Android Karenina

EPILOGUE: THE NEW HISTORY

IN THE SLANTING EVENING SHADOWS cast by the baggage piled up on the platform, Vronsky in his long regimental overcoat and gleaming silver hat, with his hands in his pockets, strode up and down, like a proud lion displaying himself for an admiring crowd, turning sharply after twenty paces. His beloved-companion robot, Lupo, strutted along behind him as always, the silver paneling of his lupine frame glimmering beautifully in the late-day sun, as together man and machine awaited departure on their newest assignment.

Vronsky’s old friend and fellow soldier Yashvin fancied, as he approached him, that Vronsky saw him but was pretending not to see. This did not affect Yashvin in the slightest: interested only in his own advancement, and distinctly aware of the high regimental perch Vronsky now inhabited, Yashvin was above all personal dignity. At that moment Yashvin looked upon Vronsky as a man at the pinnacle of a remarkable career, and would think himself foolish to miss any opportunity to thrust himself before the great man. He went up to him.

Vronsky stood still, looked intently at him, recognized him, and going a few steps forward to meet him, shook hands with him very warmly.

“Well, now, Alexei Kirillovich,” said Yashvin. “As strange as it feels to see any Russian soldier setting off on such a mission, I can imagine none other but you undertaking it. Did you ever imagine we would see such a day arrive?”

“I have had a feeling for some years that things were going this way,” said Vronsky, turning his head for a moment to admire the figure of a fashionable woman with a charming, fuchsia Class III. “Since the rise of Stremov, you know, with his decidedly liberal bent on the Robot Question. After the death of the… oh, dear, you know the fellow I mean. With the unusual face.”

Yashvin hurried to fill in the gap, eager to impress Vronsky with his understanding. “Karenin.”

“Yes, that’s right. Karenin.”

Vronsky’s jaw twitched impatiently from the incessant, gnawing toothache that prevented him from even speaking with a natural expression. The Karenin affair had been rather a shocking incident, now that he recalled it: a minister of the Higher Branches, murdered by his wife in his own bed. “He was a hardliner on mechanical development, that Karenin. Stremov always gave every impression of seeing things in a different light. Though it will certainly feel strange, as you say, to sit on the opposite side of a bargaining table with UnConSciya.”

“Yes, well…,” Yashvin began. Vronsky looked off into the distance as they heard the pleasant thrum of the arriving Grav. Right on time, reliable and efficient as always.

“I am sorry to intrude upon your solitude. I merely meant to offer you my services,” saidYashvin finally, scanning Vronsky’s face. “To deliver one’s brother-men from endless war is an aim worth death and life. God grant you success outwardly-and inwardly peace,” he added, and he held out his hand. Vronsky warmly pressed his outstretched hand, and began to respond, when suddenly he could hardly speak for a throbbing ache in his strong teeth, which were like rows of ivory in his mouth. And all at once a different pain, not an ache, but an inner trouble that set his whole being in confusion, made him for an instant forget his toothache. To make peace with UnConScyia was unquestionably a great boon for Russia and the Russian people, but what did it mean for him? The only purpose his life had known, the only star around which the planet of his being had ever revolved, was the making of war, the heavy grinding power of the Exterior suit in motion, the searing flash of the whip. Vronsky’s eyes took in the arriving Grav, elegantly whooshing forward on its magnet bed. He thought suddenly of a half-remembered girl, of Princess Kitty Shcherbatskaya: one of a dozen or more such girls whose head he had turned, at one time or another, with easy talk of love. She is married now, Vronsky thought, to that funny man, that miner…

For one cold moment, Vronsky saw himself reflected in the mighty silver prow of the Grav in the most uncharitable and unforgiving light: a body approaching middle age, a soldier lacking a war, a man lacking a wife.

He rubbed at his aching chin, and Lupo let out a little querying yelp.

“Yes, yes, old friend. Of course. I still have you.”

Just at that moment, the sun dipped below the horizon line, and Vronsky and his Class III climbed aboard the Grav.