Leo Tolstoy, Ben H Winters
Android Karenina
© 2010
Illustrations by Eugene Smith
A NOTE ON NAMES
Russian names consist of three parts: the given name, the patronymic (derived from the father’s first name), and the family name. Often, individuals also go by a nickname. Hence the first character introduced is Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky-Stepan is his given name, Arkadyich the patronymic, and Oblonsky the family name. But the man is often called “Stiva,” his nickname.
Class I and II robots also use a three-part nomenclature: a Roman numeral for class type, a function-designation, and an indication of model. Hence the I/Samovar/1(8) is a Class I device, designed to steep and serve tea, model number 1(8).
Class III robots are universally known by the nickname bestowed by their master or mistress.
MAJOR CHARACTERS IN ANDROID KARENINA
Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky (Stiva), a Moscow gentleman and Small Stiva, Stiva’s Class III
Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya (Dolly), Oblonsky’s wife and Dolichka, Dolly’s Class III
Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, Oblonsky’s sister and Android Karenina, Anna’s Class III
Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, Anna’s husband
Sergey Alexeich Karenin (Seryozha), the Karenins’ young son
Konstantin Dmitrich Levin, Oblonsky’s old friend and Socrates, Levin’s Class III
Nikolai Dmitrich Levin, Levin’s brother and Karnak, Nikolai’s Class III
Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya (Kitty), Dolly’s sister and Tatiana, Kitty’s Class III
Prince Alexander Dmitrievich Shcherbatsky, Kitty and Dolly’s father
The Princess Shcherbatskaya, Kitty and Dolly’s mother and La Scherbatskaya, the Princess’s Class III
Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, a war hero and Lupo, Vronsky’s Class III
Countess Vronsky, Vronsky’s mother and Tunisia, the Countess’s Class III
Elizaveta Fyodorovna Tverskaya (Betsy), Vronsky’s cousin and a friend of Anna
and Darling Girl, Betsy’s Class III
Marya Nikolaevna, Nikolai Levin’s companion
Madame Stahl, a society woman and prominent xenotheologist
Varenka, a poor girl attached to Madame Stahl
Yashvin, Count Vronsky’s friend and fellow officer
Vassenka Veslovsky, a gentleman of society
VENGEANCE IS MINE;
I SHALL REPAY.
PART ONE: A CRACK IN THE SKY
CHAPTER 1
FUNCTIONING ROBOTS are all alike; every malfunctioning robot malfunctions in its own way.
Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with the French girl who had been a mécanicienne in their family, charged with the maintenance of the household’s Class I and II robots. Stunned and horrified by such a discovery, the wife had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the robots in the household were terribly affected by it. The Class IIIs were keenly aware of their respective masters’ discomfort, and the Class IIs sensed in their rudimentary fashion that there was no logic in their being agglomerated together, and that any stray decoms, junkering in a shed at the Vladivostok R. P. F., had more in common with one another than they, the servomechanisms in the household of the Oblonskys.
The wife did not leave her own room; the husband had not been at home for three days. The II/Governess/D145, its instruction circuits pitifully mistuned, for three days taught the Oblonsky children in Armenian instead of French. The usually reliable II/Footman/C(c)43 loudly announced nonexistent visitors at all hours of the day and night. The children ran wild all over the house. A II/Coachman/47-T drove a sledge directly through the heavy wood of the front doors, destroying a I/Hourprotector/14 that had been a prized possession of Oblonsky’s father.
Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky-Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world-woke at eight o’clock in the morning, not in his wife’s bedroom, but within the oxygen-tempered Class I comfort unit in his study. He woke as usual to the clangorous thumpthumpthump of booted robot feet crushing through the snow, as a regiment of 77s tromped in lockstep along the avenues outside.
Our tireless protectors, he thought pleasantly, and uttered a blessing over the Ministry as he turned over his stout, well-cared-for person, as though to sink into a long sleep again. He vigorously embraced the pillow on the other side and buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped up, banging his rotund forehead against the glass ceiling of the I/Comfort/6, and opened his eyes.
He suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife’s room, but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted his brows.
Small Stiva, Stepan Arkadyich’s Class III companion robot, clomped happily into the room on his short piston-actuated legs, carrying his master’s boots and a telegram. Stiva, as yet unprepared to undertake the day’s obligations, bid his Class III come a bit closer, and then swiftly pressed three buttons below the rectangular screen centered in Small Stiva’s midsection. He sat back glumly in the I/Comfort/6, while every detail of his quarrel with his wife was displayed on Small Suva’s monitor, illuminating the hopelessness of Suva’s position and, worst of all, his own fault.
“Yes, she won’t forgive me, and she can’t forgive me,” Stepan Arkadyich moaned when the Memory ended. Small Stiva made a consoling chirp and piped, “Now, master: She might forgive you.”
Stiva waved off the words of consolation. “The most awful thing about it is that it’s all my fault-all my fault, though I’m not to blame. That’s the point of the whole situation.”
“Quite right,” Small Stiva agreed.
“Oh, oh, oh!” Stiva moaned in despair, while Small Stiva motored closer, angled his small, squattish frame 35 degrees forward at the midsection, and rubbed his domed head in a catlike gesture against his master’s belly. Stepan Arkadyich then re-cued the Memory on the monitor and stared desolately at the most unpleasant part: the first minute when, on coming, happy and good-humored, from the theater, with a huge pear in his hand for his wife, he had found his wife in her bedroom viewing the unlucky communiqué that revealed everything.
She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household details, supervising the mécaniciennes, limited in her ideas, had been sitting perfectly still while the incriminating communiqué played on the monitor of her Class III, Dolichka, and looking at him with an expression of horror, despair, and indignation. Dolichka, despite the rounded simplicity of her forms, appeared equally distraught, and her perfectly circular peach-colored eyes glowed fiercely from her ovoid silver faceplate.
“What’s this?” Dolly asked, gesturing wildly toward the images displayed upon Dolichka’s midsection.
Stepan Arkadyich, as is so often the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had met his wife’s words. What happened to him at that instant happens to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed toward his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even-anything would have been better than what he did do-his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyich, who from his work at the Ministry understood the simple science of motor response)-utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile. Still worse, Small Stiva emitted a nervous, high-pitched series of chirps, clearly indicating a guilty thought-string.