“Please, your Excellency,” said the target boy. “Perhaps-”
The Englishman rolled his eyes and walloped him on the back of the head. “It’s only a half-power round.”
Vronsky, as comfortable in Frou-Frou’s familiar confines as a child in the womb, directed his Exterior to shoot, and shoot she did, loosing a jolt of pure electric force from behind the face grill directly at the target boy. Though it was indeed only a half-power jolt, when Vronsky climbed out of the suit and he and the Englishmen stepped from the shed into the sunlight, they left the target boy behind them, his body shivering as he slowly recovered on the rock-hard floor of the silo.
“Well, I rely on you, then,” Vronsky said to the Englishman. “Half past six on the ground.”
“All right,” said the Englishman. “Ah, where are you going, my lord?” he asked suddenly, using the title which he had scarcely ever used before.
Vronsky in amazement raised his head, and stared, as he knew how to stare, not into the Englishman’s eyes, but at his forehead, astounded at the impertinence of his question. But realizing that in asking this the Englishman had been looking at him not as an employer, but as a combatant, he answered:
“I’ve got to pay a visit; I shall be home within an hour.” He blushed, a thing which rarely happened to him.
The Englishman looked gravely at him; and, as though he, too, knew where Vronsky was going, he added: “The important thing’s to keep quiet before a contest. Don’t get out of temper or upset about anything. And watch the roads. The rumor is circulating that UnConSciya has mined the roads around the arena with emotion bombs.” Vronsky scowled. Emotion bombs were a nasty business: detonators triggered by mood-based physiological surges in passersby, such as their perspiration chemistry.
“All right,” answered Vronsky, and departed, still wearing the set of miniaturized sense-plates attached to his body, with which he would later resume his connection with Frou-Frou-and through which, via vibratory telegraphy, the engineer could monitor his physiological condition until then.
Before he had driven many paces away, the dark clouds that had been threatening rain all day broke, and there was a heavy downpour.
CHAPTER 11
THE RAIN DID NOT last long, and by the time Vronsky arrived at the Karenins’ the sun had peeped out again, the roofs of the summer villas and the old lime trees in the gardens on both sides of the principal streets sparkled with wet brilliance, and from the twigs came a pleasant drip and from the roofs rushing streams of water. He thought no more of the shower spoiling the match ground, but was rejoicing now that-thanks to the rain-he would be sure to find her at home and alone, as he knew that Alexei Alexandrovich had not moved from Petersburg.
Hoping to find her alone, Vronsky alighted, as he always did, to avoid attracting attention, before crossing the bridge, and walked to the house. He did not go up the steps to the street door, but went into the court.
“Has your master come?” he asked a mécanicien, who was irritatedly tinkering with a maltuned II/Topiary/42-9.
“No, sir. The mistress is at home. But will you please go to the front door; there are II/Footmen/74s there,” the mécanicien answered. “They’ll open the door.”
“No, I’ll go in from the garden.”
And feeling satisfied that she was alone, and wanting to take her by surprise, since he had not promised to be there today, and she would certainly not expect him to come before the match, he walked, with one hand on the handle of his hot-whip, and stepping cautiously over the sandy path bordered with flowers to the terrace that looked out upon the garden. Vronsky forgot now all that he had thought on the way of the hardships and difficulties of their position. He thought of nothing but that he would see her directly, not in imagination, but living, all of her, as she was in reality.
Anna Karenina was sitting on the terrace waiting for the return of her son, who had gone out for his walk and been caught in the rain. She had sent a II/Porter/7e62 and a II/Maid/467 out to scan for him. Dressed in a white gown, deeply embroidered, she was sitting in a corner of the terrace watering some flowers with a Class I water-spritzer, which sensed the precise amount of mist to properly water each individual leaf and stem, and therefore did not hear him. In his Cull undersuit, with the dozen electrodes still attached to various vital points along his body, Vronsky was aware that he must look strange and vulnerable. Bowing her curly black head, she pressed her forehead against a cool watering pot that stood on the parapet, and both her lovely hands, with the rings he knew so well, clasped the pot. The beauty of her whole figure, her head, her neck, her hands, struck Vronsky every time as something new and unexpected. He stood still, gazing at her in ecstasy. His heart palpitated rapidly; at the same moment, away in the battleground silo, the English engineer, monitoring Vronsky’s telemetry readings on a Class I physiolographer, grimaced at the way his pulse was escalating.
But, just as he was about to make a step to come nearer to her, Anna was aware of his presence, pushed away the watering pot, and turned her flushed face toward him.
“What’s the matter? You are ill?” he said to her in French, going up to her. He would have run to her, but remembering that there might be spectators, he looked round toward the balcony door, and reddened a little, as he always reddened, feeling that he had to be afraid and be on his guard.
“No, I’m quite well,” she said, getting up and pressing his outstretched hand tightly. “I did not expect… thee. What in God’s name are you wearing?”
“Mercy! What cold hands!” he said, and quickly he explained the undersuit and the need for his vital signs to be monitored in the hours preceding the Cull.
“You startled me,” she said. “I’m alone, and expecting Seryozha. He’s out for a walk; they’ll come in from this side.”
But, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were quivering.
“Forgive me for coming, but I couldn’t pass the day without seeing you,” he went on, speaking in French, as he always did to avoid using the stiff Russian plural form, so impossibly frigid between them, and the dangerously intimate singular.
“Forgive you? I’m so glad!”
“But you’re ill or worried,” he went on, not letting go her hands and bending over her. “What were you thinking of?”
“Always the same thing,” she said, with a smile, and back in the stable the engineer muttered a curse in English, watching the various needles of his box shoot up into the red.
Anna had spoken the truth. If ever at any moment she had been asked what she was thinking of, she could have answered truly: of the same thing, of her happiness and her unhappiness. She was thinking, just when he came upon her, of this: Why was it that to others it was all easy, while to her it was such torture? Today this thought gained special poignancy from certain other considerations. She asked him about the impending death matches. He answered her questions, and, seeing that she was agitated, trying to calm her, he began telling her in the simplest tone the details of his preparations for the races.
Tell him or not tell him? she thought, looking into his quiet, affectionate eyes. He is so happy, so absorbed in his upcoming Cull that he won’t understand as he ought, he won’t understand all the gravity of this fact to us.