Android Karenina (69 page)

At first, fatherhood, with the new joys and duties bound up with it, had completely crowded out these thoughts. But of late, the question that clamored for solution had more and more often, more and more insistently, haunted Levin’s mind.

The question was summed up for him thus: “If I do not accept the authority of the Ministry of Robotics and State Administration, and the ways that Russia has been and is being reformed, then how can I justify failing to act?” He told himself that scenes such as the one he had just witnessed—of his child, surrounded not by machines but by humanity, and the fundamental
rightness
of that scene—proved that, after all, he agreed with the changes society had undergone. And more: as he gazed out at the vast groznium pit, now being methodically plowed under and transformed into wheat fields, he found himself looking forward to being master of a great agricultural estate, as his ancestors had been in the time of the Tsars. Yet in the whole arsenal of his convictions, so far from finding any satisfactory answers, he was utterly unable to find anything at all like an answer.

He was in the position of a man seeking food in toy shops and tool shops. Instinctively, unconsciously, with every book, with every
conversation, with every man he met, he was on the lookout for light on these questions and their solution. What puzzled and distracted him above everything was that the majority of men of his age and circle had, like him, exchanged their old beliefs for the same new convictions, and yet saw nothing to lament in this, and were perfectly satisfied and serene. So that, apart from the principal question, Levin was tortured by other questions too. Were these people sincere? he asked himself, or were they playing a part? Or was it that they understood the answers that the Ministry gave to these problems in some different, clearer sense than he did? And he assiduously studied both these men’s opinions and the books which treated of these explanations. Russia had allowed itself to become weak, they said, too reliant on the easy solutions and shortcuts that technology provides. Hadn’t Levin reached much the same conclusions, working alongside his Pitbots and Glowing Scrubblers in the depths of the mine? Hadn’t he regretted the loss of discipline and mental clarity in the Age of Groznium?

But he had given his heart to a moment in time, to a Golden Hope, and now could not admit that at that moment he knew the truth, and that now he was wrong; for as soon as he began thinking calmly about it, it all fell to pieces. He could not admit that he was mistaken then, for his set of beliefs then was precious to him, and to admit that it was a proof of weakness would have been to desecrate those moments. He was miserably divided against himself, and strained all his spiritual forces to the utmost to escape from this condition.

These doubts fretted and harassed him, growing weaker or stronger from time to time, but never leaving him. He read and thought, and the more he read and the more he thought, the further he felt from the aim he was pursuing.

All that spring he was not himself, and went through fearful moments of horror.
Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life’s impossible; and that I can’t know, and so I can’t live,
Levin said to himself.

He must escape from this torture. And the means of escape everyman
had in his own hands. He had but to cut short this dependence on evil. And there was one means—death.

And Levin, a happy father and husband, in perfect health, was several times so near suicide that he hid the cord that he might not be tempted to hang himself, and was afraid to go out with his gun for fear of shooting himself.

But Levin did not shoot himself, and did not hang himself; he went on living.

S
EVERAL DAYS LATER,
Agafea Mihalovna found on the doorstep a brown-paper-wrapped package bearing no writing upon it, nor identifying marks of any kind. Agafea Mihalovna dutifully brought the package to Konstantin Dmitrich.

Curious and confused, Levin carefully cut away the layers of brown paper and lifted out the dismembered torso unit of an old Class III robot. He gasped. The torso unit was severely dented, battered as if by hard wear, but the yellow casing was unmistakable, as was the small circular stamp bearing the logo of the Urgensky Cigarette Factory.

“Kitty!” he cried. “Kitty!”

Making sure they were entirely alone, Konstantin Dmitrich and his wife locked the door of their bedchamber and tremblingly engaged the monitor of the Class III—aware that even the small series of hand motions necessary to do so were now illegal.

The figure in the communiqué was Socrates himself. At the sight of him, tugging at his beard of tools and apparatuses, looking one way and then another, his familiar faceplate flickering with evident anxiety, Kitty burst into tears. Levin clutched at her hand, feeling his own chin
working with emotion.

Socrates!

“Master, my time I fear is short. Short indeed yes short. However I would be remiss if I did not relay to you the result of my analysis.”

“Old friend,” Levin cried out, reaching toward the monitor with trembling fingers, as if to pluck out the tiny, glowing figure and hug it to his heart. “Loyal friend!”

“Examining all the relevant data: All that you discovered of the worm machines, and of the so-called Honored Guests, and . . .”

Here the Class III stopped in his narration and looked wildly about the dingy room where he stood, in fear of what it was impossible to say.

“I must hurry, Master. Must hurry hurry.

“When it was so often claimed that the aliens ‘will come for us in three ways,’ this was not after all meaningless. They have come in three ways.

“They have done sol”

When they finished watching the monitor, and Socrates’s explanation was complete, Levin took Kitty’s hand in his own, and together they sat for a long time, not saying a word: only contemplating what came next.

*    *    *

They had come as screeching warrior-beasts, born in horror from the fragile bodies of the ill.

They had come as ticking soil-dwelling worm-things, gathering strength from the groznium soil before bursting forth from the ground beneath us.

And they had come a third way. . . .

WE CANNOT BE STOPPED,
said the Face to Alexei Alexandrovich, which is to say, said to itself, for now the Face was Karenin, and Karenin was the Face.

WE CANNOT BE STOPPED OR DEFEATED. NOT NOW. THIS PLANET BELONGS TO US.

Tsar Alexei had ordered the regiments to fight the aliens in the Nest, and had therefore consigned them to their doom, and left Russia undefended against the onslaught to come. He had done this because that was what the Face wanted, and the man called the Tsar was now entirely the puppet of the Face.

The alien soldiers known as Honored Guests had killed and been killed, but the alien leaders had won their war against humanity years ago. They had won from the moment that Alexei Alexandrovich, with the Face already a part of him, had ascended to power in the Ministry.

The aliens had won from the day of Karenin’s ascendance, and nothing could stop that now, because that day had long passed.

Karenin-that-was-not-Karenin cackled from inside his gleaming silver caul with a terrible laugher; while, somewhere in the deep recesses of what once had been a human heart, there floated and glittered the memory of a woman, a woman he had loved.

L
EVIN STRODE ALONG
the highroad, absorbed not so much in his thoughts—he could not yet disentangle them—as in his spiritual condition, unlike anything he had experienced before. The words uttered by Socrates in the communiqué had acted on his soul like an electric shock, suddenly transforming and combining into a single whole the whole swarm of disjointed, impotent, separate thoughts that incessantly occupied his mind.

The Golden Hope was not a fight for the sake of robots, or for the importance of technology, but for human freedom. Karenin was the enemy, not because he would take groznium technology from the people, but because he was an alien creature bent on the subjugation of all humanity.

Levin was aware of something new in his soul, and tested this new thing, not yet knowing what it was.

He wished to express this new rush of understanding to his old coconspirator, his darling Kitty.

She understands,
he thought;
she knows what I’m thinking about. Shall I tell her or not? Yes, I’ll tell her.
But at the moment he was about to speak, she began speaking . . . and he found that she had nearly the same thoughts, almost in the same words.

On that day, in that moment, they began to make their plans. Somehow they would seek out whatever remnants of UnConSciya had survived the summer purges, and begin to regain their trust and rebuild the resistance. Levin would secretly seal off one corner of his mine, ensuring that there was enough of the Miracle Metal left for him to begin experiments. Quietly, invisibly, they would keep humanity’s flame burning until the Golden Hope could finally fly free. Someday, they would find a way to overturn the evil that Karenin had brought to their world, no matter the lengths to which they must go.

Night fell. As they spoke, Levin gazed up into the high, cloudless sky, where somewhere the alien invaders hovered.

“Do I not know that that is infinite space, and that it is not a round arch? But, however I screw up my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it
not
round and
not
bounded, and in spite of my knowing about infinite space, I am incontestably right when I see a solid, black dome, and more right than when I strain my eyes to see beyond it. That is how we must think of the future, of the rest of our lives. We cannot see it, but we know it is there to take—and we know it belongs to us, if we have the strength and the courage to seize hold of it.”

Kitty kissed him gently, and went off to bed.

Levin pictured the future in his imagination.
Can this be purpose?
he thought, afraid to believe in the feelings carrying him away. “Socrates, I thank thee!” he said, gulping down his sobs, and with both hands brushing away the tears that filled his eyes.

“This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith—or not faith—I don’t know what it is—but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.

“I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why hope lives in my breast, and I shall still go on hoping; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no longer meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”

QUIETLY, INVISIBLY, THEY WOULD KEEP HUMANITY’S FLAME BURNING UNTIL THE GOLDEN HOPE COULD FINALLY FLY FREE

THE END

1. The famous first sentence of the novel states that “Functioning robots are all alike; every malfunctioning robot malfunctions in its own way.” Which of the novel’s many malfunctioning robots causes the most trouble for the humans around it?

2. Do the Iron Laws of robot behavior function solely on the level of plot, or is Tolstoy drawing an analogy with the societal and moral codes governing
human
behavior? What are the “iron laws” of your own life, and in what situations do you break them?

3. When Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky first meet, which is the strongest sign that things aren’t going to go that well: Lupo’s instinctive growling, the loud and mysterious “crack in the sky,” or the mangled corpse?

4. Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin’s “Face” is a trusted technological device that slowly takes over his brain and makes him evil. Was Tolstoy merely creating an interestingly dichotomous villain, or anticipating people who check their messages too much? How often do you check
your
messages?

5. How does Kitty’s experience aboard the Venetian orbiter prepare her emotionally for an adult relationship? Is she more “healed” by the ship’s carefully recirculated air, or by watching Madame Stahl get shot into space?

6. Did Tolstoy, in making the aliens horrid, shrieking lizard-beasts—rather than the benevolent light-beings anticipated by the xenotheologists—
intend a comment on the nature of faith? Or did he, perhaps, just really like lizard-beasts?

7. In a crucial moment, Levin chooses his wife over Socrates, his beloved-companion robot. Are there any technological devices in your life that you love more than your spouse?