Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [93]
Then the thing she had been praying for happened: Somebody got out a cigarette and lit it. He took a long drag and passed it after the jar.
Pepsicolova’s nostrils flared. She recognized the smell. It was the real stuff!
Even better, she could see a large stack of familiar white packs arranged neatly against the wallpapered bedrock. So they had tobacco to spare. Best of all, she’d dealt with the Dregs before, and instilled in them a healthy fear of her abilities. She could negotiate with them.
Things were going her way at last.
Which made it particularly ironic that the Pale Folk chose that very moment to attack.
There was a sudden clanging of two metal pipes being repeatedly slammed together. It was obviously a lookout raising the alarm, for the men below instantly leaped to their feet and snatched up weapons. Pepsicolova saw one take the cigarette from his lips and ditch it in the fire. She could have wept.
The clanging cut off abruptly. Pale Folk came running into the squat in force. There were at least eight of them for every one of the squatters. The Dregs, no cowards, ran to meet them.
The fight itself didn’t interest Pepsicolova. She had seen enough gang battles to know that the side having the eight-to-one advantage (as the Pale Folk did) would inevitably win. However, she found it encouraging that the Dregs fought at all. The Dregs were mercenaries who had learned early that a captive could be traded for cigarettes, and had been ruthless enough in providing such captives to amass a fortune in smokes. Which in turn had, at least temporarily, bought them freedom.
So much, Pepsicolova thought, for the notion that tobacco was inevitably bad for you.
At first the advantage was to the Dregs. They had homemade blades and metal pipes. Somebody brandished what looked like a handgun. There was a flash of black powder and one of the Pale Folk fell.
But the attackers had not come unprepared. Some of them carried a device that looked something like an atomizer in reverse, with a glass jar at the top and a bellows affixed to its bottom. Inside the jars was a fine black powder. When squeezed, the bellows emitted a puff of dry smoke.
Perhaps it was a new drug. Or a dosage of the happy dust in such quantity as to overwhelm the Dregs’ resistance to it. In any case, those inhaling it instantly lost all desire to fight. In minutes the battle was over. The squatters, smiling happily, were prodded away. Three Pale Folk had been killed. Their bodies were left where they’d fallen.
But before they left, the Pale Folk gathered up all of the Dregs’ possessions and threw them upon the campfire. It blazed up like a bonfire, so hot that its flames licked the blackened ceiling.
Into this inferno, they threw the cigarettes.
All that beautiful smoke went roaring up through the vent and away.
...13...
The Pearls Beyond Price were ready at last to fling themselves— gracefully, of course—at the feet of their noble bridegroom.
Almost.
The Neanderthals had drawn lots to decide who would stand guard outside the dressing room and which four would stand within, fetching and carrying for their charges. Enkidu, Beowulf, Kull, and Gargantua had lost. They watched, a little dazed, as fabrics, furs, and leathers flew through the air, silk stockings were donned and shucked, lips glossed in layers, eyelashes curled, nails buffed and painted and rebuffed, hair piled high and then brushed out flat again, perfumes sprayed, imaginary roughnesses pumiced.
“Uh, maybe we shouldn’t be here,” Beowulf mumbled when Eulogia began applying blush to Euphrosyne’s nipples. I mean, you know…us being male and all.”
“Oh, you don’t count!” Eulogia put down the makeup brush. “Are my elbows ugly? Be honest now.”
“You’re perfect up and down, Missy. All this fussing and primping ain’t really necessary. Anybody would fall in love with you with just one glance.”
“You’re sweet. What do you know?”
The Pearls were determined that everything be just right. They started with tremendous natural advantages over other women, of course. But