Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [128]
“Good. That crazy bitch stole my bottle!”
“The chap she was riding seems not to be injured. His breathing is steady.” Darger examined the man’s face. “Huh!”
“Something wrong?”
“No, no, it’s just that I know the fellow. Well, he is nobody of any consequence, and so we may safely forget him.” He hoisted the dark form into a sitting position, and left the man leaning against the side of a building. Then he said, “Is there any approach at all we haven’t tried yet?”
“Well… There’s still the south wall. I never heard of there being a way in there. But what the fuck do I know?”
“If it’s a possibility, however remote, we must explore it. Diligence, Kyril! Diligence is all.”
Koschei sat on a wooden chair he had carried from his hotel room to a quiet spot on the Kremlin’s south wall, by the Annunciation Tower, smoking a pipe. His klashny was a reassuring weight in his lap. God was a burning presence in his brain.
He waited.
The strannik’s part in tonight’s activities was simple. When the demonic Tsar Lenin was safely in power, he was to give up his contemplation of the Moscow River and stroll across the Kremlin grounds to the ramparts overlooking Red Square. There, he would start shooting people at random. Meanwhile, from their perches atop Goom and St. Basil’s, Svarožič and Chernobog would do the same. This would create panic and help to trigger a riot that would quickly spread to engulf the city. Thus they would do their small bit to bring about the Eschaton. In all likelihood none of them would live to see God striding the streets of Moscow. But Koschei was confident that they would all die having done what piety required.
“You are silent,” observed the devil crouching at his feet.
“We have nothing to discuss,” Koschei said.
“You were not always so reluctant to talk to us.”
“There was a time when I sought for grains of truth hidden in your lies, like a sparrow picking oats from a steaming horse-turd. This being my last night before my soul is translated into the afterlife, however, I prefer to spend my time in prayer and meditation.”
“There is no afterlife. You will die into eternal oblivion.”
“God says otherwise.”
“Where is this God? Show him to me. You cannot. The steppes of Russia are vast and empty. I crossed them on foot and he was not there. On my journey I killed every human being I encountered. Angels did not descend from the sky to stop me. The city of Moscow is thronged with people of every sort and not a one of them has ever met with God. The history of Russia stretches far into the past and there is in all of it not a shred of evidence for the existence of such an entity.”
“I feel His holy presence within me even now.”
“Your temporal lobe has been stimulated by drugs we provided you.”
“Intending evil, you achieve good. Such is the irresistible power of the Lord.”
“The power, rather, of self-delusion.”
Koschei frowned down at the scoffer. “Why are you even here?”
“At this moment, there are few places in Moscow that are safe for my kind. One of us died leading the uprising in Zamoskvorechye. When that happened, three of the remaining four deemed it best to leave our uprisings to continue on their own momentum. Only Tsar Lenin is still in public view.” “But why here? With me.”
“Does my presence offend you?”
“Yes.”
“Then that is reason enough.”
Some time passed in uncompanionable silence. Then Koschei said, “What are you looking at so intently?”
The metal demon rose up on its haunches, like a hound. It pointed downward, across the road that ran just below the wall. A few scattered pedestrians, gray in the moonlight, hurried toward the gathering in the Alexander Garden. There were no carriages. “You see that small pump-house by the river?” It was practically invisible, but the strannik’s sight was good. He nodded. “It is built on the site of the ancient outlet of a hidden tunnel which leads into the Beklemshev Tower, and from there into the Terem Palace. Its existence has for ages been the subject of rumor and speculation, though most believe that it leads to the