Android Karenina Part 7

YES, THERE IS SOMETHING in me hateful, repulsive," said Levin bitterly to Socrates, who nodded his yellow metal head slowly, reluctantly. Together they came away from the Shcherbatskys' and walked in the direction of his brother Nikolai's lodgings. "And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position." And he pictured to himself Vronsky, happy, good-natured, clever, that handsome wolf of a Cla.s.s III bounding along at his feet, so self-possessed, and felt sure he had never been placed in the awful position in which he had been that evening. in me hateful, repulsive," said Levin bitterly to Socrates, who nodded his yellow metal head slowly, reluctantly. Together they came away from the Shcherbatskys' and walked in the direction of his brother Nikolai's lodgings. "And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position." And he pictured to himself Vronsky, happy, good-natured, clever, that handsome wolf of a Cla.s.s III bounding along at his feet, so self-possessed, and felt sure he had never been placed in the awful position in which he had been that evening.

"Yes, she was bound to choose him."

"It had to be," agreed Socrates sadly. agreed Socrates sadly. "You cannot complain of anyone or anything." "You cannot complain of anyone or anything."

"I am myself to blame. What right had I to imagine she would care to join her life to mine?"

"Who are you? What are you?"

"A n.o.body, not wanted by anyone, nor of use to anybody."

Man and machine sighed heavily in melancholy unison.

To prepare Levin for what was to be a difficult visit to his brother, Socrates initiated his monitor and displayed for his master a sequence of Nikolai Memories: Nikolai tottering drunkenly, sneering, with his torn coat and his disdain for the world and all the people in it.

"Isn't he right that everything in the world is base and loathsome?"

"No," said Socrates, who felt at such times a programmatic responsibility to balance his master's gloomy emotional state with a more sober a.n.a.lysis. said Socrates, who felt at such times a programmatic responsibility to balance his master's gloomy emotional state with a more sober a.n.a.lysis. "No, it cannot be." "No, it cannot be."

"And are we fair in our judgment of brother Nikolai? Of course, from the point of some, tipsy and wearing his torn cloak, accompanied by that battered, old, oil-stained Cla.s.s III, he's a despicable person. But I know him differently. I know his soul, and know that we are like him. And I, instead of going to seek him out, went out to dinner, and came here." Levin sighed again, had Socrates call Nikolai's address up from his internal archives, and called a sledge. All the long way to his brother's, Levin continued to view all the vivid Memories familiar to him of his brother Nikolai's life.

He watched how his brother, while at the university, and for a year afterward, had, in spite of the jeers of his companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all religious rites, services, and fasts, and avoiding every sort of pleasure, especially women. And afterward, how he had all at once broken out: he had a.s.sociated with the most horrible people, and rushed into the most senseless debauchery-including, it had been whispered, relations.h.i.+ps of an intimate nature with robots, relations.h.i.+ps that were forbidden in even the most liberal construction of the Ministry's laws, and of G.o.d's.

It was all horribly disgusting, yet to Levin it appeared not at all in the same disgusting light as it inevitably would to those who did not know Nikolai, did not know all his story, did not know his heart.

Levin felt that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his brother Nikolai, in his soul, in the very depths of his soul, was no more in the wrong than the people who despised him. He was not to blame for having been born with his unbridled temperament and his somehow limited intelligence. But he had always wanted to be good. And now, or so he had written, he had fallen ill-terribly ill, if Levin could judge by his brother's latest letter, though the precise nature of his illness remained unclear.

I will tell him everything, without reserve, and I will make him speak without reserve, too, and I'll show him that I love him, and so understand him, Levin resolved to himself, as, toward eleven o'clock, he reached the hotel of which he had the address. Levin resolved to himself, as, toward eleven o'clock, he reached the hotel of which he had the address.

"The top . . . twelve and thirteen," the II/Porter7e62 answered automatically to Levin's inquiries. the II/Porter7e62 answered automatically to Levin's inquiries.

The door of No. 12 was half open, and there came out into the streak of light thick fumes of cheap, poor tobacco, and the sound of a woman's voice, unknown to Levin. But he knew at once that his brother was there; he heard his cough.

"Whom do you want?" said the voice of Nikolai Levin, angrily.

"It's I," answered Konstantin Levin, coming forward into the light.

"Who's I?" Nikolai's voice said again, still more angrily. He could be heard getting up hurriedly, stumbling against something, and Levin saw, facing him in the doorway, the big, scared eyes, and the huge, thin, stooping figure of his brother, so familiar, and yet astonis.h.i.+ng in its weirdness and sickliness. Karnak hunched in the shadows of the corner, a battered and dented old can of an android, with black-orange streaks of rust and acid staining his copper-colored sides.

Nikolai was even thinner than three years before, when Konstantin Levin had seen him last. He was wearing a short coat, and his hands and big bones seemed huger than ever. His hair had grown thinner, the same straight mustache hid his lips, the same eyes gazed strangely and naively at his visitor.

"Ah, Kostya!" he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his brother, and his eyes lit up with joy. Karnak raised his creaky head and groaned tiredly. But the next second Nikolai's face took on a quite different expression: wild, suffering, and cruel.

"I wrote to you that I don't know you and don't want to know you. What is it you want?"

He was not at all the same as Konstantin had been fancying him. The worst and most tiresome part of his character, what made all relations with him so difficult, had been forgotten by Konstantin Levin when he thought of him, and now, when he saw his face, and especially that nervous twitching of his head, he remembered it all. Karnak let out a strange, metallic belch, and from within him some set of bedeviled gears ground together with an unbearable screech.

"I didn't want to see you for anything," he answered timidly. "I've simply come to see you."

His brother's timidity obviously softened Nikolai. His lips twitched. For the first time, Levin noticed a small, gray pustule pulsing just above his brother's left eyelid.

"Come to see me. Oh, so that's it?" Nikolai spat angrily.

"Thaaaaat's itttt?" croaked Karnak. Socrates took a step away from the other Cla.s.s III, as if afraid his rust and gear-degeneracy could be infectious. croaked Karnak. Socrates took a step away from the other Cla.s.s III, as if afraid his rust and gear-degeneracy could be infectious.

"Well, come in. Sit down," Nikolai continued. "Like some supper? Masha, bring supper for three, and fresh humectant for the machine-man. Yes, we have it! No, stop a minute. Do you know who this is?" he said, addressing his brother.

"This woman," he said, pointing to her, "is the partner of my life, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of a bad house," and Levin knew what was meant by this, and blushed for it. "But I love her and respect her, and anyone who wants to know me," he added, raising his voice and knitting his brows, "I beg to love her and respect her. She's just the same as my wife, just the same. So now you know whom you've to do with. And if you think you're lowering yourself, well, here's the floor, there's the door."

And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them. Karnak's big, rusty head lolled in its neck socket.

"Why I should be lowering myself, I don't understand."

"Then, Masha, bring supper: three portions, the humectant, the spirits and wine. . . . No, wait a minute. . . . No, it doesn't matter. Go along."

As they ate, Nikolai coughed and spat big clumps of mucous onto the floor, and Levin noticed a second gray pustule, slightly larger than the first, throbbing on his brother's cheek. It was difficult to eat.

"Yes, of course," said Konstantin Levin, as his brother rambled about some new idea he had, a theory about forming a new members.h.i.+p a.s.sociation for Cla.s.s IIIs. He tried not to look at the patch of red that had come out on his brother's projecting cheekbones.

"Why such an a.s.sociation? What use is it?"

"Why? Because robots have been made slaves, just as the peasants once were in the time of the Tsars! We feel we can treat them as objects, because we have created them, but we created them to possess consciousness, and to have free will-"

"Free will as bounded by the Iron Laws," Levin reminded his brother.

"Yes, yes, the Iron Laws. But free will they nevertheless possess, free will of a kind. kind. And just as G.o.d made man to pursue his own ends as he saw fit, surely we must allow magnificent automatons like these to try and get out of their slavery," said Nikolai, exasperated by the objection. He gestured to Karnak, as if his own Cla.s.s III's magnificence were evidence enough-and at that moment one of Karnak's arms fell off with a weak, tinny And just as G.o.d made man to pursue his own ends as he saw fit, surely we must allow magnificent automatons like these to try and get out of their slavery," said Nikolai, exasperated by the objection. He gestured to Karnak, as if his own Cla.s.s III's magnificence were evidence enough-and at that moment one of Karnak's arms fell off with a weak, tinny clank. clank.

Levin sighed, looking meanwhile about the cheerless and dirty room. This sigh seemed to exasperate Nikolai still more.

It became increasingly difficult for Nikolai even to speak, as he was consumed by a series of shuddering coughs. Finally he stepped out onto the landing to expectorate mightily over the side; he found enjoyment, he announced wickedly, evacuating his sputum onto pa.s.sing sledges-he considered it the one small pleasure that life had still afforded him.

Left alone with Marya Nikolaevna, Levin turned to her.

"Have you been long with my brother?" he said to her.

"Yes, more than a year." She lowered her voice, turning away from Karnak's sensors, although it seemed to Levin that they were pitifully befogged and incapable of registering much. "Nikolai Dmitrich's health has become very poor. Nikolai Dmitrich drinks a great deal," she said.

"That is . . . how does he drink?"

"Drinks vodka, and it's bad for him."

"And a great deal?" whispered Levin.

"Yes," she said, looking timidly toward the doorway, where Nikolai Levin had reappeared. Soon he resumed his tired oration, turning to a bizarre warning that: "If we do not allow robots to control their own destiny, they will control ours." But his speech had begun to falter, and he pa.s.sed abruptly from one subject to another. Konstantin, with the help of Masha, persuaded him not to go out anywhere, and got him to bed hopelessly drunk.

Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need, and he departed. As he and Socrates descended the creaky stairs, Levin considered his suspicion that there was something wrong with his brother far beyond the effects of drink, and wondered what exactly it could be.

CHAPTER 21.

IN THE MORNING Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and toward evening he reached home. On his journey on the Grav he talked to his neighbors about politics and the new gravways, and, just as in Moscow, he was overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with himself, shame of something or other. But when he got out at his own station, when he saw the cyclopian II/Coachman/47-T, its st.u.r.dy torso perfectly perpendicular at the controls; when, in the dim light reflected by the station fires, he saw his own sledge, his own four-treaded Puller at its head, trimmed with rings and ta.s.sels; when the Coachman mechanically relayed the village news, he began to see what had happened to him in quite a different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and toward evening he reached home. On his journey on the Grav he talked to his neighbors about politics and the new gravways, and, just as in Moscow, he was overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with himself, shame of something or other. But when he got out at his own station, when he saw the cyclopian II/Coachman/47-T, its st.u.r.dy torso perfectly perpendicular at the controls; when, in the dim light reflected by the station fires, he saw his own sledge, his own four-treaded Puller at its head, trimmed with rings and ta.s.sels; when the Coachman mechanically relayed the village news, he began to see what had happened to him in quite a different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before.

Then, riding on the coach from the Grav station, came the heat: the radiating warmth of the pit, his pit, which he began to feel on his skin several versts before his ma.s.sive groznium mine came into view. At last, there it was, a vast and craggy crater blasted out of the countryside. The pit was half a verst long and twice again as wide, its rough rock walls sloping down into a rutted rock-lined bottom, which was dotted with a thousand small smelting fires, which rung twenty-four hours a day with the clang of pickaxes and shovels.

Konstantin Levin climbed from the sledge, waved robustly to a gang of Pitbots with their battered but firm charcoal bodies and wide treads, donned his goggles, and stood at the outer radius of the pit. As he stared down into the vast crater, watching his dozens of diligent Pitbots at work, diligent and industrious as honeybees, scurrying to and fro, churning up the Earth with their axes, he felt that little by little the confusion was clearing up, and the shame and self-dissatisfaction were pa.s.sing away.

He took a last breath of the sulfurous air and walked with Socrates to the house from the side of the pit. As they walked, Levin expressed to his Cla.s.s III his new resolutions.

"In the first place, from this day I will give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness," he said. "Such as marriage might have given me."

"One, no happiness for you," Socrates parroted faithfully, his master's use of the set phrase "in the first place" having activated his recording/retaining function-set. Socrates parroted faithfully, his master's use of the set phrase "in the first place" having activated his recording/retaining function-set.

"Consequently I will not so disdain what I really have."

"Subset of one: no happiness equals no disdain."

"Secondly, I will never again let myself give way to low pa.s.sion, the memory of which tortured me so while I was making up my mind to make an offer."

"Two: absence of low pa.s.sion."

Then Levin remembered his brother Nikolai, and made one further resolution. "I will never allow myself to forget him, Socrates."

"Three: Nikolai preservation dedication."

"I will follow him up, and not lose sight of him. I will be ready to help if his illness should continue to worsen."

The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by a light in the bedroom window of his old mecanicienne mecanicienne, Agafea Mihalovna. She was not yet asleep.

"You're soon back again, sir," said Agafea Mihalovna as Levin and Socrates entered.

"I got tired of it, Agafea Mihalovna. With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better," he answered, and, together with his beloved-companion, went into his study.

CHAPTER 22.

COME, IT'S ALL OVER, and thank G.o.d!" was the first thought that came to Anna Arkadyevna, when at the Moscow Grav Station she bid good-bye to her brother, who stood blocking the entrance to the carriage till the third bell was heard. She sat down on her lounge beside Android Karenina, and looked about her in the twilight of the sleeping carriage.

On the morning after the float, Anna Arkadyevna had sent her husband a telegram that she was leaving Moscow the same day.

"No, I must go, I must go." She had explained to her sister-in-law the change in her plans in a tone that suggested that she had to remember so many things that there was no enumerating them: "No, it had really better be today!"

Stepan Arkadyich came to see his sister off at seven o'clock. Kitty had not come, sending a note that she had a headache.

"Thank G.o.d!" Anna murmured to her beloved-companion as they settled in the carriage. "Tomorrow I shall see Seryozha and Alexei Alexandrovich, and my life will go on in the old way, all nice and as usual."

Still in the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been all that day, Anna took pleasure in arranging herself for the journey with great care. With her long, deft fingers Android Karenina opened a discreet mid-body compartment, took out a cus.h.i.+on, and laid it on Anna's knees. Anna smiled and stroked Android Karenina's gentle hands in thanks: she had long felt, and felt all the more so at such moments, that she and her darling android enjoyed a bond that was, somehow, stronger than that between other humans and their beloved-companions-even though Android Karenina never breathed a word, indeed lacked even the capacity to elocute, Anna knew in her own heart that there was no one else on Earth, human or robot, who understood or loved her so well.

They were seated across from a kindly elderly lady, but, intending to enjoy a novel, rather than to engage her fellow pa.s.sengers in conversation, Anna leaned back in her seat and engaged a chitator, putting Android Karenina into partial Surcease. At first her attention was too distracted to follow the story. She could not help listening to the magical, propulsive noises of the Grav as it shot forward on the magnet bed; then the snow beating on the left window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the m.u.f.fled II/Gravman/160 rolling by, covered with snow on one side, and the conversations about the terrible snowstorm raging outside distracted her attention.

At last, Anna began to understand the story. Anna Arkadyevna listened and understood, but it was distasteful to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she heard that the heroine of the story had fallen ill with malaria, she longed to move with noiseless steps about a sick room; if the chitator had a pirate s.h.i.+p laying siege to a houseboat, she longed to be the one active in its defense. But there was no chance of doing anything, and she forced herself to relax and let the chitator wash over her.

The heroine of the story was already almost reaching her English happiness, a handsome husband and a lakeside estate, and Anna was feeling a desire to go with them to the estate, when she suddenly felt that he he ought to feel ashamed, and that she was ashamed of the same thing. But what had he to be ashamed of? ought to feel ashamed, and that she was ashamed of the same thing. But what had he to be ashamed of? What have I to be ashamed of? What have I to be ashamed of? she asked herself in injured surprise. She switched off the chitator, sank against the back of the chair, and glanced at Android Karenina to help her understand, but her faceplate in Surcease was perfectly smooth and unreflective, revealing nothing. she asked herself in injured surprise. She switched off the chitator, sank against the back of the chair, and glanced at Android Karenina to help her understand, but her faceplate in Surcease was perfectly smooth and unreflective, revealing nothing.

There was was nothing! She went over all her Moscow recollections. All were good, pleasant. She remembered the ball, remembered Vronsky and the crackle of his hot-whip and his face of slavish adoration, remembered all her conduct with him: there was nothing shameful. And for all that, at the same point in her memories, the feeling of shame was intensified, as though some inner voice, just at the point when she thought of Vronsky, were saying to her, "Warm, very warm, hot." nothing! She went over all her Moscow recollections. All were good, pleasant. She remembered the ball, remembered Vronsky and the crackle of his hot-whip and his face of slavish adoration, remembered all her conduct with him: there was nothing shameful. And for all that, at the same point in her memories, the feeling of shame was intensified, as though some inner voice, just at the point when she thought of Vronsky, were saying to her, "Warm, very warm, hot."

"Well, what is it?" she demanded of Android Karenina, though she knew the Cla.s.s III could hardly respond while in Surcease. "What does it mean? Am I afraid to look it straight in the face? Why, what is it? Can it be that between me and this officer boy there exists, or can exist, any other relations than such as are common with every acquaintance?"

But, as is the way with many people who have difficult questions, but not the will to hear them answered, she asked her questions of a Surceased robot, who of course offered no response.

Anna laughed contemptuously at her own foolishness, and reactivated the chitator; but now she was definitely unable to follow what she heard.

Unthinkingly, she lifted Android Karenina's smooth hand and laid its cool surface onto her cheek, and almost laughed aloud at the feeling of delight that all at once without cause came over her. She felt as though her nerves were strings being strained tighter and tighter on some sort of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g peg. She felt her eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and toes twitching nervously, something within oppressing her breathing, while all shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to strike her with unaccustomed vividness.

In this strange and disjointed sense of hyperawareness, it took her eyes a long moment to fully register what she then saw across from her: a koschei, bronzish, pencil-thin and centipedal, crawling on dozens of tiny, hideous feet across the wrinkled neck of the dozing elderly lady seated across from her.

The skittering steps of the miniature bug-robot were hardly heavy enough to wake the sleeping woman, and Anna thanked G.o.d at least for that small mercy. Surely the very sight of the skittering koschei-for that must be what this was, one of the hideous little insect-like death-machines used by UnConSciya to terrify the Russian populace-would cause the old woman to panic, and panic would seal her doom. Anna, murmuring a prayer for courage, scrunched forward in her seat, raising one hand, her fore- and middle fingers primed for plucking . . . slowly, carefully, she raised her hand, never taking her eyes off the automaton crawling in and out of the wrinkled folds of the ancient woman's neck flesh.

She was about to grasp the glowing, creeping thing, not yet considering what she would do with it once it was in her grasp, when three things happened in rapid succession.

A flat, jellyfish-like blob of undulating silver flew over Anna's head from behind her and landed with a thick, disgusting splat across the old woman's face, causing her to wake and begin thras.h.i.+ng in her seat; Anna herself also began screaming, loud enough to wake the devil; and the koschei she had been grasping for escaped her clutches, leapt off the old woman and onto Anna's forearm, and escaped up the sleeve of her dress.

The sensation of the koschei twitching rapidly forward inside her dress was viscerally horrifying, the countless tiny feet dancing about on her flesh-but worse by far was her knowledge of what was surely the koschei's intention, programmed like an animal instinct: to find her breastbone, to pierce her flesh, to plunge its heat-sucking electrode antennae into the chambers of her heart. Anna clawed at her chest with one hand, and with the other she desperately flicked Android Karenina's red switch, praying with every breath that she would not be long in emerging from Surcease.

There was nothing to be done for the elderly woman, even if she could: the jellyfish koschei was still clenched over the old woman's face and was oozing out in all directions, covering the woman's body like a wriggling sheath, sucking the heat from her body.

While Anna slapped at her flesh, trying to squash the centipede koschei inside her dress, she became aware that all over the Grav car, other koschei were attacking other pa.s.sengers. A slavering robotic beast in the shape of a gigantic c.o.c.kroach, with coal-black wings and teeth like needles, buzzed down the aisle and landed on the eyes of a dignified Petersburg gentleman. Anna saw the roach thing sink its pulsing antennae into a dozen places in the unfortunate man's face, before her attention was seized by a most welcome distraction: Android Karenina, animated and in action, her smart, thin fingers inside Anna's bodice, catching up the wriggling koschei, crus.h.i.+ng it neatly between thumb and forefinger.

Android Karenina then scooped up her mistress around the waist and hustled them both to the end of the carriage, where they escaped down the running board and toward the platform, for the Grav had made an emergency stop at a rural station. As they stepped from the carriage, the driving snow and the wind rushed to meet them. Android Karenina greeted the cold burst of air silently, but to Anna, the wind seemed as though lying in wait for her; with gleeful whistle it tried to s.n.a.t.c.h her up and bear her off, but she clung to the cold doorpost, and holding her skirt got down onto the platform and under the shelter of the carriages. The wind had been powerful on the steps, but on the platform, under the lee of the carriages, there was a lull. With a giddy, life-embracing thrill of having survived, she drew deep breaths of the frozen, snowy air, and standing near the carriage looked about the platform and the lighted station.

The carriages, posts, people, everything that was to be seen was covered with snow on one side, and was getting more and more thickly covered. For a moment there would come a lull in the storm, but then it would swoop down again.

Meanwhile, inside the carriage from whence they had escaped, a troop of 77s charged in, heads spinning rapidly, spitting pincer-tipped cords from their midsections to catch up koschei, sending rapid-fire bursts of bolts around the carriage, pinning the little beasts against chair backs and doorposts. Anna saw several more of the dog-sized c.o.c.kroach koschei, along with at least one blackly gleaming spider-bot and a small cadre of flying wasp koschei, which buzzed and swooped through the carriage like demonically possessed birds, stinging pa.s.sengers in their necks and ears.

Android Karenina gently turned her mistress's eyes from such horrors, and for a long time they stood quietly in the freezing dark of the station. But then it sounded like the tenor of the battle was changing, and Anna risked another glance through the window; what she saw heartened her, for it seemed that koschei were being dispatched rapidly now, one after the other, their hideous clacketing metal feet stilled, their fangs loosened from the necks and arms of the pa.s.sengers.

Anna realized after a moment that the changing tide of the fight appeared to be the doing of one man-not a 77 at all, but a regimental soldier in a crisp silver uniform, who moved briskly but unpanicked up and down the length of the carriage, slas.h.i.+ng and shooting and calling out orders with a loud, authoritative voice. And even before Anna heard the rumbling growl of a mechanical wolf, before she could see the sizzle and crackle of a hot-whip in action, before she could see his face, she knew that it was he. he.

The battle won, the koschei thrown together into a portable sizzle unit and destroyed, Vronsky emerged from the carriage, put his hand to the peak of his cap, bowed to her, and asked if she had been hurt? Could he be of any service to her? She gazed rather a long while at him without answering, and, in spite of the shadow in which he was standing, she saw, or fancied she saw, both the expression of his face and his eyes. It was again that expression of reverential ecstasy which had so worked upon her the day before. More than once she had told herself during the past few days, and again only a few moments before, that Vronsky was for her only one of the hundreds of young men, forever exactly the same, that are met everywhere, that she would never allow herself to bestow a thought upon him. But now at the first instant of meeting him, she was seized by a feeling of joyful pride. She had no need to ask why he was here. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.