“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.
CHAPTER 4
IT 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 perfor
med 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.
CHAPTER 5
ANNA 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.”
Anna said what came to her lips, and marveled, hearing herself, at her own capacity for lying. How simple and natural were her words, and how likely that she was simply sleepy! She felt herself clad in an impenetrable force field of falsehood.
“Anna, I must warn you,” he began, and flicked Android Karenina—her Class III—into Surcease, exercising a crude patriarchal prerogative that caused Anna’s eyes to widen with startlement. The warm glow that Android Karenina had been shedding snapped off, plunging the room into a preternatural gloom.
“Warn me?” Anna said, when she had recovered from the start of surprise. “Of what?”
She looked at him so simply, so brightly, that anyone who did not know her as her husband knew her could not have noticed anything unnatural, in either the sound or the sense of her words. Moving bit by minute bit, his steely oculus scanned every inch of her flesh, gathering in an instant a universe of physiognomic datum points: the subtle flinch of her retinas, her skin’s agitated flush. He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, which had always hitherto lain open before him, were closed against him. More than that, he heard from her tone that she was not even perturbed at that, but, as it were, said straight out to him: Yes, it’s shut up, and so it must be, and will be in the future. Now he experienced a feeling such as a man might have, returning home and finding his own house locked up.
BUT PERHAPS THE KEY MAY YET BE FOUND, suggested the ever-thinking Face of Alexei Alexandrovich.
“I want to warn you . . .” he said in a low voice, and then found himself embarrassed, unable to continue.
“Yes?”
Alexei Alexandrovich continued, lamely, “To, to warn you of the likelihood of more UnConSciya violence, in the form of koschei. A woman was set upon by a leech-like machine-beast, and had her spinal column pierced and drained of its fluid, as she shopped in the open-air fruit and vegetable market Thursday last.”
“Very well,” replied Anna Karenina, and smiled with evident relief, as if daring him to continue, to announce the true cause of his vexation.
HAVE STRENGTH, FRIEND ALEXEI. HAVE STRENGTH.
“I want to warn you, too, that through thoughtlessness and lack of caution you may cause yourself to be talked about in society. Your too-animated conversation this evening with Count Vronsky—” he enunciated the name firmly and with deliberate emphasis—“attracted attention.”
He talked and looked at her laughing eyes, which frightened him now with their impenetrable look.
HAVE STRENGTH.
“You’re always like that,” Anna answered, as though completely misapprehending him, and, of all he had said, only taking in the last phrase. “One time you don’t like my being dull, and another time you don’t like my being lively. I wasn’t dull. Does that offend you?”
Alexei Alexandrovich shivered, and out of old habit raised a hand before his chin and tapped a neat fingernail against the cold, hard metal of his right cheek.
“Oh, please, don’t do that, I so dislike it,” she said. “But what is this all about? What do you want of me?”
Alexei Alexandrovich struggled to speak. Indeed, what did he want of her? The answer came from his Class III: INSTEAD OF DOING WHAT YOU HAD INTENDED—THAT IS TO SAY, WARNING YOUR WIFE AGAINST A MISTAKE IN THE EYES OF THE WORLD—YOU HAVE UNCONSCIOUSLY BECOME AGITATED OVER WHAT WAS THE AFFAIR OF HER CONSCIENCE.
Yes. Why, that is it precisely.
YOU STRUGGLE AGAINST THE BARRIER YOU FANCY BETWEEN YOU.
Alexei drew strength from the calm counsel of his Face, and he continued. “This is what I meant to say to you, and I beg you to listen to it. I consider jealousy, as you know, a humiliating and degrading feeling, and I shall never allow myself to be influenced by it; but there are certain rules of decorum that cannot be disregarded with impunity. This evening it was not 7 who observed it, but judging by the impression made on the company, everyone observed that your conduct and deportment were not altogether what could be desired.”
“I positively don’t understand,” said Anna, shrugging her shoulders, believing that it was other people who had upset him, the fact that they had noticed it. “You’re not well, Alexei Alexandrovich,” she said, and she got up, and would have gone toward the door, but for a strange, thick power that suddenly welled up in the atmosphere around her, like invisible fingers of fog, holding her body in place. She gasped, and looked to Alexei Alexandrovich.
He for his part saw that his wife had stopped by the door, and was gladdened, and felt she had done so because she was now willing to listen to reason. For in the previous moment he had been silently willing her to do so: he had been thinking, Stop, Anna, do stop, try and understand what I ask of you. He did not understand that this will had been translated, somehow, into physical reality—that it was the force of his desire holding her in place.
When she looked at her husband, Anna saw that the natural portion of his face had a most relaxed, calm expression, and was even smiling; while the metal half was alive with movement, glowing with a weird grey-green light. The thin lines of groznium that laced his faceplate were pulsing furiously, as if they were rushing veins, alive with the movement of blood. Anna forced herself to remain calm, and idly began taking out her hairpins, as if no queer thickening of the air a
round her were holding her in place where she stood.
“Well, I’m listening to what’s to come,” she said, calmly and ironically, “and indeed I listen with interest, for I should like to understand what’s the matter.”
She spoke, and marveled at the confident, calm, and natural tone in which she was speaking, and the choice of the words she used.
“To enter into all the details of your feelings I have no right, and besides, I regard that as useless and even harmful,” began Alexei Alexandrovich. As he continued, she slowly, slowly felt the pressure around her release like a fist unclenching, and that she could again move normally. “Ferreting in one’s soul, one often ferrets out something that might have lain there unnoticed. Your feelings are an affair of your own conscience; but I am in duty bound to you, to myself, and to God, to point out to you your duties. Our life has been joined, not by man, but by God, blessed in the eyes of Mother Russia, and sanctified by the Ministry. That union can only be severed by a crime, and a crime of that nature brings its own chastisement.”
“I don’t understand a word. And, oh dear! How sleepy I am, unluckily,” she said, rapidly passing her hand through her hair, feeling for the remaining hairpins.
“Anna, for God’s sake, don’t speak like that,” he said gently. “Perhaps I am mistaken, but believe me, what I say, I say as much for myself as for you. I am your husband, and I love you.”
For an instant the mocking gleam in her eyes died away, but the word “love” threw her into revolt again. She thought: Love? Can he love? If he hadn’t heard there was such a thing as love, he would never have used the word. He doesn’t even know what love is. She looked longingly at the still-Surceased Android Karenina, wishing for the warm comfort of her activated eyebank.
“Alexei Alexandrovich, really I don’t understand,” she said. “Define what it is you find . . .”
“Pardon, let me say all I have to say.” The pulsating movement along the thin lines of the Face had stopped now, Anna noted fleetingly and again the thing upon her husband’s skull was a simple cold mask of silver. “I love you. But I am not speaking of myself; the most important persons in this matter are our son and yourself. It may very well be, I repeat, that my words seem to you utterly unnecessary and out of place; it may be that they are called forth by my mistaken impression. In that case, I beg you to forgive me. But if you are conscious yourself of even the smallest foundation for them, then I beg you to think a little, and if your heart prompts you, to speak out to me. . . .”
Leo Tolstoy & Ben Winters Page 14
