across the table. “Militant forces are at this moment assembling here, here, here, here, and here.” His finger tapped the five squares where the armies of Pale Folk would emerge from the City Below. “They possess an irresistible weapon-one that will make the citizens of Moscow rise up and follow them.”
“There can be no such weapon,” the Minister of Genetic Oversight said. “Otherwise, I would surely have known.”
“Again, madam, patience. All will be revealed.” Picking up a stick of charcoal, Chortenko returned their attention to the map. “The forces will come along these boulevards”-he drew thick lines along Bolshaya Yakimanka, Tverskaya, and Maroseika-“as well as up along the river from Taganskaya and through the Arbat, gathering in strength all the while. There is little the military can do to stop them, for most of their forces have been withdrawn to locations outside the city, and by the time they can be summoned, the rebellion will be a fait accompli.”
The lines met and merged. “Finally, the insurgents will converge upon the Kremlin. By this time, their numbers will be unimaginable, a sea of humanity, unstoppable!” He laid the charcoal on its side and ringed the Kremlin with black. “Most of the military forces within the Kremlin have been quietly pulled away and given their liberty for the night. I do not have to tell you how they are currently engaged.” There was an uneasy shifting among his auditors. “Of those remaining, a clear majority have been suborned. The Trinity Tower Regulars will open the gate, allowing the revolutionaries inside without a single shot being fired.
“There are many distinct units involved in the security of the Kremlin, and it is entirely possible that scattered centers of resistance will remain. But the mob will be highly energized by this point, and that resistance will only give them something to vent their energies on. A few short hours from now, the deed will be done, the Duke of Muscovy dead, and the present government overthrown.”
“My God, this is ghastly!” the Commissioner for Mandatory Hygiene cried. “How could such an enormous plot have reached this point without any of us hearing a word about it?”
Chortenko smiled benignly. “Believe me, madam,” he said, “it was not easy.”
Stunned silence. Then, as comprehension set in, several of the more intemperate politicians tried to stand. But the men standing behind them simply pressed hands firmly on their shoulders and pushed them back down. Chortenko raised his voice to be heard above the clamor. “At this moment, I want you all to turn over the name cards in front of you. You’ll see that written on the back is the title of the position being offered you in the new government, and your exact salary as well.”
Not even the most recalcitrant could resist looking. Most grew very still.
Chortenko casually removed his glasses, so he could read the patterns of blood-flow in their faces. It was important that he know their emotions. All those present were deceitful and potentially treacherous. Some would be planning resistance and rebellion from the very start, and those would have to be weeded out first.
It would have been foolish to assemble such a group and not have at least one ringer in it-and Chortenko was no fool. Now the ringer, Ilya Nikitovich Dubinin, currently the head of the trash collectors union and a man with a bad gambling habit, slammed his fist on the table. “This is treason! I’ll have no part of it.” There were cautious murmurs of agreement. Chortenko quietly noted from whom they came.
“But you are already a part of it. You are present at a meeting of conspirators who are choosing new government ministers before the old government has fallen. That alone would discredit you with the current regime, no matter what alibis you offered. However, you have no need to fear. By morning, the Kremlin will be ours, and everybody in this room will be written up in the history books as heroes.”
“These are merely words,” Dubinin said, keeping to the script. “There is not a jot of evidence to support your claims. Why should we accept your version of the facts? What proof do you have of the irresistibility of your putsch?”
“That is an excellent question.” Chortenko nodded, and a junior intelligence officer opened a door. “Colonel Misha, you may enter.”
The commander of the Royal Guard strode into the room, followed by two more bear-guards, their medals and ribbons bright on the breasts of their dress uniforms. Even in a roomful of conspirators and traitors, the mere presence of the giant man-beasts was shocking. The Royal Guard were incorruptible. Everybody knew that. If they could be suborned, then so could anybody.
The two guards took up places to either side of the door through which they had entered. Their commander cleared his throat. Everybody waited anxiously to hear what he had to say.
“Our new ally,” the colonel announced. An underlord clanked into the room.
Twenty faces froze in horror.
The invasion began quietly in Pushkin Square.
Underpeople began emerging from the long stairway that led from the docks below in an unhurried and orderly manner. They flowed into the square like water welling up from the storm sewers. Some of them had leather bird-masks. Others were laughing and singing. Some had drums, which they began to beat erratically upon. Others had horns which they put to their lips with lamentable results. Still others slammed pots and pans together. More emerged and more. Even when it seemed there could not possibly be any more, they kept coming and coming and coming. It was as if one last subway train from the miraculous age of Utopia had finally arrived at its station, centuries late, to disgorge its hundreds and thousands of passengers. They filled the square and overflowed into the streets converging upon it before the numbers of newcomers began to dwindle.
A smudge-pot had been lit by the stairway entrance, and those with torches lit them from its flame.
One of the last to emerge was a gigantic bear-man stooping under the burden of a folded gurney. Once into the square, he swiftly snapped straight the gurney’s legs so it could stand on its own. Then he bent low over its occupant and shook an admonitory claw before the man’s face. “A word to the wise, friend: no more puns.”
Darger giggled.
There were lights in the windows of all the buildings surrounding the square, and the shadowy figures of their occupants, come to see what all the commotion was about, could be seen peering down.
One final figure emerged from the City Below.
At once, miraculously, out of chaos came order. The ambling and aimless forces from below swiftly organized themselves into brigades and lined up in parade formation facing down Tverskaya ulitsa. For a long, still moment, the drums and horns and makeshift noisemakers went silent. All voices hushed.
The last figure to arrive assumed his place at the head of the procession.
It was Tsar Lenin in his three-piece gray suit with the razor-crisp creases in his trousers. He lifted his goateed chin, looking confident and determined, like a man who could not be stopped by anything. Without saying a word, he raised one arm high and then brought it down and forward. Lenin strode straight ahead, and the procession followed in his wake.
Behind him, Pale Folk waved banners that were on the verge of collapsing into dust. Slogans reappeared that had not been seen since the rise of Utopia: WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE and FOREVER PRAISE THE NAME AND WORK OF VLADIMIR LENIN followed by LONG LIVE THE INDISSOLUTE UNION OF THE WORKING CLASS, THE PEASANTRY, AND THE INTELLIGENTSIA and BROTHERHOOD AND FREEDOM OF ALL WORKING PEOPLE! and PEACE, LAND, amp; BREAD! and LONG LIVE THE GLORIOUS COLLECTIVE FARM PEASANTRY OF KOLOMNA.
There were other banners as well, with messages like RIVERSIDE ARTS FESTIVAL and MEN’S SUITS AT LOW, LOW PRICES! and WINTER BONFIRE DISCO which, cryptic though they were, helped lend a festive air to the procession.
The Pale Folk shambled lifelessly forward, and when a banner ripped and its cloth exploded into shreds, they kept on walking and waving the pole to which its remnants were attached. Their captives capered and danced.
From every doorway, Muscovites poured into the street, abandoning sex and theology for the pageantry of history-in-the-making. When they confronted the actual procession, those in front stopped and even shrank away from its uncanny strangeness. But there were bird-masked Pale Folk at the edges wielding bellows-guns from which puffed clouds of black smoke, and those who were touched by the smoke stopped and then, with stunned expressions and eyes that shone with holy fire, joined the parade.
“Tsar Lenin has returned!” a louder-than-human voice roared. Only those closest to its source realized that it originated from Lenin himself, for his mouth did not move with the words. “Join the great man and restore the glory of Russia!”
The people cheered rapturously.
“Tsar Lenin has returned! Tsar Lenin has returned!” Spontaneous chanting began from those nearest to the front of the procession: “Lenin! Len-in! Len-in!”
