Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [99]
A spasm of pain cramped Pepsicolova’s guts. One side of her body suddenly tingled with pins and needles, as if it had fallen asleep. A dark throbbing filled her head, and for an instant she was tempted to simply let go and roll off the dome and die. She narrowed her eyes, but otherwise gave no outward sign of the pain she was feeling. There was nobody up here to see it. Nevertheless, she refused to let it show.
Resting the jar in her lap, she picked up Saint Methodia. A second line down her arm restored her mental clarity.
Putting this new-won lucidity to good use, Pepsicolova reasoned with herself: It would be foolhardy to do what she was thinking of doing. But did she have any alternative? The cravings were getting worse and worse. Soon, if the rumors about the effects of withdrawal from the underlords’ cigarettes were at all true, her body would start to shut down. And then—death.
So she really had no choice at all.
But if there was one thing Pepsicolova hated above all others, it was doing something—anything!—because she had to. Even in extremis, there was almost always a way of putting a twist on a bad decision, of making it her own. It was how she’d kept herself sane under Chortenko’s rule. By giving him slightly more—or even, sometimes, other—than exactly what he wanted. If she was ordered to give somebody a warning, she made sure that the warning terrified. If told to terrify somebody, she threw in a broken jaw or delivered the message in the presence of a spouse. It was never enough to earn her a reprimand. Just enough to keep alive within herself the rumor of free will.
One last line down her arm. Any more than that would be self-indulgence. She drew out the cut, savoring it as she would have a smoke. Then she put Saint Methodia back in her sheath. Finally, she pushed up her jacket-sleeve and bound up her arm with a long bandage she’d been carrying with her for this exact purpose for weeks.
And somehow, in performing that small, simple act, Pepsicolova saw the merest glimmer of freedom in her terrible fix.
Pepsicolova eyed the grains thoughtfully. Taking even one was foolhardy. To take a fingertip’s worth would be madness. Only an idiot would ingest more.
She brought the jar to her mouth, and swallowed them all.
Perhaps that, she thought, would suffice to free her. Perhaps it would kill her. At the very least, it would obliterate her consciousness. Which, at this point, was an outcome devoutly to be desired.
But nothing happened.
Pepsicolova waited impatiently for a sign of change. None came. Time crept by, and crept by, and crept by. Until finally she put the jar down beside her and listened to it slowly slide down to a seam in the roof, and then fall on its side, and then roll rapidly away. It skipped and rattled down the gilded lead and went over the edge. She listened for the sound of it breaking. But instead… instead… She heard a sound from a world away. It sounded like her name. “What?” It sounded like somebody calling her name. “What?” It sounded like somebody calling her name from the far side of the universe. “What?”
The darkness rose up like a snake and swallowed her.
Arkady stumbled through the lightless streets, desperate and all but despairing. Low groans, throaty laughter, and moist sounds of passion oozed from every dark building. The injustice of it all lashed at him like a knout. All the city was reveling in the pleasures he had brought them, while he himself was out here in the cold, alone and friendless. He who was the only honest man aware of the great danger they were all in! He who was going to save them! It hardly bore thinking about, and yet he could think of nothing else.
The road branched, and Arkady stopped, unsure which way to go. He looked up the left branch and then up the right. Four-story facades rose to either side. There was nothing to distinguish them.
And with that, Arkady realized that he was completely lost.
Up until now there had been carriages and drivers to take