Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the room, Dolichka springing pneumatically along behind her. Since then, Dolly had refused to see her husband.
“But what’s to be done? What’s to be done?” he said to Small Stiva in despair, but the little Class III had no answer.
CHAPTER 2
STEPAN ARKADYICH was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He wasn’t the type to tell small, self-consoling lies to his Class III, and Small Stiva was programmed to console, but not to offer or confirm dishonest impressions. So Stiva was incapable of pretending that he repented of his conduct, either to himself or to his Class III. He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her. He had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out quite the other way.
He idly activated the Galena Box, praying the gentle fluttering of the Class I device’s thinly hammered groznium panels would have their usual salutary effect on his disposition.
“Oh, it’s awful!” said Stepan Arkadyich to Small Stiva, who echoed him, chirping “Awful awful awful” from his Vox-Em, but neither could think of anything to be done. “And how well things were going up till now!”
“How well you got on,” noted the Class III, falling into his familiar role as comforter and confidant.
“She was contented and happy in her children!”
“You never interfered with her in anything!”
“I let her manage the children and the Is and IIs just as she liked. It’s true it’s bad her having been a mécanicienne in our own house.”
“Yes, bad. Very very very very bad!”
“There’s something common, vulgar, in flirting with one’s mécanicienne, in getting the grease-oil on one’s cuffs, as it is said. Oh-but what a mécanicienne!” Responding unhesitatingly to his master’s implied request, Small Stiva cued his monitor with a flattering Memory of Mile Roland: her roguish black eyes; her smile; her figure slyly making itself known within her silver jumpsuit.
Stiva sighed, and Small Stiva sighed with him, and in unison they murmured, “But what is to be done?”
Small Stiva had a relatively advanced empathetic and communicative function, compared for instance to Dolly’s Class III, Dolichka, whose Vox-Em could barely produce sentences-but on the other hand, she had more advanced use of her end-effectors. Small Stiva’s stubby midtorso appendages were several clicks short of full phalangeal function. His short legs worked adequately on their pistons, but Stiva’s Class III was for all intents and purposes a very clever little torso and head. In moments of pique or jovial teasing, Stiva called him his little bustling samovar.
Drawing a deep breath of air into his broad, bare chest, Stepan Arkadyich walked to the window with his usual confident step, turning out his feet that carried his full frame so easily. He pulled up the blind and signaled Small Stiva to bring him his clothes and boots and activate the II/Sartorial/943. The Class II automaton motored to life, a pair of long, flat “arms” unfolding and extending forward from the sides of its hatbox-sized body as it wheeled over to Stiva on its thick treads. As Stiva settled into his comfortable armchair and presented his face and neck, one of the Class II’s end-effectors grew thick with shaving cream, and from the other flicked forth a gleaming silver straight razor.
As the II/Sartorial/943 began carefully lathering Stepan Arkadyich’s cheeks and jowls, Small Stiva emitted a series of three sharp pings: A communiqué was arriving. Stiva gestured for his little beloved-companion to play it, and soon his face brightened.
“My sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomorrow,” he said, checking for a minute the efficient end-effector of the II/Sartorial/943 cutting a pink path through his long, curly whiskers.
As the communiqué from Anna Arkadyevna concluded, Small Stiva’s whole frontal display lit up brightly, and his gleaming dome of a head spun rapidly around atop his little body. He, like his master, realized the significance of this arrival-that is, that Anna Arkadyevna, the sister Stiva was so fond of, might bring about a reconciliation between husband and wife.
“Alone, or with her husband?” the Class III inquired.
As he opened his mouth to answer, the II/Sartorial/943 let out a shriek as loud and piercing as a boiling kettle and sank the razor end-effector deeply into Stiva’s top lip, causing him to jerk backward and yelp.
“Ah! Ah!” he shouted in genuine pain, hot blood streaming from the wound into his mouth and down his neck. The Class II screeched again, deafeningly, its razor-tipped end-effector drawn back for a second slash. Stepan Arkadyich raised his hands feebly before his face, trying to protect his eyes, and to wave away the noxious cloud of sweet perfume the II/Sartorial/943 was spraying from the Third Bay at the base of its midsection. The Class II swept its blood-smeared end-effector directly at Stepan Arkadyich’s plump neck, nicking his Adam’s apple and missing the carotid artery by a matter of inches.
Stepan Arkadyich hollered wildly over the din of the Class II’s feverish beeping. “The thing is maltuned! It’s become maleficent! Small Stiva!”
But Small Stiva, programmed in keeping with the Iron Laws to defend his master even past the point of his own destruction, was already in action. The loyal Class III bent forward at a 45-degree angle and launched himself like a little cannonball directly into the black metal frame of the malfunctioning robot. The II/Sartorial/943 was knocked off its treads and thrown across the room, where it smashed against the glass top of the comfort unit.
“Bravo, little samovar,” said Stepan Arkadyich through his wadded handkerchief, which he had stuffed up against his lip in a half-successful effort to staunch the crimson flow from his face.
The Class II’s horrid beeping had not yet ceased, and the malfunctioning of the sartorial unit was more dire than Stepan Arkadyich had realized. It righted itself and shot back across the floor with demonic energy, whirling gyroscopically as it came, firing hot, thick globs of shaving cream toward Stepan Arkadyich’s eyes, its straight-razored end-effector swinging in wild, deadly circles. Stepan Arkadyich cowered back into the corner, his arms flung up helplessly before him.