Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [123]
Then he heard noise in the distance.
At first he thought it was music, because there was a regular throb to it. But as it grew louder and closer, he realized that it was anything but musical. People were chanting and beating on drums and blowing horns to several different beats and as many different tunes at once. Down with something, they chanted. Down with something, Down with something. But Yevgeny was damned if he could make out what that something was.
Yevgeny mounted his horse and raced down Teatralny proezd to Tverskaya ulitsa. At the intersection looking north, he saw a shadowy deluge of humanity churning and rumbling down the street toward him with banners flying and fists flung into the air. This was surely what the baron had said he would know when he saw it. But knowing it and knowing what to do about it were two separate things.
The sergeant appeared at his elbow. “Shall we bring up the gun and open fire, sir?”
“On our own citizens?” Yevgeny said, horrified.
“It’s been known to happen, sir.”
The mob was coming closer and coming into focus as well. Yevgeny could make out individual faces now. There were three white horses pulling a troika at the front. Behind it, bodies filled the street from wall to wall. Most of them seemed to be wearing red kerchiefs. But the team pulling the troika… Didn’t it look familiar? Surely that was—he squinted—the same cloned triplet of a stallion his cousin Avdotya owned? The one whose uniqueness she had ensured by buying the genome’s patent and then refusing to license it?
“Do you want me to bring around the cannon, sir, and have it aimed up the street? Just as a precaution, I mean.”
“Yes, yes, why do you bother me with questions, just do it,” Yevgeny muttered distractedly. He stared with all his might, trying to will the distant figures into clarity, cursing the dimness of the moonlight, praying he was wrong. Slowly they came closer until finally, yes, that was without question the Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma driving. Sitting behind her were Irina, the dog-headed Byzantine ambassador the baronessa had invited to her soiree, and…Tsar Lenin?
Yevgeny’s head swam with the impossibility of it all.
But then the words swam into lucidity. Down with the duke! the mob was chanting. Down with the duke! Down with the duke!
It was treason. Beyond all doubt this was what the general’s gnomic warning had been about. Yet now that the need for action was upon him, Yevgeny found that he could not bring himself to act.
“If we’re going to fire, now’s the time to do it, sir. While there’s still time enough to get off another shot or two if the first one don’t turn ’em away.”
“I…”
Yevgeny knew what he should do. He knew what General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka would demand of him, were she here. But he could not fire upon his cousin. They had played together as children. As adolescents they had competed for the same lovers. He had been the witness at her marriage to that overbearing oaf of a husband of hers.
Yet he had to. It was his duty.
Yevgeny drew out his snuffbox and flicked it open, feigning a confidence he did not feel. “Is everything ready, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well, then.” Yevgeny took a dip of snuff, marveling at how steady his voice was. His stomach was a lump of ice. He face felt numb. He did not know how he would survive this decision. “In that case, you may…”
“Sir?”
“Yevgeny’s mouth moved, but nothing came out.
“Sir, are you ordering me to fire?”
“I—”
“Stop! Cease! Do not fire!”
Yevgeny spun about and saw, speeding up Okhotny Ryad ulitsa, the least likely Angel of Mercy imaginable—none other than Chortenko himself—leaning from the window of his notorious blue-and-white carriage. The servile coachman drove its horses up so mercilessly that the carriage rattled and leaped and threatened to shake itself apart. “Do not fire!” Chortenko shouted again.
The servile pulled back on the reins and the carriage clattered to a stop alongside the artillery piece.
Without descending, Chortenko said, “I am ordering