CHAPTER 3
IT IS EXACTLY THAT MAN most distracted by fear of death from above who is most vulnerable to death from below. Such it was with Konstantin Dmitrich Levin in his fit of pique, as he stomped along the familiar woodsy path to his groznium mine, his gaze fixed on the tree line, in case a pack of the hideous Honored Guests should come leaping over the aspens. For it was the ground beneath his feet that tore open and spewed forth the long, twisting body of a worm-beast. The segmented death machine writhed toward him, emitting as before the ominous tikka tikka tikka. Levin gasped and stumbled backwards into a crouch, trying to judge the size of the peril. He and Socrates had estimated that the last one was the size of a hippopotamus, but this one was long as an elephant, and nearly half as high.
With a quick, grunting roll of its powerful head, the thrashing metal-plated thing knocked Levin off his feet, even as more of its body poured up out of the ground like a Grav emerging from a tunnel. Levin, now flat on his back, swung determinedly with his sturdy oaken walking stick, making satisfying contact with the eyeless face of the beast. The great worm drew back, its sucking mouth-hole dripping ochre fluid, the tikka tikka tikka loud as a drumroll, emanating from . . . from where? Some sort of Vox-Em, he imagined, somewhere from the midsection of the robotic beast. Konstantin Dmitrich, breathing heavily, feeling the thud of blood in his veins, scrabbled to his feet and circled backward, the walking stick raised and poised to strike. Curiously, however, the creature’s huge did not parry again—it paused and held steady with crooked neck, the featureless head twitching in the air above, twisting first this way and then that, as if searching for something. Levin thought he saw dim lights pulsing somewhere beneath the semi-opaque, grey outer covering of the monster—rapidly flickering greenish lights—the light of sensors searching the landscape?
By God, it’s looking for something, thought Levin, stepping slightly forward and examining the underside of the thing. “What are you looking for?” he said aloud, as if the segmented, twelve-foot-long ticking mechanical worm could somehow summon human voice and answer. Instead, the thing stopped moving, its head cocked in a northerly direction, and the queer tikka tikka tikka noise abruptly grew drastically louder, so much so that Levin clasped his hands over his ears. He’s got it, Levin thought. He’s got the scent. And the great worm lunged up and over Levin, its whole writhing body traveling over his head in a fluid motion, like a long jet of water sprayed from a hose; and then plunging back into the ground on the opposite side of the clearing, disappearing into another wormhole in the soil. In a matter of seconds, the entire length of the worm-thing had disappeared into this fresh cavity.
* * *
Levin did not continue on to the pit, as he had planned, but instead settled his lank frame on a rock to contemplate the mystery of the worm-beast, with his walking stick at his side, scratching at his head and tugging at his beard in unconscious emulation of his absent beloved-companion. Levin came back to the house only when they sent to summon him to supper. On the stairs were standing Kitty and Agafea Mihalovna, examining the I/Humidor/19, consulting about wines for supper.
“But why are you making all this fuss? Have what we usually do.”
“No, Stiva doesn’t drink . . . Kostya, stop, what’s the matter?” Kitty began, hurrying after him, but all his irritation with her supposedly inappropriate carryingson came back to him in a flood, and he strode ruthlessly away to the dining room without waiting for her. There he joined in the lively general conversation which was being maintained by Vassenka Veslovsky and Stepan Arkadyich.
“Well, what do you say, are we to Hunt-and-be-Hunted tomorrow?” said Stepan Arkadyich.
“Please, do let’s go,” said Veslovsky moving to another chair, where he sat down sideways, with one fat leg crossed under him.
“I shall be delighted, we will go. I shall order the Huntbears warmed and baited,” said Levin to Veslovsky, speaking with that forced amiability that Kitty knew so well in him, and that was so out of keeping with him. “I can’t answer for our finding grouse, especially as, with the Honored Guests about, we will need to stay within the perimeter fence, or find ourselves hunted a bit more realistically than is pleasant. Only we ought to start early. You’re not tired? Aren’t you tired, Stiva?”
“Me tired? I’ve never been tired yet.”
“Yes, really, let’s not go to bed at all! Capital!” Veslovsky chimed in. “I have little use for the interval of unconsciousness.”
It was a rather peculiar way of phrasing such a declaration, and Levin looked with renewed irritation at Veslovsky. He was eager to retire to his bedchamber, where he could compose a communiqué to Socrates, expressing his thoughts on the question of the worm-machines.
“Suppose we stay up all night. Let’s go for a walk!” agreed Stepan Arkadyich with radiant good humor.
“Oh, we all know you can do without sleep, and keep other people up too,” Dolly said to her husband, with that faint note of irony in her voice which she almost always had now with her husband.
“Do you know Veslovsky has been at Anna’s, and he’s going to them again? He swears that their little hideaway is hardly fifty miles from you, and I too must certainly go over there. Veslovsky, come here!”
Vassenka crossed over to the ladies, and sat down beside Kitty.
“Ah, do tell me, please; you have stayed with her? How was she? Where is she?” Darya Alexandrovna appealed to him.
“Ah, that I cannot tell you,” laughed Vassenka, “for in a blindfold was I led to the camp, and in a blindfold led away.”
Levin was left at the other end of the table, and though never pausing in his conversation with the princess, he saw that there was an eager and mysterious conversation going on between Stepan Arkadyich, Dolly, Kitty, and Veslovsky. And that was not all. He saw on his wife’s face an expression of real feeling as she gazed with fixed eyes on the handsome face of Vassenka, who was telling them something with great animation.
“It’s exceedingly rugged, their place, some sort of old farm from the time of the Tsars, somewhat restored, but really barely livable” Veslovsky was telling them about Vronsky and Anna. “I can’t, of course, take it upon myself to judge, but I certainly would not want to live there.”
“What do they intend to do?”
Vassenka smiled enigmatically, trying of course to prolong the moment when everyone believed he knew the answer to that most intriguing of questions: what was intended by Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Vronsky, who after the night at the Vox Fourteen had fled into hiding, along with their Class Ills, in willful and open defiance of the Ministry—and of Anna’s own husband.
“What they intend, alas, I cannot say, and I am not sure they can agree amongst themselves. They do seem well hidden though, and I imagine they can live in their secret paradise forever,” he said with a chuckle.
“How jolly it would be for us all to go over to them together! I think we might even convince them to rejoin polite society! When are you going there again?” Stepan Arkadyich asked Vassenka.
“July.”
“Will you go?” Stepan Arkadyich said to his wife.
“I shall certainly go, if I am invited and told the location,” said Dolly. “I am sorry for her, and I know her. She’s a splendid woman. But I will go alone, when you go back to Moscow, and then I shall be in no one’s way. And it will be better indeed without you.”
“To be sure,” said Stepan Arkadyich. “And you, Kitty?”
“I? Why should I go?” Kitty said, flushing all over, and she glanced round at her husband.
“Do you know Anna Arkadyevna, then?” Veslovsky asked her. “She’s a very fascinating woman.”
“Yes,” she answered Veslovsky crimsoning still more. She got up and walked across to her husband.
“Are you to be Hunting and Hunted, then, tomorrow?” she said to Levin. His jealousy had advanced far indeed in these few moments, especially at the flush that had overspread her cheeks while she was talking to Veslovsky. No
w as he heard her words, he construed them in his own fashion. Strange as it was to him afterward to recall it, it seemed to him at the moment clear that in asking whether he was going on the hunt, all she cared to know was whether he would give that pleasure to Veslovsky, with whom, as he fancied, she was in love.
“Yes, I’m going,” he answered her in an unnatural voice, disagreeable to himself.
“No, better spend the day here tomorrow, or Dolly won’t see anything of her husband, and will set off the day after,” said Kitty.
The motive of Kitty’s words was interpreted by Levin thus: Don’t separate me from him. I don’t care about your going, but do let me enjoy the society of this delightful young man.
“Oh, if you wish, we’ll stay here tomorrow,” Levin answered, with peculiar amiability.
Vassenka, meanwhile, got up from the table after Kitty, and watching her with smiling and admiring eyes, he followed her.
Levin saw that look. He turned white, and for a minute he could hardly breathe. How dare he look at my wife like that! was the feeling that boiled within him.
“Tomorrow, then? Do, please, let us go,” said Veslovsky, sitting down on a chair, and again crossing his leg as was his habit.
Levin’s jealousy went further still, growing from moment to moment, evolving as it were from I/Jealousy/4 to I/Jealousy/5 to I/Jealousy/6. Already he saw himself a deceived husband, looked upon by his wife and her lover as simply necessary to provide them with the conveniences and pleasures of life. . . . But in spite of that, he made polite and hospitable inquiries of Vassenka about his shooting, his gun, and his boots, and agreed to go hunting the next day.
Happily for Levin, the old princess cut short his agonies by getting up herself and advising Kitty to go to bed. But even at this point Levin could not escape another agony. As he said goodnight to his hostess, Vassenka would again have kissed her hand, but Kitty, reddening, drew back her hand and said with a naive bluntness, for which the old princess scolded her afterward:
“We don’t like that fashion.”
In Levin’s eyes she was to blame for having allowed such relations to arise, and still more to blame for showing so awkwardly that she did not like them.
Levin scowled and stalked up the stairs to compose a communiqué to Socrates about the terrible worms.
CHAPTER 4
KONSTANTIN DMITRICH SPENT several hours in concentration, composing, recording, and reviewing the communiqé, as he carefully considered how to express his dawning understanding of the worm-machines: what they were, where they came from, and how they were connected to the other troubles plaguing Russia. He went to sleep happy and satisfied with the process of his inquiry, looking eagerly forward to a return communiqué from his poor, exiled beloved-companion.
But it took very little time, the next morning, for Levin’s jealousy to be coaxed back to life by the nettlesome Veslovsky. At breakfast, the conversation Vassenka had started with Kitty was running on the same lines as on the previous evening: discussing Anna, and whether love is to be put higher than worldly considerations. Kitty disliked the subject, and she was disturbed as well both by the tone in which it was conducted and by the knowledge of the effect it would have on her husband. But she was too simple and innocent to know how to cut short the talk, or even to conceal the superficial pleasure afforded her by the young man’s very obvious admiration. She wanted to stop it, but she did not know what to do. Whatever she did she knew would be observed by her husband, and the worst interpretation put on it. And, in fact, when she asked Dolly what was wrong with her daughter Masha, and Vassenka, waiting till this uninteresting conversation was over, began to gaze indifferently at Dolly, the question struck Levin as an unnatural and disgusting piece of hypocrisy.
“What do you say, shall we go and look for mushrooms today?” said Dolly.
“By all means, please, and I shall come too,” said Kitty, and she blushed. She wanted from politeness to ask Vassenka whether he would come, but she did not ask him.
“Where are you going, Kostya?” she asked her husband with a guilty face, as he passed by her with a resolute step. This guilty air confirmed all his suspicions.
“To inspect the pit for aliens,” he said, not looking at her.
“Again?”
He went downstairs, but before he had time to leave his study he heard his wife’s familiar footsteps running with reckless speed to him. He did not turn, but stalked out of the house into the surrounding gardens, past a II/Gardener/9, who Levin had put to work visually scanning for Honored Guests in the woods. Finally he had to acknowledge Kitty’s presence:
“Well, what do you have to say to me?”
He did not look her in the face, and did not care to see that she in her condition was trembling all over, and had a piteous, crushed look. He did not care, that is to say, to recall how difficult it must be for a woman with child, deprived of the special comfort that only a Class III can provide.
“We can’t go on like this! It’s misery! I’m wretched, you are wretched! What for?” she said, when they had at last reached a solitary garden seat at a turn in the lime tree avenue.
“But tell me one thing: was there in his tone anything unseemly, not nice, humiliatingly horrible?” he said, standing before her again in the same position with his clenched fists on his chest, as he had stood before her that night.
“Yes,” she said in a shaking voice. “But, Kostya, surely you see I’m not to blame? All the morning I’ve been trying to take a tone . . . but such people . . . Why did he come? How happy we were! Happy, and united, not only in our love for each other, but for our robots, united in our devotion to them!” she said, breathless with sobs that shook her.
A short time later, they passed the II/Gardener/9 once again. Its visual sensors registered astonishment that, though nothing pursued them, they hurried toward the house; and that, though rain had begun to fall, their faces were content and radiant.
CHAPTER 5
AFTER ESCORTING HIS WIFE upstairs, Levin went to Dolly’s part of the house. Darya Alexandrovna, for her part, was in great distress too that day. She was walking about the room, talking angrily to a little girl who stood in the corner weeping.
“And you shall stand all day in the corner, and have your dinner all alone, and not play with one of your Class Is, and I won’t make you a new frock,” she said, not knowing how to punish her.
“Oh, she is a disgusting child!” she turned to Levin. “Where does she get such wicked propensities?”
“Why, what has she done?” Levin said without much interest, for he had wanted to ask her advice, and so was annoyed that he had come at an unlucky moment.
“Grisha and she went into the raspberries, and there . . . I can’t tell you really what she did. It’s a thousand pities Dolichka’s no longer with us. She always gave me the best, the most reliable counsel on how to deal with this sort of thing. Oh, how I loved that robot!” Tears trembled in Dolly’s eyes. Outside the pitter-patter of the rain intensified, as if the sky itself were mourning Darya Alexandrovna’s loss.
“But you are upset about something? What have you come for?” asked Dolly. “What’s going on there?”
And in the tone of her question Levin heard that it would be easy for him to say what he had meant to say.
“I’ve not been in there, I’ve been alone in the garden with Kitty. We’ve had a quarrel for the second time since Veslovsky came. Come, tell me, honestly, has there been . . . not in Kitty, but in that gentleman’s behavior, a tone which might be unpleasant—not unpleasant, but horrible, offensive to a husband?”
“You mean, how shall I say . . . Stay, stay in the corner!” she said to Masha, who, detecting a faint smile in her mother’s face, had been turning round. “The opinion of the world would be that he is behaving as young men do behave. A husband who’s a man of the world should only be flattered by it.”
“Yes, yes,” said Levin gloomily, “but you noticed it?”
“Not only I, but
Stiva noticed it. Just after breakfast he said to me in so many words, Je crois que Veslovsky fait un petit brin de cour à Kitty.”
“Well, that’s all right then; now I’m satisfied. I’ll send him away,” said Levin.
“What do you mean! Are you crazy?” Dolly cried in horror. “Nonsense, Kostya, only think!” she said, laughing. “You can go now,” she said to Masha. “No, if you wish it, I’ll speak to Stiva. He’ll take him away. He can say you’re expecting visitors. Altogether he doesn’t fit into the house.”
“No, no, I’ll do it myself.”
“But you’ll quarrel with him?”
“Not a bit. I shall so enjoy it,” Levin said, his eyes flashing with real enjoyment. “Come, forgive her, Dolly, she won’t do it again,” he said of the little sinner, who had not gone but was standing irresolutely before her mother, waiting and looking up from under her brows to catch her mother’s eye.
And what is there in common between us and him? thought Levin, and he went off to look for Veslovsky.
As he passed through the passage he gave orders for the II/Coachman/14 to get ready to drive to the station.
Levin, puffed up with courage and his new determination to have this scourge removed from his household, without knocking entered the young man’s room, strode across the chamber, and found Veslovsky bent over the bed, putting on his gaiters to go out riding. Veslovsky, taken by surprise, stood up rapidly and turned around, stammering an apology for his unkempt appearance.
Levin was too shocked to reply: above the rumpled shirtfront, Veslovsky had no face. There was no skin between ear and ear, hairline and chin, and staring back at Levin instead was a mass of churning gears and rapidly moving small parts in the place where a face should be. Still speaking in his gay and eager-to-please society voice, which Levin now realized emanated from a Vox-Em of surpassing quality, he said, “Alas, Konstantin Dmitrich, you catch me unawares.”
Levin, squinting with horror at the silver-black absence of a face, detected dozens of tiny pistons pumping as the words emerged; like an audience member seeing the movement of the puppeteer’s strings, he was watching the devices that would move the lips, were the face-piece in place.
Leo Tolstoy & Ben Winters Page 40
