Android Karenina (22 page)

“Yes, he realizes all the gravity of it,” Anna said to Android Karenina.

But Anna was mistaken in thinking he felt the weight of the fact in the same way as she, a woman, felt it. What Vronsky felt was that the turning-point he had been longing for had come now; that it was impossible to go on concealing things from her husband, and it was inevitable in one way or another that they should soon put an end to their unnatural position. But, besides that, her emotion physically affected him in the same way. He looked at her with a look of submissive tenderness, kissed her hand, got up, and, in silence, paced up and down the terrace.

“Yes,” he said, going up to her resolutely. “Neither you nor I have looked on our relations as a passing amusement, and now our fate is sealed. It is absolutely necessary to put an end”—he looked round as he spoke—“to the deception in which we are living.”

“Put an end? How put an end, Alexei?” she said softly.

She was calmer now, and Android Karenina was glowing with an intense but not unpleasant violet, lending a romantic backlight to her mistress’s tender expression.

“Leave your husband and make our life one.”

“It is one as it is,” she answered, scarcely audibly.

“Yes, but altogether, altogether.”

“But how, Alexei, tell me how?” she said in melancholy mockery at the hopelessness of her own position. “Is there any way out of such a position? Am I not the wife of my husband?”

“There is a way out of every position. We must take our line,” he said. “Anything’s better than the position in which you’re living. Of course, I see how you torture yourself over everything—the world and your son and your husband.”

“Oh, not over my husband,” she said, with a quiet smile. “I don’t know him, I don’t think of him. He doesn’t exist.”

“You’re not speaking sincerely. I know you. You worry about him too.”

“Oh, he doesn’t even know,” she said, and suddenly a hot flush came over her face; her cheeks, her brow, her neck crimsoned, and tears of shame came into her eyes. “But we won’t talk of him.”

V
RONSKY HAD SEVERAL TIMES ALREADY
, though not so resolutely as now, tried to bring her to consider their position, and every time he had been confronted by the same superficiality and triviality with which she met his appeal now. It was as though there were something in this that she could not or would not face, as though the moment she began to speak of this, she, the real Anna, retreated somehow into herself, and another strange and unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love, and whom he feared, and who was in opposition to him. But today he was resolved to have it out.

“Whether he knows or not,” said Vronsky, in his usual quiet and resolute tone, “that’s nothing to do with us. We cannot . . . you cannot stay like this, especially now.”

“What’s to be done, according to you?” she asked with the same frivolous irony. She who had so feared he would take her condition too lightly was now vexed with him for deducing from it the necessity of taking some step.

“Tell him everything, and leave him.”

“Very well, let us suppose I do that,” she said. “Do you know what the result of that would be? I can tell you it all beforehand,” and a wicked light gleamed in her eyes, which had been so soft a minute before. “‘Eh, you love another man, and have entered into criminal intrigues with
him?’” (Mimicking her husband’s singular appearance, she covered one side of her face with the flat of her hand). “‘I warned you of the results in the religious, the civil, and the domestic relation. You have not listened to me. Now I cannot let you disgrace my name’”—
and my son,
she had meant to say, but about her son she could not jest—’“disgrace my name, and’—and more in the same style,” she added. “In general terms, he’ll say in his official manner, and with all distinctness and precision, that he cannot let me go, but will take all measures in his power to prevent scandal. And he will calmly and punctually act in accordance with his words. That’s what will happen. He’s not a man, but a machine, and a spiteful machine when he’s angry,” she added, recalling Alexei Alexandrovich as she spoke, with all the peculiarities of his figure and manner of speaking and bifurcated apperance, and reckoning against him every defect she could find in him, softening nothing for the great wrong she herself was doing him.

It was then she sensed that Vronsky was not listening, and saw that his eyes were fixed on some spot behind her head.

“The swirling . . . ,” he said in a low voice, as if hypnotized, and Anna felt irritated by his lack of attention.

“What?”

“The fountain . . . the swirling. . . .” he repeated, and then with sudden force shouted, “Jump!”

Anna, shocked into action by this sudden urgency, leapt forward from where she sat on the wall of the fountain, landing in a disordered heap at Vronsky’s feet; he scrambled forward to grasp as her forearms and pulled as hard as he could. Directly behind her, hovering like a storm cloud over the fountain’s swirling waters, was what could only be described as a terrible, undulating
nothingness:
a grey-black hole in the fabric of the atmosphere, wavering in the air above the fountain, and pulling, pulling Anna Karenina in toward itself.

Vronsky gripped her with all his strength, bracing his feet against the wall of the fountain, resisting with all his strength the violent force, ten
times stronger than gravity, that was drawing Anna in. Android Karenina joined the struggle, lacing her fingers around Anna’s waist and digging in the base of her heels at the base of the fountain wall.

“What . . . what is . . . ,” Anna began, and Vronsky answered immediately: “A godmouth!” Anna’s skirts billowed up behind her, rustled by the phantasmagoric wind bellowing from the portal. “UnConSciya creates them . . . somehow . . .
oof. . .
”

His fingers slipping a little, Vronsky cursed. “Hold on, Anna. Only hold on, a bit longer . . . it will not last long.”

“Let me go,” said Anna weakly.

“What?”

“What good is living,” she said, louder now, “if our life is to be under
my husband’s
control? Let me go!” She directed this last command to Android Karenina, who by virtue of the Iron Laws could not disobey; she turned her faceplate apologetically to Vronsky and released her grasp.

“But, Anna,” said Vronsky, renewing his grip and putting steel into his voice, “we simply must, anyway, tell him, and then be guided by the line he takes.”

“And what, run away?”

“And why
not
run away?” he shouted desperately. “I don’t see how we can keep on like this. And not for my sake—I see that you suffer!”

A fierce wind blew from the terrible depths of the demonic spiral; one of Anna’s shoes slipped from her feet and was sucked into the vortex. Vronsky redoubled his efforts to pull her free, nearly dislodging Anna’s arm from the socket. He stared over her shoulder at the space-hole still hovering in the air behind her, glowing like the malevolent eye of a hungry beast. One of Anna’s hands came loose from his, and she made no effort to let him grab it again. Her body was virtually slack, and he felt she had given up, in her body and her mind, and was ready to be consumed.

“Anna,” he pleaded, “do not quit!”

“Yes,” she muttered, almost talking to herself. “Run away, become
your mistress, and complete the ruin of. . .”

And she would have said “my son,” but she could not utter those words—whether because she could not bear to, or because the force on her body was squeezing the very air from her lungs, Vronsky could not say.

Anna thought of her son, pictured his innocent body hovering before the unfathomable grey void behind her, imagined him caught in such a trap. It came to her that
she
had set a trap for him, by falling in love; she thought of his future attitude toward his mother, who had abandoned his father, and she felt such terror at what she had done that she could not face it. She cried out and writhed, and Vronsky lost his grip. The godmouth widened, like a snake mouth opening to accommodate a rabbit or possum.

It was then that Android Karenina broke the Iron Law of obedience.

Dismissing the earlier command to let go, she grabbed Anna by the waist, and with furious mechanical strength pulled her to safety. Together, mistress and robot landed with a thud on the stones of the fountain, and Anna watched with shaded eyes as the queer dimensional portal
whooshed
shut and disappeared.

For a long moment, Anna stared into the pale purple gleam of Android Karenina’s faceplate—and then mouthed the words
thank you.
Android Karenina, as ever, said nothing, only straightened up and motored respectfully away, as Vronsky rushed to his lover’s side and placed her head lovingly in his lap.

“I beg you, I entreat you,” Anna said, turning her head away from Vronsky’s eyes. “Never speak to me of that!”

“To the contrary!” Vronsky began. “I shall not rest until I discover what cell, what madman, would dare to launch such an attack on you—and why—”

“No,” said Anna, shaking her head with impatience. “Never speak to me of my becoming your mistress. Of my ruin, and that of. . .”

“But, Anna . . .”

“Never. Leave it to me. I know all the baseness, all the horror of my position; but it’s not so easy to arrange as you think. And leave it to me, and do what I say. Never speak to me of it. Do you promise me? . . . No, no, promise!”

“I promise everything, but I can’t be at peace, especially after what you have told me. I can’t be at peace, when you can’t be at peace . . .”

“I?” she repeated. “Yes, I am worried sometimes; but that will pass, if you will never talk about this. When you talk about it—it’s only then it worries me.”

“I don’t understand—” he said.

“I know,” she interrupted him, “how hard it is for your truthful nature to lie, and I grieve for you. I often think that you have ruined your whole life for me.”

“I was just thinking the very same thing,” he said. “How could you sacrifice everything for my sake? I can’t forgive myself that you’re unhappy!”

“I unhappy?” she said, coming closer to him, and looking at him with an ecstatic smile of love. “I am like a hungry man who has been given food. He may be cold, and dressed in rags, and ashamed, but he is not unhappy. I unhappy? No, this is my unhappiness. . . .”

She could hear the sound of her son’s voice coming toward them, and glancing swiftly round the terrace, she got up impulsively. Her eyes glowed with the fire he knew so well; with a rapid movement she raised her lovely hands, covered with rings, took his head, looked a long moment into his face, and, raising her face with smiling, parted lips, swiftly kissed his mouth while Android Karenina kept her gaze discretely averted, then pushed him away. She would have gone, but he held her back.

“When?” he murmured in a whisper, gazing in ecstasy at her.

“Tonight, at one o’clock,” she whispered, and, with a heavy sigh, she walked with her light, swift step to meet her son.

Vronsky, looking at his watch, went away hurriedly, plagued by
questions about the encounter: Why would UnConSciya plant such a trap here? Was it meant for Anna . . . or for him?

And was it UnConSciya at all?

W
HEN VRONSKY LOOKED
at his watch, he was so greatly agitated and lost in his thoughts that he saw the figures on the watch’s face, but could not take in what time it was. He came out onto the highroad and walked, picking his way carefully through the mud, to his carriage, detaching and reattaching the electrodes to his chest and forehead as he went. He was so completely absorbed in his confusion about the godmouth that he did not even think what o’clock it was. But the excitement of the approaching Cull gained upon Vronsky as he drove further and further into the atmosphere of the arena, overtaking carriages driving up from the summer villas or out of Petersburg.

He arrived to find Frou-Frou standing in the silo, torso door hanging open, at the ready. They were just going to lead her out.

“I’m not too late?”

“It’s all right! It’s all right!” said the Englishman, looking nervously at his I/Physiolographer/99. “For Heaven’s sakes, don’t upset yourself!”

Vronsky once more took in, in one glance, the exquisite lines of his Exterior, which was oscillating all over, quivering with excitement up and down its sleek lines. He surveyed the rows of pavilion seating, quickly scanning the crowd before climbing inside his death-suit to begin combat.

“Oh, there’s Karenin!” said an acquaintance from his regiment. “He’s looking for his wife, and she’s in the middle of the pavilion. Didn’t
you see her?”

“No,” answered Vronsky, and without even glancing round toward the pavilion where his friend was pointing out Madame Karenina, he went up to his Exterior.

In a moment, the cry was heard:
“Entrez!”

Vronsky climbed inside Frou-Frou’s groznium torso door and with a series of deft movements attached himself to her contact board. He then slipped his forefinger and index fingers under the palm-sized steering disc, which was his secondary means of control, and pressed its small central button firmly, once, with his thumb. Instantly the war-machine reared back, tilted her head upward, and fired a massive jolt of electricity into the sky. Vronsky smiled:
She is ready.

Outside the beast, the Englishman puckered up his lips, leaned against the torso door, and shouted in:

“Good luck, your Excellency.” And then, in English, added his traditional final word of support: “Survive.”

Vronsky peered into the long-tube, a periscope-like exterior sensor, to gain a last look at his rivals. Once the match began, they would in the grand tradition of the Cull no longer be his beloved fellow Border Officers, but targets. One Exterior, belonging to a drinking companion of his, Oposhenko, was in the shape of a massive arachnid, with glittering golden “eyes” that Vronsky knew could exert a powerful magnetic force, to draw enemies into the Exterior’s “web.” A second battle-suit was a modified sledge, with engines attached to the back, allowing it to function as a kind of battering ram, simple but effective. Galtsin, a friend of Vronsky’s and one of his more formidable rivals, had an Exterior patriotically fashioned in the shape of a massive sickle, such as that used in the time of the Tsars by traditional peasants in their fields; she could roll with deadly speed along the periphery of the conflict, and then dart in to slice through heavy armor plating with her sharpened edge.