Android Karenina (18 page)

It’s come!
he thought in ecstasy.
When I was beginning to despair, and it seemed there would be no end—it’s come! She loves me! She owns it!

“Then do this for me: never say such things to me, and let us be friends,” she said in words; but her eyes spoke quite differently.

“Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the most wretched of people—that’s in your hands.”

She would have said something, but he interrupted her.

“I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do,” he said as he tied off his handkerchief and smoothed down the hem of her dress over the tidy makeshift bandage. “But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I shall disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.”

“I don’t want to drive you away.”

“Only don’t change anything, leave everything as it is,” he said in a shaky voice. “Here’s your husband.”

At that instant Alexei Alexandrovich did in fact walk into the room with his calm, awkward gait, his robotic right eye turning slowly in his head, scanning everyone in all corners of the room. Lupo, who had been curled up in the corner, waiting loyally for his master to conclude his conversation, slunk hurriedly away.

Glancing at his wife and Vronsky, Alexei Alexandrovich went up to the lady of the house, and sitting down for a cup of tea, began talking in his deliberate, always audible voice, in his habitual tone of banter, laced with menace.

“Your Rambouillet is in full conclave,” he said, looking round at all the party, “the graces and the muses.”

But Princess Betsy could not endure that tone of his—“sneering,” as she called it, using the English word, and like a skillful hostess she at once brought him into a serious conversation on the subject of universal conscription. Alexei Alexandrovich was immediately interested in the subject, and began seriously defending the Ministry’s latest decree against Princess Betsy, who had attacked it.

Vronsky and Anna still sat at the little table.

“This is indecorous,” whispered one lady, with an expressive glance at Madame Karenina, Vronsky, and her husband.

“What did I tell you?” said Anna’s friend.

Not only those ladies, but almost everyone in the room, even Princess Myakaya and Betsy herself, looked several times in the direction of these two, withdrawn from the general circle, as though that were a disturbing fact. Alexei Alexandrovich was the only person who did not once look in that direction, having entered into an interesting discussion elsewhere in the room.

Noticing the disagreeable impression that was being made on everyone, Princess Betsy slipped someone else into her place to listen to Alexei Alexandrovich, and went up to Anna.

“I’m always amazed at the clearness and precision of your husband’s language,” she said.

“Oh, yes!” said Anna. She crossed over to the big table and took part in the general conversation.

Alexei Alexandrovich, after staying half an hour, went up to his wife and suggested that they should go home together. But she answered, not looking at him, that she was staying for supper. Alexei Alexandrovich
made his bows and withdrew.

After supper, Madame Karenina at last excused herself, and found her streamlined II/Coachman/47-T outside, chilled with the cold. A II/Footman/C(c)43 stood opening the carriage door. The II/Porter/7e62 stood holding open the great door of the house. Android Karenina, with her dexterous metal fingers, was unfastening the lace of her mistress’s sleeve caught in the hook of her fur cloak, and averting her faceplate while, with bent head, Anna listened to the words Vronsky murmured as he escorted her down.

“You’ve said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing,” he was saying, “but you know that friendship’s not what I want: that there’s only one happiness in life for me, that word that you dislike so . . . yes, love! . . .”

“Love,” Anna repeated slowly, feeling the painful burn on her calf. “Love.” (Later, as she fell asleep that night, Anna thought she remembered hearing Android Karenina say it too—
“love”
—though of course this was impossible: her dear beloved-companion had no capacity to speak, no Vox-Em at all.)

“I don’t like the word,” she said to Vronsky. “I don’t like it that it means too much to me, far more than you can understand,” and she glanced into his face.
“Au revoir!”

She gave him her hand, and with her rapid, springy step she passed by the II/Porter/7e62 and vanished into the carriage.

Her glance, the touch of her hand, set him aflame. He kissed the palm of his hand where she had touched it. Lupo reared back and bayed his artificial bay, almost but not quite real, up toward the light of the full moon, as if in greeting to the people who lived there.

I
T WAS NOT TRUE
, as the wagging tongues at Princess Betsy’s would have it, that the members of the Higher Branches, those who had ascended to the highest ranks of service in the Ministry, had eschewed Class III companion robots. In fact their experiments, experiments hidden from most of the world, had been quietly advancing the art of robotic engineering, so much so that a new generation of Class IIIs had been born, as yet unknown to the public.

Alexei Alexandrovich’s Class III, for example, was his Face. That cold sheath of metal that covered the right front portion of his skull, which people (including his wife) assumed existed for purely cosmetic reasons, was in fact a servomechanism of the most advanced technological achievement, with which he communed directly, using not his voice but the synapses of his brain. It was a Thinking Machine, quite literally, for Alexei Alexandrovich did not rely upon his Class III to pour him tea or carry his suitcases, but rather to help him reason out those problems that confronted him in his work—that is to say, the most crucial questions of Russian life.

Lately, though, Alexei Alexandrovich’s Face had been evolving to better serve its master, exactly as all Class IIIs were designed to do; its counsel had begun to extend, for example, past professional considerations into personal issues as well. So, though Alexei Alexandrovich had seen nothing striking or improper in the fact that his wife was sitting with Vronsky at a table apart, in eager conversation with him about something, his Face disagreed, and suggested to him in the carriage on the way home that there was something in the relationship that was
striking and improper, and for that reason it seemed to him too to be improper. He made up his mind that he must speak of it to his wife.

On reaching home Alexei Alexandrovich went to his study, as he usually did, seated himself in his low chair, activated a chitator relating to tank-tread construction at the place where he had paused it, and listened till one o’clock, just as he usually did. At his usual time he got up and made his toilet for the night. Anna Arkadyevna had not yet come in. With a book under his arm he went upstairs. But this evening, instead of his usual thoughts and meditations upon official details, his thoughts were absorbed by his wife and something disagreeable connected with her. Contrary to his usual habit, he did not get into bed, but fell to walking up and down the rooms with his hands clasped behind his back. He could not go to bed, feeling that it was absolutely needful for him first to think thoroughly over the position that had just arisen.

When Alexei Alexandrovich had made up his mind that he must talk to his wife about it, it had seemed a very easy and simple matter. But now, when he began to think over the question that had just presented itself, it seemed to him very complicated and difficult.

I am not jealous, of course,
he thought.

OH
?

This was the Face. Its voice appeared in Alexei Alexandrovich’s mind, as clear and strong as if he were in conversation with another man, though no one could hear it but he.

No. Jealousy according to my notions is an insult to one’s wife, and one ought to have confidence in one’s wife.

AND YOU HAVE NO SUCH LACK OF CONFIDENCE
.
The Face’s tone was decidedly neutral, implying no opinion.

“Yes,” Alexei Alexandrovich replied aloud. “For though my conviction that jealousy is a shameful feeling and that one ought to feel confidence has not broken down—I feel that I was standing face to face—”

AS IT WERE
.

“Yes, very clever, face to face, as it were, with something illogical
and irrational, and I do not know what is to be done.”

INDEED. FOR YOU STAND FACE TO FACE WITH LIFE, WITH THE POSSIBILITY OFYOUR WIFE’S LOVING SOMEONE OTHER THAN YOU, AND THIS FEELS IRRATIONAL AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE
.

Alexei Alexandrovich silently contemplated this position, and the Face remained silent as well. All his life he had lived and worked in official spheres having to do with the reflection of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself he had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man who, while calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Alexei Alexandrovich had lived. His focus had been on his work, on the innovations in technology and weaponry, in physiolography and transportation—those innovations so crucial to his beloved country’s continued advancement, to protect her from her enemies.

Now, for the first time, the question presented itself to him of the possibility of his wife’s loving someone else, and he was horrified at it.

He did not undress, but walked up and down with his regular tread over the resounding parquet of the dining room, where one
lumiére
shone bright, over the carpet of the dark drawing room, in which the light was reflected on the big new portrait of himself hanging over the sofa, and across her boudoir, where two
lumiéres
glowed, lighting up the portraits of her parents and woman friends, and the pretty knickknacks of her table, that he knew so well. He walked across her boudoir to the bedroom door, and turned back again. At each turn in his walk, especially at the parquet of the lighted dining room, he halted and announced to his Face, “Yes, this I must decide and put a stop to; I must express my view of it and my decision.”

BUT EXPRESS WHAT? WHAT DECISION
?
the Face asked innocently, and Alexei Alexandrovich had no ready reply.

“But after all,” Alexei added,” what has occurred? Nothing!”

NOTHING
?

He hesitated. “Yes.
Nothing.
She was talking a long while with him. But what of that? Surely women in society can talk to whom they please. And then, jealousy means lowering both myself and her.”

For some reason Alexei remembered at this moment Sarkovich, the underling from his department who had made impertinent overtures to Anna. Alexei had not been jealous, for then, as now, he had considered the emotion beneath him. He next recalled, with a twinge of unease, how he had later found the man out to be a Janus. Or, rather, the Face—having performed unbidden the relevant set of analyses—had discovered that the man was a spy for UnConSciya, Alexei Alexandrovich had announced the finding, and Sarkovich had been appropriately punished.

For some reason this led Alexei Alexandrovich’s restless mind to a more recent recollection—the encounter at the Grav station with Vronsky and his incessantly barking Class III. He had been thinking how much he wished the animal would be quiet, had even been saying to himself:
Quiet. Quiet!
And then, echoing through the chambers of his mind came the Face repeating the same word:
QUIET
!

And the next moment the irritating canine Class III had been lying on the floor of the Grav station, quivering and stricken.

Now, shaking these reflections away, postponing their analysis for another time, he entered the dining room of his house and said aloud, “Yes, I must decide and put a stop to it, and express my view of it. . . .”

DECIDE HOW? HOW MUST WE DECIDE
?

But Alexei’s thoughts, like his body, went round a complete circle, without coming upon anything new. He noticed this, rubbed his forehead, and sat down in Anna’s boudoir.

And the worst of it all,
he thought,
is that just now, at the very moment when my great work is approaching completion
—he was thinking of the long-term project for Class III improvement, a project of which the Face represented but the first phase—
when I stand in need of all my mental peace and all my energies, just now this stupid worry should fall foul of me. But what’s to be done? I’m not one of those men who submit to uneasiness and worry without
having the force of character to face them.

HERE IS WHAT YOU MUST DO
, pronounced the Face in a calming, even fatherly tone.
YOU MUST THINK IT OVER, COME TO A DECISION, AND PUT IT OUT OF YOUR MIND
.

There was the sound of a carriage driving up to the front door. Alexei Alexandrovich halted in the middle of the room.

A
NNA CAME IN
with hanging head, with Android Karenina at her heels, glowing an easy nighttime red-orange glow. On seeing her husband, Anna raised her head and smiled, as though she had just woken up.

“You’re not in bed? What a wonder!” she said, letting fall her hood, and without stopping, she went on into the dressing room. “It’s late, Alexei Alexandrovich,” she said, when she had gone through the doorway.

“Anna, it’s necessary for me to have a talk with you.”

“With me?” she said, wonderingly. She came out from behind the door of the dressing room, and looked at him. His one human eye blinked back, while the mechanical iris of the other dilated with a barely audible whir, adjusting automatically to the room’s semidarkness. “Why, what is it? What about?” she asked, sitting down. “Well, let’s talk, if it’s so necessary. But it would be better to get to sleep.”