She made no answer, but simply gazed at him. He went on: “One day a son may be born, my son, and he too will have the results of this choice, he too will have the consequences thrust upon him. He will be an outcast, an escapee from society, and worse—if this redoubt of ours should be found and our defenses destroyed, my child would in the course of events be killed, or worse, raised by him: as a Karenin! You can understand the bitterness and horror of this position! I have tried to speak of this to Anna. It irritates her. She is happy now, she has taken what she sees as her principled position on the Robot Question. She enjoys the thrill of this wilderness existence we now lead. She cannot look far enough down the road to contemplate the kind of future we are engendering. She does not understand, and to her I cannot speak plainly of all this. . . .”
He paused, evidently much moved.
“Yes, indeed, I see that. But what can Anna do?” queried Darya Alexandrovna.
“Yes, that brings me to the object of my conversation,” he said, calming himself with an effort. “It is my great hope that I might give up this life and marry Anna properly, within the bounds of society.”
“I am surprised to hear you say so,” replied Dolly. She looked about her, her gesture taking in the whole of Vozdvizhenskoe. “I would have said you were so happy here, at the head of your robot regiment. . . .”
“But they could be brought into service! With me at their head! Can you imagine . . .”
“Into service?”
“Of the state, of the Ministry,” Vronsky turned his gaze back toward the farmhouse, as if ensuring Anna did not overhear. “I am prepared to play what part it is thought I would play best in the New Russia being created by our leaders.” Dolly raised a hand to her mouth, but said nothing.
“I have built this world in the woods because I have stood for the honor of Anna Karenina. But in truth I have no problem, no practical problem that is to say, with the direction of the Higher Branches, with the changes they seek to implement. My differences with Alexei Alexandrovich are personal, not political.”
“But after your departure . . . your disappearance . . . how can the Higher Branches allow your return? How could Karenin?”
“If Anna asked he would allow it: I’m sure of it. Her husband agreed to a divorce—at that time your husband had arranged it completely. And now, I know, he would not refuse it. He would grant her a divorce, and forgiveness for both of us. It is only a matter of sending him a communiqué. He said plainly at that time that if she expressed the desire, he would not refuse. Of course,” he said gloomily, “it is one of those pharisaical cruelties of which only such heartless men are capable. He knows what agony any recollection of him must give her, and knowing her, he must have a communiqué,” he said, with an expression as though he were threatening someone for its being hard for him. “And so it is, princess, that I am shamelessly clutching at you as an anchor of salvation. Help me to persuade her to write to him and ask for a divorce and for amnesty.”
This last word he spoke with emphasis, though quietly. But Lupo, who had padded up to them midway through their conversation and had been sitting contentedly as usual at his master’s feet, heard—with his extraordinary, lupine aural circuitry, he heard, and with his survival instincts he understood. For Vronsky and Anna to be given amnesty, they would surely have to comply with the “adjustment protocol.”
The wolf-machine let loose a long, low growl, which Vronsky did not, or affected not, to hear.
“Use your influence with her, make her record a communiqué. I don’t like—I’m almost unable to speak about this to her.”
“Very well, I will talk to her,” said Darya Alexandrovna, and for some reason she suddenly at that point recalled Anna’s strange new habit of half-closing her eyes. And she remembered that Anna dropped her eyelids just when the deeper questions of life were touched upon. Just as though she were half-shutting her eyes to her own life, so as not to see everything, thought Dolly. “Yes, indeed, for my own sake and for hers I will talk to her,” Dolly said in reply to his look of gratitude. They got up and walked to the farmhouse.
They passed Lupo, prowling in and out of the old henhouse, sniffing at Tortoiseshell’s stubby groznium tail. It was as if he were already more at home in this company than at the side of his master. Vronsky did not call out to him.
CHAPTER 11
WHEN ANNA FOUND DOLLY at home before her, she looked intently in her eyes, as though questioning her about the talk she had had with Vronsky, but she made no inquiry in words.
“I believe it’s dinnertime,” she said. “We’ve not seen each other at all yet. I am reckoning on the evening. Now I want to go and dress. I expect you do too; we have all been splattered with mud, and with the spilt, stinking yellow gore of our attacker.” Dolly went to her room and she felt amused. To change her dress was impossible, for she had already put on her best dress. She brushed it off as best she could, wringing out some of the more gore-soaked patches of fabric; then, in order to signify in some way her preparation for dinner, she changed her cuffs and tie, and put some lace on her head.
“This is all I can do,” she said with a smile to Anna, who came in to escort her to the ramshackle little tent where the sarcastic mécanicien served as camp cook as well.
“Yes, we are too formal here,” Anna said, as it were apologizing for the unceremoniousness of the dining. “Alexei is delighted at your visit, as he rarely is at anything. He has completely lost his heart to you,” she added. “You’re not tired?”
There was no time for talking about anything before dinner. The dinner, the wine, the decoration of the table were all of a compelling simplicity; flasks open on the long wooden table; candlelight serving for lumières, in the old way.
After dinner they sat on the terrace, then they proceeded to play a quaint, old manual game called lawn tennis that Anna and Vronsky had come to enjoy in the absence of Flickerfly and other grozniumage amusements. The players, divided into two parties—humans against robots—stood on opposite sides of a tightly drawn net with gilt poles on the carefully leveled and rolled croquet ground. Darya Alexandrovna made an attempt to play, but it was a long time before she could understand the game, and by the time she did understand it, she was so tired that she sat down and simply looked on at the players. Her partner, Witch Hazel, gave up playing too and sat beside her; and after asking permission, began braiding her hair, an intimate kind of Class III action that brought tears to Dolly’s eyes.
The others kept the game up for a long time. Vronsky and Anna played very well and seriously: they kept a sharp lookout on the balls served to them, and without haste or getting in each other’s way, they ran adroitly up to them, waited for the rebound, and neatly and accurately returned them over the net. Veslovsky played worse than the others. He was too eager, but he kept the players lively with his high spirits. His laughter and outcries never paused. With the ladies’ permission, he took off his coat, and his solid, comely figure in his white shirtsleeves, with his red, perspiring face and his impulsive movements, made a picture that imprinted itself vividly on the memory.
During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not enjoying herself. She did not like the light tone of raillery that was kept up all the time between Vassenka Veslovsky and Anna; she felt strangely disquieted by the attention he paid to her. But to avoid breaking up the party and to get through the time somehow, after a rest she joined the game again, and pretended to be enjoying it. All that day it seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was spoiling the whole performance. She had come with the intention of staying two days, if all went well. But in the evening, during the game, she made up her mind that she would ask that Witch Hazel guide her home the next day. The maternal cares and worries, which she had so hated on the way, now, after a day spent without them, struck her in quite another light, and tempted her back to them.
* * *
When Darya Alexandrovna lay in bed that night, as
soon as she closed her eyes, she saw Vassenka Veslovsky flying about the match ground. Something about that man, with his frivolous manner and appearance, caused her such disquiet—even distress.
CHAPTER 12
VRONSKY AND ANNA spent the whole summer and part of the winter in the country, living as lord and lady of their robot freedomland at Vozdvizhenskoe, and still taking no steps to obtain a divorce. It was an understood thing between them that they could not go away anywhere, but both felt, the longer they lived alone, especially in the autumn, just them and their small robot army, that they could not stand this existence, and that they would have to alter it. Their life was apparently such that nothing better could be desired. They had the fullest abundance of everything; they had a child, and both had occupations. The building of the fortifications, the slow improvement of the camp from a woodsy tent city into a strong, well-fortified encampment, interested Anna greatly. She did not merely assist, but planned and suggested a great deal herself.
But her chief thought was still of herself: how far she was dear to Vronsky, how far she could make up to him for all he had given up. Vronsky appreciated this desire not only to please but to serve him, which had become the sole aim of her existence, but at the same time he wearied of the loving snares in which she tried to hold him fast. As time went on, and he saw himself more and more often held fast in these snares, he had an evergrowing desire, not so much to escape from them, as to test whether they hindered his freedom. Had it not been for this growing desire to be free, not to have scenes every time he wanted to ride out to check the farthest flung component of their early-warning system, or take one of the junker regiments on a day-long training exercise, Vronsky would have been perfectly satisfied with his life. The role he had taken up, the role of a captain to a regiment of machine-men, was very much to his taste (even though, as he had expressed in confidence to Dolly, he would prefer to play that role within society, not outside it). Now, after spending six months in that character, he derived even greater satisfaction from it. And his management of his estate, which occupied and absorbed him more and more, was most successful: no more Honored Guests attacked the camp, and if agents of the Ministry discovered their whereabouts, never did they make an attempt against their walls.
In late October, Antipodal returned from a routine scouting trip with remarkable news. Reporting to Count Vronsky in strictest privacy, he described his encounter in the forest with a short man wearing a long, dirty beard, in bast sandals and a tattered laboratory coat. This man had appeared seemingly from nowhere, flatly refusing to provide his name or any other identifying information. He would only say he demanded a tête-à-tête with Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky to discuss what he called an “alliance,” though with whom or for what purpose, the man had not said. Antipodal finally reported the time and place set for a meeting: a week following, at a Huntshed in Kashinsky, three versts distant.
It was the very dullest autumn weather, which is so dreary in the country, and so, preparing himself for a struggle, Vronsky, with a hard and cold expression, informed Anna of his departure as he had never spoken to her before. But, to his surprise, Anna accepted the information with great composure, and merely asked when he would be back. He looked intently at her, at a loss to explain this composure. She smiled at his look. He knew that way she had of withdrawing into herself, and knew that it only happened when she had determined upon something without letting him know her plans. He was afraid of this; but he was so anxious to avoid a scene that he kept up appearances, and half sincerely believed in what he longed to believe in—her reasonableness.
“I hope you won’t be dull?”
“I hope not,” said Anna. “Android Karenina and I are knitting banners for our little army. No, I shan’t be dull.”
She’s trying to take that tone, and so much the better, he thought, or else it would be the same thing over and over again.
And so he made a last circuit of the barrier-defenses, then set off for the tête-à-tête without appealing to her for a candid explanation. It was the first time since the beginning of their intimacy that he had parted from her without a full explanation. From one point of view this troubled him, but on the other side he felt that it was better so. At first there will be, as this time, something undefined kept back, and then she will get used to it. In any case I can give up anything for her, but not my masculine independence, he thought.
CHAPTER 13
KONSTANTIN DMITRICH LEVIN stood just within the creaking, rusted door of the abandoned Huntshed, which, though long unused, still housed the Surceased bodies of three massive Huntbears, their crudely fashioned paws frozen in positions of attack. He looked again down the long path leading to the Huntshed, and decided that this was a fool’s errand, just as Kitty had warned. Only when he began to exit the shed and walk back to his carriage did he hear a distant rumble coming through the forest; he watched as the trees shook, and from them emerge a roughly hewn Exterior battle-suit, accompanied by a regimental Class III robot in the shape of a great gray wolf. Both machines stopped, and with a high creak the torso door of the Exterior opened to reveal the dapper form of Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky.
“Konstantin Dmitrich! Delighted!” Vronsky called out as he emerged. “I believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you . . . at Princess Shcherbatskaya’s,” he said, giving Levin his hand.
“Yes, I quite remember our meeting,” said Levin, and blushing crimson, he turned away immediately and looked instead at the frozen Huntbears. The days when both had courted Kitty Shcherbatsky were a lifetime ago, but the pain and embarrassment sprang back to Levin undimmed. His mind leapt to the business at hand. “For what reason have you requested a meeting?”
“I requested it? No, sir,” countered Vronsky, tugging suspiciously on his mustache. “You mean it was not you?”
Suddenly Lupo snarled, whipped his head around, and bared his teeth. A moment later, Vronsky and Levin saw what had excited the keen-eared wolf: a short, squat man with a long beard, tangled and filthy, draped in an equally squalid laboratory coat.
“Mea culpa, mea culpa” said this strange personage, speaking with exceptional rapidity. “My name is Federov, and I am afraid the blame for the ambiguity attendant on our little tête-à-tête is entirely mine. But hardly could I have sent a communiqué grandly requesting your presence at a meeting with a representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists.”
“UnConSciya!” shouted Vronsky, and in an instant his hot-whip was deployed, crackling across the space between himself and Federov. But the man merely touched a small device on his belt, and the whip seemed not even to touch him.
“Now, now,” the little man in the lab coat said, as if chastising a child. “I am hardly in a position to ask you to disarm, but our meeting will go more smoothly if you refrain from such posturing. I myself am wearing an array of defensive clothing and underclothing, created of technologies several generations ahead of any you might have access to. ‘Always be prepared,’ that’s the motto of our little society.”
Levin looked carefully at Federov. “What is it that you want?”
“Each of you, in your own way, is now as much an enemy of the Ministry as we are. You have come to understand what we have long understood: that our benevolent protectors are at heart neither benevolent, nor protective. Soon all Russia will know it, too, and they will need their leaders.”
The squat, strange little man turned to Konstantin Dmitrich and looked him directly in the eye. “Levin, we beg you to travel with your household to Moscow, and wait there until such time as you can be of use.”
Vronsky sneered, and spoke derisively, “You ask us to enter into conspiracy with the greatest criminals in Russian history.”
“Yes,” Levin echoed, his mind racing. “How can we?”
“By knowing this: we have never committed a single one of the violent acts attributed to us by the Ministry. Yes, we left the government laboratories en masse because we did not like certain orders
we had been given, the path our rulers demanded technological innovation travel down. But we have never committed a single act of violence.”
The funny little man leaned forward, his eyes welling with tears: “Not a single one. The emotion bombs, the malfunctions—the Ministry itself has done it all. Remember, if you want to control someone, first protect them. And if you will protect someone, you need something to protect them from.”
Vronsky snorted with derision, and shook his head, but Levin trembled like a man hearing the word of God. He was moved beyond words to see that tears were openly rolling down Federov’s dirty, bearded face. “I apologize for becoming so emotional,” said Federov. “But we have spent a generation outside of possibility, and now I stare at you two proud Russian gentlemen, and I cannot help it—I feel—hope.”
BOOM!
The forest exploded with fire.
“No,” cried Federov. “An emotion bomb! I should have known.”
BOOM! A second hope-bomb rattled the treeline, and with a terrible crack a massive oak tree splintered and fell before them, its leaves alive with fire. All three men ducked down to the earth, covering their ears against the concussive roar of the detonations. “It is me,” screamed Federov. “My hope! My—”
BOOM! A third blast, the loudest yet, knocked Vronsky’s massive Exterior to the ground and tore the roof from the Huntshed. Levin caught a glimpse of the tops of the Surceased Huntbears, their fight grimaces glinting in the fire-lit darkness, before a burning branch cracked free and landed across his back.
“Ahh!” he screamed in terrible pain, and Vronsky rolled atop him, causing him exquisite agony but extinguishing the blaze. Levin wailed helplessly, while Vronsky screamed to Federov. “It is a trap! You have trapped us here! What have you done? You’ve killed him!”
Leo Tolstoy & Ben Winters Page 43