Android Karenina

CHAPTER 1

THE KARENINS, HUSBAND AND WIFE, continued living in the same house, met every day, but were complete strangers to one another. Alexei Alexandrovich, though consumed with preparations for the next and most delicate phase of his cherished Project, made it a rule to see his wife every day so that the servants would have no grounds for suppositions, but avoided dining at home. Vronsky was never at Alexei Alexandrovich’s house, but Anna saw him away from home, and her husband was aware of it.

The position was one of misery for all three, and not one of them would have been equal to enduring this position for a single day if it had not been for the expectation that it would change, that it was merely a temporary, painful ordeal which would pass over. Alexei Alexandrovich hoped that this passion would pass, as everything does pass, that everyone would forget about it, and his name would remain unsullied. Anna, on whom the position depended, and for whom it was more miserable than for anyone, endured it because she not merely hoped, but firmly believed, as she repeatedly expressed to Android Karenina, that it would all very soon be settled and come right. Vronsky, against his own will or wishes, followed her lead, hoped too that something, apart from his own action, would be sure to solve all difficulties.

Vronsky had that winter endured and survived a particularly brutal and long-lasting inter-regimental Cull, one intended to prepare the ranks for a new and quite serious threat to the Motherland, the details of which were murky, but for which the Ministry demanded all soldiers hone their readiness. Vronsky had advanced as his reward to the rank of colonel, and as part of his new responsibilities, he was dispatched by his superior officer to spend a week entertaining a foreign prince-an assignment that promised at first some mild amusement, but ended up being the most tedious of chores. The prince’s tastes ran to the most excessive and wearisome form of indulgence, and all week long Alexei Kirillovich was obliged to partake in flute after flute of champagne, to sit through long games of Flickerfly, and to attend the robot-human diversions known as metal-flesh, officially illegal but widely enjoyed during such “stag nights.”

When the visitor had at last departed, and Vronsky’s time was his own again, Vronsky arrived home to find a note from Anna. She wrote, “I am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go on longer without seeing you. Come in this evening. Alexei Alexandrovich goes to the Ministry at seven and will be there till ten.” Thinking for an instant of the strangeness of her bidding him come straight to her, in spite of her husband’s insisting on her not receiving him, he decided to go.

After having some lunch, he lay down on the sofa and cued Lupo’s monitor to display a soothing Memory to aid him in falling off to sleep. He did not know how long he slept, but at some point he became aware that time had passed, and that Lupo’s monitor still glowed on-and as Vronsky gazed with heavy lids at the screen, he saw that the images had grown distorted and unsettling. Here was Anna being sucked again into that horrid godmouth; here she was in theVrede Garden, encased in the translucent sheath, drifting upward toward some uncertain doom. And here, at the Grav Station, the two of them together, watching the charred and battered body, curtained in burlap, lifted from the magnet bed…

“Lupo!” Vronsky screamed, sitting up in a wild panic, and the Class III looked chastened and confused, for apparently the strange images had played unbidden. He hurried to cue a new Memory, but it was too late;Vronsky’s rest had become impossible.

“What queer maltuning is this!” muttered Vronsky darkly, rising from the sofa drenched in sweat, and glanced at his watch. He rang up his servant, dressed in haste, and went out onto the steps, trying to shake from his head the sequence of alarming Memories, worried too about being late.

As he drove up to the Karenins’ entrance he looked at his watch and saw it was ten minutes to nine. A high, narrow carriage with a pair of grays was standing at the entrance. He recognized Anna’s carriage. “She is coming to me,” muttered Vronsky, “and better she should. I don’t like going into that house. But no matter; I can’t hide myself,” and with that manner peculiar to him from childhood, as of a man who has nothing to be ashamed of, Vronsky got out of his sledge, his thumb tracing anxious circles on the hilt of his hot-whip, and went to the door. The door opened, and the II/Porter/7e62, a rug draped in the grip of its end-effector, called the carriage.

And then, suddenly, in the doorway, Vronsky almost ran up against Alexei Alexandrovich. The gas jet threw its full light on the bloodless, sunken face, half-concealed beneath the gleaming alloy mask and the black hat, the white cravat brilliant against the beaver of the coat. Karenin’s fixed, dull eye was fastened upon Vronsky’s face.

A long moment passed, and Vronsky bowed-or rather, he began to bow, and stopped short, feeling himself unable to do so. Lupo swiveled his big silver head unit back and forth, now with trepidation at Alexei Karenin, now with fear and uncertainty at his master. Vronsky, thinking in one confused moment that it was fear, or even social awkwardness, that held him in his place, tried again to bow; it was then he realized that his body was held fast, seemingly wrapped in thick blankets of invisible force.

The telescopic eye starkly obtruded from Alexei Alexandrovich’s face as the man stood chewing his lips, directed straight at him. The invisible grip tightened slowly, constricting about Vronsky’s body like a snake… and then sliding him, slowly at first and then quickly, toward the heavy oaken front door. Lupo whimpered and huddled weakly in the opposite corner. Vronsky felt he was a piece of furniture set on rollers, only he moved not in the strong grips of II/Porter/7e62s, but was propelled instead by some invisible push radiating from Anna’s queer husband. Karenin stood, calm and composed, staring at him through that lenticular eye like a jeweler examining a stone, as Vronsky smashed with terrible force into the door.

In the next moment, the force that had held him relaxed like an unclenching fist, and he lay on the ground in a numb heap, pain radiating from where his back had banged into the heavy wood of the door, drinking in great, heaving gasps of sweet air.

Without a word, Alexei Karenin stepped over him, lifted his hand to his hat, and went on. Vronsky saw him without looking round get into the carriage, pick up the rug and the opera glass at the window, and disappear. Vronsky went into the hall. His brows were scowling, sweat was pouring off his body, and his eyes gleamed with a proud and angry light in them.

“What a position!” he said to Lupo, trotting at his heels. “If he would fight fair, would stand up for his honor, I could act, could express my feelings; but this weakness or baseness… He puts me in the position of playing false, which I never meant and never mean to do…”

He trailed off, then added darkly: “How in blazes did he do that?”

He was still in the hall when he caught the sound of Anna Karenina’s retreating footsteps. He knew she had been expecting him, had listened for him, and was now going back to the drawing room.

“No,” she cried, on seeing him, and at the first sound of her voice the tears came into her eyes. “No, if things are to go on like this, the end will come much, much too soon.”

“What is it, dear one?”

“What? I’ve been waiting in agony for an hour, two hours… You met him?” she asked, when they had sat down at the table in the lamplight. “You’re punished, you see, for being late.”

“Such punishment,” he replied, rubbing at the small of his back, where he could feel the first tender blossom of the angry bruise to come. “seems rather excessive. Wasn’t he to be at the Ministry?”

“He had been and come back, and was going out somewhere again.”

“Never mind, never mind,” Vronsky said, and she looked a long while at him with a profound, passionate, and at the same time searching look. She was studying his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She was, every time she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as he really was.

CHAPTER 2

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? With that foreign prince still?” She knew every detail of his existence. He was going to say that he had been up all night and had dropped asleep, but looking at her thrilled and rapturous face, he was ashamed. He said he had had to go to report on the prince’s departure.

“But it’s over now? He is gone?”

“Thank God it’s over! You wouldn’t believe how insufferable it’s been for me.”

“Why so? Isn’t it the life all of you, all young men, always lead?” she said, knitting her brows, taking up the end of a length of the crochet yarn slowly spooling from a giant ball in Android Karenina’s torso. She began drawing the hook out of it, without looking at Vronsky.

“I gave that life up long ago,” he said, wondering at the change in her face, and trying to divine its meaning. “And I confess,” he said, with a smile, showing his thick, white teeth, “this week I’ve been, as it were, looking at myself in a glass, seeing that life-the endless Flickerfly, the metal-flesh, and all-and I didn’t like it.”

She held the work in her hands, but did not crochet, and looked at him with strange, shining, and hostile eyes.

“How disgusting you are, you men! How is it you can’t understand that a woman can never forget that,” she said, getting more and more angry, and so letting him see the cause of her irritation. “Especially a woman who cannot know your life? What do I know? What have I ever known?” she asked. “What you tell me. And how do I know whether you tell me the truth?”

“Anna, you hurt me. Don’t you trust me? Haven’t I told you that I haven’t a thought I wouldn’t lay bare to you?”

“Yes, yes,” she said, evidently trying to suppress her jealous thoughts. “But if only you knew how wretched I am! I believe you, I believe you… What were you saying?”

Vronsky could not at once recall what he had been going to say. These fits of jealousy, which of late had been more and more frequent with her, horrified him, and, however much he tried to disguise the fact, made him feel cold toward her, although he knew the cause of her jealousy was her love for him. How often he had told himself that her love was happiness; and now she loved him as a woman can love when love has outweighed for her all the good things of life-and he was much further from happiness than when he had followed her from Moscow. Then he had thought himself unhappy, but happiness was before him; now he felt that the best happiness was already left behind. She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this, he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now, when it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.

She turned away from him, and rapidly, with the help of her forefinger, began working loop after loop of the wool that was dazzling white in the lamplight, while the slender wrist moved swiftly, nervously in the embroidered cuff. The soft machine hum of the yarn’s rapid unspooling filled the silence.

“I don’t understand your husband in the least,” said Vronsky. “He toys with us, literally toys; if he has the power to destroy me with a glance, why not employ that power? How can he put up with our unsettled position? He feels it, that’s evident.”

“He?” she said sneeringly. “He’s perfectly satisfied.”

“What are we all miserable for, when everything might be so happy?”

“Only he is not happy. Don’t I know him, the falsity in which he’s utterly steeped? He’s not a man, not a human being-he’s a machine. At least, and you must understand me, Alexei, because I mean it sincerely: There is some struggle within him between the man and the machine. For now at least the human part of him still lives and thrives, and it is that and nothing else that prevents him from destroying you and me together. Oh, if I’d been in his place, I’d long ago have killed, have torn to pieces a wife like me. He doesn’t understand that I’m your wife, that he’s outside, that he’s superfluous… Don’t let’s talk of him!”

“You’re unfair, very unfair, dearest,” said Vronsky, trying to soothe her. “But never mind, don’t let’s talk of him. Tell me what you’ve been doing? What is the matter? What has been wrong with you, and what did the doctor say?”

She looked at him with mocking amusement. Evidently she had hit on other absurd and grotesque aspects of her husband and was awaiting the moment to give expression to them.

But he went on:

“I imagine that it’s not illness, but your condition. When will it be?”

The ironical light died away in her eyes, but a different smile, a consciousness of something, he did not know what, and of quiet melancholy, came over her face. Android Karenina buzzed swiftly and silently to a side table and poured her a glass of cool water.

“You say that our position is miserable,” Anna said, “That we must put an end to it. If you knew how terrible it is to me, what I would give to be able to love you freely and boldly! I should not torture myself and torture you with my jealousy… And it will come soon, but not as we expect.”

And at the thought of how it would come, she seemed so pitiable to herself that tears came into her eyes, and she could not go on. She laid her hand on his sleeve.

“It won’t come as we suppose. I didn’t mean to say this to you, but you’ve made me. Soon, soon, all will be over, and we shall all, all be at peace, and suffer no more.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, understanding her.

“You asked when? Soon. And I shan’t live through it. Don’t interrupt me!” and she made haste to speak. “I know it; I know for certain. I shall die; and I’m very glad I shall die, and release myself and you.”

Tears dropped from her eyes; Vronsky bent down over her hand and began kissing it, trying to hide his emotion, which, he knew, had no sort of grounds, though he could not control it.

“Yes, it’s better so,” she said, tightly gripping his hand. “That’s the only way, the only way left to us.”

In the melancholy stillness that followed, Lupo suddenly jumped to his feet, his hyper-attuned sensors mistaking some distant twig crack or carriage rumble for the sound of Karenin’s returning footfalls.

Vronsky recovered himself, and lifted his head. “How absurd! What absurd nonsense you are talking!”

“No, it’s the truth.”

“What, what’s the truth?”

“That I shall die. I have-I have had a dream.”

“A dream?” repeated Vronsky, recalling the quasi-Memories which had confronted him on Lupo’s monitor earlier in the day.

“Yes, a dream,” she said. “It’s a long while since I dreamed it. I dreamed that I ran into my bedroom, that I had to get something there, to find out something; you know how it is in dreams,” she said, her eyes filling with horror. “And in the bedroom, the corner, stood something.”

“Oh, what nonsense! How can you believe…”

But she would not let him interrupt her. What she was saying was too important to her. “And the something turned round, and I saw it was a man with a disheveled beard, in some sort of dirty white coat, little, and dreadful looking. I wanted to run away, but he bent down over the sack, and was fumbling there with his hands…”

She showed how he had moved his hands. There was terror in her face. And Vronsky felt the same terror filling his soul.

“He was fumbling and kept talking quickly, quickly in French, you know: Il faut le battre, le groznium, le brayer, le pétrir… And in my horror I try to wake up, and wake up… but wake up still in the dream. And I began asking myself what it meant. And it is Android Karenina, who in reality never speaks, it is she who answers me: ‘In childbirth you’ll die, mistress, you’ll die…’ And I woke up.”

“What nonsense, what nonsense!” said Vronsky; but he felt that there was no conviction in his voice. He risked a glance at Android Karenina, the real one, standing in the room with them, to see her reaction to what her mistress had just revealed. But something in her eyebank’s expression, in the tilt of her head unit, spoke to her anguish at having been, even in a dream, a source of pain to her beloved mistress.

“But don’t let’s talk of it,” Anna said. “Let’s have tea, stay a little now; it’s not long I shall-”

But all at once she stopped. The expression of her face instantaneously changed. On her face was a look of soft, solemn, blissful attention. He could not comprehend the meaning of the change. She was listening to the stirring of the new life within her.

CHAPTER 3

ALEXEI ALEXANDROVICH, after meeting Vronsky on his own steps, drove, as he had intended, to the Vox Fourteen. He sat through two acts there, and saw everyone he had wanted to see. On returning home, he carefully scrutinized the hat stand, and noticing that there was not a military overcoat there, he went, as usual, to his own room. But, contrary to his usual habit; he did not go to bed; he walked up and down his study till three o’clock in the morning.

The feeling of furious anger with his wife, who would not observe the proprieties and keep to the one stipulation he had laid on her, not to receive her lover in her own home, gave him no peace.

YOU COULD HAVE SLAIN HIM SO EASILY.

COULD HAVE LEFT HIM IN A SHATTERED HEAP IN THE FRONT HALLWAY.

Alexei tried to argue with the furious anger of the Face. “Such an extreme measure, driven out of personal passion, would gain so little and risk so much.”

YOU ARE TOO TIMID. A SIMPLE BLOW TO THE HEAD…

“No!”

A RAPID CONSTRICTION OF THE WINDPIPE…

“For God’s sake, no!”

This internal dissension-perfectly sensible to Alexei Alexandrovich, who could hear the voice in his head as clearly as that of any other person, but no different to an outside observer than the ravings of a madman-continued into the late hours of the night. She had not complied with his request, and he was bound to punish her and carry out his threat: obtain a divorce and take away his son. He knew all the difficulties connected with this course, but he had said he would do it, and now he must carry out his threat.

OR YOU COULD SIMPLY-

“No! That I cannot do! Now I bid you be silent!”

He did not sleep the whole night, and his fury, growing in a sort of vast, arithmetical progression, reached its highest limits in the morning. He dressed in haste, and as though carrying his cup full of wrath, and fearing to spill any over, fearing to lose with his wrath the energy necessary for the interview with his wife, he went into her room as soon as he heard she was up.

Anna, who had thought she knew her husband so well, was amazed at the violence of his arrival. Lying still in her bedclothes, she flung up her hand before her eyes as the door flew inward off its hinges and smashed into splinters on the ground.

His brow was lowering, and his telescopic eye zoomed toward her, scanning every inch of her body-except her eyes, scrupulously he avoided her eyes; his mouth was tightly and contemptuously shut. In his walk, in his gestures, in the sound of his voice there was a determination and firmness such as his wife had never seen in him.

“What do you want?” she cried, leaping from the bed.

“Sit down! Sit!” he commanded. Amazed and intimidated, she gazed at him in silence.

“I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in this house.”

“I had to see him to…”

She stopped, not finding a reason. Words poured into Alexei Alexandrovich’s mind:

DO IT SAY IT DO IT SAY IT

“I do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her lover.”

YOU WASTE WORDS YOU WASTE TIME DO IT SAY IT

“I meant, I only…,” she said, flushing hotly. This coarseness of his angered her, and gave her courage. “Surely you must feel how easy it is for you to insult me?” she said.

“An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a thief he’s a thief is simply la constatation d’un fait.”

“This cruelty is something new I did not know in you.”

“There is much of me you do not know. There are facets of my life, of my being, let alone of the being of this world, this universe, that you cannot understand, and secrets that if I revealed them to you would seal your destruction.”

His cruelty was overtaking him; with every moment it was overwhelming him, rising up in his blood like a fever. The Face sang out in his mind:

IMPLORE CONTROL INSULT INSIST OVERMASTER

With a physical effort he calmed himself, strove to regain himself, to speak with his own voice and with words chosen from his own mind. “You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty and the honorable protection of his name, simply on the condition of observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?”

“It’s worse than cruel-it’s base, if you want to know!” Anna cried in a rush of hatred, and rose to leave.

“No!” he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note higher than usual even, and at once she felt what Vronsky had felt in the hallway: her body frozen and then snatched up like a poppet in the hand of a child, tossed in the air and slammed into the ceiling, helpless, pressure squeezing upon her throat, the breath choked out of her. Her husband stared up at her where she flailed in the air, a fish on a hook.

“Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake husband and child for a lover, while you eat your husband’s bread!”

He stared up at her, his oculus telescoping forward ominously, click by click, and she felt the whole of her body forced flatter against the ceiling. She had to argue her case, make him feel her, her humanity, or this was the end-he would destroy her.

“NO!” HE SHRIEKED, AND ANNA FELT HER BODY SLAMMED INTO THE CEILING, PRESSURE SQUEEZING UPON HER THROAT

“You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be myself,” she cried out desperately. “Alexei…

“I beg of you, Alexei…

“Alexei…”

“Ah!” he shouted finally, and released his mental hold. She fell, landing fortuitously-or had some breath of humanity inside him guided her there?-into her chair.

COWARD COWARD COWARD

Anna gasped for breath in the chair, each swallow of air as delicious as the finest wine. She did not say what she had said the evening before to her lover, that he was her husband, and her husband was superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt glad to be alive, and in that state she could not help but feel all the justice of his words. She sat in silence as he continued.

“You may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard to observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to this state of things.”

“Soon, very soon, it will end, anyway,” she said.

“It will end sooner than you and your lover have planned! If you must have the satisfaction of animal passion…”

“Alexei Alexandrovich! I won’t say it’s not generous, but it’s not like a gentleman to strike anyone who’s down.”

“Yes, you only think of yourself! But the sufferings of a man who was your husband have no interest for you. You don’t care that his whole life is ruined, that he is thuff… thuff…”

Alexei Alexandrovich was speaking so quickly that he stammered, and was utterly unable to articulate the word “suffering.”

DONKEY!

IF YOU CANNOT DESTROY, AT LEAST SUMMON THE COURAGE TO SPEAK PLAINLY, YOU FOOL-YOU FAKE-YOU-

In a paroxysm of anger and exasperation, Alexei Alexandrovich clutched at his Face, trying in vain to tear it from him, to rip free the millions of tiny neural junctures that connected the Face’s circuits to his own cell walls. Anna watched in horrified fascination as her husband, screaming with the full force of his lungs, turned in haphazard circles about the room, wrenching at the cruel metal mask. Though she did not, could not, understand what had overtaken him, for the first time, for an instant, she felt for him, put herself in his place, and was sorry for him. But what could she say or do? Her head sank, and she sat silent. He too was silent for some time, and then began speaking in a frigid, less shrill voice, emphasizing random words that had no special significance.

At last he gave up, collapsed in a woeful heap in the opposite corner of the room.

“I came to tell you…,” he said at last, softly and slowly…

She glanced at him. No, to feel sorry for him, it was my fancy, she thought, recalling the expression of his face when he stumbled over the word “suffering.” No, can a man with those dull eyes, with that self-satisfied complacency, feel anything?

“I cannot change anything,” she whispered.

“I have come to tell you that I am going tomorrow to Moscow, and shall not return again to this house, and you will receive notice of what I decide through the lawyer into whose hands I shall entrust the task of getting a divorce. My son is going to my sister’s,” said Alexei Alexandrovich, with an effort recalling what he had meant to say about his son.

“You take Seryozha to hurt me,” she said, looking at him from under her brows. “You do not love him… Leave me Seryozha!”

“Yes, I have lost even my affection for my son, because he is associated with the repulsion I feel for you. But still I shall take him. Good-bye!”

The interview was complete. Anna revivified her beloved-companion and left in tears.

In the echoing chambers of Alexei Alexandrovich’s brain, the Face was silent; but it was the silence of the victor, a jubilant silence, anticipating glories to come. Its goal grew closer-closer with every passing day.

CHAPTER 4

ALEXEI ALEXANDROVICH LEFT HOME with the intention of not returning to his family again. He discussed his intention of obtaining a divorce with a lawyer; by this action he had translated the matter from the world of real life to the world of bureaucratic action, he had grown more and more used to his own intention, and by now distinctly perceived the feasibility of its execution.

He traveled then to Moscow, where he was to oversee the final adjustments to the improved Class III model that he had created-what he now with some audacity called the Class IV As he worked in his sub-basement laboratory, double-checking the precision sighting mechanism embedded in the steely blue eyes of his masterpiece, he heard the loud tones of Stepan Arkadyich’s voice. Stepan Arkadyich was disputing with Karenin’s II/Footman/74, and insisting on being announced.

Alexei Alexandrovich thought to bar the visitor, or hide the Class IV from sight, as his own security protocol dictated, and as he could do with a single button push. But he impulsively decided instead to give his ridiculous brother-in-law a treat, and let the thing remain in view.

LET HIM ENTER. LET HIM SEE WHAT RUSSIA IS TRULY CAPABLE OF.

“Come in!” he said aloud, collecting his papers, and putting them in the blotting paper.

“There, you see, you’re talking nonsense, and he’s here!” responded Stepan Arkadyich’s voice, addressing the Footman, which had refused to let him in; and taking off his coat as he went, Oblonsky walked into the room. “Well, I’m awfully glad I’ve found you! So I hope while you are in Moscow, you will come and dine with us…” Stepan Arkadyich began cheerfully, before stopping short and gasping.

“What… Alexei Alexandrovich, what is that?”

“Surely even in the Department of Toys and Misc., it is being discussed that the Higher Branches are planning, at long last, a new iteration of robot. Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky, meet the Class IV”

“But… but…,” Oblonsky stammered, staring openmouthed while Small Stiva scuttled backward whirring with alarm. Karenin smiled, drinking in their discomfort. “But what will you do with them?”

OH SO MANY THINGS

SO MANY THINGS

OH

But Alexei merely raised his eyebrow. “Our world is ever-changing, Stepan Arkadyich,” he said mildly. “Our beloved-companions must change, too.

“Now. As to your kind inquiry, no-I cannot come to dinner,” Alexei Alexandrovich continued, standing and not asking his visitor to sit down. “I can’t dine at your house, because the terms of the relationship which have existed between us must cease.”

“How? How do you mean? What for?” said Stepan Arkadyich, still nervously eyeing the Class IV that stood staring back at him from the corner.

“Because I am beginning an action for divorce against your sister, my wife. I ought to have-”

But before Alexei Alexandrovich had time to finish his sentence, Stepan Arkadyich was behaving not at all as he had expected. He groaned and sank into an armchair.

“No, Alexei Alexandrovich! What are you saying?” cried Oblonsky, and his suffering was apparent in his face. “Did you hear this?” he said to Small Stiva.

“Heard it, yes, but cannot believe it!”

Alexei Alexandrovich sat down, feeling that his words had not had the effect he anticipated, and that it would be unavoidable for him to explain his position, and that, whatever explanations he might make, his relations with his brother-in-law would remain unchanged. He wished his visitor would go and leave him be, leave him to put the last touches on his beautiful machine.

“Yes, I am brought to the painful necessity of seeking a divorce,” he said.

“I will say one thing, Alexei Alexandrovich,” said Stepan Arkadyich. “I know you for an excellent, upright man; I know Anna-excuse me, I can’t change my opinion of her-for a good, an excellent woman; and so, excuse me, I cannot believe it. There is some misunderstanding.”

“Oh, if it were merely a misunderstanding!”

“Pardon, I understand,” interposed Stepan Arkadyich. “But of course… one thing: you must not act in haste. You must not, you must not act in haste!”

“I am not acting in haste,” Alexei Alexandrovich said coldly, “but one cannot ask advice of anyone in such a matter. I have quite made up my mind.”

“This is awful!” said Stepan Arkadyich. “I would do one thing, Alexei Alexandrovich. I beseech you, do it!” he said. “No action has yet been taken, if I understand rightly. Before you take advice, see my wife, talk to her. She loves Anna like a sister, she loves you, and she’s a wonderful woman. For God’s sake, talk to her! Do me that favor, I beseech you! Do this, come and see my wife.”

“Well, we look at the matter differently,” said Alexei Alexandrovich coldly. “However, we won’t discuss it.”

“No, but why shouldn’t you come today to dine, anyway? My wife’s expecting you. Please, do come. And, above all, talk it over with her. She’s a wonderful woman. For God’s sake, on my knees, I implore you!”

“If you so much wish it, I will come,” said Alexei Alexandrovich, sighing.

“Believe me, I appreciate it, and I hope you won’t regret it,” answered Stepan Arkadyich, smiling. “Come, Small Stiva,” he said. Then, putting on his coat as he went, he cast one last nervous glance at the Class IV, patted Alexei Alexandrovich’s II/Footman/74 on the head, chuckled, and went out.

Alexei stood, shaking his head with irritation. He thought the word engage, and the eyes of the Class IV glowed to life. He thought the word reduce, and in the next instant the chair on which Stiva had perched burst into flames and burned quickly away to ash.

OH SO MANY THINGS said the Face, and Karenin’s mind echoed with terrible, cackling laughter.

CHAPTER 5

IT WAS PAST FIVE, and several guests had already arrived at the Oblonskys’ for dinner, before the host himself got home. He went in together with the intellectuals, Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev and Pestsov, two men respected for their education and erudition, and widely known for their strong opinions on the Robot Question. Koznishev and Pestsov respected each other, but were in complete and hopeless disagreement upon almost every fine point of the subject, for each had his own special shade of opinion. Both men were leading exponents of what was known broadly as the Advancement Theory, holding that servomechanisms must and should grow in their intelligence and abilities. Koznishev believed that this process should be carefully overseen by the appropriate branches of the Ministry at each step, in order that robot capabilities remained carefully understood and contained. Koznishev considered himself an acolyte of the Jewish scholar Abraham Ber Ozimov, a rye merchant turned machine theorist from Petrovichi whose theories had inspired the Iron Laws, anticipating the need to safeguard against any future “rebellion of the machines.” Pestsov dismissed this idea of mechanical revolt as a fairy tale, the sort ofthing used to scare children into obeying their II/Governess/7s. He argued that the gadgetmen should go wherever their experimentation led them, and that their charges should be allowed to socialize more freely with each other, and with humankind. In this way, said Pestsov and his supporters, they could learn and grow in a natural and organic process.

Since no difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions, the two intellectuals never agreed in any opinion, and had long, indeed, been accustomed to jeer without anger, each at the other’s incorrigible aberrations.

In the drawing room there were already sitting Prince Alexander Dmitrievich Shcherbatsky, Turovtsin, Kitty, and the stiff figure of Karenin, his telescoping oculus scanning the room.

Oblonsky worked his sociable magic on the assemblage in the drawing room, beginning them in innocuous but spirited conversation, and then, in the dining room he was met by Konstantin Levin and the familiar, angular figure of Socrates.

“I’m not late?”

“Of course we’re late. We were invited for half past seven, and at present the exact-”

“You can never help being late!” said Stepan Arkadyich, taking Levin’s arm and wagging a merry finger at Socrates.

“Have you a lot of people? Who’s here?” asked Levin, unable to help blushing, as his beloved-companion took his cap and carefully knocked the snow off it.

“All our own set. Kitty’s here. Come along, I’ll introduce you to Karenin.”

Stepan Arkadyich was well aware that to meet Karenin, a man of the Higher Branches, was sure to be felt as a flattering distinction, and so treated his best friends to this honor. But at that instant Konstantin Levin was not in a condition to feel all the gratification of making such an acquaintance. He had not seen Kitty since that memorable evening when he met Vronsky, not counting, that is, the moment when he had had a glimpse of her on the highroad, in her luminescent semiconscious state as she emerged from suspended animation. He had known at the bottom of his heart that he would see her here today. But now, when he heard that she was here, he was suddenly conscious of such delight, and at the same time of such dread, that his breath failed him and he could not utter what he wanted to say.

“Oh, please, introduce me to Karenin,” Levin brought out with an effort, and with a desperately determined step he walked into the drawing room and beheld her. And as he walked, Socrates, walking one step behind, said precisely what he was thinking, anxiously whispering the words into the nape of his neck, just above the level of thought: “What is she like, what is she like? Like what she used to be, or like what she was in the carriage? What if Darya Alexandrovna told the truth? Why shouldn’t it be the truth?”

She was not the same as she used to be, nor was she as she had been in the carriage; she was quite different.

She was scared, shy, shame-faced, and still more charming from it. She saw him the very instant he walked into the room. She had been expecting him. She was delighted, and so confused at her own delight that there was a moment, the moment when he went up to her sister and glanced again at her, when she, and he, and Dolly, who saw it all, thought she would break down and would begin to cry. She crimsoned, turned white, crimsoned again, and grew faint, waiting with quivering lips for him to come to her. Tatiana, her once-ignored, now-beloved Class III, sat beside her, gently massaging her knee. Levin went up to them, bowed, and held out his hand without speaking. Except for the slight quiver of her lips and the moisture in her eyes that made them brighter, her smile was almost calm as she said:

“How long it is since we’ve seen each other!” and with desperate determination she pressed his hand with her cold hand. Socrates bowed low to the charming Tatiana, who burbled coquettishly in return.

“You’ve not seen me, but I’ve seen you,” said Levin, with a radiant smile of happiness. “I saw you when you were driving from the railway station to Ergushovo: you were only just emerging from suspended animation, and what a lovely picture you did make.”

“When?” she asked, wondering.

“You were driving to Ergushovo,” said Levin, feeling as if he would sob with the rapture that was flooding his heart. He glanced with teary eyes at Socrates, as if to say: How dared I associate a thought of anything not innocent with this touching creature? Socrates’ eyebank flashed in warm understanding.

When it was time to be seated for dinner, quite without attracting notice, Stepan Arkadyich put Levin and Kitty side by side.

“Oh, you may as well sit there,” he said to Levin.

The dinner was as choice as the china, of which Stepan Arkadyich was a connoisseur. The soupe Marie-Louise was a splendid success; the tiny pies eaten with it melted in the mouth and were irreproachable. Small Stiva, acting the role of waiter in a charming little white cravat, did his duty with the dishes and wines unobtrusively, quietly, and swiftly. On the material side the dinner was a success; it was no less so on the immaterial. The conversation, at times general and at times between individuals, never paused, and toward the end the company was so lively that the men rose from the table without stopping speaking.

Only Karenin remained cold and distant, listening with evident displeasure to the heated talk of the two intellectuals as they endlessly presented their varying opinions on the Robot Question.

He remained silent, however, even when Koznishev turned the question to him directly. “It is only under the guidance of those such as our honored guest,” he said, offering Karenin a respectfully deep bow of the head, “that our Class IIs and Ills have evolved even to the extraordinary levels at which they presently function. Why, just look at them! Serving tureens of soup and balancing heavy drink trays!” He paused to gesture to Small Stiva, who did a happy little twirl, playing to the spotlight. “But what a future they may hold…”

But Alexei Alexandrovich scowled and said nothing; the intellectuals grew silent, and looked away.

CHAPTER 6

EVERYONE TOOK PART in the conversation except Kitty and Levin. At first there rose to Levin’s mind what he had to say on the Robot Question. He thought of his recent foray deep into the bowels of his mine, swinging an axe alongside his clever and industrious Pitbots; how he had come to admire them, like one admires a fellow man, though they were technically but Class IIs. But these ideas, once of such importance in his eyes, seemed to come into his brain as in a dream, and had now not the slightest interest for him. It even struck him as strange that they should be so eager to talk of what was of no use to anyone. Kitty, too, should, one would have supposed, have been interested when the subject turned to the supreme value of Class Ills to women, as a means of relieving them from the drudgery of household labor. How often she had mused on just this subject, how Class Ills were more than mere chore-doers, how they offered bosom companionships-how useful Tatiana had been to her as emotional support in her long and painful days aboard theVenutian orbiter.

But it did not interest her at all. She and Levin had a conversation of their own, yet not a conversation, but some sort of mysterious communication, which brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of glad terror before the unknown into which they were entering.

At first Levin, in answer to Kitty’s question of how he could have seen her last year in the carriage, told her how he had been coming home from the smeltworks along the highroad and had met her.

Over time the evening’s conversation turned from cold robotics to warm human passions. Turovtsin, another of the party, as a means of drawing attention away from the Robot Question, about which he knew nothing, mentioned an acquaintance involved in an intrigue.

“You heard, perhaps, about Pryatchnikov?” said this Turovtsin, warmed up by the champagne he had drunk. “Vasya Pryatchnikov,” he said, with a good-natured smile on his damp, red lips, addressing himself principally to the most important guest, Alexei Alexandrovich, “they told me today he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has killed him.”

Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so Stepan Arkadyich felt now that the conversation would by ill luck fall every moment on Alexei Alexandrovich’s sore spot. Small Stiva, as attuned as his master to conversational nuance, brought himself up short in his round of bustling, flashing with alarm at Oblonsky. Together they would have contrived to pull the brother-in-law away, but Alexei Alexandrovich himself inquired, smiling neutrally from behind his mask:

“What did Pryatchnikov fight about?”

“His wife. Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and blasted him!”

“Ah!” said Alexei Alexandrovich indifferently, and lifting his eyebrows, he went into the drawing room, and the rest of the party resumed their conversation.

“How glad I am you have come,” Dolly Oblonsky, Stiva’s wife, said to Karenin with a frightened smile, meeting him in the outer drawing room. “I must talk to you. Let’s sit here.”

“Sit sit,” echoed her Class III, Dolichka. “Oh do, sit.”

Alexei Alexandrovich, with the same expression of indifference given him by his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Darya Alexandrovna, and smiled affectedly.

“It’s fortunate,” he said, “especially as I was meaning to ask you to excuse me, and to be taking leave. I have to start tomorrow.”

Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna’s innocence, and she felt herself growing pale and her lips quivering with anger at this frigid, unfeeling man, wreathed by the eldritch gleam of his silvery half-face, who was so calmly intending to ruin her innocent friend.

“Alexei Alexandrovich,” she said, with desperate resolution looking him in the face, “I asked you earlier about Anna, but you made me no answer. How is she?”

“She is, I believe, quite well, Darya Alexandrovna,” replied Alexei Alexandrovich, not looking at her.

“Alexei Alexandrovich, forgive me, I have no right… but I love Anna as a sister, and esteem her; I beg, I beseech you to tell me what is wrong between you? What fault do you find with her?”

Alexei Alexandrovich frowned, and almost closing his eyes, dropped his head, and was at once confronted by the caustic hissing of the Face.

HOW DARE SHE

“Quiet! Please!” he cried aloud, and balled a fist against his forehead; Dolly stared back at him tremulously.

“I presume that your husband has told you the grounds on which I consider it necessary to change my attitude toward Anna Arkadyevna?” he said, not looking her in the face.

“I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it!” Dolly said, clasping her bony hands before her with a vigorous gesture. She rose quickly, and laid her hand on Alexei Alexandrovich’s sleeve. “We shall be disturbed here. Come this way, please.”

HOW DARE SHE began the Face again, but Dolly’s agitation had an effect on Alexei Alexandrovich. He got up and followed her to the schoolroom. They sat down to a table covered with an old sheet of acetate, cut in slits by I/Penknife/4s; at such “writing tables” did children play at the old game, a mere amusement since the time of the Tsars, of “learning one’s letters.”

“I don’t, I don’t believe it!” Dolly began, trying to catch his glance, which avoided her.

“One cannot disbelieve facts, Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, with an emphasis on the word “facts.”

“But what has she done?” said Darya Alexandrovna. “What precisely has she done?”

“She has forsaken her duty, and deceived her husband. That’s what she has done,” said he.

“No, no, it can’t be! No, for God’s sake, you are mistaken,” said Dolly, putting her hands to her temples and closing her eyes.

Alexei Alexandrovich smiled coldly, with his lips alone, meaning to signify to her and to himself the firmness of his conviction; but this hot defense, though it could not shake him, reopened his wound. He began to speak with greater heat.

“It is extremely difficult to be mistaken when a wife herself informs her husband of the fact-informs him that eight years of her life, and a son, all that’s a mistake, and that she wants to begin life again,” he said angrily, with a snort.

“Anna and sin-I cannot connect them, I cannot believe it!”

“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, now looking straight into Dolly’s kindly, troubled face, and feeling that his tongue was being loosened in spite of himself, “I would give a great deal for doubt to be still possible. When I doubted, I was miserable, but it was better than now. When I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope, and still I doubt of everything. I am in such doubt of everything that I even hate my son, and sometimes do not believe he is my son. I am very unhappy.”

He had no need to say that. Darya Alexandrovna had seen that as soon as he glanced into her face; and she felt sorry for him, and her faith in the innocence of her friend began to totter.

Karenin’s inner voice for once was silent, and he was glad for that-he could bear, he thought, this woman’s childish pity, but not the ruthless disdain of the Face.

“Oh, this is awful, awful! But can it be true that you are resolved on a divorce?”

“I am resolved on extreme measures. There is nothing else for me to do.”

“Nothing else to do, nothing else to do…,” Dolly echoed, with tears in her eyes.

“Nothing else? Nothing?” came the third echo, this from Dolichka, parroting her mistress in sad, mechanical tones.

OH BUT THERE IS SOMETHING, came the brutal dead whisper of the Face.

OH BUT THERE IS.

DIVORCE HER? YOU MUST Kl-

“No! It is enough!!” said Karenin, with a force shocking to Dolly. “I shall divorce her, and that is all!”

“No, it is awful! She will be no one’s wife, she will be lost!”

“What can I do?” said Alexei Alexandrovich, raising his shoulders and his eyebrows. “I am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be going,” he said, getting up.

“No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I will tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me; in anger and jealousy, I would have thrown away everything, I would myself… But I came to myself again; and who did it? Anna saved me. And here I am living on. The children are growing up, my husband has come back to his family, and feels his fault, is growing purer, better, and I live on… I have forgiven it, and you ought to forgive!”

Alexei Alexandrovich heard her, but her words had no effect on him now. All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a divorce had sprung up again in his soul. He shook himself, and said in a shrill, loud voice:

“Forgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong. You must understand that divorce is not the worst I can do to her, but the best she might hope for. I have done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all in the mud to which she is akin. I am not a spiteful man, I have never hated anyone, but I hate her with my whole soul, and I cannot even forgive her, because I hate her too much for all the wrong she has done me!”

“Love those who hate you…” Darya Alexandrovna whispered timorously.

When he spoke in response his natural speaking voice was displaced with the cruel rasp of the Face, speaking out from his mouth.

“NO,” he said. “HATE THEM MORE.”

And turning on his heel, he left Dolly there to shudder and to whisper to Dolichka, exactly as others had whispered before: “What is he?”

Meanwhile Karenin himself gathered his coat and hat and stopped at the door, glaring icily at the two old intellectuals, who still sat over their drained bowls of soup, parsing the question of robot intelligence.

“I might humbly suggest, gentlemen, you spend too much effort debating these ancient and intricate questions. In short order, the issue will be… let us say… moot.”

And then, Alexei Alexandrovich quietly took leave and went away.

CHAPTER 7

WHEN THE GROUP finished eating and rose from the table, Levin would have liked to follow Kitty into the drawing room, but he was afraid she might dislike this as too obviously paying her attention. He remained in the little ring of men, taking part in the general conversation, and without looking at Kitty, he was aware of her movements, her looks, and the place where she was in the drawing room.

“I thought you were going toward the piano,” he said, at last approaching her. “That’s something I miss in the country-music.”

She rewarded him with a smile that was like a gift. “What do they want to argue for? No one ever convinces anyone, you know.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Levin. “It generally happens that one argues hotly simply because one can’t make out what one’s opponent wants to prove.”

And with that the two in the drawing room, with their beloved-companions standing back a deferential distance, closed their eyes against the discussion in the other room, and felt at once that all the world was theirs alone. Kitty, going up to a game table, sat down, and, taking up a mini-blade, began drawing diverging circles over the new acetate surface.

They began on another of the subjects that had been started at dinner-the liberty and occupations of women. Levin was of the opinion of Darya Alexandrovna that a girl who did not marry should find a woman’s duties in a family: that of petite mécanicienne, maintaining the Class Is of the household.

“No,” said Kitty, blushing, but looking at him all the more boldly with her truthful eyes, “a girl may be so positioned that she cannot live in the family without humiliation, while she herself…”

At the hint he understood her.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, yes, yes-you’re right, you’re right!”

Socrates and Tatiana exchanged a knowing look, and then both enacted an exceedingly rare gesture, in tacit acknowledgment of the powerful mood of intimacy blossoming between their respective masters: reaching up at the same moment beneath their chins, they put themselves in Surcease.

A silence followed. She was still tracing shapes with the blade on the table. Kitty’s eyes were shining with a soft light. Under the influence of her mood he felt in all his being a continually growing tension of happiness.

“Ah! I’ve scratched figures all over the acetate!” she said, and, laying down the little blade, she made a movement as though to get up.

“What! Shall I be left alone-without her?” he thought with horror, and he took the knife. “Wait a minute,” he said, sitting down to the table. “I’ve long wanted to ask you one thing.”

He looked straight into her caressing, though frightened eyes.

“Please, ask it.”

“Here,” he said, and he carved the initial letters: w, y, t, m, i, c, n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t. These letters meant: When you told me it could never be, did that mean never, or then? There seemed no likelihood that she could make out this complicated sentence; among the thousands of miraculous innovations groznium had gifted to the Russian people, mind-reading remained as impossible as it was in the time of the Tsars.

But Levin looked at her as though his life depended on her understanding the words. She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her puckered brow on her hands and began to read. Once or twice she stole a look at him, as though asking him, Is it what I think?

“I understand,” she said, flushing a little.

“What is this word?” he said, pointing to the n that stood for never.

“It means never” she said, “but that’s not true!”

He quickly laid down another sheet of acetate, gave her the blade, and stood up. She scratched: t, i, c, n, a, d.

Dolly was completely relieved of the depression caused by her conversation with Alexei Alexandrovich when she caught sight of the four figures Tatiana and Socrates in their meaningful Surcease; Kitty with the penknife in her hand, with a shy and happy smile looking upward at Levin; and his handsome figure bending over the table with glowing eyes fastened one minute on the table and the next on her.

He was suddenly radiant: he had understood. It meant: Then I could not answer differently.

He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.

“Only then?”

“Yes,” her smile answered.

“And n… and now?” he asked.

“Well, read this. I’ll tell you what I should like-should like so much!” she etched the initial letters: i, y, c, fa, fw, h. This meant: if you could forget and forgive what happened. He snatched the knife with nervous, trembling fingers, and wrote the initial letters of the following phrase: I have nothing to forget and forgive; I have never ceased to love you.

She glanced at him with a smile that did not waver.

“I understand,” she said in a whisper.

He sat down and scratched out a long phrase, requiring him to roll out a third sheet of acetate. She understood it all, and without asking him, “Is it this?” took the blade and at once answered.

For a long while he could not understand what she had written, and often looked into her eyes. He was stupefied with happiness. He could not supply the word she had meant; but in her charming eyes, beaming with happiness, he saw all he needed to know. And he scratched out three letters. But he had hardly finished writing when she read them over her arm, and herself finished and wrote the answer, Yes.

Levin rose, beaming, and escorted Kitty to the door, their two revivified Class Ills trailing behind, arm in arm.

In their conversation everything had been said; it had been said that she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother that he would come tomorrow morning.

CHAPTER 8

THE STREETS WERE STILL EMPTY the next morning, when Levin went to the house of the Shcherbatskys. The visitors’ doors were closed and everyone was asleep. He walked back, went into his room again, and ordered coffee from the II/Samovar/1(8). Levin tried to drink coffee and put some roll in his mouth, but his mouth was quite at a loss what to do with the roll. Instead he put on his coat and went out again for a walk. It was nine o’clock when he reached the Shcherbatskys’ steps the second time. In the house they were only just up, and he watched as the II/Cook/89 motored off toward the market. He had to get through at least two hours more.

All that night and morning Levin lived perfectly unconsciously, and felt perfectly lifted out of the conditions of material life. He had eaten nothing for a whole day, had not slept for two nights, had spent several hours undressed in the frozen air, and felt not simply fresher and stronger than ever, but utterly independent of his body; he moved without muscular effort, and felt as if he could do anything. He was convinced he could fly upward or lift the corner of the house, if need be. He spent the remainder of the time in the street, incessantly looking at his wrist-borne I/Hourprotector/8 and gazing about him.

And what he saw then, he never saw again after. The children, especially going to school, the bluish doves flying down from the roofs to the pavement, and the little loaves covered with flour, thrust out by an unseen hand, touched him. Those loaves, those doves, and those two boys were not earthly creatures. It all happened at the same time: a boy ran toward a dove and glanced smiling at Levin; the dove, with a whir of her wings, darted away, flashing in the sun amid grains of snow that quivered in the air, while from a little window there came a smell of fresh-baked bread, and the loaves were put out. All of this together was so extraordinarily nice that Levin laughed and cried with delight. Going a long way round by Gazetny Place and Kislovka, he went back again to the hotel, and putting the Hourprotector before him, he sat down to wait for twelve o’clock. In the next room they were talking about some new sort of Ministry policy being spoken of, something about a registry-was that what they said, registry?-of Class III robots, some sort of improvement project… none of it mattered. Not to Levin. He could hardly believe that these men did not realize that the dial of the Hourprotector was approaching twelve.

At last the hour was at hand. Levin went out onto the steps, and hired a sledge; the II/Coachman/47-T knew the Shcherbatskys’ house, and drew up at the entrance with a curve of his flexible effector and a hearty, resonant “Ho!” The Shcherbatskys’ household Class IIs, Levin knew, were not programmed for emotional sensitivity, but it was obvious to Levin that the II/Porter/42 certainly knew all about everything-there was something so cheery in the red glow of its faceplate, something positively mischievous in the way it intoned:

“Enter, sir… enter, sir…”

As soon as he entered, swift, swift, light steps sounded on the parquet, and his bliss, his life, himself-what was best in himself, what he had so long sought and longed for-was quickly, so quickly approaching him. She did not walk, but seemed, by some unseen force, to float to him, Tatiana trailing behind her with a tinkling snippet of Chopin playing from her Third Bay. But he could hardly hear the gentle strains, indeed hardly noticed the Class III, for he saw nothing but his darling’s clear and truthful eyes, frightened by the same bliss of love that flooded his heart. Those eyes were shining nearer and nearer, blinding him with their light of love. She stopped still close to him, touching him. Her hands rose and dropped onto his shoulders.

She had done all she could-she had run up to him and given herself up entirely, shy and happy. He put his arms round her and pressed his lips to her mouth that sought his kiss.

She too had not slept all night, and had been expecting him all the morning.

Her mother and father had consented without demurring, and were happy in her happiness. She had been waiting for him. She wanted to be the first to tell him her happiness and his. “Let us go to Mamma!” she said, taking him by the hand. For a long while he could say nothing, not so much because he was afraid of desecrating the loftiness of his emotion by a word, as that every time he tried to say something, instead of words he felt that tears of happiness were welling up. He took her hand and kissed it.

“Can it be true?” Levin said at last in a choked voice, straightening up. “I can’t believe you love me, dear!”

She smiled at that “dear,” and at the timidity with which he glanced at her.

“Yes!” she said significantly, deliberately. “I am so happy!”

And then Socrates motored into the room, and Levin was startled, for the first time realizing that in his clouded, joyous state he had left his beloved-companion behind at the hotel. He blushed and lowered his head, and his embarrassment and shame were only compounded when Socrates explained what had befallen him on the way.

“I was detained by a man some sort of man some sort of man, a man with a mustache a man a man,” Socrates intoned in an agitated rush, his eyebank flickering wildly. “He said he was from the Ministry, from Enforcement.”

“A Caretaker?” Levin began, taken aback; he had never seen his oft-agitated Class III quite so agitated as this.

“Not a Caretaker. No IIs with him. His uniform was of a kind I did not recognize. He took my information, and then then then then…”

“Socrates?” Levin said again, his confusion deepening into anxiety and fear.

“He said unaccompanied Class Ills will be no longer allowed to pass unescorted.”

“What?!”

Levin was startled by such a report, but Kitty, in her childish and charming innocence, was merely affronted. “Well, who was this man with his little mustache, to talk such foolishness!” she tittered, and Tatiana nodded, though hesitantly-for she understood, as only another android could, the depth of cold mechanical terror reflected in Socrates’ eyebank.

The prince and princess then entered, and in half an hour the man with the mustache was entirely forgotten, and the wedding planning had begun.

CHAPTER 9

GOING OVER IN HIS memory the conversations that had taken place during and after dinner, Alexei Alexandrovich returned to his solitary sub-basement laboratory in the Moscow Tower. Darya Alexandrovna’s words about forgiveness had aroused in him a queer pity, but from the Face it had earned nothing but contempt. Indeed, the Face continually recalled to him the phrase of that stupid, good-natured Turovtsin-“Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and blasted him!” Everyone had apparently shared this feeling, though from politeness they had not expressed it.

AND YOU-YOU WITH SUCH POWER…

“But the matter is settled, it’s useless thinking about it,” Alexei Alexandrovich replied bitterly. He sat down at his desk, tried to turn his energies to the monumental task ahead of him: the long logistical effort of identifying the Class Ills, of gathering them up, of implementing the necessary changes in appearance, in circuitry…

IN LOYALTY…

“Two communiqués,” said a II/Porter/7e62, buzzing into the room. “Beg pardon, excellency, two communiqués… two…”

Alexei Alexandrovich impatiently ordered them transferred to his desk-mounted monitor; the first was the announcement of Stremov’s appointment to the very post Karenin had coveted, as overseer of the final phase of the Project. Alexei Alexandrovich trembled in his seat.

YOU CANNOT ALLOW

“I know.”

NOT NOW

“I know!” Stremov could not be allowed to take over the Project, he would ruin everything… but his colleagues in the Higher Branches had spoken.

If Karenin could not undo the appointment…

YOU MUST UNDO STREMOV.

Alexei Alexandrovich stabbed the monitor into silence, and flushing a little, got up and began to pace up and down the room shouting “Quos vult perdere dementat!” He was furious that he had not received the post, that he had been conspicuously passed over; and it was incomprehensible, amazing to him that they did not see that the wordy phrasemonger Stremov was the last man fit for it.

THEY WILL PAY

THEY WILL PAY

WE WILL MAKE CERTAIN THAT THEY PAY.

“This will be something else in the same line,” Alexei Alexandrovich said bitterly, cuing the second communiqué. It was from his wife.

SHE

SHE WHO TORMENTS YOU

SHE-

Alexei blocked out the voice of the Face as Anna’s tearful, pained eyes swam into view. “I am dying; I beg, I implore you to come. I shall die easier with your forgiveness,” said the tinny image of Anna Karenina.

He smiled contemptuously, and flicked his finger to stop this communiqué as well, but then paused, and he watched it again, growing tearful himself. “I am dying; I beg, I implore you to come. I shall-”

THIS IS A TRICK AND A FRAUD. THERE IS NO DECEIT SHE WOULD STOP AT.

“She is near her confinement,” Alexei Alexandrovich replied, trying idiotically to have a reasoned and rational conversation with the rageful Face. “Perhaps it is the confinement… what would be the aim of a trick?

TO LEGITIMIZE THE CHILD, TO COMPROMISE YOU, TO PREVENT A DIVORCE.

“But something was said in it…” He cued the communiqué again-“I am dying; I beg, I implore you to come. I shall die easier with your forgiveness”-and suddenly the plain meaning of what was said in it struck him.

“And if it is true?” he said aloud, and the Face laughed, sneeringly.

TRUE? TRUE THAT SHE SUFFERS? TRUE THAT SHE MAY DIE? THEN GOOD! ONLY A SHAME THAT HER DEATH SHOULD COME OTHERWISE THAN AT YOUR HANDS.

“If it is true that in the moment of agony and nearness to death she is genuinely penitent, and I, taking it for a trick, refuse to go? That would not only be cruel, and everyone would blame me, but it would be stupid on my part.”

“Call a coach,” he said to the II/Porter/7e62.

NO-NO, YOU CAN’T-YOU MUST STAY HERE-YOU MUST COMPLETE THE PROJECT… STOP STREMOV… REGAIN CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL

But when the II/Coachman/47-T returned, Alexei Alexandrovich said, “I am going to Petersburg.”

And all the long way back to Petersburg, Karenin’s mind was hushed and still; not a further whisper did he hear from the Face. When he arrived, a II/Porter/44 opened the door before Alexei Alexandrovich rang; still the Face was silent.

“How is she?” he demanded.

“Very ill, sir.”

“Ill?” said Alexei Alexandrovich, and he went into the hall.

On the hat stand there was a silver regimental overcoat. Alexei Alexandrovich noticed it and asked:

“Who is here?”

“The doctor, the midwife, and Count Vronsky.”

Alexei Alexandrovich paused at the steps, expecting at any moment to be brought up short by the angry roar of the Face, but he heard nothing. He went into the inner rooms.

In the drawing room there was no one; at the sound of his steps there came out of her boudoir a scared and tired looking doctor with his II/Prognosis/64. “Thank God you’ve come! She keeps on about you and nothing but you,” said the man.

Alexei Alexandrovich went into her boudoir.

At the table, sitting sideways in a low chair, was Vronsky, his face hidden in his hands, weeping; at his feet was Lupo, his wolf-like Class III, who at the sight of Alexei Alexandrovich reared back on his haunches and growled warningly. Seeing the husband, Vronsky was so overwhelmed that he sat down again, drawing his head down to his shoulders, as if he wanted to disappear; but he made an effort over himself, got up, and said:

“She is frozen.”

“Frozen? What can that mean?”

“It comes and goes. In some moments she snaps out of it, and is entirely herself, seeming to have no recollection of what has just occurred. Then it begins again: her hair stands on end, her back arches, her eyes roll back into her head, and she is locked into that strange posture. The doctors say they have no idea, that they have seen nothing like it before.”

Vronsky stopped for a moment, and then stammered what was hardest for him to say to the husband: “But as for me, I have seen it…” He trailed off, unable to speak aloud to Alexei Alexandrovich the intimate circumstance in which he had previously seen Anna enter this bizarre altered state.

“I am entirely in your power,” he said instead. “Only let me be here…”

At those words, “Only let me be here,” Karenin’s mind exploded in light and noise, as if a bomb had been detonated in the depths of his cerebral cortex.

“LET ME BE HERE! LET ME BE HERE!”

The Face shouted through Karenin’s mouth, angry and incredulous, and it was then that the struggle began, a struggle between Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin’s true human heart and his hateful mechanical Face, which is to say, between Karenin and himself; a struggle to be fought inside his brain, the crevices and folds of gray matter contested like the rugged hills of a battlefield; a struggle for the soul of a man, and for the future of a nation.

HE WOULD HAVE YOUR FORGIVENESS! YOUR LOVE!

Silence, Karenin thought.

HE STANDS BEFORE YOU WEEPING, AND YOU BID ME BE SILENT!

Be silent!

NO! NEVER! NO! YOU MUST MAKE HIM SUFFER-YOU MUST MAKE THEM ALL SUFFER MUST MUST MUST…

And there the battle was nearly lost; indeed, at that moment Karenin even reached out for Vronsky with his mind, even telescoped his oculus toward him, intent for one deadly second on raising him high above the floor of the room and then dashing out his brains. But then from the bedroom came the sound of Anna’s voice saying something.

“She moves!” he cried.

Her voice was lively, eager, with exceedingly distinct intonations. Forgetting in the space of a heartbeat his murderous intentions, Alexei Alexandrovich went into the bedroom, and went up to the bed.

She was lying turned with her face toward him. Her cheeks were flushed crimson, her eyes glittered, her little white hands thrust out from the sleeves of her dressing gown were playing with the quilt, twisting it about. It seemed as though she were not only well and blooming, but in the happiest frame of mind. She was talking rapidly, musically, and with exceptionally correct articulation and expressive intonation.

“Alexei, come here,” Anna began. “I am in a hurry, because I’ve no time, I’ve not long left to live; this is what I wanted to say. Don’t be surprised at me. I’m still the same… But there is another woman in me, I’m afraid of her: she loved that man, and I tried to hate you, and could not forget about her who used to be. I’m not that woman. Now I’m my real self, all myself.”

And then it happened, exactly what Vronsky had warned him of: Anna’s fragile body snapped into a fearful rigidity, her jaw clenched, her eyes rolled back into her head. And then, as he watched, her entire frame lifted six inches above the drenched mattress, oscillating wildly in the air before him. Alexei looked about desperately, but the doctor with his Class II had left the room. It was just him and her-and, he noticed suddenly, Android Karenina, who looked at him with calm directness from where she stood partially concealed in the drapes, as if to say: This shall pass.

And pass it did; in a matter of seconds, Anna’s body relaxed, her color returned, and she fell back into her place atop the bedspread. She continued speaking, mid-sentence, mid-thought even, apparently having no memory or understanding of the frightful spell.

“There is only one thing I want: forgive me, forgive me quite. I’m terrible, but my nurse used to tell me; the holy martyr-what was her name? She was worse. And I’ll go to Rome; there’s a wilderness, and there I shall be no trouble to anyone, only I’ll take Seryozha and the little one… No, you can’t forgive me! I know, it can’t be forgiven! No, no, go away, you’re too good!” She held his hand in one burning hand, while she pushed him away with the other.

Still, the Face was silent; and Alexei Alexandrovich felt, for the first time in many months-no, in many years-that he was master of his own mind. This realization gave him all at once a new happiness he had never known. He knelt down, and laying his head in the curve of her arm, which burned him as with fire through the sleeve, he sobbed like a little child. She put her arm around his head, moved toward him, and with defiant pride lifted up her eyes.

Vronsky had entered the room, and he now came to the side of the bed, and seeing Anna, hid his face in his hands.

“Uncover your face-look at him! He’s a saint,” she said. “Oh! uncover your face, do uncover it!” she said angrily. “Alexei Alexandrovich, do uncover his face! I want to see him.”

Alexei Alexandrovich, never moving a muscle, focused his attention on the other man, and making use of that invisible fog of controlling force, which he had previously used to dominate and threaten, gently tugged Vronsky’s hands away from his face to reveal his timid expression. Just as on the night they had encountered each other in the doorway, the one man was controlling the other without physical power, but with the force of the mind; but now, the control was firm but gentle, like that of a loving father, guiding the hands of his son.

“Now give him your hand,” Anna demanded. “Forgive him.”

Alexei Alexandrovich gave Count Vronsky his hand.

“Thank God, thank God,” Anna said. “Now everything is ready. Now-”

And again she locked, and arched, and her spine grew rigid like a bridge of steel as her body floated several inches above the mattress. For some minutes they stood that way: Vronsky and Karenin with their hands clasped, still and solemn as supplicants at her bedside. Until at last Android Karenina motored over from the window glowing lavender and placed a gentle palm across Anna’s forehead.

Anna recovered from the attack, but immediately fell into a deep sleep.

On the third day, Anna was continuing to suffer these occasional and inexplicable attacks; the doctor, even with the help of a prototype II/Prognosis/5 that Alexei Alexandrovich requisitioned from the Ministry ofWellness & Recovery, could not discern what was causing the attacks. That day Alexei Alexandrovich went into the boudoir where Vronsky was sitting, and closing the door sat down opposite him.

“Alexei Alexandrovich,” said Vronsky, feeling that a statement of his position was coming, “I can’t speak, I can’t understand. Spare me! However hard it is for you, believe me, it is more terrible for me.”

He would have risen, but Alexei Alexandrovich took him by the hand, and said:

“I beg you to hear me out; it is necessary. I must explain my feelings, the feelings that have guided me and will guide me, so that you may not be in error regarding me. You know I had resolved on a divorce, and had even begun to take proceedings. I won’t conceal from you that in the beginning of this I was in uncertainty, I was in misery; I will confess that I was pursued by a desire to revenge myself on you and on her. I will go so far as to say that a certain part of me wanted… more than divorce. Wanted revenge. To cause you pain. To clutch at your insides and squeeze until I felt the blood burst from your brain, and your very lungs burst within you like two bags of rotten refuse.”

Vronsky shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“However… when I got the communiqué, I came here with the same feelings; I will say more, I longed for her death. I wished that I could-never mind. But…” He paused, pondering whether to disclose or not to disclose his feeling to him. “But I saw her and forgave her. And the happiness of forgiveness has revealed to me my duty. I forgive completely. I would offer the other cheek, I would give my cloak if my coat were taken. I pray to God only not to take from me the bliss of forgiveness!”

A tear stood in his one human eye, and the luminous, serene look impressed Vronsky.

“This is my position: you can trample me in the mud, make me the laughingstock of the world, but I will not abandon her, and I will never utter a word of reproach to you,” Alexei Alexandrovich went on. “My duty is clearly marked for me; I ought to be with her, and I will be. If she wishes to see you, I will let you know, but now I suppose it would be better for you to go away.”

He got up, and sobs cut short his words. Vronsky too was getting up, and in a stooping, not yet erect posture, looked up at him from under his brows. He did not understand Alexei Alexandrovich’s feeling, but he felt that it was something higher and even unattainable for him with his view of life.

The Face was silent, but not vanquished. It dwelled in hidden chambers, biding its time, analyzing opportunities. Waiting.

CHAPTER 10

ON GETTING HOME, after three sleepless nights, Vronsky, without undressing, lay down flat on the sofa, clasping his hands and laying his head on them. His head was heavy.

“To sleep! To forget!” he said to himself with the serene confidence of a healthy man who, if he is tired and sleepy, will go to sleep at once. And the same instant his head did begin to feel drowsy and he began to drop off into forgetfulness. The waves of the sea of unconsciousness had begun to meet over his head, when all at once-it was as though a violent shock of electricity had passed over him. He started so that he leaped up on the springs of the sofa, and leaning on his arms got in a panic onto his knees. His eyes were wide open as though he had never been asleep. The heaviness in his head and the weariness in his limbs that he had felt a minute before had suddenly gone.

“You can trample me in the mud,” he heard Alexei Alexandrovich’s words and saw him standing before him, and saw Anna’s face with its burning flush and glittering eyes, gazing with love and tenderness not at him but at Alexei Alexandrovich; he saw his own, as he fancied, foolish and ludicrous figure when Alexei Alexandrovich had mysteriously pulled his hands away from his face. He stretched out his legs again and flung himself on the sofa in the same position and shut his eyes.

“To sleep! To forget!” he repeated to himself. But with his eyes shut he saw more distinctly than ever Anna’s face as it had been on the memorable evening before the Cull.

“That is not and will not be, and she wants to wipe it out of her memory. But I cannot live without it. How can we be reconciled? How can we be reconciled?” he said aloud, and unconsciously began to repeat these words. This repetition checked the rising up of fresh images and memories, which he felt were thronging in his brain. Not Memories, but memories-he remembered as a child remembers. Again in extraordinarily rapid succession his best moments rose before his mind, and then his recent humiliation. “Take away his hands,” Anna’s voice said. He felt the strange force remove the hands from his face, and felt the shame-stricken and idiotic expression of his face. He still lay down, trying to sleep, though he felt there was not the smallest hope of it, and kept repeating stray words from some chain of thought, trying by this to check the rising flood of fresh images. He listened, and heard in a strange, mad whisper words repeated: “I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it. I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it.”

“What’s this? Am I going out of my mind?” he said quietly to Lupo, who shook his thickly whiskered head unit in an energetic no.

“What makes men go out of their minds; what makes men shoot themselves?”

Lupo growled with worry; his mechanical tail stood straight back; the hair bristled up and down the ladder of his spine.

“No, I must sleep!” Vronsky moved the cushion up, and pressed his head into it, but he had to make an effort to keep his eyes shut. He jumped up. “That’s all over for me,” he said, pacing, Lupo pacing behind him. “I must think what to do. What is left?”

His mind rapidly ran through his life apart from his love of Anna. “The regiment? The court? Destroying koschei?” He could not come to a pause anywhere. All of it had had meaning before, but now there was no reality in it. He got up from the sofa, took off his coat, undid his belt, and uncovering his hairy chest to breathe more freely, walked up and down the room. “This is how people go mad,” he repeated, “and how they shoot themselves… to escape humiliation,” he added slowly.

He went to the door and closed it, then with fixed eyes and clenched teeth he approached his full-length mirror, and unholstered his twin smokers. For two minutes, his head bent forward with an expression of an intense effort of thought, he stood with the smokers in his hand, motionless, thinking.

“Of course,” he announced at last-as though a logical, continuous, and clear chain of reasoning had brought him to an indubitable conclusion. In reality this “of course,” which seemed convincing to him, was simply the result of exactly the same circle of memories and images through which he had passed ten times already during the last hour-memories of happiness lost forever. There was the same conception of the senselessness of everything to come in life, the same consciousness of humiliation. Even the sequence of these images and emotions was the same.

“Of course,” he repeated, when for the third time his thought passed again round the same spellbound circle of memories and images. With a minute and yet decisive flick of his thumbs he sent the smokers to life, and felt the pleasant, familiar sensations of their barrels glowing in his palms.

Lupo began to protest, barking madly-“Yelpyelpyelp!”-charging in circles at the foot of his master; with the unseeing determination of the sleepwalker, Vronsky crouched down on his knees and flicked the mighty wolf into Surcease. Lupo was stopped in mid-motion, a forepaw raised in desperation, a gleaming silver statue of unavailing loyalty.

Pulling one of the smokers to the left side of his chest, and clutching it vigorously with his whole hand, as it were, squeezing it in his fist, he pulled the trigger. He did not hear the hot zap of the shot, but a violent blow on his chest sent him reeling.

He tried to clutch at the edge of the table, dropped the smokers, staggered, and sat down on the ground, looking about him in astonishment. The groznium plating of his uniform had of course absorbed 80 or more percent of the blast, exactly as it was designed to do. “Idiotic!” he cried.

Meanwhile, the 20 percent of unabsorbed smoker blast was ricocheting wildly around the room.

He heard the sound of the subsequent explosion, as the smoker stream landed in the worst possible place: the trunk of munitions in the opposite corner of the room. The Disrupter, its feather trigger activated by the force of the smoker stream, exploded to life, and the whole room began to shake violently; next the six-load of glowbombs erupted one after the other, a string of deafening, concussive explosions. Vronsky clutched at his forehead and ducked under the settee, grasping with desperate fingers for Lupo, exposed in the center of the room, helpless in Surcease.

He cowered there, his chest throbbing, covering his beloved-companion with his body, until the firestorm abated. When Vronsky looked up from the floor, he could barely recognize his room: the bent legs of the table, the wastepaper basket, and the tiger-skin rug, all of it a smoking ruin. He breathed with difficulty through scorched lungs, stumbled for the exit, smelled the terrible odor of his own singed hair and skin.

“I’ve got you, old friend,” he muttered raggedly to Lupo, shielding his eyes against the smoke with one hand while with the other he flicked his beloved-companion back to life.

“I’ve got you.”

CHAPTER 11

THE MISTAKE MADE by Alexei Alexandrovich-that, when preparing to see his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her repentance might be sincere, and he might forgive her, and she might not die-this mistake was, two months after his return from Moscow, brought home to him in all its significance. But the mistake made by him had arisen not simply from his having overlooked that contingency, but also from the fact that until that day of his interview with his dying wife, he had not known his own heart. At his sick wife’s bedside he had for the first time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic suffering always roused in him by the sufferings of others, and hitherto looked on by him with shame as a harmful weakness. And pity for her, and remorse for having desired her death, and most of all, the joy of forgiveness made him at once conscious, not simply of the relief of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual peace he had never experienced before. In the profound silence of the Face’s unexpected disappearance, he suddenly felt that the very thing that was the source of his sufferings had become the source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed insoluble while he was judging, blaming, and hating had become clear and simple when he forgave and loved.

He forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her remorse. He forgave Vronsky, and pitied him, especially after reports reached him of his desperate action. He felt more for his son than before. And he blamed himself now for having taken too little interest in him. But for the little newborn baby he felt a quite peculiar sentiment, not of pity, only, but of tenderness. At first, from a feeling of compassion alone, he had been interested in the delicate little creature, who was not his child, and who was cast on one side during her mother’s illness, and would certainly have died if he had not troubled about her, and he did not himself observe how fond he became of her. He would go into the nursery several times a day until the child got quite used to his presence. Sometimes for half an hour at a stretch he would sit silently gazing at the saffron-red, downy, wrinkled face of the sleeping baby in its I/Perambulator/9, watching the movements of the frowning brows, and the fat little hands with clenched fingers that rubbed the little eyes and nose. At such moments particularly, Alexei Alexandrovich had a sense of perfect peace and inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his position, nothing that ought to be changed.

But then… then he heard the whisper.

DESTROY IT

DESTROY IT

DESTROY THE CHILD

DESTROY

And he knew in that instant that the struggle was not over. He knew that besides the blessed spiritual force controlling his soul, there was another, a brutal force, as powerful, or more powerful, which controlled his life, and that this force would not allow him that humble peace he longed for. There had been a period of detente, and now it was at an end. His Face, his dear friend and most fearsome enemy, had returned.

DESTROY, it whispered.

CONTROL

DESTROY

CHAPTER 12

HAVING RECEIVED SEVERAL anxious communiqués relating to his sister’s difficult confinement and long recovery, Stepan Arkadyich and his beloved-companion Small Stiva traveled from Moscow to pay her a visit.

They found her in tears. Small Stiva immediately joined Android Karenina in tending to Anna’s physical condition, turning up her Galena Box, smoothing the bedcovers with his flattened end-effectors, and refilling the ice water of his master’s ailing sister. As for Stepan Arkadyich himself, he immediately and quite naturally fell into the sympathetic, poetically emotional tone which harmonized with her mood. He asked her how she was, and how she had spent the morning.

“Very, very miserably. Today and this morning and all past days and days to come,” she said.

“I think you’re giving way to pessimism. You must rouse yourself, you must look life in the face.”

“Rouse! Rouse!” beeped Small Stiva, up-actuating the Galena Box.

“I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices,” Anna began suddenly, “but I hate him for his virtues. I can’t live with him. Do you understand? The sight of him has a physical effect on me, it makes me beside myself. But what am I to do? I have been unhappy, and used to think one couldn’t be more unhappy, but the awful state of things I am going through now, I could never have conceived. Would you believe it, that knowing he’s a good man, a splendid man, that I’m not worth his little finger, still I hate him. I hate him for his generosity. And there’s nothing left for me but…”

She would have said “death,” but Stepan Arkadyich would not let her finish.

“You are ill and overwrought,” he said. “Believe me, you’re exaggerating dreadfully. There’s nothing so terrible in it.”

And Stepan Arkadyich smiled. No one else in Stepan Arkadyich’s place, having to do with such despair, would have ventured to smile (the smile would have seemed brutal); but in his smile there was so much sweetness and almost feminine tenderness that his smile did not wound, but softened and soothed. His gentle, soothing words and smiles were as soothing and softening as almond oil. And Anna soon felt this.

“No, Stiva,” she said, “I’m lost, lost! Worse than lost! I can’t say yet that all is over; on the contrary, I feel that it’s not over. I’m an overstrained string that must snap. But it’s not ended yet… and it will have a fearful end.”

“No matter, we must let the string be loosened, little by little. There’s no position from which there is no way of escape.”

“I have thought, and thought. Only one…”

Small Stiva burbled cheerily, trying to lift everyone’s spirits, but Stiva felt that his pleasantness was, for once, unwarranted, and sent the little bot into Surcease.

“Listen to me,” he said to Anna. “You can’t see your own position as I can. Let me tell you candidly my opinion.” Again he smiled discreetly his almond-oil smile. “I’ll begin from the beginning. You married a man twenty years older than yourself. You married him without love and not knowing what love was. It was a mistake, let’s admit.”

“A fearful mistake!” said Anna.

“But I repeat, it’s an accomplished fact. Then you had, let us say, the misfortune to love a man not your husband. That was a misfortune; but that, too, is an accomplished fact. And your husband knew it and forgave it.” He stopped at each sentence, waiting for her to object, but she made no answer. “That’s so. Now the question is: Can you go on living with your husband? Do you wish it? Does he wish it?”

“I know nothing, nothing.”

“But you said yourself that you can’t endure him.”

“No, I didn’t say so. I deny it. I can’t tell, I don’t know anything about it.” She gripped the bedcovers, and then whispered: “There’s something else, Stepan. Something in his character I cannot fathom, something…”

She could not finish, and Stepan Arkadyich did not pursue the point. But in his mind he returned to the Moscow sub-basement, and saw again what Karenin had shown him there, and felt again the fear and confusion he had experienced on that day.

“Yes, but let…”

“There’s nothing, nothing I wish… except for it to be all over.”

“But he sees this and knows it. And do you suppose it weighs on him any less than on you? You’re wretched, he’s wretched, and what good can come of it?” With some effort Stepan Arkadyich brought out his central idea, and looked significantly at her. “But divorce would solve the difficulty completely.”

She said nothing, and shook her cropped head in dissent. But from the look in her face, which suddenly brightened into its old beauty, he saw that if she did not desire this, it was simply because it seemed to her an unattainable happiness.

“I’m awfully sorry for you! And how happy I should be if I could arrange things!” said Stepan Arkadyich, smiling more boldly. “Don’t speak, don’t say a word! God grant only that I may speak as I feel. I’m going to him.”

Anna looked at him with dreamy, shining eyes, and said nothing.

Outside the room, Alexei Alexandrovich heard all, and the Face heard all, and took its chance to strike.

YOU SEE? it shouted, the cruel and taunting voice bouncing like rocket fire off the corners of his mind.

YOU SEE WHAT YOUR FORGIVENESS HAS EARNED YOU?

Alexei flushed with shame and anger and returned to his room, where he paced like a caged animal. Louder and louder grew the vituperative roar of the Face.

NO MORE GENTLENESS.

NO MORE FORGIVENESS.

ONLY CONTROL.

Stepan Arkadyich, with the same, somewhat solemn expression with which he used to take his presidential chair at his board, walked into Alexei Alexandrovich’s room. Alexei Alexandrovich was walking about his room with his hands behind his back, lost deep in the violent eddies of his mind.

“I’m not interrupting you?” said Stepan Arkadyich, on the sight of his brother-in-law. To conceal this embarrassment he took out a Class I cigarette case he had just bought that opened in a new way, and, flicking the blue-green toggle, took a cigarette out of it.

“No. Do you want anything?” Alexei Alexandrovich asked, while into his mind’s eye came a picture of the Class I exploding, of Stepan Arkadyich’s fat, smirking face melting off of his skull.

LET HIM PAY.

LET THEM ALL PAY.

“Yes, I wished… I wanted… yes, I wanted to talk to you,” said Stepan Arkadyich, with surprise, aware of an unaccustomed timidity.

This feeling was so unexpected and so strange that he did not believe it was the voice of conscience telling him that what he was meaning to do was wrong.

Alexei Alexandrovich meanwhile looked with angry eyes at Small Stiva, that squat, twittering fool of a Class III.

SOON. SOON ITS TIME TOO WILL COME.

Stepan Arkadyich made an effort and struggled with the timidity that had come over him.

Alexei knew what Stepan Arkadyich would say, and knew as well what his reply would be. Let her have her divorce; let her go; who cared? What did it matter? There were weightier matters at hand. He had wrested control of his Project back from his opponents; Stremov lay in a Petersburg basement, buried to his neck in rock and gravel, never to mount another challenge.

His focus must remain on his work: even now new ideas were flooding into his head; even now the Project was evolving… becoming exactly what the Face had always wanted it to be.

SO LET HER GO. LET HER GO WITH HER HANDSOME BORDER OFFICER.

“I hope you believe in my love for my sister and my sincere affection and respect for you,” he said, reddening.

Alexei Alexandrovich stood still and said nothing.

LET THEM ROAM FREE LET THEM TASTE FREEDOM. LET THEM ENJOY IT WHILE THEY CAN.

“I intended… I wanted to have a little talk with you about my sister and your mutual position,” he said, still struggling with an unaccustomed constraint. “If you will allow me to give my opinion, I think that it lies with you to point out directly the steps you consider necessary to end the position.”

“If you consider that it must be ended, let it be so,” Alexei Alexandrovich interrupted him.

“Then you would consent to a divorce?” Stiva said timidly, dragging on his cigarette. Small Stiva’s irritating, tinny Vox-Em repeated the stupid word: “Divorce? Divorce?”

“Let her be divorced. LET HER DIE,” Alexei Alexandrovich said suddenly and harshly, the silver mask pulsing and undulating, veins of hot groznium alive inside it. “LET HER BODY BE BORNE TO THE FAR WINDS OF THE UNIVERSE, ONLY LET ME NEVER SEE HER, OR HIM, OR YOU AGAIN!”

Stepan Arkadyich went slack-mouthed: whatever horrid thing Anna had warned him of, whatever force lurked inside of Alexei Alexandrovich, it was that which he was in conversation with now, not the man.

“Yes, I imagine that divorce-yes, divorce,” Stepan Arkadyich repeated, backing away. “That is from every point of view the most rational course for married people who find themselves in the position you are in. What can be done if married people find that life is impossible for them together? That may always happen.”

Alexei Alexandrovich raised his fists and screamed, “GET OUT!”

The scream poured forth from him like a wave roaring up from the depths of the roiling sea; it threw Stiva and Small Stiva across the room, and they slammed against the opposite wall. Stiva’s head rang from the impact, and a deep dent was knocked in Small Stiva’s heretofore unbendable exterior.

When Stiva crawled out of his brother-in-law’s room he was scared, deeply scared, of what he had just witnessed; but that did not prevent him from being glad he had successfully brought the matter to a conclusion.

Alexei Alexandrovich threw on his coat and stomped off through the snow-crusted streets, and within a half hour was at his St. Petersburg office. Waiting for him there was a crowd of fashionable young men, all of them thin-framed and handsome, each wearing black boots and a neat blond mustache.

“My friends,” he said, and the blond men nodded in unison. “The Project begins in earnest. Find the Class IIIs.

“Find them all.”

CHAPTER 13

VRONSKY’S WOUND HAD BEEN a dangerous one, filling his lungs with smoke and leaving him with a system of nasty burns along his chest, and for several days he had lain between life and death.

And yet he felt that he was completely free from one part of his misery. By his action he had, as it were, washed away the shame and humiliation he had felt before. He could now think calmly of Alexei Alexandrovich. He recognized all his magnanimity, but he did not now feel himself humiliated by it. Besides, he got back again into the beaten track of his life. He saw the possibility of looking men in the face again without shame, and he could live in accordance with his own habits. One thing he could not pluck out of his heart, though he never ceased struggling with it, was the regret, amounting to despair, that he had lost her forever. That now, having expiated his sin against the husband, he was bound to renounce her, and never in the future to stand between her with her repentance and her husband, he had firmly decided in his heart; but he could not tear out of his heart his regret at the loss of her love, he could not erase from his memory those moments of happiness that he had so little prized at the time, and that haunted him in all their charm.

Serpuhovskoy had arranged Vronsky’s appointment at the head of a new and elite regiment, one being formed to take on this still-unnamed grave threat spoken of by the Ministry of War, and Vronsky agreed to the proposition without the slightest hesitation. But the nearer the time of departure came, the bitterer was the sacrifice he was making to what he thought his duty.

His wounds had healed, and he was making preparations for his departure for the new regiment, when late in the afternoon he answered his door to find Android Karenina, staring at him in her cold and quiet way, her eyebank glowing an unceasing and meaningful purple. The Class III did not say a word, only held out a hand, and pointed back to the carriage in which she had come.

“She desires to see me?”

Without even troubling himself to finish his preparations, forgetting all his resolutions, without asking when he could see her, where her husband was, Vronsky went with Android Karenina and together they drove straight to the Karenins’. He ran up the stairs seeing no one and nothing, Lupo chasing at his heels, and with a rapid step, almost breaking into a run, he went into her room. And without considering, without noticing whether there was anyone in the room or not, he flung his arms round her, and began to cover her face, her hands, her neck with kisses.

Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him, but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a long while she could say nothing.

“Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours,” she said at last, pressing his hands to her bosom.

“So it had to be,” he said. “So long as we live, it must be so. I know it now.”

“That’s true,” she said, getting whiter and whiter, and embracing his head. “Still there is something terrible in it after all that has happened.”

“It will all pass, it will all pass; we shall be so happy. Our love, if it can be stronger, will be strengthened by there being something terrible in it,” he said, lifting his head and parting his strong teeth in a smile.

Lupo paced in giddy circles, but Android Karenina stood perfectly still at the edge of the room: simple purple beauty in the long shadows of late afternoon, watching the reunion with her quiet joy.

Anna could not but respond with a smile-not to Vronsky’s words, but to the love in his eyes. She took his hand and stroked her chilled cheeks and cropped head with it.

“I don’t know you with this short hair,” he said. “You’ve grown so pretty. Like a boy. But how pale you are!”

“Yes, I’m very weak,” she said, smiling. And her lips began trembling again.

“We’ll travel to the moon, and indulge in the spas there; you will get strong,” he said.

“Can it be possible we could be like husband and wife, alone, your family with you?” she said, looking close into his eyes.

“It only seems strange to me that it can ever have been otherwise.”

“Stiva says that he has agreed to everything, but I can’t accept his generosity,” she said, looking dreamily past Vronsky’s face. “I don’t want a divorce; it’s all the same to me now. Only I don’t know what he will decide about Seryozha.”

He could not conceive how at this moment of their meeting she could remember and think of her son, of divorce. What did it all matter?

“Don’t speak of that, don’t think of it,” he said, turning her hand in his, and trying to draw her attention to him; but still she did not look at him.

“Oh, why didn’t I die! It would have been better,” she said, and silent tears flowed down both her cheeks; but she tried to smile, so as not to wound him.

To decline the flattering and dangerous new appointment would have been, Vronsky had till then considered, disgraceful and impossible. But now, without an instant’s consideration, he declined it, and observing dissatisfaction in the most exalted quarters at this step, he immediately retired from the army.

A month later Alexei Alexandrovich was left alone with his son in his house at Petersburg, while Anna and Vronsky had gone to the moon: not having obtained a divorce, and having absolutely declined all idea of one.