Android Karenina (40 page)

V
RONSKY’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.

T
HE WORKINGS OF A CLASS III ROBOT
are as surpassingly complex as they are surpassingly small. As is well known, each of these miraculous humanoid automatons contains within itself a self-perpetuating system of systems, a universe of infinitesimal mechanisms, and the movement of these intricately interconnected contraptions is powered by the “sun” that sits at the core of every Class III. That sun is the groznium engine, the approximate size and proportion of a human heart, which burns for the life of the machine with furious intensity. It is that remarkable heat-giving heart, unseen from without but all-powerful within, that gives life to the machine, generating the energy to turn the gears to animate the thousands of interlocking parts creating the easy, fluid functioning of a companion robot.

So, too, goes the working of our universe. God’s will in the world is like that unseen groznium fire—its heat and power forever surrounding us, suffusing every new event and idea. Whether we know it or not, we are but servomechanisms in the service of fate, and our movements, our very thoughts, are powered only by the magnificent heat shed by the Almighty.

And so, just as a Class III performs its variety of ever-changing duties with seeming intelligence and independence, we humans may
attempt in our arrogance to steer the events of the world, but never can we indeed control those events—they will continue along their own way, along
God’s
way, no matter the fervency of our desires or the force of our expectations. We are but gears, turned only by the unseen hand of the Lord.

*   *   *

The Higher Branches of the Ministry, led by Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, now unquestionably their dominant figure, moved forward with the momentous Project: the collection of all Class III robots to undergo “adjustments,” the precise nature of which were still a great mystery to the public in general, who would be affected. Softening the blow was the civil and decorous manner of the young officers assigned to enact the adjustment provision; reportedly recruited from the highest ranks of the Caretakers, these young men soon became known as Toy Soldiers, what with their neatly pressed blue uniforms and slim black boots. In pairs or groups of three they appeared on doorsteps all over the country, inquiring respectfully whether any Class III robots were among the household. With handheld Class I devices they diligently recorded the names and generational information of each beloved-companion, and carefully provided a receipt before the machine was loaded in the back of a coach.

Anyone who thought to question the Toy Soldiers as to the precise nature of the planned circuitry “adjustments” was told firmly but with gentleness that such concerns were the responsibility of the Ministry, and wouldn’t we all do well to put our trust in our leaders? In general, this response was considered satisfactory, and the people accepted their receipts and bade calm farewell to their Class Ills.

Even Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky, whose beloved-companion Small Stiva flashed his usually cheerful eyebank tremulously as he was led away, waved merrily and called out, “Never fear, little Samovar. I shall see you again soon.” Stepan Arkadyich tried mightily, by dint of a
peculiar internal ability he cherished, to block out unpleasant thoughts and associations, to forget what he had seen in Karenin’s basement office in the Moscow Tower. There could be no connection, he assured himself, between Karenin’s strange experiments and what was happening now. “Wouldn’t we all do well to put our trust in our leaders?” he chastened his tearful wife, Darya Alexandrovna, as her kind and matronly Dolichka was led away.

“Wouldn’t we?”

T
HE GEARS OF LIFE
turned and turned again, ever forward, and in time the anxious confusion surrounding the departure of Small Stiva and Dolichka was replaced in the household of Oblonsky by joyful anticipation, as preparations began for the wedding of Dolly’s sister, Kitty Shcherbatskaya, to Stepan’s oldest friend, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin.

When they arrived at the church, a crowd of people, principally women, was thronging round the church lighted up for the wedding. Those who had not succeeded in getting into the main entrance were crowding about the windows, pushing, wrangling, and peeping through the gratings.

More than twenty carriages had already been drawn up in ranks along the street by the Class II police robots, their bronze weather-protected outercoating primed against the rusting frost. More carriages were continually driving up, and ladies wearing flowers and carrying their trains, and men taking off their helmets or black hats kept walking into the church. The church windows, programmed for the occasion by a highly sought-after display gadgeteer, glowed brightly with the life of the Savior, one luminously delineated scene shifting seamlessly into the
next. This ornate display, along with the gilt on the red background of the holy picture-stand, the silver of the lusters, and the stones of the floor, and the rugs, and the banners above in the choir, the steps of the altar, the cassocks and surplices—all were flooded with light.

The only thing missing was the loving couple. Every time there was heard the creak of the opened door, the conversation in the crowd died away, and everybody looked round expecting to see the bride and bridegroom come in. But the door had opened more than ten times, and each time it was either a belated guest or guests, who joined the circle of the invited on the right, or a spectator, who had eluded the II/Policeman/56s, and went to join the crowd of outsiders on the left. The Galena Box sent its waves of oscillation through the room, but was proving insufficient to dampen the mood of confused anxiety; both the guests and the outside public had by now passed through all the phases of anticipation. The long delay began to be positively discomforting, and relations and guests tried to look as if they were not thinking of the bridegroom but were engrossed in conversation.

At last one of the ladies, glancing at her I/Hourprotector/8, said, “It really is strange, though!” and all the guests became uneasy and began loudly expressing their wonder and dissatisfaction.

Kitty meanwhile had long ago been quite ready, and in her white dress and long veil and wreath of orange blossoms she was standing in the drawing room of the Shcherbatskys’ house. Beside her was her pink-flushed Class III, Tatiana, one of the last beloved-companions left in Moscow. Kitty had been allowed to forestall her Class III’s collection for “adjustment” until after the wedding, thanks to the intercession of her father, Prince Shcherbatsky with a childhood friend who sat on the Higher Branches. (“A girl cannot be wed without the soothful presence of her Class III,” the prince had pleaded; meanwhile, all across Russia, less well-connected brides were somehow making do.) Tatiana was looking out of the window, and had been for more than half an hour piping a soft and calming lullaby from her Third Bay, to keep her
mistress from becoming too anxious that her bridegroom was not yet at the church.

Levin meanwhile, in his trousers, but without his coat and waistcoat, was walking to and fro in his room at the hotel, with Socrates pacing directly behind him, his beard clanking. (He, too, had been granted a reprieve, exhausting the favors due to the old prince). Man and machine took turns poking their heads out of the door and looking up and down the corridor. But in the corridor there was no sign of the Class II who had been dispatched to bring Levin his shirtfront, which had been forgotten. The shirtfront had been left at home by Levin’s best man, Stepan Arkadyich, who placed the blame on Small Stiva—or rather, the absence of Small Stiva. Oblonsky had assumed that his beloved-companion, ever mindful of such details, would bring the necessary accoutrements, and it slipped his mind entirely that his dear friend was by now at a Robot Processing Facility in Vladivostok, in deep Surcease with his mechanical guts splayed out on a workbench.

While Socrates frantically paced, Levin addressed Stepan Arkadyich, who was smoking serenely.

“Was ever a man in such a fearful fool’s position?” he said.

“Yes, it is stupid, and I feel awful,” Stepan Arkadyich assented, smiling soothingly. “I’m a simple block of wood without my Little Samovar. But don’t worry, it’ll be brought directly.”

“No, what is to be done!” said Levin, with smothered fury. “What if it’s been lost?”

“It’s not been lost,” reassured Stepan Arkadyich.

“It may have been lost. Yes, probably it’s lost
,” intoned Socrates.

“That is not helpful,” said Stepan Arkadyich with a glare suggesting a wish that Socrates, too, were in a Vladivostok R.P.F. Addressing himself to Levin, he said: “Just wait a bit! It will come round.”