Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [36]
It was also, he had to admit, good to get away from the Pearls for a change. Beauteous and charming as they might be, the Pearls were also— there was no denying it—intense. Indeed, they were growing more intense with each passing day on which they were not taken, with enormous pomp and ceremony, to the Terem Palace to stand at last, blushing and shy, before their new bridegroom. After which, he presumed, these seven virgins with their excess of book learning and lack of any prior outlets for their physical desires, would teach the duke precisely how terrifying such young ladies could be.
So it was with a bit of an edge in his voice that Surplus turned to the rotund and pompous bureaucrat—the eighteenth most powerful man in Moscow, the gentleman had boasted—with whom he slowly strolled among the ash trees of the Secret Garden and said, “We have been in Moscow over a month and still you cannot make this simplest of things happen?”
“I have given it my honest best. But what is there to be done? A meeting with the Duke of Muscovy is not something that happens every day.”
“All I wish to do,” Surplus said, “is to give the man a present of seven uniquely beautiful concubines, all of them graceful, intelligent, and desperately eager to please. Nor are they merely decorative and companionable. They can also cook, tat lace, arrange flowers, cheat at cards, and play the pianoforte. Not only are they pleasant to the eye and ear and—presumably—nose and hand and tongue, but they have been thoroughly educated in literature, psychology, and political philosophy. As advisors, they will be unfailingly frank yet subtle as only a Byzantine can be. Further, they are trained in all the social graces and the erotic arts as well. Never was such a gift more churlishly refused!”
“The duke is a great man, with many demands on his time.”
“I warn you that when he finally experiences the thousand delights of the Pearls of Byzantium, he will not reward you for having kept them from him so long.”
“You have your duty and I have mine. Good-bye.” Wrapping his dignity about himself like a greatcoat, the bureaucrat, whom Surplus now thought of as the single most useless man in Moscow, departed.
Dispirited, Surplus sank down on a park bench.
The Secret Garden’s portentous name was more suggestive than it perhaps merited, for it lay above and was named for the Secret Tower, one of the Kremlin’s two dozen towers, most of which antedated the Utopian era. As for why the tower was so named, there were many explanations. One was that it was the terminus of a secret tunnel into the city. Another said that it contained a secret well. The most plausible was that it was named after a long-demolished Cathedral of the Secret that once stood nearby. But which was the truth no man could say for there were no facts in Russia—only conflicting conspiracy theories.
Surplus came out of his reverie to discover, sitting on the bench beside him, a stocky and unprepossessing man in blue glass goggles.
“You seem unhappy, Ambassador,” Chortenko said. “May I ask why?”
His mood being foul, and seeing no reason to pretend otherwise, Surplus said, “Surely you, who are reputed to know everything else that goes on in this city, must be aware of what I have made no effort whatsoever to hide.”
“Yes, yes, these ‘Pearls’ of yours, of course. I was only making small talk. But you, I see, are far too direct for that. So I shall be blunt as well. It is impossible for you to see the Duke of Muscovy. No foreigner has ever been allowed into his presence. But if you will answer a few questions openly and honestly for me, I will arrange the impossible for you. And then…well, you will have as much of the great man’s attention as he deigns to give you.”
There was something about the quiet amusement with which the man spoke that made the small hairs on the back of Surplus’s neck bristle with sudden fear. But he said only, “What do you wish to know?”
“This book that was stolen