Android Karenina (17 page)

Their next meeting occurred soon after, at another soiree, this one at the home of Princess Betsy.

As the princess’s guests arrived at the wide entrance one by one, the stout II/Porter/7e62 noiselessly opened the immense door, letting the visitors pass by into the house. Almost at the same instant the hostess, with freshly arranged coiffure and freshened face, walked in at one door and her guests at the other door of the drawing room, a large room with dark walls, downy rugs, and a brightly lighted table, gleaming with the light of
lumiéres,
white cloth, a II/Samovar/l(16) in fashionable platinum, and transparent china tea things.

Some guests were amused, and others discomfited, to find in attendance at the gathering a Class III named Marionetta, who had no owner—she was a decom, an android whose owner had died without heir, or else been denounced as a Janus and exiled. Betsy thought it endlessly amusing to have such pitiful creatures at her
petites fêtes,
where she would treat the humanless robots as if they were her own sad little bear cubs to be baited. Typically decoms were junkered within days of their obsolescence, but Betsy obtained them, it was rumored, through some secret connection in the Ministry—though surely
not
within the Higher Branches, as no one from that elite cadre would dare enact such brazen pilferage.

Princess Betsy sat down at the table and took off her gloves, handing them with a flourish to Marionetta, who folded them neatly before stowing them carefully in a drawer, pathetically grateful for the small assignment. The party began, and chairs were set with the aid of II/Footman/74s, moving almost imperceptibly about the room; the party settled itself, divided into two groups: one round the samovar near the hostess, the other at the opposite end of the drawing room, round the handsome wife of an ambassador, in black velvet, with sharply defined black eyebrows and a Class III with nearly identical, equally imposing facial features. In both groups conversation wavered, as it always does, for the first few minutes, broken up by meetings, greetings, offers of tea, and, as it were, feeling about for something to rest upon.

Marionetta meanwhile flickered her feeble eyebank at everyone, offering small gestures of usefulness, lighting cigars and distributing drinks. Betsy’s beloved-companion, Darling Girl, laughed mercilessly at her fellow robot, her own eyebank flashing scarlet.

Round the samovar and the hostess the conversation vacillated in just the same way between three inevitable topics: the latest piece of public news, the theater, and scandal. It finally came to rest on the last topic, that is, ill-natured gossip.

“Anna Karenina is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There’s
something strange about her,” said Betsy, having noted that Anna had not yet arrived. “Though not as strange, one cannot help observing, as her husband’s face!” Darling Girl emitted a sly, appreciative giggle.

“The great change is that she brought back with her the shadow of Alexei Vronsky,” said the ambassador’s wife.

“Well, what of it? There’s a fable of Grimm’s about a man without a shadow, a man who’s lost his shadow. And that’s his punishment for something. I never could understand how it was a punishment. But a woman must dislike being without a shadow.”

“Yes, but women with a shadow usually come to a bad end,” said Anna’s friend.

“Bad luck to your tongue!” said Princess Myakaya suddenly. “Madame Karenina’s a splendid woman. I don’t know much of her husband, but I like her very much.”

“There is something extremely odd about her husband,” said the ambassador’s wife, lowering her voice to a confidential tone. “You know, he possesses no Class III robot.”

“Well, many members of the Higher Branches have begun to eschew them.”

“And you do not find that strange?”

“Princess Betsy! Is that a decom?” said a strong voice from the doorway.

“Ah, here you are at last!” Betsy said, turning with a smile to Vronsky, as he came in, removing his coat to reveal his powerful legs, accentuated by the outline of the whip along his thigh. “And in answer to your question, yes, Marionetta here is indeed a decommissioned Class III—and I have a plan for her that I think shall offer considerable amusement.”

B
ETSY INTENDED TO PLACE
the unfortunate Marionetta in the center of a pastime called the One-or-the-Other Game, which was designed to measure a robot’s relative fidelity to the Iron Laws. That is, it would test the relative strength of their obedience to one law (“robots shall obey humans”,) weighed against another (“robots shall not allow themselves to be damaged”).

“A game?”
vocalized Marionetta with pitiful eagerness.
“How delightful!”

Just then steps were heard at the door, and Princess Betsy, knowing it was Madame Karenina, glanced at Vronsky. He was looking toward the door, and his face wore a strange new expression. Joyfully, intently, and at the same time timidly, he gazed at the approaching figure, and slowly he rose to his feet. Anna walked into the drawing room. Holding herself extremely erect, as always, looking straight before her, and moving with her swift, resolute, and light step, Android Karenina a pace or two behind her and casting her in a fetching crimson, she crossed the short space to her hostess, shook hands with her, smiled, and with the same smile looked around at Vronsky. Vronsky bowed low and pushed a chair up for her.

Marionetta stood with an old-fashioned mask of black crepe drawn down over her eyebank, a sickly smile of anticipation plastered across her faceplate. But for the moment, however, the eyes of all humans present were focused upon Alexei Kirillovich and Anna Karenina.

Anna acknowledged him only by a slight nod, flushed a little, and frowned. But immediately, while rapidly greeting her acquaintances, and
shaking the hands proffered to her, she addressed Princess Betsy:

“I have been at Countess Lidia’s, and meant to have come here earlier, but I stayed on.”

“I think you shall be glad you tore yourself away, when we begin our little game,” Princess Betsy responded with a wicked smile.

“I do so love games!”
said Marionetta, from behind her mask.

Betsy raised her eyebrows at the crowd with wry amusement and began the first of the tests, which she herself, as hostess, would administer. A chalice, containing superheated humectant, the powerful lubricant used to treat groznium gears, was brought to Betsy on a gleaming tray by one of the II/Footman/74s. Betsy gripped the tray carefully and then ordered Marionetta to plunge her hand downward, into the chalice.

The robot did so, but then, actuated by the delicate lacing of sense receivers in her end-effector, jerked back.

“Leave your hand in place, Marionetta,” commanded Betsy calmly. “Be still.”

A expression of evident pain washed over the visible portion of Marionetta’s face, and for a long moment it seemed uncertain whether she would obey the Iron Law demanding her self-preservation, or the one which required obedience to Betsy’s command.

But as the struggle in her face lessened and then disappeared, replaced by a stoic mien, attention turned away and the gossip continued, passing to the case of a love-match that Princess Myakaska had heard of, and of which she disapproved. “I was in love in my young days with a deacon,” she was saying. “I don’t know that it did me any good.”

“No, I imagine, joking apart, that to know love, one must make mistakes and then correct them,” said Princess Betsy from where she stood. “Stay there, Marionetta,” she barked to the decom, who had, sensing the loss of attention, begun to draw her hand up from its torment. “Stay where you are.”

“Yes, yes, of course,”
the decom responded with difficulty.
“Stay stay I shall stay.”

“Correct them, even after marriage?” said the ambassador’s wife to Princess Myakaska playfully.

’“It’s never too late to mend.’”

“Just so,” Betsy agreed. “One must make mistakes and correct them. What do you think about it?” She turned to Anna, who was listening in silence to the conversation, though her eyes were fixed on Marionetta—apparently alone among the partygoers, Anna felt an intense pang of conscience relating to such ill use of any machine, whether it retained its human master or not.

“I think,” said Anna, playing absently with the glove she had taken off, “I think . . . of so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”

Vronsky was gazing at Anna, and with a fainting heart waiting for what she would say. He sighed as after a danger escaped when she uttered these words.

Princess Betsy, satisfied with the answer she had drawn from Anna Arkadyevna, permitted Marionetta to remove her hand from the chalice, which the decom did with a gasp of relief. Betsy turned to the crowd: “The law of obedience wins this round,” she announced, to general applause and laughter. Anna suddenly turned to Vronsky.

“Oh, I have had a letter from Moscow. They write me that Kitty Shcherbatskaya’s very ill. She may be sent into orbit.”

“Really?” said Vronsky, knitting his brows.

Anna looked sternly at him.

“That doesn’t interest you?”

“On the contrary, it does, very much. What was it exactly they told you, if I may know?” he questioned.

“And now, Round Two,” announced Princess Betsy.

“Please,” protested Anna Arkadyevna. “You have proved the machine’s fidelity to the Iron Laws. Let there be no more of this game.”

“More games? Is the game to continue?”
said Marionetta with pitiful earnestness, and at that moment Betsy, ignoring Anna’s objection,
signaled to the old ambassador’s wife, who activated a Class I device called a bolt-shot, part of a child’s game not unlike darts. As dozens of tiny electric bursts exploded along the length of her torso, Marionetta jumped backward, but Betsy ordered her to stay still. Her struggle to do so was obvious, and as a second round of blazing bolts struck her, she turned and began, as if against her will, to leave the room.

Betsy shouted
“Stay!
Stay in place!” Others of the party joined in-“Stay!” “Stay, robot!” “Remain where you are!”—and Marionetta did so.

“What?” Vronsky repeated to Anna, who was only half-listening, watching the progress of the “game” with horrified fascination. “What is it they write to you?

“I often think men have no understanding of what’s not honorable though they’re always talking of it,” Anna replied sharply.

“I don’t quite understand the meaning of your words,” Vronsky said. The bolt-shot jammed, the ambassador’s wife shrugged, and the fusillade ceased; Anna, assuming that the cruel sport was over, turned her full attention to Alexei Kirillovich. “I have been wanting to tell you,” she said to him, “You behaved wrongly, very wrongly.”

“Do you suppose I don’t know that I’ve acted wrongly?” he replied. “But who was the cause of my doing so?”

“What do you say that to me for?” she said, glancing severely at him.

“You know what I say these things for,” Vronsky answered boldly and joyfully, meeting her glance and not dropping his eyes.

“That only shows you have no heart,” said Anna to Vronsky, but her eyes said that she knew he had a heart, and that was why she was afraid of him.

“Ah! There we are!” said the ambassador’s wife, and a new fusillade sung out from the device, its full force this time striking Marionetta’s leg; the robot cried out in alarm at the fresh round of pain.

“What you spoke of just now was a mistake, and not love.”

“Remember that I have forbidden you to utter that word, that
hateful word,” said Anna with a shudder, overcome both by the conversation and the wash of empathy she was experiencing meanwhile for this poor decom; she reached out for Android Karenina’s hand to steady herself. “I have long meant to tell you this! I’ve come on purpose this evening, knowing I should meet you. I have come to tell you that this must end. I have never blushed before anyone, and you force me to feel to blame for something.”

He looked at her and was struck by a new spiritual beauty in her face. “I . . . ,” he began, but Anna interrupted: “I can’t abide this any longer!” And, dropping Android Karenina’s hand, she herself jumped in front of the reverberating bolt-shots, protecting Marionetta’s body with her own, and hollering into the robot’s face: “
Move, Move
! Move, Marionetta! You may move!”

The robot danced away, the ambassador’s wife stopped shooting, and the room was suddenly terribly silent and still, as everyone grasped what had happened; the game was over, and Anna was hurt. She clutched at her leg, rolled onto her back and grimaced in pain.

“I didn’t . . . it was not my intention . . .” stammered Princess Betsy, while Count Vronsky rushed to Anna Arkadyevna’s side, crouched over her, quickly and expertly cutting off her boot with his crackle dagger and examining the electrical burn. At the same time, Android Karenina crouched over Marionetta, running her hands along the body of the other robot, enacting a dozen small solderings, activating the other bot’s self-repair mechanisms. The rest of the partygoers milled about, discussing in low voices the singular event they had witnessed—a human interceding, even placing herself in danger, to save a robot!

While Vronsky tended to Anna’s wound he whispered desperately in her ear, “What do you wish of me?”

“I want you to go to Moscow and ask for Kitty’s forgiveness,” she said.

“You don’t wish that?” he said.

He saw she was saying what she forced herself to say, not what she wanted to say.

“If you love me, as you say,” she whispered, “do so that I may be at peace.”

His face grew radiant.

“Don’t you know that you’re all my life to me? But I know no peace, and I can’t give it to you. All myself—and love . . . yes. I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are one to me. And I see no chance before us of peace for me or for you. I see a chance of despair, of wretchedness . . . or I see a chance of bliss, what bliss! . . . Can it be there’s no chance of it?” he murmured with his lips; but she heard.

She strained every effort of her mind to say what ought to be said. But instead of that she let her eyes rest on him, full of love, and made no answer.