Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [125]
It was easily the most amazing moment in Baronessa Avdotya’s life.
Intellectually, she understood that none of this was her own due. But it felt like it was, and that was the important thing. It filled her with a sense of destiny and purpose. She could not help turning from side to side, nodding and smiling luminously.
She craned around to look behind her and saw Tsar Lenin standing upon the seat. His balance was preternaturally perfect as, hand in air, he acknowledged the applause with a dignified hint of a bow, the tiniest twitch of his wrist.
Now those closest to the tsar unharnessed the horses and led them away. Others seized the carriage by its rods and pulled it by hand through the adoring throngs.
A speaking platform had been set up at the foot of the causeway leading up to the Trinity Tower gate. Bleachers stretched the length of the Alexander Garden’s back wall. In between, all the park was already filled with marchers from the three invasions which had by prearrangement arrived earlier than Tsar Lenin’s group. More people than Avdotya had ever in her life seen in a single space struggled to catch a glimpse of the great man, and screamed in ecstasy when they did.
Lenin stood straight and proud on the carriage seat, accepting their adulation.
Then, as lightly as he had climbed up, the new tsar leapt down and walked without hurry or effort through a riotous ocean of humanity which parted before him like the Red Sea before Moses, and closed solidly behind him like the gates of history clanging shut. Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma ran quickly after Lenin, leaving Irina behind (indeed, forgetting her completely), and slid her arm through his.
Tsar Lenin did not object.
The Royal Guard appeared out of nowhere to close ranks behind and to either side of them, a bodyguard that Lenin surely did not need, but which did much to emphasize the legitimacy of the once and future ruler, freshly returned from the graveyard of the past to claim his land once more.
Together they ascended the stairs to the platform.
Upon the departure of the terrifying entity impersonating Lenin, Surplus had quietly slipped down from the troika. Irina had tried to climb over the heads and shoulders of the crowd to join the baronessa and been absorbed in their number, another anonymous drop of water in a sea of hysteria. Alone in all Moscow, it seemed, Surplus was immune to the contagions of emotion that lofted the crowd’s mood higher and higher. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that those emotions terrified him. So much so that he immediately determined to get as far away from their epicenter as possible.
Not without effort, Surplus made his way to the fringes of the crowd. Behind him, the troika was being dismantled and then broken into pieces for souvenirs and relics.
When finally Surplus found himself free of the immense assembly’s gravitational pull, he paused to gather his thoughts.
He had been in mobs before, though none so great as this. The prickling sensation of danger, of incipient violence, was not new to him. He knew how easy it would be to surrender to the madness that permeated the air and let himself be swallowed up by it. It was therefore of primary importance for him to keep his head. Systematically, then, Surplus reasoned carefully that:
Imprimis: The Duke of Muscovy was about to be overthrown.
Secundus: This meant that the plan he and Darger had devised to separate the duke from a generous share of his nation’s surplus wealth was defunct. There was no point in mourning this fact. One simply had to move on.
Tertius: It