however, it became obvious: Shadowy throngs of ragged people were hopping, skipping, limping, twirling, and (some few) dancing past, all in the same direction. They were all mad with joy.

From around a bend in the motorway, light flared. An uneven line of bird-masked Pale Folk appeared, walking steadily, thrusting torches forward like prods to herd yet more of the tunnel-dwellers before them.

Their captives did not seem to mind this treatment. The torchlight threw up shadows on the walls above them that leaped and cavorted madly, as if in some unholy Neolithic Walpurgisnacht. It was an eerie glimpse into the murky hindbrain of Russian prehistory that made the little hairs on the back of Kyril’s neck stand on end.

There was a metal pillar almost touching the wall. Shoving Darger behind it, Kyril said, “Wait here. Don’t move. I’m going to get you a mask of your own. That’ll make things simpler for both of us.” Then he flung himself down on the filthy ground, and lay motionless. Corpses were not entirely uncommon down here. He did his best to look like one.

Above, to his intense annoyance, he heard Darger snicker.

The wave of people passed Kyril by unnoticing. One of them stepped even on his hand, but he managed not to cry out. Then, when the line of Pale Folk had gone beyond him as well, he rose to his feet. Stealthily, he ran after the hindmost of them and, wrapping arms about the creature’s chest, wrestled him to the ground. The torch fell to the side, atop a pile of rubbish, but the fire it caused seemed unlikely to spread, so he didn’t bother stamping it out.

Seconds later, he returned to Darger with the mask.

But when he tried to strap it on his mentor, the bastard pushed it away.

A murmur of voices rose up behind them, growing steadily stronger. A second wave of happy idiots was being driven their way. “Look, sir. What fun!” Kyril cried desperately, thrusting forward the filter-mask. “Why don’t you try this on?”

Laughing helplessly, Darger shook his head.

“Oh, don’t be such a prick, sir. It’s full of dried herbs and flowers—see? Take a whiff. Smells pleasant, dunnit?”

“Oh, no, you fail to understand,” Darger said in the jolliest possible manner. “What you propose is the stuff of bad melodrama. Disguise ourselves in anonymous headgear and then pass ourselves off as minions? Absurd! Such stratagems work on the stage, young sir, only because the author has sided with the hero and by fiat declared that they will. If we must play this little game of yours, let us at least play it well.”

“It’s not actually a game, you fucking idiot. Sir.”

“Viewed properly, all of life is a game. Look at yourself! Do you walk with the plodding mindlessness of the Pale Folk? Oh, dear me, no. You stride along purposefully, and as to your motions…well, they are far too quick and alert. Even the Pale Folk, incurious dotards though they are, would be able to see through your subterfuge, were they not distracted by their chore. Now suppose I were to don this jolly old mask, what then? The two of us would be doubly obvious. Whoops go our chances of evasion and escape! You see?”

Reluctantly, Kyril had to admit that Darger’s words made a kind of sense. He flung down the mask in disgust. “Then what can we do?”

Joyous voices and the scuffing of feet announced that the next wave of captives was almost upon them. Soon they would be dimly visible. Darger laid a finger alongside his nose and winked. “Walk behind me, as if you were driving me toward this oh-so-very mysterious destination of theirs. Try to plod. I in my turn shall hide you behind gales of laughter and avalanches of girlish giggles! You must move in the same direction as the others, mind you. Oh, my, yes. If we go against the flow the Pale Folk will notice we are but imperfectly of their sort. When we see a line of escape divergent from our destination, why, then we shall take it and so sail off into a phosphorescent sea of free will wherein to find a destiny of our own.”

“Yeah, okay, I guess that makes sense.”

Darger waggled a finger at Kyril. “It is far better than your own foolish plan. Minion helmets indeed! Were I to follow your lead, it would inevitably end up with us breaking into some super-criminal’s lair to steal secret information, seduce a convenient voluptuary, kill the villain, and leave the entire place ablaze behind us!”

There was a glimmer of torchlight in the distance. “When we get to the surface,” Kyril said solemnly, “I’m going to kick your butt so hard you’ll never sit down again.”

Darger laughed and laughed.

The hunt wasn’t going well. Pepsicolova was down to her last two cigarettes, and the craving was almost unbearably strong. And getting stronger. She pulled the nearly depleted pack from her jacket pocket and gently teased out one tobacco-filled cylinder. It was soft from repeated fondling already, but she ran her fingers down its length, not so much straightening it as deriving what satisfaction she could from the feel of the paper. Slowly, she ran it under her nose, savoring the ghost of comfort the aroma provided. At last she was unable to put off the deed any longer and convulsively lit up.

Leaving her with a cushion of exactly one smoke.

She’d been hunting for a fresh pack for hours, with no success. Several times she’d run across a fellow addict also desperately looking to score. After determining for certain that they were entirely out, she’d released them. The first, a woman, she had then stealthily trailed after. But when she’d witnessed what became of the poor bitch when she finally found the Pale Folk, Pepsicolova had concluded there was nothing to be gained by following her example.

Now she was crouched in a concrete air vent high above the motorway, staring down at the throngs being driven toward the underlords’ redoubt. The flood of people looked more impressive than it actually was. There were hundreds of captives, she reckoned, but not
many
hundreds. Life was hard in the City Below and correspondingly short. Also, they were scattered over an area equal to that of the City Above, which meant that, inevitably, a goodly fraction of them would evade capture simply through blind luck. By Pepsicolova’s best estimate, the underlords wouldn’t be able to assemble an army of more than two or three thousand. Tops. Hardly enough to accomplish anything serious. So whatever they were up to, this was only for starters.

Not that it was any concern of hers.

She smoked the penultimate cigarette down to almost nothing. Then she pierced the butt with the point of Saint Cyrila’s blade and toasted it with a match, breathing in every last bit of its magical smoke. After which, no longer cramped and aching, she scuttled back up the vent. At the top, she squirmed through a narrow slit between concrete slabs, and regained her feet in an unused utility tunnel. It was surpassingly strange how the people below her pranced and gamboled like buffoons and snickering idiots, even as they were being driven toward an end she knew to be singularly unsavory. But that was no concern of hers either.

Her only concern was finding more smokes.

It was the most grotesque journey Kyril had ever made. The Pale Folk drove the underpeople before them like cattle, thrusting forward their fiery torches whenever their captives lagged. The scrawny denizens of the underworld, in their turn, capered and joked as they were prodded along. Somebody stumbled and fell and didn’t get up even when poked with a torch, so one of the Pale Folk stamped down hard on the fallen body, snapping the spine, and walked unhurriedly on.

Great gusts of laughter swept through the throng like wind.

Sickened, Kyril looked away. He was rapidly losing faith in Darger’s plan. Despite the man’s assurances, no chance to slip away had presented itself. Nor did it look like it was going to. They came to the collapsed end of the motorway and were herded through a side-entrance into a smaller tunnel, one lined with smooth ceramic tiles half as old as time. Here they were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder. Twice, they passed dark doorways. In each one stood one of the Pale Folk, torch in hand, preventing egress.

Darger glanced over his shoulder and, taking in Kyril’s dispirited posture, grinned. Then the sonofabitch began to
sing!

“Do your hopes hang low? Have you no place to go?

Then just keep your eyes open, and watch out for the foe.

The race goes to the bolder so behave just like a soldier.

For escape will never beckon, if your hopes hang low!”

Kyril placed the beak of his mask up over Darger’s shoulder so he could be heard: “Stop singing like that, you madman!”

Carelessly, Darger pushed him away. Then, changing his tune to a hornpipe, he sang:

“Listen to me, if you want to be free,

Says your only friend the madman.

Your mouth you must shut or they’ll rip open your gut,

Says Darger the musical madman.”

Just then, the tunnel opened out into a foyer. Hallways led out from it, and there were faded signs reading SURGERY and X-RAY and OUTPATIENT REGISTRATION and LABORATORY and RADIOLOGY, with arrows pointing in different directions. Not all of the words or symbols made sense to Kyril, but enough of them did for him to recognize this place.

It was a hospital. One that had not been used in a very long time.

Clearly this was a revenant of some ancient defense installation, built underground to render it safe from the wars of the Preutopian era, with their explosions and great machines. Kyril had run across stranger things under Moscow and was not greatly surprised. Though he did feel a twinge of regret that he had not chanced upon this place earlier, when he could have scavenged it for things to sell on the gray market.

The great river of incoming bodies here split into several streams. Kyril found himself carried along, like a cork in the current, down a hallway, up a set of stairs, and into yet another dim hallway. There the pressure eased somewhat as Pale Folk grabbed and pushed individuals into short lines before the open doors of what must have originally been rooms for the hospital’s patients. In each room were rotting gurneys. In some the Pale Folk were strapping their blissful captives onto them. In others, they were performing surgery. Without anesthesia, Kyril judged from the sounds he heard.

“Go to the last room in the hall,” Darger sang, gesturing theatrically at the furthest doorway. Through it could be glimpsed, by the light of a single candle, a single figure bent low over a body that struggled and giggled and choked all at once.