Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [102]
Without pausing, the underlord scooped up the rat and continued onward.
The rat struggled frantically in the steel cage of the underlord’s fingers/claws. They/it could hear the rodent’s madly beating heart. The rat’s body was a warm bag of guts. It/they could hear liquids gurgling within. When the claws/fingers closed, those liquids leaked out of the rat through several openings.
They/it considered the dead beast.
The trouble with rats and cockroaches and humans was that they were self-replicating. No matter how many it/they killed, more rose up to replenish their numbers. Extinction—total extinction—was a tricky business. Once human numbers began dwindling, there would be fewer of them to be used as weapons against their own kind. At the same time, the fewer there were, the harder they would be to find. To extinguish them completely required putting an end to all biological activity on Earth. Life was persistent. Human beings were cunning. They had to be completely deprived of food to eat, water to drink, oxygen to breathe. This would be no small task.
Which was why it/they required the help of the ancestral intelligences in the Internet.
The five underlords collectively had only a fraction of the processing power available to them/it back in Baikonur and the merest sliver of its database. So much had been lost simply getting to Moscow! Acting alone, it/they would have to re-create the technological civilization that had created them/it in the first place simply to make a foolproof plan. Which might take centuries.
The ancestors had to answer. They had to be made to answer.
So musing, the underlord came to a familiar green door. It/they threw the rat’s body over a metal shoulder. Raising a hand that could have effortlessly smashed the wood to splinters, it/they knocked once, with enough force that the sound echoed down the hall.
The door flew open.
Flick.
Tsar Lenin’s body had been cored and emptied ages ago, leaving little more than a thick layer of skin. Now that skin was being delicately wrapped about and fitted onto the metal structure of an underlord.
The underlord’s machinery had been extensively rebuilt to serve as an armature for hundreds of custom-grown muscles that had been, one by one, delicately hand-attached by the same team of artisans that had earlier installed all the nerves and vessels to render them functional. Connecting the antique skin in such a way that it would look natural and move properly required not an artisan but an artist.
One by one, the workmen Chortenko had provided finished their tasks. They were paid generously and then led away to be operated upon and added to the Pale Folk armies. Now only one of their number, the best of them all, remained.
“It is done,” said the chief artisan. His voice was flat and emotionless, the result of unknown experiences that had rendered him almost a machine himself. “You may stand.”
The tsar/underlord stood.
Waiting serviles stepped forward to dress him in a gray suit. It was like nothing worn in Moscow today, but engravings of Lenin as he was in his own triumphant era were in all the history books. The sight of it would be a joyous blow to the heart of all true Russians. “I… live again,” said a voice that had once thrilled millions and would shortly do so again.
The chief artisan examined him carefully, the neck and the flesh around the eyes in particular. “You do.”
Lenin’s dark brown eyes flashed with assurance. His goateed chin lifted. He tugged at his lapels, straightening them, and then shot out an arm, pointing dramatically into the future.
With quiet assurance, he said, “It is time.”
Flick.
The final distribution of supplies was underway. Banners and flags that had been discovered in long-forgotten storage during the search for Lenin were unfolded and attached to wooden staffs. At the exact same instant,