Android Karenina

“What is it exactly that you want from me?” he said, moving in his chair and snapping his pince-nez.

“A definite settlement, Alexei Alexandrovich, some settlement of the position. I’m appealing to you”-not as an injured husband, Stepan Arkadyich was going to say, but afraid of wrecking his negotiation by this, he changed the words-“not as a statesman”-which, truly, did not sound apropos-“but simply as a man, and a good-hearted man and a Christian. You must have pity on her,” he said.

As Oblonsky spoke, Karenin very slowly and with great care unscrewed his right index finger, laid it down on the desk, and screwed in its place a sleek, cruel-looking attachment. It was the approximate length of a finger, but made of solid black metal.

“That is, in what way precisely?” Karenin answered finally. He flexed the obsidian phalangeal and its tip glowed to life, a deep, menacing red. Stiva edged backward in his chair.

“Yes, pity on her. If you had seen her as I have!-I have been spending all the winter with her-you would have pity on her. Her position is awful, simply awful!”

“I had imagined,” answered Alexei Alexandrovich in a higher, almost shrill voice, “that A

“AND YET THEY SEND THIS WORM, THIS COWERING SPECIMEN OF HUMANITY, TO PLEAD FOR FAVORS? FOR FORGIVENESS?”

Karenin threw back his head and barked a high, shrill laugh.

“HERE IS YOUR ANSWER. TELL THEM THEY SHALL BE DESTROYED. TELL THEM I POSSESS THE POWER TO DESTROY THEM AT MY WILL, AND THIS IS MY INTENTION. TELL THEM THEY MAY RUN IF THEY CHOOSE. COWER AS THEY MIGHT, STILL I SHALL DESTROY THEM.”

“Oh, Alexei Alexandrovich, for heaven’s sake, don’t let us indulge in recriminations!” responded Stepan Arkadyich, somewhat feebly.

He shot a glance at the door, considered leaving now before the conversation proceeded further; but he really was in need of the position on the Grav committee.

“I think it’s a bit too late for that,” said Karenin, his regular, human voice back again. “Ah, wonderful. Our guest has arrived. Levitsky!”

The Toy Soldier had returned, his hand clutched on the quivering elbow of a short, stout man with a mass of red curls topped by a crumpled hat in the English style.

“I… I…”

“Bow, man, before the Tsar.”

Stepan Arkadyich was astonished all over again. He had not heard the ancient honorific “Tsar” used in his lifetime, and nor, he knew, had his father, nor his father’s father: not since the dawn of the Age of Groznium and the ascendance of the Ministry of Robotics and State Administration.

Karenin accepted the unfamiliar title as his due, gestured magisterially as Levitsky cowered before him.

“Alexei?” ventured Oblonsky.

“I suppose this matter is ended. I consider it at an end,” answered Alexei Alexandrovich calmly, though the door of the room banged open and shut on its own, while the stained-glass window imploded in a cloud of pulverized glass. Levitsky yelped in terror.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t get hot!” said Stepan Arkadyich, touching his brother-in-law’s knee and then instantly pulling his hand away, repulsed by the cold, steely feeling of the other man’s body; was there any part of him left that was human?

“Sir? Sir?” began the terrified Levitsky, and the Toy Soldier silenced him with a swift boot to the stomach. Alexei Alexandrovich rose from his chair and held his red, gleaming fingertip aloft, as if examining it in the sunlight.

Oblonsky swallowed hard.

“The life of A

“Open your eyes!” barked the Toy Soldier to Levitsky.

“No… please…”

“Open!”

“My only interest now is in the life of the nation,” Karenin continued, crossing the room to Levitsky, while the Toy Soldier grasped his chin to hold it steady. “In the protection of the nation. That is my vision.”

He raised his red-tipped finger to the newsman’s eyes, and Stepan Arkadyich fled the room.

CHAPTER 11

IN ORDER TO CARRY THROUGH any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be either complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be undertaken.

Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.

Both Vronsky and A

It was during this time that it became obvious to A

And being jealous of him, A

Even Vronsky’s rare moments of tenderness that came from time to time did not soothe her; in his tenderness now she saw a shade of complacency, of self-confidence, which had not been there of old, and which exasperated her.

It was dusk. A