Android Karenina

“I did not cause this attack!” shouted Federov, staggering to his feet. “But I can still the hope that provokes it!” Levin, moaning, clutching at himself with his badly scalded hands, sat up and stared-as Federov pulled out a dagger and drove it into his own heart.

Levin gasped; the man from UnConSciya screamed and doubled forward, pushing the knife in to the hilt. No further bombs were heard, only the eerie crackling of the burning forest.

“Remember these words, men,” Federov said between clenched teeth, sinking to his knees. “Rearguard… Action.”

“Rearguard…,” intoned Levin, as if hypnotized.

“Action,” Vronsky mumbled.

CHAPTER 14

VRONSKY HAD AGREED to pursue the tête-à-tête at the Huntshed partly because he was attracted, as all cocksure men are, by a chance for further adventures-just as the tippler, once he has tasted wine, will again and again reactivate the II/Barrel/4. But also Vronsky was bored in the country and wanted to show A

After burying the body of the UnConSciya man in a circular hollow a hundred or so paces from the Huntshed, Levin and he stopped to discuss the remarkable events, and to enjoy smoking cigars. They spoke in a calm and happy way-though, while they seemed to be perfect allies and friends, their past rivalry forgotten, Levin did not mention that his Class III still lived, buried in a Urgensky smoke factory; and Vronsky did not bring up his cherished hope, that if only he could get A

They were thus smoking and talking, when Lupo was beamed a communiqué and promptly lit it up on his monitor.

It was from A

The missive was not unexpected, but the form of it was unexpected, and particularly disagreeable to him. A

Vronsky played the communiqué again, to ensure he had it right, and again watched the pleading face of A

CHAPTER 15

BEFORE VRONSKY’S DEPARTURE for the tête-à-tête, A

In solitude afterward, thinking over that glance which had expressed his right to freedom, she came, as she always did, to the same point-the sense of her own humiliation. “He has the right to go away when and where he chooses,” she complained to Android Karenina. “Not simply to go away, but to leave me. He has every right, and I have none. But knowing that, he ought not to do it.” Together they had fled Petersburg, together they had built Vozdvizhenskoe on the old abandoned patch of farmland. But now while he was out playing the role of dashing rebel leader, she waited for him alone in the autumn cold.

“What has he done, though?… He looked at me with a cold, severe expression. Of course that is something indefinable, impalpable, but it has never been so before, and that glance means a great deal,” she concluded, as Android Karenina softly stroked her flowing hair. “That glance shows the begi

And though she felt sure that a coldness was begi

That meant a divorce from Karenin; worse, it meant dispatching an emissary to the Higher Branches, revealing their location; it meant giving up their arms, begging forgiveness of the Ministry. And, of course, it would mean giving up their Class III robots, though this possibility A

Absorbed in such thoughts, she passed five days without him, the five days that he was to be at the mysterious tête-à-tête in the woods. When the sixth day ended without his return, she felt that now she was utterly incapable of stifling the thought of him and of what he was doing there, just when her little girl was taken ill. A

But still she was glad she had sent the communiqué. At this moment A

She was sitting in the drawing room, and as she read she listened to the sound of the wind outside, every minute expecting the carriage to arrive. The farm was silent, with the cold and complete silence of an estate populated only by robots, who in their nightly Surcease made not even the smallest sound. Only one companion robot at Vozdvizhenskoe still had its human, and that was Android Karenina; now she brought tea, warmed on her own groznium core.

At last A