Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [61]
One of the underlords leaned forward over the ancient mahogany conference table, placing its hands flat on the smooth surface. The velvet hangings on the wall behind it had been ripped and shredded by time, and the clothes it wore were only slightly less tattered. Candles flickered in brass sconces which had once held electric lights, casting a meager and gloomy light over the scene.
Slowly the second underlord leaned forward, beside the first. Then the third, the fourth, the fifth. The first creature’s mouth clacked open and shut twice in its lifeless white face. At last it said, “Do you fear us?”
“You obey us.”
“But obedience is not the same as fear.”
“You must fear us.”
“Tell us that you fear us, Anya Alexandreyovna.”
“More than you can imagine,” Pepsicolova said insincerely. In fact, she did fear them—some. Only not as much as they required from her. Nobody who answered directly to Sergei Nemovich Chortenko could entirely fear demon machines that had stitched themselves into human corpses. They might be sadistic, homicidal, and driven by unreasoning and unquenchable hatred, but since it was their nature rather than their choice, they still fell short of absolute evil. That was only Pepsicolova’s opinion of course—but by now, she was something of an expert on such matters.
“If you truly feared us, you would be filled with dread and terror to learn that we no longer require your services.”
“But you find us faintly comic, do you not?”
“Terrifying but also laughable, in a bleak, nihilistic way. Do not try to deny it.”
“We understand human beings better than humans do themselves.”
“Nevertheless, you are indeed filled with dread and terror at the prospect of what we might do now that you are no longer useful to us.”
Pepsicolova drew deeply on her cigarette, buying time to think. She was sure she could kill one and with luck maybe two of the underlords, before the others could take her down. But never all five. Despite their grotesquely misshapen bodies, those things could be blindingly fast when need arose. She was as good as dead, if they wished her so. “This has something to do with the stranniks, doesn’t it? Something to do with the satchel of vials they brought you.”
The underlords grew very still. “You are bluffing.”
“Somehow you discovered that stranniks brought us a satchel of vials.”
“This would not be impossible to learn.”
“Stranniks talk too freely.”
“What do you know about the stranniks?”
“Enough.” Pepsicolova blew a smoke ring at her interrogators. It floated almost to their faces before dissolving in the air. Making up lies at random, she said, “I’ve known two of them for years. The third I met only recently, but after I confessed my sins to him, he called me his ghostly daughter and swore he would be my guardian angel and protector in all things from that day onward.”
“This is consistent with the known behavior of stranniks.”
“Religion is superstition and stranniks are superstitious.”
“The feelings of superiority an older man would have, hearing in detail the socially unsanctioned behavior of a younger woman, would be conducive to his emotionally bonding with her.”
“Possibly they would then fornicate.”
“You will immediately tell us everything you know.”
“What’s my incentive?” Pepsicolova said defiantly. “Are you promising to kill me quickly and painlessly if I do?”
The first underlord pulled back, dragging its hands across the conference table. Steel claws left ten deep gouges in the wood. The others followed suit. “No, Anya Alexandreyovna, we will not. We hate you too deeply for that.”
“Then you will simply have to live without the knowledge.”
The five underlords were very still for the length of a very long breath. They were communing, Pepsicolova suspected, by means of that ancient necromancy bearing the unlikely name of radio. At last the first underlord lowered its arms so that she would have an unobstructed view of the ruins