Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [73]
“It must be done today,” Koschei said, the God-light glowing in his eyes. His voice was low and thunderous, and when he spoke electricity seemed to crackle in the air about his head and beard. “Tomorrow will be too late.”
“What do you mean, too late?”
“Our labors are at long last come to fruition, praise God and all the Cherubim! For on this very day we will bring about the Eschaton and history will come to an end.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“No one can know what it means until it happens. We can only accept that it will.”
“I still don’t—”
“The Eschaton,” Chernobog said, “is the transcendent, uncreated, and spiritual apotheosis of humankind, the unending instant when the finger of God touches the Earth and all the immanent and phenomenal world is swallowed up in such wild glories as are experienced in each and every instant by the saints in Heaven.”
“But what are you talking about? What will it look like?”
“You will know it when it comes,” Koschei said solemnly.
“Yes,” Chernobog said, “and it will come soon.”
Beaming, Svarožič put his hands together in prayer.
Then, in a flurry of activity, the stranniks placed the satchel in Arkady’s hands, slapped him on the back, and ushered him out the door. He found himself alone in the hallway, blinking. He hadn’t understood a word of what had just been said to him. But it sounded very spiritual. In some way, it involved God. So whatever or whoever the Eschaton was, it must surely be a good thing? Of course it must.
He put his head inside the satchel, inhaled deeply, and returned to his work with renewed determination.
The tunnel stretched more than a kilometer beyond the Kremlin’s walls. Built with the eerie precision characteristic of the ancients, it curved almost imperceptibly, so that more of the corridor was continually appearing before them and monotonously disappearing behind. Luminous lichen covered the ceiling and walls, filling the tunnel with gentle light. Surplus led, followed by Zoësophia and then Chortenko with his dwarf savants, Max and Igorek, striding lockstep at his heels. The six bear-guards came lumbering after them.
“This is a bit of a walk,” Chortenko said. “But a pleasant one, yes?” Not that he believed for an instant that his unwitting captives found it any such thing. But he was fascinated by what untruths people could be made to agree to, rather than acknowledge an unbearable truth.
Stiffly, Zoësophia said, “You must excuse me, if I am not in the mood for idle chitchat. I have suffered a serious blow today.”
Surplus said nothing.
No one knew for what purpose the tunnel had originally been dug, for such things were never written down. But periodically the company passed a doorway that had been filled in with masonry or else secured by metal plates and locks that had long ago rusted solid. So that purpose, whatever it had been, was no more.
“Walking is such good exercise. I know you will think me a health faddist for saying so, but I try to put in at least an hour per day.” Chortenko removed his blue-glass spectacles. He could read Zoësophia’s face like a book. When he had first joined Muscovy Intelligence as a junior officer, he had had his eyes surgically removed and the hemispherical insectoid organs he now possessed grown in their place. That people found them intimidating had been pleasant for a homely youth of pudgy build. But their true merit was that they saw deep into the infrared, and so he could follow the patterns of blood flow in people