Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [148]
“I am! Today is my wedding day and I’m celebrating it by helping to save my new city.” The beautiful woman hopped down and stuck out her hand. “My name’s Nymphodora. Dora for short. What’s yours?”
“Anya Alexandreyovna Pepsicolova. Who’s the lucky man?”
Dora gestured toward the three Neanderthals. “They are—Enkidu, Gilgamesh, and Rabelais. My sisters and I wrote their names down on slips of paper and drew three each. Except for Zoësophia. She sent a messenger and said she was going into politics so she didn’t need a husband quite yet. Which is good, because then we all got the same number.”
Pepsicolova was sure she hadn’t understood half of what she’d just heard. “Three husbands?” she said wonderingly. “Can you actually satisfy all of them?”
“Trust me, sister,” the nearest giant said with a shy grin, “she can.”
Dora happily ruffled his hair. “Oh, you big galoot.” Then a sudden gout of flame made her shout, “Over there!” and off she and her mighty consorts sped.
Pepsicolova and her dog wandered off into the wondrous if somewhat reduced city of Moscow.
Because the Terem Palace was in ruins and elements of the Kremlin remained on fire, the Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Muscovy was reduced to meeting in the brothel in Zamoskvorechye from which Baron Lukoil-Gazprom was already directing rescue and firefighting operations. The ranking members of both the old and new regimes who were neither dead nor incapacitated by sexual exhaustion, crowded into the parlor. So diminished were the numbers of the ruling class and so great was the need to reestablish a functioning government that nobody wasted time in political infighting. That could wait for next week.
“Firstly, thank you all for coming,” Zoësophia said. “Baron Lukoil-Gazprom has asked me to serve as the recording secretary for this meeting.” No one could have suspected the degree to which the Committee had been chosen by this striking but deferential young woman. Nor how deftly she had countered its most ambitious members by appointing their political rivals to positions of equal authority. “He himself will serve as chair until a new leader is chosen. Baron?”
The baron glanced down at the agenda laid before him as though he had had no hand in drafting it. Which he most definitely had. “There is much we must do. However, the first and most pressing order of business is to name an acting chief of government to replace our own beloved and tragically deceased Duke of Muscovy.”
A rustle of wordless surprise passed around the table. This was the first that most of them had heard of the duke’s demise. But before anyone could demand details of this startling news, the baron said, “Nominations?”
Several of those present straightened with sudden resolve. State Inspector of Infrastructure Zdrajca bulled his way to the front and said, “I would like to—”
“Jaragniew Bogdanovich Zdrajca.” Baron Lukoil-Gazprom referred to a list of names that Zoësophia slid before him. “You are known to belong to an organization including elements of the government created by the False Tsar Lenin.” There was just enough of a pause for everyone to realize that most of the members of that organization referred to were present in this very room. Then he continued, “And to having ambitions of establishing yourself as absolute ruler of Muscovy. This makes you a clear and present danger to the welfare of the state.” Lifting his head, the baron said, “Take him out and shoot him.”
Two soldiers whom nobody had previously paid any serious attention to seized the unfortunate state inspector by the arms and dragged him from the building. There was a long silence and then a volley of klashny fire.
A flurry of motions and points of order later, Muscovy had a new duke-to-be.
There was a tense moment when the question was raised of punishments for those involved in the abortive coup. However, since Chortenko was dead and his puppet government had been assembled under duress, it was quickly established that the only rebel of any note was the Baronessa