“And what right had he to look at him like that?” Anna said to her android, recalling Vronsky’s glance at Alexei Alexandrovich. Undressing, she went into the bedroom, and sent Android Karenina, as was appropriate, into Surcease; but her face had none of the eagerness that, during her stay in Moscow, had fairly flashed from her eyes and her smile; on the contrary, now the fire seemed quenched in her, hidden somewhere far away.
PART TWO: VOYAGE OF THE SHCHERBATSKYS
CHAPTER 1
AT THE END OF THE WINTER, in the Shcherbatskys’ house, a consultation was being held, which was to pronounce on the state of Kitty’s health and the measures to be taken to restore her failing strength. It was hoped by her family that she was suffering from nothing worse than a broken heart. But she had been severely ill, and as spring came on she grew worse. A celebrated physician was called in, and, with his valise crammed full of the latest physiolographical instruments, accompanied by an industrious hospital-green Class II with an impressive effector array, he examined the patient.
For more than an hour the doctor ran his Class I physiometers along every inch of Kitty Shcherbatskaya’s naked flesh, carefully working the thread-thin vital-estimators into her windpipe and the chambers of her ears, listening with his echolocater pressed against the sides of her skull. Throughout this invasive and degrading process, Princess Shcherbatskaya, the patient’s mother, hovered anxiously at the edges of the room, as did Tatiana, the lithe, balletic Class III who had, as yet, been little used and hardly noticed by her ailing mistress.
“Well, doctor, decide our fate,” said the princess. “Tell me everything.”
“Yes, yes, tell! What hope is there? Is there hope?” said La Scherbatskaya, the princess’s Class III, wringing her hands beside her mistress.
“Princess. Allow me to examine the results of the various physiolographs and then I will have the honor of laying my opinion before you.”
“So we had better leave you?”
“As you please.”
When the doctor was left alone, he flicked on his II/Prognosis/M4, and fed into it all the data he had collected. After thirty long seconds, during which the wise little machine ran its efficient tabulation of the various symptoms that had been discovered, the Class II reported that there was possibly a commencement of tuberculosis trouble… that there were indications: malnutrition, nervous excitability, and so on.
The celebrated physician looked impatiently at the Class II. “Yes, but in the presence of tuberculosis indications, what is to be done to maintain nutrition?”
The Class II mulled over this follow-up, a faint steam indicative of second-tier information-processing escaping from its Third Bay, while the doctor glanced at his gold-plated watch and waited, thinking about the opera. Meanwhile in the drawing room the family whispered anxiously, surrounding Kitty where she lay prostrate on the sofa, blushing and anticipating her fate. Her Class III, Tatiana, performed nervous jetés from one corner of the room to the other.
At last the physician received the final results from the Class II and entered the drawing room. When the doctor came in, Kitty flushed crimson and her eyes filled with tears. All her illness and treatment struck her as a thing so stupid, ludicrous even! Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders and vitasonic recalibrations? But she could not grieve her mother, especially as her mother considered herself to blame.
“May I trouble you to sit down, princess?” the celebrated doctor said to her.
He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again began asking her tiresome questions. Suddenly sensing an opportunity to be of use to her mistress, Tatiana pirouetted over and took first position directly between the doctor and Kitty.
“Excuse me, doctor,” she said, her sweet, still-developing soprano Vox-Em tone showing surprising strength. “But there is really no object in this. For this is the third time you’ve asked her the same things!” Kitty looked up with wide-eyed gratitude at this intercession, experiencing for the first time that mysterious feeling of true, deep kinship between a human and her beloved-companion; and then, arm in arm, Kitty Shcherbatskaya and her pink-hued android left the room.
The celebrated doctor did not take offense.
“What a charming Class III,” he said to the princess. “However, I had finished…”
And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess, repeating word for word the phrases he had heard only a few minutes earlier from the II/Prognosis/M4. At the question whether they should “go abroad,” the doctor plunged into deep meditation, as though resolving a weighty problem. He glanced furtively at the Class II, saw it indicate yes with a barely perceptible 2.5-degree head unit rotation, and thusly pronounced his decision: they were to “go abroad,” but to put no faith in foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need.
It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass after the doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful when she went back to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to be more cheerful. She even spent a half hour walking the grounds of the estate with Tatiana, which made the rose-accented Class III immeasurably joyful.
“Really, I’m quite well, Mamma. But if you want to go abroad, let’s go!” she said, and trying to appear interested in the proposed tour, she began talking of the preparations for the journey.
So it was that several weeks later the Shcherbatskys marked the coming of Lent by giving up their terrestrial moorings. They traveled first by Puller carriage and then by Grav to Russia’s grand departure port, the town of Pushkin, where stood the pride of the century: the Ballistic Cross-Orbital Cannon.
Thus were the Scherbatskys blasted into space.
CHAPTER 2
THE HIGHEST PETERSBURG SOCIETY is essentially one: in it everyone knows everyone else, everyone visits everyone else. But this great set has its subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close ties in various circles of this highest society. One circle was her husband’s government official set, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates in the Higher Branches of the Ministry of Robotics and State Administration. Anna found it difficult now to recall the feeling of almost awe-stricken reverence that she had at first entertained for these persons, who were together responsible for the management and advancement of groznium-derived technologies, and therefore for the welfare of all Mother Russia. Now she knew all of them as people know one another in a country town; she knew their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched each one of them. She knew their relations with one another and with the head authorities, knew who was for whom, and how each one maintained his position, and where they agreed and disagreed.
The second circle with which Anna had ties was preeminently the fashionable world-the world of floating balls, of dinners, of sumptuous dresses. Her connection with this circle was kept up through Princess Betsy Tverskaya, her cousin’s wife, who had an income of a hundred and twenty thousand rubles, and who had taken a great fancy to Anna since she came of age and received her Class III, showed her much attention, and drew her into her set, which followed all the latest trends.
Anna had at first avoided as far as she could Princess Tverskaya’s world, because it necessitated an expenditure beyond her means, and besides in her heart she preferred the first circle. But since her visit to Moscow she had done quite the contrary. She avoided her serious-minded friends in that circle around the Ministry, and went out into the fashionable world. There she saw Vronsky, and experienced an agitating joy at those meetings. She met Vronsky especially often at Betsy’s, for Betsy was a Vronsky by birth and his cousin. Vronsky was everywhere where he had any chance of meeting Anna and speaking to her, when he could, of his love. She gave him no encouragement, but every time she met him there surged up in her heart that same feeling of quickened life that had come upon her that day in the Grav, when he saw her for the first time. She was conscious herself that her delight sparkled in her eyes and curved her lips into a smile, and she could not quench the expression of this delight.