Android Karenina

Or so it appeared to Count Vronsky.

He had not yet seen A

“How little of the military man there is left in you!” his friend Serpuhovskoy was saying to him. “A diplomat, an artist, something of that sort, one would say.”

“Yes, it was like going back home when I put on a black coat,” answered Vronsky, smiling and with a few clicks activating his opera glass.

“Well, I’ll own I envy you there. When I come back from abroad and put on this,” he touched his epaulets, “I regret my freedom.”

Serpuhovskoy had long given up all hope of Vronsky’s career, but he liked him as before, and was now particularly cordial to him.

“What a pity you were not in time for the first act!”

Vronsky, listening with one ear, moved his opera glass from the stalls and sca

When Vronsky turned the opera glass again in that direction, he noticed that A

In that box on the left were the Kartasovs Vronsky knew them, and knew that A

Vronsky could not understand exactly what had passed between the Kartasovs and A

Knowing that something had happened, but not knowing precisely what, Vronsky felt a thrill of agonizing anxiety, and hoping to find out something, he went toward the box where she sat. Working his way through the aisles toward her, he jostled as he came out against the colonel of his regiment, talking to two strangers.

The colonel greeted him with genial familiarity, and hastened to introduce him to the others. The colonel’s companions were young, with neat hairstyles under regimental caps, high cheekbones, and cold, green-gray eyes.

“Excuse me, gentlemen, but I must pass. Good evening, sir,” he said curtly, ignoring the two strangers and addressing only his old friend, the colonel. The men did not step aside, however, but to the contrary formed a tight, jostling ring around him, chattering familiarly.

“Ah, Vronsky! When are you coming to the regiment? We can’t let you off without a supper. You’re one of the old set,” said one of the men. But even as he smiled politely, still glancing up toward A

The face was almost the same face-the same set of the jaw, the same roll of flesh below the chin, the same bristly black mustache-but a cu

Vronsky recoiled. “I can’t stop, awfully sorry, another time,” he said, and tried again to break free, to get to the carpeted stairs that led to A

“No, no,” replied the colonel-who-was-not-the-colonel genially. “We insist.” One of the other soldiers gri

“Oh yes!” said the third soldier. “Why, we could rectify that situation right away!”

Lupo hissed and showed his teeth. Vronsky murmured a demurral while his left hand, hidden by his cloak, moved discreetly toward his belt. Although not, apparently, as discreetly as he had hoped.

“Oh, that won’t do, your Excellency,” said the “colonel” with a smile. “That won’t do at all.”

The colonel’s face blurred, wavered, and was replaced in a terrible instant by a silver-black mass of churning gears. Vronsky yelped in startlement as the same hideous transformation unfolded on the other men: the skin of their faces retracted, revealing not flesh but gears-gears rolling in gears, tiny pistons pumping up and down, winding tracks-all in the approximate shape of a human face, but made from the stuff of robots.

“Good God,” Vronsky had time to say, before a tongue of flame shot forth from the mouth-space on the colonel’s face, or rather where the face had been a moment ago. Vronsky ducked in the last moment and caught the blast with the top of his head. He cried out in pain, smelling his own singed flesh and burnt hair, and drew his smoker to open fire; Lupo launched himself forward on his strong hind legs and landed on the chest of one of the counterfeit soldiers, groznium teeth sinking into groznium Adam’s apple. The robot cried out and went down in what appeared to be some genuine form of pain, while Lupo wrestled and thrashed at his neck.

Abstractedly, Vronsky heard the panicked screams of the other theatergoers; he ducked and rolled away from a second fire-blast, crouching behind a red-upholstered seat and returning fire. The non-colonel winced as he absorbed a fusillade that would have killed a real human several times over.