“I assume that a salary is the price paid for a commodity, and it ought to conform with the law of supply and demand! I consider-”
Stepan Arkadyich nervously interrupted his brother-in-law. “Yes; but you must agree that this is to be an important undertaking.”
Alexei Alexandrovich settled back in his chair. “Yes, indeed it is. Indeed it is. Do you even know what the job entails?”
Stepan Arkadyich stopped short-of the many things he had considered in preparing for this interview, he had not thought to gain actual knowledge of the requirements of the position.
Alexei Karenin slowly and with apparent relish explained: “The entire Grav-way is to be dismantled. The cars will be dismantled, the groznium rails stripped and sent to Moscow for repurposing. The magnet bed will be shut off, up and down the line.”
“But…”
“Do not fear, Stepan Arkadyich. The people of Russia will still be able to travel; they will travel, however, on a simple mechanical apparatus, rather than a groznium-powered one. The cars will be fired by the steam generated by burning heaps of noxious, dirty coal, and will run on rickety metal wheels along non-charged rails. This transportation machine we shall call a ‘train.’”
Karenin spoke with relish this last, unfamiliar word, train, taking obvious pleasure in pronouncing the thick, dull syllable.
“But-but why?” said Stepan Arkadyich.
The answer came in a brash, echoing voice, one no longer recognizable to Stepan Arkadyich as that belonging to his brother-in-law:
“WHY? WHY, FOR THE SOUL OF THE PEOPLE.”
“What?” replied Stiva helplessly.
“THE GRAV WAS SMOOTH AND EFFICIENT AND POWERFUL. THE GRAV WAS EASY. EASY THINGS MAKE US WEAK. IT IS DIFFICULTY THAT MAKES US STRONG.”
“Well, you’ll do me a great, a great-that is, a service, anyway,” said Stepan Arkadyich, cringing and stuttering slightly, “by putting in a word to Pomorsky-just in the way of conversation…”
“I WILL DO PRECISELY AS I CHOOSE.”
Karenin slammed his fist down on the table with incredible force, and Stiva thought it best to change the subject. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as he would soon realize, he had a second topic of conversation at hand.
“Now there is something I want to talk about, and you know what it is. About Anna.”
As soon as Oblonsky uttered Anna’s name, he wished he had not done so. Alexei Alexandrovich smashed his other fist down on the table, and for the first time Oblonsky noticed that Karenin’s right arm, like his face, was now composed entirely of metal. Each of his ten fingers was apparently detachable, with a screw-and-thread mechanism where the bottom knuckle connected to the hand.
“What is it exactly that you want from me?” he said, moving in his chair and snapping his pince-nez.
“A definite settlement, Alexei Alexandrovich, some settlement of the position. I’m appealing to you”-not as an injured husband, Stepan Arkadyich was going to say, but afraid of wrecking his negotiation by this, he changed the words-“not as a statesman”-which, truly, did not sound apropos-“but simply as a man, and a good-hearted man and a Christian. You must have pity on her,” he said.
As Oblonsky spoke, Karenin very slowly and with great care unscrewed his right index finger, laid it down on the desk, and screwed in its place a sleek, cruel-looking attachment. It was the approximate length of a finger, but made of solid black metal.
“That is, in what way precisely?” Karenin answered finally. He flexed the obsidian phalangeal and its tip glowed to life, a deep, menacing red. Stiva edged backward in his chair.
“Yes, pity on her. If you had seen her as I have!-I have been spending all the winter with her-you would have pity on her. Her position is awful, simply awful!”
“I had imagined,” answered Alexei Alexandrovich in a higher, almost shrill voice, “that Anna Arkadyevna had everything she had desired for herself. I have allowed them to return… let them carry on unmolested…” And here his voice seemed to transform, taking on again the booming, echoing roar.
“AND YET THEY SEND THIS WORM, THIS COWERING SPECIMEN OF HUMANITY, TO PLEAD FOR FAVORS? FOR FORGIVENESS?”
Karenin threw back his head and barked a high, shrill laugh.
“HERE IS YOUR ANSWER. TELL THEM THEY SHALL BE DESTROYED. TELL THEM I POSSESS THE POWER TO DESTROY THEM AT MY WILL, AND THIS IS MY INTENTION. TELL THEM THEY MAY RUN IF THEY CHOOSE. COWER AS THEY MIGHT, STILL I SHALL DESTROY THEM.”
“Oh, Alexei Alexandrovich, for heaven’s sake, don’t let us indulge in recriminations!” responded Stepan Arkadyich, somewhat feebly.
He shot a glance at the door, considered leaving now before the conversation proceeded further; but he really was in need of the position on the Grav committee.
“I think it’s a bit too late for that,” said Karenin, his regular, human voice back again. “Ah, wonderful. Our guest has arrived. Levitsky!”
The Toy Soldier had returned, his hand clutched on the quivering elbow of a short, stout man with a mass of red curls topped by a crumpled hat in the English style.
“I… I…”
“Bow, man, before the Tsar.”
Stepan Arkadyich was astonished all over again. He had not heard the ancient honorific “Tsar” used in his lifetime, and nor, he knew, had his father, nor his father’s father: not since the dawn of the Age of Groznium and the ascendance of the Ministry of Robotics and State Administration.
Karenin accepted the unfamiliar title as his due, gestured magisterially as Levitsky cowered before him.
“Alexei?” ventured Oblonsky.
“I suppose this matter is ended. I consider it at an end,” answered Alexei Alexandrovich calmly, though the door of the room banged open and shut on its own, while the stained-glass window imploded in a cloud of pulverized glass. Levitsky yelped in terror.
“For heaven’s sake, don’t get hot!” said Stepan Arkadyich, touching his brother-in-law’s knee and then instantly pulling his hand away, repulsed by the cold, steely feeling of the other man’s body; was there any part of him left that was human?
“Sir? Sir?” began the terrified Levitsky, and the Toy Soldier silenced him with a swift boot to the stomach. Alexei Alexandrovich rose from his chair and held his red, gleaming fingertip aloft, as if examining it in the sunlight.
Oblonsky swallowed hard.
“The life of Anna Arkadyevna can have no interest for me,” Alexei Alexandrovich said to him suddenly.
“Open your eyes!” barked the Toy Soldier to Levitsky.
“No… please…”
“Open!”
“My only interest now is in the life of the nation,” Karenin continued, crossing the room to Levitsky, while the Toy Soldier grasped his chin to hold it steady. “In the protection of the nation. That is my vision.”
He raised his red-tipped finger to the newsman’s eyes, and Stepan Arkadyich fled the room.
CHAPTER 11
IN ORDER TO CARRY THROUGH any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be either complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be undertaken.
Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.
Both Vronsky and Anna felt life in Moscow insupportable in the heat and dust, when the spring sunshine was followed by the glare of summer-especially that terrible summer, with the city streets beset by aliens, who had begun to brazenly burst into people’s homes in search of human prey. But of late there had been no agreement between Anna and Vronsky and so they went on staying in Moscow, in their state of limbo, expecting any day to hear that they had been granted amnesty and permission to marry-or that their appeal had been denied and they would be punished. Neither of them gave full utterance to their sense of grievance, but they considered each other in the wrong, and tried on every pretext to prove this to one another.