Android Karenina

CHAPTER 1

ONCE, INA PREVIOUS YEAR, Levin had gone to look in on the work in the groznium mine, and being made very angry by the deteriorated condition of the chief II/Excavator/8, and the lazy mécanicien who had not reported it, he had sought recourse in what would become his favorite means for regaining his temper: he retrieved an antique pickaxe (such as peasants had once wielded) from the cellar of his home, donned a helmet and everlit, was lowered by the great pneumatic dumbwaiter to the floor of the mine pit, chose a tunnel extension, entered the inky blackness, and began to dig.

He liked the work so much that he had several times tried his hand at mining since. This year, ever since the early spring, he had cherished a plan for digging for a whole day together with the nimble Pitbots, lightshedding Glowing Scrubblers, and big and inexhaustible II/Extractor/4s who served in his groznium mine.

“I must have physical exercise, or my temper will certainly be ruined,” he announced one spring day to loyal Socrates, who was bent at the Herculean task of tabulating the receipts and filling out the Ministry paperwork relating to that season’s excavation and extraction. “I fancy the spring extraction is in full swing. Tomorrow I shall start mining.”

Socrates lifted his head, and looked with interest at his master.

“Mine like a Pitbot? All day long?”

“Yes, it’s very pleasant,” said Levin.

“Splendid exercise, except you’ll hardly be able to stand it,” replied Socrates, without a shade of irony.

“No, I don’t think so. It’s so delightful, and at the same time such hard work, that one has no time to think about it.”

The next morning, Konstantin Levin got up earlier than usual, but he was detained reviewing communiqués from the Ministry’s Department of Groznium Management, and by the time he arrived pit-side and donned his goggles, air canister, lead-lined suit, and thick-soled boots, the miners were already at the declension point.

He stared down from the outer rim of the crater, surveying his beloved gash in the earth. Lying in rich deposits in this crater and the soil below it were vast quantities of groznium, the Miracle Metal, the blood of Russian life. But before it could be transformed into devices of every shape and class, it had to be pried out by the mechanical axes of the Pitbots and the shovels of the imperturbable Extractors; pried from where it lay buried in thick chunks along tunnel walls; from where it sat in thick clusters along cragged rock walls, each rough nugget of groznium more valuable than any diamond.

Gripping the edge of the dumbwaiter as it descended, Levin gazed at the cluster of tunnel entrances on the far wall of the pit: in and out of the tunnel entrances flowed his dear rough-hewn Class IIs like ants, clutching their buckets and axes in their sturdy end-effectors. He waited impatiently, his soul crying out to begin work, as the dumbwaiter clicked slowly downward, inch by inch, before at last depositing him on the floor of the pit.

From the declension point, he hastily picked his way down the sloping crater wall into the heart of the pit, and the main tunnel entrance. The robots swarmed around him-the industrious surface-machines; the Pitbots gunmetal gray where they weren’t yet caked in ore; the Glowing Scrubblers shedding their famous dirty-red subterranean glow; and the heavy, tank-like Extractors, rumbling like sentient carriages, their shovellike face attachments primed to bore into the soil. Levin counted forty-two robots altogether.

THE ROBOTS SWARMED AROUND HIM-THE PITBOTS, THE GLOWING SCRUBBLERS, THE EXTRACTORS; LEVIN COUNTED FORTY-TWO ALTOGETHER

Just as Levin joined the line of robots they broke off into a dozen or more small groups and branched off the pit floor into the small side-tunnels where the good clusters of extractable ore could be found. He fell in with a small buzzing band as they moved slowly into an uneven, freshly dug tunnel, sloping steadily downward away from the honeycomb of tunnel entrances and into the pit’s sulfurous heart. Levin recognized some of his own robots, many of whom his old father had given names to, when he was lord of the mine: here was old Yermil, a dented Pitbot with a very long, white frontplate, bending forward to swing his axe; there was a newer model, Vaska, thrusting at the pit wall with a wide sweep. Here, too, was Tit, a thin little android whose thin fingertips were built for crevice-cleaning. Tit was in front of all, and swung away at the tunnel wall without bending, as though playing with the axe.

Levin, carrying his old-fashioned axe and shining his headlamp forward in the dim gloom of the cavern, went to meet Tit, who burbled respectfully at the master. Tit produced a newer pickaxe from his torso, more appropriate to the task at hand, and gave it to him.

“Like a razor, sir” intoned Tit. “Like a razor, cuts of itself.”

Levin took the axe, and clacked it three times against the wall of the tunnel before pronouncing himself ready to begin. The robots all stared at him till a tall, old Glowing Scrubbier bent its red-glowing frame respectfully at Levin’s side.

“Look’ee now, master,” tweedled the Scrubbier apologetically in the curious argot of the hypogeal Class IIs. “Look’ee, look’ee, look’ee. Once joining the line there’s no going back!”

“I shall not be turning back,” Levin said, taking his stand behind Tit, and waiting for the time to begin. Tit made room, and Levin started swinging his axe. The wall here was thick with chunks of groznium, so large you could see big pieces glinting at you, as if winking, begging to be driven free. But Levin knew that it was harder than it seemed, that the alloy did not simply crumble forth, that it took strength and the precise angling of one’s axe to drive it forth. The group’s II/Extractor/4, nicknamed Old Georgy, scuttled forward, its treads working laboriously over the rutted, rock-strewn path, its brush-and-magnet effectors collecting the precious dust left behind by the extraction of the bigger rocks. The Pitbots buzzed efficiently in the Extractor’s wake, axing out or vacuuming up chunks of groznium that Old Georgy missed with its broader efforts.

Levin, who had not done any mining for a long while, and was disconcerted by the robots’ curious lenses locked upon him, dug badly for the first moments, though he swung his axe vigorously. Behind him he heard soft mechanical chirrups:

“Not set right…”

“Handle’s too high…”

“He has to stoop to it…”

“He’s going to hit a hot one…”

“Never mind, he’ll get on all right,” countered Tit sharply, and Levin felt a burst of fellow feeling with the lithe Pitbot, a feeling which somewhat unsettled him, considering the machine was but a Class II.

With each step forward, the tunnel grew smaller and dimmer, and Levin followed Tit, trying to do the best he could. They moved a hundred paces. Tit kept moving on, without stopping, not showing the slightest weariness, but Levin was already beginning to be afraid he would not be able to keep it up: he was so tired.

He felt as he swung his axe that he was at the very end of his strength, and was making up his mind to ask Tit to stop. But at that very moment Tit stopped of his own accord, and bending at the midsection, rubbed his axe, and began whetting it on the whetstone embedded in his forearm. Levin straightened himself, and drawing a deep breath looked round. Behind him came another Pitbot, who stopped at once without waiting to get to Levin, and began whetting his own axe. Tit sharpened his tool and Levin’s, and they went on. The next time it was just the same. Tit moved on with sweep after sweep of his axe, not stopping nor showing signs of weariness. Levin followed him, trying not to get left behind, and he found it harder and harder: the moment came when he felt he had no strength left, but at that very moment Tit stopped and whetted the axes.

He marveled at the sensitivity of this Class II, at the evolutionary design of it; Tit’s circuits were designed to adjust to the needs of the other worker robots in his line, to maintain each other as they worked together in the Scrubbier-lit gloom. Since today Levin worked among them, Tit now treated him automatically as a member of the cadre, making allowances for his slow pace and (compared to the robots) limited strength.

So they completed the first tunnel. And this first branch seemed particularly hard work to Levin; when the tunnel ended abruptly, the mechanical crew reversed its course, retracing their steps to the declension point, and headed down a second tunnel to continue their work. What delighted Levin particularly was that he now knew he would be able to hold out.

He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left behind by the robots, and to do his work as well as possible. He heard nothing but the clang of metal on rock and the constant dull buzz emitted by Old Georgy. He saw before him Tit’s upright figure swinging away, the thick chunks of alloy falling free with each swing.

How odd, thought Levin, to think that in centuries past this land was intact, unscarred by tunnels and mines, covered instead by fields of gently swaying wheat. Before groznium was discovered, in the ancient days of the Tsar, before there were robots or even the idea of robots, all this was cropland, and where now was heard the clang of the axe and the whir of the Extractor was heard the whisper of the scythe, the tromp of peasant boots on grass, the endless mowing of rows. And all that work, that grueling and backbreaking labor, performed not by tireless machines, but by human beings. This work that he did today as a sort of lark, to rid his irritable soul of excess energy, had in those days been the daily toil of the Russian people in their thousands and millions.

Levin found it hard to imagine… and yet he could not help but consider what price his people had paid for the glorious transformation of the Age of Groznium. The robots have assumed the burden of our labors, but have taken from us, too, the benefits of that labor: the clarifying moral force of discipline, the redemptive pain of long exertion.

Such were the thoughts working through Konstantin Dmitrich’s mind, as the man himself worked through the tunnels of his mine. Long tunnels and short tunnels, with easy walls and with poor walls. As the hours ticked by in the inky darkness, Levin lost all sense of time and could not have told whether it was late or early now. A change began to come over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In the midst of his toil there were moments during which he forgot what he was doing, and it all came easy to him, and at those same moments his wall was almost as smooth and well-plucked as the robots’.

Even as they descended further and further below the surface of the earth, and the heat grew and grew until it felt he was standing in a very oven, the mining did not seem such hard work to him. The perspiration with which he was drenched cooled him, while the fulvous lucency of the Glowing Scrubbier seemed to give a vigor and dogged energy to his labor; more and more often now came those moments of unconsciousness, when it was possible not to think of what one was doing. The pickaxe dug of itself. These were happy moments. Still more delightful were the moments when they reached a cool underground stream, and old Tit rinsed his blade in the murky water, ladled out a little in a tin dipper, and offered Levin a drink.

“Humans experience thirst, correct?” he said. “For water?”

And truly Levin had never drunk any liquor so good as this cold, black water with purplish, glowing pinpricks of groznium floating in it, and a taste of rust from the tin dipper. And immediately after this came the delicious, slow saunter, with his hand on the axe, during which he could wipe away the streaming sweat, breathe deeply from his oxygen canister, and look about at the long string of automated miners tromping along in their dark underground universe.

The longer Levin mined and the deeper below the surface his labor took him, the oftener he felt the moments of unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the axe, but the axe swinging of itself, a body full of life and consciousness of its own; and as though by magic, without thinking of it, the work turned out regular and well-finished of itself. These were the most blissful moments. He suspected that some portion of this blissful sensation was the result of oxygen deprivation, and pulled deeply on his canister.

Emerging from the tunnel at last, Levin blinked back at the startling brightness of daylight. He looked at the crater floor and hardly recognized the place, everything was so changed. While he was immersed in the mine, the surface-machines had transformed the crater floor into a bustling assembly line, where buckets full of mined ore were first weighed by efficient little Class I scales, then bundled by the busy boxing end-effectors of II/Packagers/97s, then run up on hundred-yard-long conveyer belts from the tunnel entrance to the dumbwaiters. The crater floor was like a busy and happy factory floor, with surface machines and Pitbots buzzing and beeping gaily to one another and navigating their way around Surceased Extractors and busy Packagers, while the conveyer track carried the freshly plucked groznium off to the smeltworks.

The work done was exceptionally much for forty-two machines. But Levin felt a longing to get as much mining done that day as possible, and he was vexed with the sun sinking so quickly in the sky. He felt no weariness; all he wanted was to pick a fresh tunnel, grab his axe once more, and get as much done as possible.

But the day’s work was to come to a sudden end, for from deep within the pit came a series of concussive booms. Likely a maltuned Pitbot had struck a “hot one,” a tiny pocket of heavily concentrated groznium mixed with nitrates, and the impact had caused an explosion. In the next instant robots came pouring out, red lights flashing on their head units, klaxons blaring, scuttling out of danger as quickly as possible in compliance with the Iron Law of self-preservation.

Levin joined the hastening crowd, sprinting full bore for the crater-side; he clambered fist over foot up the side of the crater wall, caught amidst a crush of robots ascending beside him on sturdy metal feet. Halfway up the face of the crater Levin risked a glance behind him and saw a great cloud of dust billowing out from within the tunnels; he saw the opposite wall of the crater fracture and avalanche, as the earth convulsed with the power of the mine explosion; he saw Old Georgy, come automatically out of Surcease but too slow on his fat treads to escape the massive tumble of rock, buried in boulders and rubble.

Levin turned away in sadness and continued his own escape. It was hard work finishing his climb up the steep side of the crater. But this did not trouble old Tit, who was next to Levin. Brandishing his axe just as ever, and moving his feet in their big, plaited casings with firm, little steps, he climbed slowly up the steep place, and though a bolt rattled on his frontplate, and his whole frame trembled with effort, he continued to find little chunks of loose groznium, and to scoop them up as they went-this was his programming. This was the purpose of his existence.

Levin walked after him and did the same; he often thought he would fall, as he climbed with an axe up the steep side of a crater where it would have been hard work to clamber without anything. But he climbed up and did what he had to do. He felt as though some external force were moving him.

CHAPTER 2

LEVIN GOT ON HIS TWO-TREAD and, parting regretfully from the Pitbots, rode homeward.

He found Socrates pacing anxiously, looking through a newly delivered stack of mail. Levin rushed into the room with his wet and matted hair sticking to his forehead, and his back and chest grimed and moist. Despite his physical state, he was merry.

“We excavated four tunnels!” he announced buoyantly to his beloved-companion, who regarded him with a warily flickering eyebank. “And some maltuned Pitbot struck a hot one, and an explosion shook the mines, and the crater floor was buried in rock! And how have you been getting on?”

“Dirt! Grime! Filth! What do you look like?” said Socrates scoldingly for the first moment looking round with some dissatisfaction. “And the door, shut the door!” he cried. “You must have let in a dozen at least.”

Socrates could not endure flies, for he had an inexplicable fear that one would fly into his joints and lay eggs, disabling him.

“Not one, on my honor,” Levin replied with a hearty laugh. “But if I have, I’ll catch them. You wouldn’t believe what a pleasure it is! How have you spent the day?”

Five minutes later the two old friends met in the dining room. Although it seemed to Levin that he was not hungry, when he began to eat, the dinner struck him as extraordinarily good.

A small red bulb alongside Socrates’ monitor lit up. “A communiqués has arrived for you,” the Class III said. The communiqué was from Oblonsky, and Socrates cued it for Levin to view:

“Dolly is at Ergushovo,” said the little hologrammatic vision of Oblosnky, “And everything seems to be going wrong there. Her I/Butterchurn/19 has exploded, the well is not running clear, and a II/MilkExtractor/47 had a disastrous accident. Poor Dolly, never mind the cow! Do ride over and see her, please; help her with advice; you know all about it. She will be so glad to see you. She’s quite alone, poor thing. My mother-in-law and all of them are still in orbit.”

“That’s capital! I will certainly ride over to her,” said Levin. “Or we’ll go together. Darya Alexandrovna is such a splendid woman, isn’t she? They’re not far from here! Twenty-five miles.”

“Thirty,” Socrates corrected, with a wry smile, for he knew what was already in his master’s mind: To meet with Dolly and find out news of Kitty Shcherbatskaya.

CHAPTER 3

ON THE SUNDAY of St. Peter’s week Dolly drove to mass for all her children to take the sacrament. Driving home from church, with all her children round her, their heads still wet from their bath, and a kerchief tied over her own head, Dolly was getting near the house, when the II/Coachman/199’s antennae began to quiver, and his Vox-Em rumbled, “Gentleman coming… gentleman coming… the master of Provokovskoe…”

Dolly peeped out in front, and was delighted when she recognized in the gray hat and gray coat the familiar figure of Levin walking to meet them. She bade the children sit up straight and prepare to greet Konstantin Dmitrich Levin, and Grisha grumbled as he put away the I/Flashpop/4 with which he was irritating his sister. Dolly was glad to see Levin at any time, but at this moment she was specially glad he should see her in all her glory. No one was better able to appreciate her grandeur than Levin.

Seeing her, he found himself face to face with one of the pictures of his daydream of family life.

“You’re like a hen with your chickens, Darya Alexandrovna.”

“Ah, how glad I am to see you!” she said, holding out her hand to him.

“Glad to see me, but you didn’t let me know. I got a communiqué from Stiva that you were here.”

“From Stiva?” Dolly asked with surprise.

“Yes. He said that you are here, and that he thinks you might allow me to be of use to you,” said Levin. He was embarrassed through a sense that Darya Alexandrovna would be annoyed by receiving from an outsider help that should by rights have come from her own husband.

Dolly certainly did not like this little way of Stepan Arkadyich’s of foisting his domestic duties on others. But she was at once aware that Levin was aware of this. It was for just this fineness of perception, for this delicacy, that she liked Levin.

And his usefulness to her was immediately proved apparent, when in the next instant the carriage in which Dolly and her children were riding rose ten feet up into the air, as if borne aloft on the crest of a geyser. Levin and Socrates stared upward to where the vehicle was balanced on the frontal section of a hideous wormlike beast, like an earthworm swelled to an unnatural size. As Levin and Socrates tried to conceive of the provenance of such a creature, the carriage fell with a bone-rattling bang from the heights to which the thing had borne it. The children, unhurt but wildly terrified, screamed and huddled in their mother’s skirts, while the creature turned its frontal portion toward Levin; he saw now its toothless chasm of a mouth, the dark indentations in lieu of eyes, the entire absence of a nose. But most of all that mouth-a gray and puckering maw, smacking wetly, a physical incarnation of the idea of appetite. The upper portion of the long body writhed balefully, with the lower half still hidden from view, only in part emerged from the earth.

A sound accompanied the motion of the beast, a repetitive mechanical click, tikka tikka tikka tikka tikka…

“It is like a… like a…” Levin began, speaking over this insistent tattoo, his mind turning wildly.

“A koschei, master,” said Socrates, fumbling in his beard for some weapon with which to confront the apparition. “Like an enormous koschei.”

There was no more time to speak, as the worm darted suddenly downward. Levin leapt backward, but too late: The puckering ring of the thing’s mouth closed around his thigh. Most shocking to Levin in this moment was that what he felt tightening around his upper leg was not the disturbing, clammy warmth of worm flesh, but the sharp, cold bite of metal.

Socrates shouted, “Master!” and leapt to his side, while in the carriage Dolly and the children shrieked and wept.

Levin slapped roughly at the face of the beast with his riding crop, estimating from the dark indentations where its eyes might be. He slashed a scar into the face, and some kind of bright-yellow muck poured forth from of the wound; the smell was not like that of any bodily fluid, but more like…

“Humectant,” blared Socrates, waving the chemometer he had pulled from his cluster of machinery. “Our foe is definitively inorganic.”

Whatever it was, the monster still had Levin’s leg caught in its maw, even as it had had fully emerged from its hole in the dirt, unspooling to some fifteen yards in length. Socrates grasped it at its midpoint and tugged with the full strength of his groznium arms. With a hideous screeching noise the worm tore in two, and more of the bright-yellow goo sprayed forth, before, in a matter of seconds, the wound cleanly stitched itself closed, a new mouth formed on what had been the rear portion of the beast, and now there were two of the writhing things. The second one rapidly wriggled free from Socrates’ end-effectors and into the coach with Dolly and the children.

“Sorry,” Socrates muttered, as the horrid tikka tikka tikka doubled in volume, approaching now a near-deafening level.

“I do not understand,” shouted Levin above the din, kicking at the head of the beast with his one free foot. “The Higher Branches declared that all koschei had been flushed from the countryside.”

“And surely this thing is too big to be a koschei!” added Dolly from the carriage, where she stomped at the segmented, gray body of the worm with one boot heel.

Dolly’s youngest boy Grisha crept silently forth from the backseat of the carriage and reactivated his Class I plaything, determined in the naive and valiant way of children to play what part he could in fending off this attack. He aimed the toy at the eyes of the creature and pressed the trigger to activate a sudden and powerful flash of light; the effect was instantaneous and gratifying-like a mole recoiling from the glare of sunlight, the worm-like machine-monster hissed, writhed away, and spun back toward the safety of its underground warren from which it had emerged.

“Why, Grisha!” said Dolly. Levin, meanwhile, still caught in the maw of the original of the two worm-beasts, called out to his beloved-companion. “Socrates!” he hollered. “Would you mind terribly…”

The tall and angular Class III, however, was already in motion, grabbing out of his beard a I/Flashpop of exactly the sort Grisha had used, only vastly more powerful. The burst of irradiation the device subsequently dispensed sent the first worm skittering after its mate, back into the hole-and left a dread silence in its wake, the rattling click at last stilled. It left, too, Konstantin Levin clutching at his bruised leg, Dolly and her family heaving great breaths of exhaustion and relief, and Socrates scouring the dirt for whatever evidence he could find of what, exactly, they had just encountered.

As the carriage resumed its slow progress back to Ergushovo, Levin and Socrates rode beside, discussing the possible provenance of the strange, wormlike attack-robots. The obvious answer was that these were simply a new model of koschei, more powerful than any UnConSciya had previously unleashed-but something about that answer felt dissatisfying to Levin, and Socrates with his higher-level analytical functionality agreed. Could the smaller, more typical wormlike koschei have grown somehow? But what could have caused them to do so?

“Well, whatever has set this unholy machine upon us,” Dolly put in, “I am certainly glad that you were here to act in our defense.”

“Of course,” said Levin, “Though your Grisha seemed more than up to the challenge!”

The youngest of Dolly’s brood beamed his pleasure at the compliment. The children knew Levin very little, and could not remember when they had seen him, but they experienced in regard to him none of that strange feeling of shyness and hostility that children so often experience toward hypocritical, grown-up people, and for which they are so often and miserably punished. Hypocrisy in anything whatsoever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wideawake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised. Whatever faults Levin had, there was not a trace of hypocrisy in him, and so the children showed him the same friendliness that they saw in their mother’s face.

Here, in the country, with children, and with Darya Alexandrovna and her plump, matronly Class III, Dolichka, Levin was in a mood, not infrequent with him, of childlike light-heartedness that she particularly liked in him. After dinner, Dolly, sitting alone with him on the balcony, began to speak of Kitty.

“You know, Kitty’s coming here, and is going to spend the summer with me.”

“Really,” he said, flushing, and at once, to change the conversation, he said: “Then I’ll send you a new cow, shall I? I heard from Stiva you had a bit of trouble with your II/MilkExtractor/47. If you insist on a bill you shall pay me five rubles a month; but you really shouldn’t.”

“No, thank you. We can manage very well now.”

And Levin, to turn the conversation, explained to Dolly the theory of cow-keeping, based on the principle that the cow is simply a kind of machine, designed for the transformation of food into milk, and so on.

He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty, and, at the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the breaking up of the inward peace he had gained with such effort.

“Yes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there to look after it?” Dolly responded, without interest.

“Pardon,” interrupted Socrates, and they all turned to look at the robot; under the weight of their collective stare, he absently began flicking a switch on his hip assembly, on and off, on and off. “I have been running a full analysis on the matter of the worm-beast. I cannot compute: If it is true that the creature we encountered is but a larger version of the koschei that have previously infested the land-for what reason? Why would a simple UnConSciya device grow to such a size? And… how?”

“Oh dear!” said Dolichka.

And, thought Levin, loathe to float such a possibility within the hearing of Darya Alexandrovna and her her children, or even to Socrates, can it be that there are other things the Ministry is hiding from us?

CHAPTER 4

KITTY REPORTS IN HER LATEST communiqué that there’s nothing she longs for so much as quiet and solitude,” Dolly said.

“And how is she-better?” Levin asked in agitation.

“Thank God, she’s quite well again. I never believed her lungs were affected.”

“Oh, I’m very glad!” said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw something touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and looked silently into her face.

“Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitrich,” she said then, smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, “why is it you are angry with Kitty?”

“I? I’m not angry with her,” said Levin.

“Yes, you are angry. Why was it you did not come to see us or them when you were in Moscow?”

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, blushing up to the roots of his hair, “I wonder really that with your kind heart you don’t feel this. How it is you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when you know…”

“What do I know?”

“You know I made an offer and that I was refused,” said Levin, and all the tenderness he had been feeling for Kitty a minute before was replaced by a feeling of anger for the slight he had suffered.

Dolly traded expressions of mock astonishment with Dolichka.

“What makes you suppose I know?”

“Because everybody knows it…”

“That’s just where you are mistaken; I did not know it, though I had guessed it was so.”

“Well, now you know it.”

“All I knew was that something had happened that made Kitty dreadfully miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of it, and then they left to orbit Venus. And if she would not tell me, she would certainly not speak of it to anyone else. But what did pass between you? Tell me.”

“I have told you.”

“When was it?”

“When I was at their house the last time.”

“Do you know that,” said Darya Alexandrovna, “I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. You suffer only from pride…”

“Perhaps so,” said Levin, “but-”

She interrupted him.

“But she, poor girl… I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I see it all.”

“Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me,” he said, getting up and signaling to Socrates his readiness to depart.

“No, wait a minute,” she said, clutching him by the sleeve, as tears came into her eyes. “Wait a minute, sit down. If I did not like you, and if I did not know you, as I do know you…”

The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up and took possession of Levin’s heart.

“Yes, I understand it all now,” Dolly said. “You can’t understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it’s always clear whom you love. But a girl’s in a position of suspense, with all a woman’s or maiden’s modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust-a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say.”

“Yes, if the heart does not speak…”

“No, but I mean even when the heart does speak! You mean, you make an offer when your love is ripe or when the balance has completely turned between the two you are choosing from. But a girl is not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she cannot choose, she can only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

Yes, to choose between me and Vronsky, thought Levin, and the dead thing that had come to life within him died again, and weighed on his heart and set it aching. Socrates, with an uncharacteristic gesture of physical tenderness, placed a comforting arm across his master’s hunched and agitated shoulders as Levin recalled Kitty’s words. She had said: “No, that cannot be…“

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said dryly, “I appreciate your confidence in me, but I believe you are making a mistake. But whether I am right or wrong, that pride you so despise makes any thought of Katerina Alexandrovna out of the question for me, you understand, utterly out of the question.”

“I will only say one thing more,” Dolly said. “You know that I am speaking of my sister, whom I love as I love my own children. I don’t say she cared for you; all I meant to say is that her refusal at that moment proves nothing.”

“I don’t know!” said Levin, jumping up. “If you only knew how you are hurting me. It’s just as if a child of yours were dead, and they were to say to you: He might have been like this, or like that, and if you could travel back in time… but man cannot travel in time! The experiment has been attempted and abandoned, so what is the use of imagining!”

“How absurd you are!” said Dolly, looking with mournful tenderness at Levin’s excitement. “Yes, I see it all more and more clearly,” she went on musingly. “So you won’t come to see us, then, when Kitty’s here?”

“No, I shan’t come. Of course I won’t avoid meeting Katerina Alexandrovna, but as far as I can, I will try to save her the annoyance of my presence.”

“You are very, very absurd,” Dolly repeated, looking with tenderness into his face.

Levin and Socrates said good-bye and drove away while Dolly and her beloved-companion bade them farewell from the front yard of the house at Ergushovo. Before she turned back into the house Dolly paused, her hands frozen at her hips, as she listened to a faint but distinct noise from the middle distance:

Tikka tikka tikka.

Tikka tikka tikka. Tikkatikkatikkatikka…

“Oh dear oh dear,” said Dolichka, and Dolly murmured her agreement. “Oh dear, indeed.”

CHAPTER 5

WELL, WHAT AM I GOING to do with my life?” said Levin to Socrates the next morning, as they joined a team of peasants, delivering a freshly excavated batch of ore to the smeltworks. “How am I to set about it?”

He was trying to express to his Class III the range of ideas and emotions he had passed through since their visit to Dolly and her family. Socrates, employing his advanced circuits for logic, sorted all his master’s thoughts and feelings into a thought matrix for him. Thought Category A was the renunciation of his old life, of his utterly useless education. This renunciation gave Levin satisfaction, and was easy and simple. Thought Category B was a series of mental images related to the life he longed to live now. The simplicity, the purity, the sanity of this life he felt clearly, and he was convinced he would find in it the content, the peace, and the dignity, of the lack of which he was so miserably conscious.

But Thought Category C turned upon the question of how to effect this transition from the old life to the new. And there nothing took clear shape for him. Socrates, in his efficient and meticulous way, rapidly divided and subdivided the possibilities:

POSSIBILITY 1. Have a wife?

POSSIBILITY 2. Have work and the necessity of work?

POSSIBILITY 3. Leave Provokovskoe?

POSSIBILITY 4. Buy land?

POSSIBILITY 5. Become a member of a peasant community?

POSSIBILITY 6. Marry a peasant girl?

“But how am I to set about such things?” Levin said confusedly in reply, and Socrates’ logistical circuits set busily back to work.

“Never mind, never mind,” Levin said then. “I’ll work it out later. One thing’s certain, this night has decided my fate. All my old dreams of home life were absurd.”

“Absurd,” Socrates seconded reluctantly, not wishing to confirm such a dismal verdict, but unwilling also to contradict his master in such a mood.

“It’s all ever so much simpler and better to… to…”

“Master?”

“How beautiful!” Levin exclaimed, and Socrates tilted back his head unit to take in the sight: a daylight meteor shower, with dozens of golden-red stars dancing in their turns across the clear blue sky. “How exquisite a sight on this exquisite morning! And when and how do such things come to be! Just now I looked at the sky, and there was nothing in it-just the clouds and the gentle glow of the sun. And now, this display of stunning beauty! Yes, and so imperceptibly too my views of life changed!”

Shrinking from the cold, Levin walked rapidly, looking at the ground. “What’s that? Someone’s coming,” he said suddenly, catching the tinkle of bells, and lifting his head.

“At forty paces, master… there…”

Indeed, at forty paces, a carriage harnessed to a four-treaded Puller was driving toward him along the grassy road on which he was walking. The treads were shallow, designed primarily for city travel rather than the countryside, but the dexterous Class II driver held a careful hand on the shaft, so that the treads stayed on the smooth part of the road.

This was all Levin noticed, and without wondering who it could be, he gazed absently at the coach.

In the coach was an old lady dozing in one corner, and at the window, evidently only just awake, sat, perfectly still, a young girl holding in both hands the ribbons of a white cap. With a face entirely absent of thought or attention she stared out the window of the carriage. Levin realized that this girl was hibernating, in the state of chemically induced suspended animation into which ill people are commonly placed to better bear the rigors of the journey to and from an orbital.

At the moment Levin realized upon whom he was gazing, her subdermal anesthesia wore off, and slowly she began to wake. Her eyes blinked once, and then again, and then fell shut-but her face was alive again, full of light and thought, full of a subtle, complex inner life that was remote from Levin.

He watched, wonderingly, as the eyes-such familiar eyes-slowly opened again, like flowers newly budding. And then she recognized him, and her face, in the hazy glow of gradually returning consciousness, lighted up with wondering delight.

He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature in the world who could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was Kitty. He understood that she was driving to Ergushovo from the Grav station. And everything that had been stirring Levin during that sleepless night, all the resolutions he had made, all the branching algorithmic calculations that Socrates had produced, all vanished at once. He recalled with horror his dreams of marrying a peasant girl. Only there, in the carriage that had crossed over to the other side of the road, and was rapidly disappearing, only there could he find the solution to the riddle of his life, which had weighed so agonizingly upon him of late.

She did not look out again. The sound of the carriage-treads faded; the drone of the II/Driver could scarcely be heard. The barking of dogs showed the carriage had reached the village, and all that was left was the empty fields all around, the village in front, and he and Socrates wandering lonely along the deserted high road.

He glanced at the sky, expecting again to see the meteor shower, that miracle of blazing torches pirouetting though the daylight. But there was nothing in the sky; there, in the remote heights above, a mysterious change had been accomplished. The sky was empty of falling stars; it had grown blue and bright; and with the same softness, but with the same remoteness, it met his questioning gaze.

“No,” he said to Socrates, “however good that life of simplicity and toil may be…”

“You cannot go back to it.”

“No, dear friend, I cannot. I love her.”

CHAPTER 6

ALEXEI ALEXANDROVICH’S singular beloved-companion, his dread Face, had been biding its time. Ever since its machine consciousness had first flickered into existence, it had lurked, a creature of the shadows, flitting in the recesses of Karenin’s mind, growing, evolving, gaining strength, gaining power.

Now its moment had come.

When, returning from the Cull, Anna had informed him of her relations with Vronsky, and immediately afterward-when, as their carriage weathered the emotion bombs, she had burst into tears, hiding her face in her hands-Alexei Alexandrovich was aware immediately of a crying out in his breast of pure human emotion, of the abiding empathy he still harbored for this woman he had loved for so long; it brought to him a rush of that emotional disturbance always produced in him by tears. But in the next instant, that burst of humane feeling in his breast was countered by a searing stream of invective from the Face, which demanded in a cold, vicious voice, speaking out in his mind, that he silence his tears and summon his manful qualities.

BE MORE OF METAL THAN OF FLESH, ALEXEI ALEXANDROVICH, the Face had exhorted him, and so he had, stiffening his spine and keeping his emotions carefully controlled. He tried to suppress every manifestation of life in himself, and so neither stirred nor looked at her. This was what had caused that strange expression of deathlike rigidity in his face, which had so impressed Anna.

When they reached the house he helped her to get out of the carriage, and making an effort to master himself, took leave of her with his usual urbanity; he said that tomorrow he would let her know his decision.

His wife’s words, confirming his worst suspicions, had sent a cruel pang to the heart of Alexei Alexandrovich. That pang was intensified by the strange feeling of physical pity triggered by her tears, and intensified all the more by the harsh, mocking laughter of the Face, laughter directed as much at his pity as at her tears.

But later, when he was all alone, Alexei Alexandrovich, to his surprise and delight, felt complete relief both from this pity and from the doubts and agonies of jealousy. He felt strong and powerful, and the Face was determined to feed those feelings, just as a master throws scraps of bloody meat to his dog.

NO HONOR. NO HEART. NO RELIGION, spat the Face, and Karemn bitterly agreed.

“A corrupt woman,” he concluded aloud, sitting in his study, alone but not alone, in the darkest hours of that night.

YOU ALWAYS KNEW IT AND ALWAYS SAW IT.

“I tried to deceive myself to spare her.”

SPARE HER? FOR WHAT REASON? TO WHAT PURPOSE?

Alexei Alexandrovich had never been so glad for the presence of his metal-thinking attachment, his secret beloved-companion-for it could bluntly address those things he could think but never express. Its mechanical eye showed him dark mysteries, and its voice demanded he acknowledge life’s darker truths.

“I made a mistake in linking my life to hers, but there was nothing wrong in my mistake, and so I cannot be unhappy.”

BUT SHE… SHE MUST BE MADE UNHAPPY.

Everything relating to her and her son, toward whom his sentiments were as much changed as toward her, ceased to interest him. The only thing that interested him now was the question of in what way he could best, with most propriety and comfort for himself, and thus with most justice, extricate himself from the mud with which she had spattered him in her fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honorable, and useful existence.

Even as he processed these perfectly rational thoughts, even congratulating himself on his ability to remain logical in the grip of emotional distress, his body, guided by the vicious impulses of the Face, obeyed a different course. Alexei Alexandrovich strode briskly into the bedroom while siding onto his ring finger, just above his wedding ring, a small silver burn-circle-an ingenious groznium-based device of his own invention-and set about incinerating his wife’s possessions with cruel efficiency.

“I cannot be made unhappy by the fact that a contemptible woman has committed a crime,” he said, and, leveling his hand carefully, blasted Anna Karenina’s ancient and stately armoire to splinters with the burn-circle.

“I have only to find the best way out of the difficult position in which she has placed me.”

He aimed at and destroyed her birch-wood dressing table.

“And I shall find it.”

YOU SHALL FIND IT INDEED.

Moving rapidly, deeply inhaling the sharp, pleasing scent of burnt furniture mixed with perfumes and bedside lotions, he felt that he could think clearly for the first time in a long time. In his study Alexei Alexandrovich walked up and down twice, then stopped at the household’s expensive and stately freestanding monitor. He bent his head on one side, thought a minute, and began to dictate a communiqué, without pausing for a second.

“At our last conversation,” he began, “I notified you of my intention to communicate to you my decision in regard to the subject of that conversation. Having carefully considered everything, I am contacting you now with the object of fulfilling that promise. My decision is as follows. Whatever your conduct may have been, I do not consider myself justified in breaking the ties in which we are bound by a Higher Power, and the beneficence of the Ministry. The family cannot be broken up by a whim, a caprice, or even by the sin of one of the partners in the marriage, and our life must go on as it has done in the past. This is essential for me, for you, and for our son. I am fully persuaded that you have repented and do repent of what has called forth the present letter, and that you will cooperate with me in eradicating the cause of our estrangement, and forgetting the past. In the contrary event, you can conjecture what awaits you and your son. I trust that you understand.”

“Yes, time will pass-time, which arranges all things, and the old relations will be re-established,” Alexei Alexandrovich announced to the Face, which fairly cackled its pleasure at the implied threat Alexei had leveled at his wife: to be subject to his will, or be destroyed. “So far reestablished, that is, that I shall not be sensible of a break in the continuity of my life. She is bound to be unhappy, but I am not to blame, and so I cannot be unhappy.”

Having completed and transmitted his communiqué, he returned to the bedchamber, slipping back on his burn-circle as he went. With calm deliberateness Alexei Alexandrovich destroyed the four-post bed in which he and his wife had lain together so many times. The sheets of silk and linen easily took to flame, and Alexei Alexandrovich, tucking his fleshy hand comfortably into the crook of his arm, watched the fire grow-the Face whispering GOOD GOOD GOOD as the bed was consumed into ash.

CHAPTER 7

THOUGH ANNA HAD OBSTINATELY and with exasperation contradicted Vronsky when he told her their position was impossible, at the bottom of her heart she regarded her own position as false and dishonorable, and she longed with her whole soul to change it.

On the way home from the Cull she had told her husband the truth in a moment of excitement, and in spite of the agony of the moment, she was glad of it. After her husband had left her, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything was made clear, and at least there would be no more lying and deception. It seemed to her beyond doubt that her position was now made clear forever. It might be bad, this new position, but it would be clear; there would be no indefiniteness or falsehood about it. That evening she saw Vronsky, but she did not tell him of what had passed between her and her husband, though, to make the position definite, it was necessary to tell him.

When she woke up the next morning, Android Karenina was seated with perfect poise at her bedside, having completed her morning routines, and gazing down with calm beneficence upon her mistress; as Anna opened her eyes she saw the Class III there, silhouetted against the day’s first light-they stared at one another, eyes into faceplate, sharing one brief intense moment before Android Karenina rose to fetch her mistress’s dressing gown.

In the perfect serenity of the new day, the words she had spoken to her husband seemed to her so awful that she could not conceive now how she could have brought herself to utter those strange, coarse words, and could not imagine what would come of it. But the words were spoken, and Alexei Alexandrovich had gone away without saying anything. “I saw Vronsky and did not tell him,” she said to Android Karenina, as the Class III slipped her gown over her porcelain shoulders.

“At the very instant he was going away I would have turned him back and told him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I had not told him the first minute. Why was it I wanted to tell him and did not tell him?” In answer to this question Android Karenina issued a light, empathetic whistle and tidied the bedclothes.

Anna’s position, which had seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly struck her now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She felt terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not ever thought before. When she thought of what her husband would do, the most terrible ideas came to her mind. She had a vision of being turned out of the house, of her shame being proclaimed to all the world. She asked herself where she should go when she was turned out of the house, and she could not find an answer.

When she thought of Vronsky, it seemed to her that he did not love her, that he was already beginning to be tired of her, that she could not offer herself to him, and she felt bitter against him for it. It seemed to her that the words that she had spoken to her husband, and had continually repeated in her imagination, she had said to everyone, and everyone had heard them. She could not bring herself to look those of her own household in the face. She could not bring herself to call her II/Maid/76, and still less go downstairs and see her son and his II/Governess/D145.

As she fretted and paced about her room, her anxiety deepened into a distinct feeling of dread, reminding her powerfully and unpleasantly of her feeling at the Moscow Grav station, watching the body of the man lifted from the tracks. Android Karenina then beeped gently, signaling receipt of a communiqué, and Anna, trembling, bid her play it. Just moments before, she had regretted that she had spoken to her husband, and wished for nothing so much as that those words could be unspoken. And here this communiqué regarded them as unspoken, and gave her what she had wanted. But the communiqué seemed to her more awful than anything she had been able to conceive.

“He’s right!” she said to Android Karenina, when the communiqué had played through and dimmed away. “Of course, he’s always right; he’s a Christian, he’s generous! Yes, vile, base creature! And no one understands it except me, except us, and no one ever will; and I can’t explain it. They say he’s so religious, so high-principled, so upright, so clever; but they don’t see what I’ve seen. They don’t know how he has crushed my life for eight years, crushed everything that was living in me-he has not once even thought that I’m a live woman who must have love. They don’t know how at every step he’s humiliated me, and been just as pleased with himself.”

Android Karenina took on a crimson glow, moving to darker and darker shades of crimson, her coloring embodying her mistress’s wild flush of emotion.

“Haven’t I striven, striven with all my strength, to find something to give meaning to my life? Haven’t I struggled to love him, to love my son when I could not love my husband? But the time came when I knew that I couldn’t cheat myself any longer, that I was alive, that I was not to blame, that God has built me so that I must love and live. And now what does he do? If he’d killed me, if he’d killed him, I could have borne anything, I could have forgiven anything; but, no, he… How was it I didn’t guess what he would do? He’s doing just what’s characteristic of his mean character. He’ll keep himself in the right, while me, in my ruin, he’ll drive still lower to worse ruin yet…”

She recalled the words from the communiqué: You can conjecture what awaits you and your son… “That’s a threat to take away my child, or worse, and Heaven knows he, he who sits in the Higher Branches, may do as he wishes! And he has been… has been…”

Android Karenina nodded, and Anna knew that her beloved-companion understood: Karenin had been changing, in ways as impossible to describe as they were to ignore.

“He doesn’t believe even in my love for my child,” Anna continued bitterly, “Or he despises it, just as he always used to ridicule it. He despises that feeling in me, but he knows that I won’t abandon my child, that I can’t abandon my child, that there could be no life for me without my child, even with him whom I love; but that if I abandoned my child and ran away from him, I should be acting like the most infamous, basest of women. He knows that, and knows that I am incapable of doing that.”

She recalled another sentence in the communiqué: Our life must go on as it has done in the past… “That life was miserable enough in the old days; it has been awful of late. What will it be now? And he knows all that; he knows that I can’t repent that I breathe, that I love; he knows that it can lead to nothing but lying and deceit; but he wants to go on torturing me. I know him; I know that he’s at home and is happy in deceit, like a fish swimming in the water. No, I won’t give him that happiness. I’ll break through the spiderweb of lies in which he wants to catch me, come what may. Anything’s better than lying and deceit.

“But how? My God! My God! Was ever a woman so miserable as I am…?”

Anna collapsed in tears, and Android Karenina gathered her up and held her close, and Anna’s tears poured into the metal lap of her only friend.

CHAPTER 8

IN SPITE OF VRONSKY’S apparently frivolous life in society, he was a man who hated irregularity. He liked to know, for instance, that all of his weapons were in proper working order at all times, and particularly when (according to the rumor currently making the regimental rounds) the Ministry’s Department of War was preparing to deploy them against some new, unnamed threat. So he would shut himself up alone and go through each weapon, from grip to muzzle, to satisfy himself that all was in proper working order. This he called his day of reckoning or faire la lessive.

On waking up the day after the Cull, Vronsky put on a white linen coat, and without shaving or taking his bath, he distributed about him all the different pieces of weaponry he used, whether frequently or infrequently. Lupo padded in happy circles in a square of sunlight on the floor of the room, ready to be of use if needed, prepared even to act as a moving target if his master was in a mood to practice his aim.

As he worked, Vronsky considered the complexities of his life. Every man who knows the minutest details of the conditions surrounding him cannot help imagining that the complexity of these conditions, and the difficulty of making them clear, is something exceptional and personal, peculiar to himself, and never supposes that others are surrounded by just as complicated an array of personal affairs as he is. So indeed it seemed to Vronsky. And not without inward pride, he thought that any other man would long ago have been in difficulties, would have been forced to some dishonorable course, if he had found himself in such a difficult position. But Vronsky felt that now especially it was essential for him to clear up and define his position if he were to avoid getting into difficulties. As he thought, he bent over his work table.

What Vronsky attacked first were the small arms, the special favorite pieces he kept on his person, and for which he was known. These amounted to: the smokers, which sat with pride on his belt, one jutting forth from each hip; the smoldering hot-whip that coiled around his upper thigh in its transparent skin; and the gleaming crackle dagger tucked into his handsome, black leather boot.

He found all in excellent condition: the smokers unloaded their sizzling streams at the rate of sixteen’a’second, twice the regimental standard. At the pressure of his thumb on the hilt, the hot-whip leaped to life like an extension of his arm, and snapped across the length of the room in all directions. The crackle dagger he hurled with deadly accuracy into the far corner of his lodgings, propelling it into the body of a raccoon, which had picked the wrong moment to emerge from hiding behind the wastepaper basket.

He plucked the twitching, electrocuted raccoon from the blade, and tossed it to Lupo before, remembering his conversation with Anna from the previous day, he sank into meditation.

Vronsky’s life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles that defined with unfailing certitude what he ought and what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered only a very small circle of contingencies, but then the principles were never doubtful, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that circle, had never had a moment’s hesitation about doing what he ought to do. In his own mind, he jokingly referred to these principles as the “Bronze Laws,” in winking homage to the Iron Laws that regulated robot behavior.

Vronsky’s Bronze Laws were a set of invariable rules: that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat anyone, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one; and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his head up. Only quite lately in regard to his relations with Anna, Vronsky had begun to feel that his code of principles did not fully cover all possible contingencies, and to foresee in the future difficulties and perplexities for which he could find no guiding clue.

He sighed and turned his little tour of inspection to the complex pieces of ordnance: there was the shoulder-mounted Disrupter; the Demagnetizing Wand; the gleaming obsidian Sapper Gun; and, of course, the dreaded organ-destabilizing propellant gun known as the “Tsar’s Vengeance.” One by one, he picked up each deadly machine, and with practiced ease disassembled it, inspected the connections, slicked the gears with fresh humectant, and snapped all back in place.

The familiar and repetitive actions cleared his mind and gladdened his heart. His present relation to Anna and to her husband was to his mind clear and simple. It was clearly and precisely defined in the code of principles by which he was guided.

She was an honorable woman who had bestowed her love upon him, and he loved her, and therefore she was in his eyes a woman who had a right to the same, or even more, respect than a lawful wife. He would have had his hand chopped off before he would have allowed himself by a word, by a hint, to humiliate her, or even to fall short of the fullest respect a woman could look for.

His attitude to society, too, was clear. Everyone might know, might suspect it, but no one might dare to speak of it. If any did so, he was ready to force all who might speak to be silent and to respect the nonexistent honor of the woman he loved.

“Ah!” he shouted as, in his split concentration, he closed the clip of the Disrupter over his hand, pinching his fingertips. “Dratted thing.”

Vronsky’s attitude to the husband was the clearest of all. Thinking of Alexei Alexandrovich, he selected the next weapon from the table, an experimental device called a Particulate Intensifier-one of only seven yet in existence, according to the conspiratorial gadgetman who had sold it to him-and leveled it at the target bay he’d had constructed in the far corner of his chamber.

Vronsky paused before firing the Particulate Intensifier. From the moment that Anna loved him, he had regarded his own right over her as the one thing unassailable. Her husband was simply a superfluous and tiresome person. No doubt he was in a pitiable position, but how could that be helped? He squinted, drew his aim, and pictured superfluous and tiresome Alexei Alexandrovich standing in the target bay, imagined the smirking, half-metal face, and squeezed the trigger.

The target rattled violently for three long seconds, then exploded in a tumult of splintered wood and orange flares; Lupo howled his approval, dancing on his four legs about the room catching sparks and shards on his tongue like snowflakes. Vronsky smiled and looked at this new weapon admiringly. If it crossed his mind that Alexei Alexandrovich was no ordinary husband, and that he might have powers both literally and figuratively greater than any Vronsky may have previously encountered, he did not let that fact bother him. Striding about in his regimental barracks, surrounded by the deadly accoutrements of his trade, Vronsky could feel no sense that there was any man in the world more powerful than he, nor more deserving of the woman upon whom he had settled his attentions.

And yet, of late, new inner relations had arisen between him and her, which frightened Vronsky by their indefmiteness. Only the day before she had told him that she was with child. And he felt that this fact and what she expected of him called for something not fully defined in that code of principles by which he had hitherto steered his course in life. And he had been indeed caught unawares, and at the first moment when she spoke to him of her position, at that awful moment when the godmouth had yawned open and threatened to swallow her away forever, his heart had prompted him to beg her to leave her husband. He had said that, but now thinking things over he saw clearly that it would be better to manage to avoid that; and at the same time, as he told himself so, he was afraid whether it was not wrong.

“If I told her to leave her husband, that must mean uniting her life with mine; am I prepared for that? How can I take her away now, when I have no money? Supposing I could arrange… But how can I take her away while I’m in the service? If I say that, I ought to be prepared to do it, that is, I ought to have the money and to retire from the army. But… to retire from the army? Can I?” he said to Lupo, bending to scratch the wolf-like Class III in the sensitive spot above his Third Bay.

He flung his crackle dagger again, with an extra curl of the wrist, and watched it sail toward the wall before swinging itself around like a Carpathian throwing stick toward the opposite corner of the room, where it embedded itself solidly in the heart of a second racoon.

Vronsky let out a long whistle, low and admiring, while Lupo retrieved the catch. He had worked all the days of his life to earn his place: the right to wield such powerful devices. Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream which he did not confess even to himself, though it was so strong that now this passion was even doing battle with his love.

“Women are the chief stumbling block in a man’s career,” his old friend Serpuhovskoy had pronounced the previous night, as they raised glasses together in memoriam of poor Frou-Frou. “It’s hard to love a woman and do anything. There’s only one way of having love conveniently without its being a hindrance-that’s marriage.”

“But Serpuhovskoy has never loved,” Vronsky murmured softly now, looking straight before him and thinking of Anna. Sensing the drift of his master’s thoughts, Lupo yelped sharply in protest, regarding Vronsky with eyes like slits; a Regimental Class III, he was naturally anxious that Vronsky should remain in the service.

“Yes, yes, you’re right,” Vronsky said. “If I retire, I burn my ships. If I remain in the army, I lose nothing. She said herself she did not wish to change her position.” And slowly twirling his mustache, he got up from the table and walked about the room. His eyes shone particularly brightly, and he felt in that confident, calm, and happy frame of mind which always came after he had thoroughly faced his position. Everything was straight and clear, every piece of his armory having been checked and rechecked and fired-except the Tsar’s Vengeance, which even the most elite soldiers were not permitted to discharge outside of combat situations-and stowed in its proper place.

Except his oldest and dearest friends: his simple, beloved smokers. Before reholstering them, Vronsky took one more trick shot, admiring the way the weapons’ hot blast lit up the four corners of the room.

Lupo ducked and rolled, his Vox-Em howling in vigorous approval of his master’s steady eye.

CHAPTER 9

IT WAS SIX O’CLOCK ALREADY, and so, in order to reach Anna quickly, and at the same time not to drive with his own carriage, known to everyone, Vronsky got into Yashvin’s hired fly, and ordered the II/Coachman/644 to drive as quickly as possible. It was a roomy, old-fashioned fly, with seats for four. He sat in one corner, stretched his legs out on the front seat, and sank into meditation.

I’m happy, very happy I he said to himself. He had often before had a sense of physical joy in his own body, but he had never felt so fond of himself, of his every sinew, as at that moment. He enjoyed the slight ache in his strong leg, an aftereffect of the catastrophe at the Cull, and he enjoyed the muscular sensation of movement in his chest as he breathed. The bright, cold August day, which had made Anna feel so hopeless, seemed to him keenly stimulating, and refreshed his face and neck, which still tingled from the cold water. The scent of brilliantine on his whiskers struck him as particularly pleasant in the fresh air. Everything he saw from the carriage window, everything in that cold, pure air, in the pale light of the sunset, was as fresh and cheery and strong as he was himself: the roofs of the houses shining in the rays of the setting sun, the strong Russian four-treads driven by gleaming groznium androids, the sharp outlines of fences and angles of buildings, the figures of passers-by, the motionless green of the trees and grass, the airships in their slow, majestic glide, the hydroponic greenhouses where grew the massive super-potatoes, each of which would feed a peasant family for a week-everything was bright like a pretty landscape just finished and freshly varnished.

“Get on, get on!” he said to the driver, putting his head out of the window, giving the Class II a light jolt with his hot-whip, and the carriage rolled rapidly along the smooth highroad.

“I want nothing, nothing but this happiness,” Vronsky declared to Lupo, who gave a happy woof of agreement before sticking his head out the carriage window to taste the wind.

“And as I go on,” Vronsky declared further, “I love her more and more. Ah, here’s the garden of the Vrede Villa”-where they had planned to meet. Whereabouts will she be? he wondered. How will she look?

He ordered the driver to stop before reaching the avenue, and, opening the door, jumped out of the carriage as it was moving, and went into the avenue that led up to the house. There was no one in the avenue; but looking round to the right he caught sight of her. Her face was hidden by a veil, but he drank in with glad eyes the special movement in walking, peculiar to her alone, the slope of the shoulders and the setting of the head, and at once a sort of electric shock ran all over him, as if someone had jolted him with a hot-whip. With fresh force, he felt conscious of himself, from the springy motions of his legs to the movements of his lungs as he breathed, and something set his lips twitching.

Joining him, she pressed his hand tightly.

“You’re not angry that I sent for you? I absolutely had to see you,” she said; and the serious and set line of her lips, which he saw under the veil, transformed his mood at once.

“I, angry?” he stammered, taken aback by her somber demeanor. “Of course not! But-how have you come, where from?”

“Never mind,” she said, laying her hand on his. “I must talk to you.”

She and Android Karenina were standing beneath a flowering tree, of a kind that Vronsky had never seen before, with large, overhanging emerald petals. The tree had an unfamiliar and vaguely foreboding appearance, which seemed in keeping with Anna’s expression. Vronsky saw clearly that something had happened, and that the rendezvous would not be a joyous one. For all the elation he had felt just a minute before, in her presence he had no will of his own: without knowing the grounds of her distress, he already felt the same distress unconsciously passing over him. He felt like a robot who’d had a burst of rainwater splashed violently behind its faceplate, shorting out his ability to reason and rendering him a useless, immobile hunk of man-shaped debris.

“What is it? What?” he asked her, squeezing her hand with his elbow, and trying to read her thoughts in her face.

She waited a few steps in silence, leaning against the trunk of the peculiar tree, gathering her courage; then suddenly she stopped.

“Yesterday,” she began, breathing quickly and painfully, “coming home with Alexei Alexandrovich I told him everything… told him I could not be his wife, that… and told him everything.”

He heard her, unconsciously bending his whole figure down to her as though hoping in this way to soften the hardness of her position for her. But as soon as she had said this he suddenly drew himself up, and a proud and hard expression came over his face.

“Yes, yes, that’s better, a thousand times better! I know how painful it was,” he said.

But she was not listening to his words; she was reading his thoughts from the expression of his face. She could not guess that that expression arose from the first idea that presented itself to Vronsky-that a duel was now inevitable. The idea of a duel had never crossed her mind, and so she put a different interpretation on this passing expression of hardness.

For Anna, when she got her husband’s communiqué, she knew at the bottom of her heart that everything would go on in the old way, that she would not have the strength of will to forego her position, to abandon her son, and to join her lover. But this talk with Vronsky was still of the utmost gravity for her. She had hoped that their conversation would transform her position, and save her. If on hearing this news he were to say to her resolutely, passionately, without an instant’s wavering: “Throw up everything and come with me!” she would give up her son and go away with him. But her news had not produced what she had expected in him; he simply seemed as though he were resenting some affront.

“It was not in the least painful to me. It happened of itself,” she said irritably, “and see… “With a brusque gesture, she directed Android Karenina to play the communiqué for Vronsky.

“I understand, I understand,” he interrupted her, ignoring the android’s display, not hearing Anna’s words, only trying to in vain to soothe her. As he held her in his arms he happened to glance above her head, and observed that one of the unusual tree’s emerald flowers had suddenly blossomed-at least, the flower was open, and he was certain, or thought he was certain, that only a moment ago it had been quite shut.

“Anna,” he began, but then drew silent, staring at the curious tree as it grew more curious still: A thin film had emerged from within the bell of the flower, and it descended slowly, pouring down over the sides, as if a child with a Class I toy were inside the plant, blowing a bubble.

Anna scowled at his distraction, and he shook his head and focused his eyes upon her. “The one thing I longed for,” he continued, “the one thing I prayed for, was to cut short this position, so as to devote my life to your happiness.”

“Why do you tell me that?” she said. “Do you suppose I can doubt it? If I doubted-”

A sudden noise made Vronsky start. “Who’s that coming?” he asked, pointing to two ladies walking toward them. “Perhaps they know us!” He abruptly took a step backward into the foliage.

“Oh, I don’t care!” Anna said, turning away from him. Her lips were quivering. And he fancied that her eyes looked with strange fury at him from under the veil. “Just see what he says to me. Watch the communiqué.” She cued Android Karenina to begin again.

Vronsky watched the display, and once again was unconsciously carried away by the sensations aroused in him by his own relation to the betrayed husband. Now he could not help picturing the challenge, which he would most likely find at home today or tomorrow, and the duel itself, in which, with the same cold and haughty expression that his face was assuming at this moment, he would await the injured husband’s shot, after having himself gallantly fired his smokers into the air. And at that instant there flashed across his mind the thought of what Serpuhovskoy had said to him, and what he had himself been thinking in the morning-that it was better not to bind himself-and he knew that this thought he could not tell her.

Neither Anna nor Vronsky, preoccupied by these thoughts and counter-thoughts running through their minds while the communiqué played, noticed what transpired directly above her head: the transparent film oozing from the odd flowering tree had silently ballooned outward to huge, though near-invisible, proportions. Now, like a soap bubble, it popped free of the tree and closed around Anna’s body, so thin and transparent as to be imperceptible even as it hardened into an impenetrable shell.

“You see the sort of man he is,” Anna said, with a shaking voice. “He…”

“I rejoice at this!” Vronsky said, speaking at the same time. Each was on their own side of the unseen sphere, and so neither could hear the other; and with Anna looking off into the distance, neither could even see that the other was speaking.

“Things can’t go on as they have,” Vronsky continued. “hope that now you will leave him. I hope that you will let me arrange and plan our life.”

Unaware, Anna carried on her own conversation: “… my child! I should have to leave him!”

Android Karenina looked around curiously. Lupo sniffed the air, with a dawning awareness that something was dreadfully amiss.

And so it went. Not hearing, both lovers simply assumed they knew what the other was thinking. When Vronsky finally looked away from Android Karenina’s monitor and raised his eyes to Anna, she did not know what caused them to seem so implacable; she knew only that, whatever he might say to her, he would not say all he thought. And she was certain her last hope had failed her. This was not what she had been reckoning on. And while these sickening thoughts chased themselves around in her mind, the sides of the near-invisible sheath drew taut under her feet like the cinching of a drawstring sack, and she lurched off the ground and up into the air.

“My God!” Vronsky shouted, noticing her for the first time:” Anna! You are floating!”

As if the strange conveyance that was carrying Anna into the air somehow knew it had been discovered, it accelerated the upward motion with which it was lifting her off her feet. Lupo leaped up on his powerful, pneumatic-actuated legs toward the mysterious conveyance, but it was already too high to be reached.

“Stay the thing, Lupo!” shouted Vronsky, reverting at once to his regimental training. Lupo, settling back on his haunches, made his wide, fierce mouth into a perfect O and howled out a resonating battle-cry, sending a precisely modulated echo wave toward the base of Anna’s airborne prison-steadying it against the wind and holding it in place. Vronsky searched furiously for a way to deliver Anna to safety, even as, in the back of his mind, he wondered: first a godmouth, and now this bubble-like cage of a prison? UnConSciya was trying to capture or kill Anna Karenina. But why?

He squatted, plucked the crackle-dagger from his boot, and stared carefully towards his target. An inch too high, and the dagger would sail uselessly off into the gardens; an inch too low, and it would bounce harmlessly off the side of the bubble-or, worse, slice through the exterior and into Anna’s precious flesh. He squinted, took aim… and hesitated, as the wind shifted the bubble ever so slightly upon the air. Lupo redoubled his powerful air-disrupting war cry, but Vronsky knew he hadn’t much time left before the shell would be borne off by the winds.

Inside her queer floating prison, Anna looked down upon Vronsky, in his soldier’s crouch with weapons drawn, and, despite the furious tangle of fears and doubts that had gripped her, felt her heart wrung by love. He is a man of action, she thought, a man who does not hesitate to grab hold of whatever life presents to him. That is how I am meant to live: with truth, with purpose, with vitality. I cannot give this up-cannot give him up, cannot stop loving him. But… am I really prepared to leave my husband? To lose my son? To abandon all I have begun, all I have known? To uproot my life entirely?

At that thought, all her problems coalesced. Of course! Anna gestured frantically to Vronsky, waving and pointing. Her wild but deliberate motions captured his attention, stopping him just before his cocked arm would have sent the deadly crackle-dagger arcing towards her. At last, they were communicating.

Vronsky, following her pantomimed suggestion, swung his crackle-dagger around to attack not the flowering bubble that held her fast, but at the base of the tree whence it had come. Lupo joined in the assault, extending excavation-quality end-effectors from his paws to dig furiously at the root of the mechanical plant. Within moments, they severed the trunk from the earth, and as it creaked and fell to the ground, the bubble that had been its progeny dissipated-sending Anna tumbling down to where Android Karenina waited to catch her beloved mistress in her arms.

“MY GOD!” VRONSKY SHOUTED, AT LAST NOTICING: “ANNA! YOU ARE FLOATING!”

After Anna had assured Vronsky for the third time that she had suffered nothing but minor bruising in the fall, they sat beside each other upon the stone wall beside the tree.

She turned his face to hers, looking him squarely in the eye. With the intensity brought on by peril, they focused and listened to one another.

“I cannot lose my son,” Anna began simply.

“But, for God’s sake, which is better?-leave your child, or keep up this degrading position?”

“To whom is it degrading?”

“To all, and most of all to you.”

As they spoke, Lupo padded carefully around the tree, sniffing at the earth, gathering up fragments of the translucent sheath for later analysis.

“You say degrading… don’t say that. That has no meaning for me.” Her voice shook. She did not want him now to say what was untrue. She had nothing left but his love, and she wanted to love him. “Don’t you understand that from the day I loved you everything has changed for me? For me there is one thing, and one thing only-your love. If that’s mine, I feel so exalted, so strong, that nothing can be humiliating to me. I am proud of my position, because… proud of being… proud…” She could not say what she was proud of. Tears of shame and despair choked her utterance. She stood still and sobbed.

He, too, felt, something swelling in his throat and twitching in his nose, and for the first time in his life Vronsky found himself on the point of weeping. The flower-trap; his love; their impossible situation; he could not have said exactly what it was that touched him so. He felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her, and with that he knew that he was to blame for her wretchedness, and that he had done something wrong.

“Is not a divorce possible?” he said feebly. She shook her head, not answering. “Couldn’t you take your son, and still leave him?”

“Yes; but it all depends on him. Now I must go to him,” she said shortly. Her presentiment that all would again go on in the old way had not deceived her.

“On Tuesday I shall be in Petersburg, and everything can be settled.”

“Yes,” she said. “But don’t let us talk any more of it.”

Anna’s carriage, which she had sent away and ordered to come back to the little gate of the Vrede Garden, drove up. Anna said good-bye to Vronsky. Android Karenina gingerly lifted her up into their carriage, and they drove home.

CHAPTER 10

ON MONDAY THERE WAS the usual sitting of the Higher Branches of the Ministry. Alexei Alexandrovich walked into the hall where the sitting was held, greeted the members and the president as usual, and sat down in his place, the papers laid ready before him. Among these papers lay the necessary evidence and a rough outline of the speech he intended to make. But he did not really need these documents. He remembered every point, and did not think it necessary to go over in his memory what he would say. He knew that when the time came, and when he saw his enemy facing him, and studiously endeavoring to assume an expression of indifference, his speech would flow of itself better than he could prepare it now. The Face murmured quiet encouragement into his cerebral cortex, assuring him that the import of his speech was of such magnitude that every word of it would have weight. Meanwhile, as he listened to the usual report, he had the most innocent and inoffensive air. No one, looking at him gazing calmly through the monocle he wore, somewhat pompously, over his one human eye, and at the air of weariness with which his head drooped on one side, would have suspected that in a few minutes a torrent of words would flow from his lips that would arouse a fearful storm, set the members shouting and attacking one another, and force the president to call for order.

When the report was over, Alexei Alexandrovich announced in his subdued, delicate voice that he had several points to bring before the meeting in regard to the subsequent phases of the Project they had undertaken. All attention was turned upon him. Alexei Alexandrovich cleared his throat, and not looking at his opponent, but selecting, as he always did while he was delivering his speeches, the first person sitting opposite him, an inoffensive little old man who never had an opinion of any sort in the commission, began to expound his views.

“As those of you who have, like myself, been participants in the development of the Project are aware, the first phase of our noble endeavor has been a total and unqualified success.”

SO IT HAS BEEN, hissed the Face. SO I HAVE BEEN.

“The second phase is now being made ready, under my direct supervision, in a subterranean work office in the Moscow Tower. The new prototype of robot, exactly as I planned, will have those three advancements we wished for: advancements in appearance, advancements in capacity, and advancements in the appropriate distribution of loyalty.”

This set of euphemistic and jargonistic phrases earned a smattering of applause from Karenin’s colleagues. But when he reached the point about the next phase of the Project, in which all Class III robots extant in Russian society would be gathered up and adjusted to meet the new standard, his opponent jumped up and began to protest. Stremov took the position that only those individuals who so desired it should have their Class Ills updated to the new version that Karenin was perfecting. Stremov, who had long been Karenin’s political enemy, was a man of fifty, partly gray, but still vigorous-looking, very ugly, but with a characteristic and intelligent face. He spoke longly and loudly about “ancient prerogatives” and the “unique nature of the bond between man and beloved-companion,” and altogether a stormy sitting followed. But Alexei Alexandrovich triumphed, and his motion was carried, the oath of secrecy-unto-death was sworn; Alexei Alexandrovich’s success had been even greater than he had anticipated.

Next morning, Tuesday, Alexei Alexandrovich, on waking up, recollected with pleasure his triumph of the previous day, and he could not help smiling. Absorbed in this pleasure, Alexei Alexandrovich had completely forgotten that it was Tuesday, the day fixed by him for the return of Anna Arkadyevna, and he was surprised and received a shock of annoyance when a II/Footman/74 motored in to inform him of her arrival.

Anna had arrived in Petersburg early in the morning; the carriage had been sent to meet her in accordance with her communiqué, and so Alexei Alexandrovich might have known of her arrival. But when she arrived, he did not meet her. She sent word to her husband that she had come, went to her own room, and occupied herself in sorting out her things, expecting he would come to her. But an hour passed; he did not come. She went into the dining room on the pretext of giving some directions, and spoke loudly on purpose, expecting him to come out there; but he did not come, though she heard him go to the door of his study. She knew that he usually went out quickly to his office, and she wanted to see him before that, so that their attitude to one another might be defined.

She walked across the drawing room and went resolutely to him. When she went into his study he was in official uniform, obviously ready to go out, sitting at a little table on which he rested his elbows, looking dejectedly before him. She saw him before he saw her, and she saw that he was thinking of her.

On seeing her, he would have risen, but changed his mind, then his metal faceplate rapidly radiated through a sequence of colors, from cruel red to a harsh, gleaming gold-an affect Anna had never seen before, and she thought to herself: It is growing. All the time it is growing.

Karenin got up quickly and went to meet her, looking not at her eyes, but above them at her forehead and hair. He went up to her, took her by the hand, and asked her to sit down.

“I am very glad you have come,” he said, sitting down beside her, and obviously wishing to say something, he stuttered. Several times he tried to begin to speak, but stopped.

SPEAK, MAN. SPEAK! SO STEELY IN THE HALLS OF POWER, SO WEAK IN HIS OWN PRIVATE CHAMBERS…

The silence lasted for some time. “Is Seryozha quite well?” he said, and not waiting for an answer, he added: “I shan’t be dining at home today, and I have got to go out directly.”

“I had thought of going to Moscow,” she said.

“No, you did quite, quite right to come,” he said, and was silent again.

Seeing that he was powerless to begin the conversation, she began herself.

“Alexei Alexandrovich,” she said, looking at him and not dropping her eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair, “I’m a guilty woman, I’m a bad woman, but I am the same as I was, as I told you then, and I have come to tell you that I can change nothing.”

“I have asked you no question about that,” he said, all at once, resolutely and with hatred looking her straight in the face, and the Face again pulsed and radiated wild colors, venom traveling along its veins. “That was as I had supposed.” Under the influence of anger he apparently regained complete possession of all his ability to speak. “But as I told you then, and have written to you,” he said in a thin, shrill voice, “I repeat now, that I am not bound to know this. I ignore it. Not all wives are so kind as you, to be in such a hurry to communicate such agreeable news to their husbands.” He laid special emphasis on the word “agreeable,” and Anna thought she noticed that his voice changed as he said it, darkening dramatically in pitch and tone: AGREEABLE.

“I shall ignore it so long as the world knows nothing of it, so long as my name is not disgraced. And so I simply inform you that our relations must be just as they have always been, and that only in the event of your compromising me I shall be obliged to take steps to secure my honor.”

“But our relations cannot be the same as always,” Anna began in a timid voice, looking at him with dismay.

When she saw once more those composed gestures, heard that shrill, childish, and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him extinguished her pity for him, and she felt only afraid, but at all costs she wanted to make clear her position.

“I cannot be your wife while I…,” she began.

He laughed a cold and malignant laugh, and she felt a jab of sharp pain inside her mind, as if a knitting needle had been thrust between the lobes of her brain. She gave out a choked sob of pain, and Android Karenina, obeying her programmed impulses, reached out to place a comforting arm across her mistress’s shoulders.

Karenin then spoke: “The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in your ideas. I have too much respect or contempt, or both… I respect your past and despise your present… that I was far from the interpretation you put on my words.”

Anna sighed and bowed her head.

“Though indeed I fail to comprehend how-with the independence you show,” he went on, getting hot, “announcing your infidelity to your husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it, apparently-you can see anything reprehensible in performing a wife’s duties in relation to your husband.”

“Alexei Alexandrovich! What is it you want of me?”

TO REPENT OF HER UNFAITHFULNESS.

TO GROVEL AT YOUR FEET .

TO SUBMIT TO YOUR WILL, OR PAY THE ULTIMATE CONSEQUENCE FOR HER REFUSAL!

Alexei Alexandrovich screamed out loud, and the little drawing-room table flew up into the air and spiraled over their heads to smash against the opposite wall. Anna whirled round in fright as a vase of flowers on the other side of the room suddenly exploded, as if shot; the door, which she had left ajar, slammed violently closed and the mechanism of the lock noisily engaged.

Anna turned back and gaped at Alexei Alexandrovich, who took a deep, labored breath as if trying to overmaster himself. Finally the room was still, and while Anna trembled, her husband calmly and coldly expressed his wishes. “I want you not to meet that man here, and to conduct yourself so that no one in the world, not even a robot, can find fault with you. Not to see him: that’s not much, I think. And in return you will enjoy all the privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling her duties. That’s all I have to say to you. Tonight I am not dining at home.” He folded his arms across his chest and turned away.

“Alexei?”

He looked back.

“Is it possible… for me to…” She looked with evident uncertainty to the heavy oaken door.

LEAVE IT .

LET HER STAY UNTIL SHE ROTS .

But Alexei Alexandrovich only shook his head slightly, and the lock disengaged, and the door swung open. Immediately, she got up, and signaled to Android Karenina that they would leave. Bowing in silence, Alexei Alexandrovich let them pass before him, visibly composed but inwardly as miserable and confused as she.

Only the Face was pleased, for in every such encounter it gained exponentially in power and control.

Over the man-over the woman-over them all.

CHAPTER 11

ONE AFTERNOON, TOWARD THE END of the spring extraction season, Levin and Socrates were in the living room, engaged in an intense discussion about the giant koschei that plagued the countryside around Provokovskoe. More and more peasants had reported hearing the dreaded tikkatikkatikka echoing through the woods at night; some spoke of friends who had gone out hunting and not returned; Levin spoke to one man who told personally of his battle with one of the robotic monsters, of how he narrowly escaped its tremendous gathering maw. Socrates had determined through rigorous analysis of recovered metallic shreds that the things were indeed of the same mechanical infrastructure as the small wormlike koschei that had plagued the countryside last season-but how they had grown so large, and so prevalent, especially after the Ministry had determined them exterminated, remained an open question.

While Socrates mulled this question yet one more time, charting out the various possibilities with branching mathematical precision in the chambers of his mind, Levin had a seemingly unrelated recollection that nevertheless chilled him to the bones: of Countess Nordston, Kitty’s foolish friend, speaking of her belief in the Honored Guests-extraterrestrial beings who, supposedly, would one day come to redeem the human race.

“In three ways,” she had said. “They will come for us in three ways.”

Turning over this gnomic phrase in his mind, wondering what connection it could have to the question of the wormlike koschei, Levin did not at first hear the sound of a long, wrenching cough coming from the front hall. But he heard it indistinctly through the sound of his own footsteps, and hoped he was mistaken. Then he caught sight of a long, bony, familiar figure, followed by a squat, rattling metal shadow, and now it seemed there was no possibility of mistake; and yet he still went on hoping that this tall man taking off his fur cloak and coughing was not his brother, Nikolai, accompanied by his woeful Class III, Karnak.

Levin loved his brother, but being with him was always a torture. Levin was confused and anxious about the koschei, and had not seen his beloved Kitty since the day he spotted her, waking gently in her carriage, and he was in a troubled and uncertain humor; meeting with his ailing brother in such a state seemed particularly difficult. Instead of a lively, healthy visitor, some outsider who would, he hoped, cheer him up in his uncertain humor, he had to see his brother, who knew him through and through, who would call forth all the thoughts nearest his heart, would force him to show himself fully. And that he was not disposed to do.

Angry with himself for so base a feeling, Levin ran into the hall; as soon as he saw his brother close, this feeling of selfish disappointment vanished instantly and was replaced by pity. Terrible as his brother Nikolai had been before in his emaciation and sickliness, now he looked still more emaciated, still more wasted. He was a skeleton covered with skin.

He stood in the hall, jerking his long, thin neck and pulling the scarf off it, and smiled a strange and pitiful smile. When he saw that smile, submissive and humble, Levin felt something clutching at his throat.

“You see, I’ve come to you,” said Nikolai in a thick voice, never for one second taking his eyes off his brother’s face. As Levin regarded him, the skin of Nikolai’s face, pulled so tightly across his skull, rippled grotesquely, like small waves moving across the surface of a fetid pond.

“I’ve been meaning to come a long while, but I’ve been unwell all the time,” he said, rubbing his beard with his big, thin hands. “Now I’m ever so much better.”

“Yes, yes!” answered Levin. He approached him to offer a kiss, but instantly drew back, horrified at the idea of his lips coming into contact with the pale, beleaguered flesh of his suffering brother. But even as he drew away, covering his mouth with his hand, he saw that Nikolai’s big eyes were full of a strange light.

A few weeks before, Konstantin Dmitrich had written to his brother that through the sale of a small part of their property that had remained undivided, there was a sum of about two thousand rubles to come to him as his share.

Nikolai said now that he had come to take this money and, what was more important, to stay a while in the old nest, to get in touch with the earth, so as to renew his strength like the heroes of old for the work that lay before him. In spite of his exaggerated stoop and the emaciation that was so striking from his height, his movements were as rapid and abrupt as ever. Levin led him into his study.

His brother had dressed with particular care-a thing he never used to do-and he combed his scanty, lank hair, not noticing that as he did he tugged free several stray clumps.

“Well, I’ll spend a month or two with you, and then I’m off to Moscow,” Nikolai said. He was in the most affectionate and good-humored mood, just as Levin often remembered him in childhood. And yet there was something in his brother’s voice and manner, something that suggested to Levin some deep concern he needed to share, but did not know how to express.

Even as he spoke, Levin saw that the flesh-rippling was not confined to Nikolai’s forehead; his stomach, his chest, even his eyes undulated nearly imperceptibly. Nikolai grimaced, evidently trying to hide his discomfort from his brother.

“Besides, I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I’ve done silly things, of course, like everyone else, but money’s the last consideration; I don’t regret it. So long as there’s health, and my health, thank God, is quite restored.”

As the brothers moved toward the bedrooms, Karnak wobbled along at their heels, his woefully maltuned navigation circuits occasionally driving him into the walls.

As the house was damp, and only one bedroom had been kept heated, Levin put his brother to sleep in his own bedroom behind a screen. Socrates’ Third Bay emitted a gentle perfume throughout the night, to minimize the combined stench of rust and dissolution emitting from Nikolai and Karnak.

His brother got into bed, and whether he slept or did not sleep, he tossed about, coughed, and when he could not get his throat clear, mumbled something. Sometimes when his breathing was painful, he said, “Oh, my God!” Sometimes when he was choking, he muttered angrily, “Ah, the devil!” Levin could not sleep for a long while, hearing him. His thoughts were most various, but the end of all his thoughts was the same: death. Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which was here in this beloved brother, groaning half asleep and from habit calling without distinction on God and the devil, was not so remote as it had hitherto seemed to him. It was in himself, too, he felt that. If not today, tomorrow; if not tomorrow, in thirty years-wasn’t it all the same! And what was this inevitable death; he did not know, had never thought about it, and what was more, had not the power, had not the courage to think about it.

“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten-death.”

He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees, and, holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered. But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact: that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was awful, but it was so.

“But I am alive still. Now what’s to be done? What’s to be done?” he said to Socrates in despair. He lighted a candle, got up cautiously, stood before the monitor of his beloved-companion, and set it to show himself to himself. Yes, there were gray hairs about his temples. He opened his mouth. His back teeth were beginning to decay. He bared his muscular arms. Yes, there was strength in them. But Nikolai, who lay there breathing with terrible difficulty had had a strong, healthy body too. “And now that bent, hollow chest… with that awful rippling below his skin… and I, not knowing what will become of me, or wherefore…”

“It is… it is inside…,” his brother’s voice called elusively.

“What… what do you mean, inside?” Levin replied “What is inside?”

Nikolai thrashed in the sheets; he was not awake, but talking from the depths of some consuming nightmare.

“It is inside me… deep inside… get it out… please… please, brother…”

Levin shuddered, withdrew behind the screen, and huddled tremulously with Socrates. The question of how to live had hardly begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new, insoluble question presented itself: death.

Through the night, Nikolai continued to moan and shudder and call out from the depths of his slumbering consciousness.

“Inside… it is inside me…”