Somehow, in the crazed, fiery moments after the collision, Vronsky kicked open the door of the cockpit and rolled onto the match ground.
“A-a-a!” groaned Vronsky, clutching at his head, tearing his helmet from it, tiny fires still burning on various spots of his body. “Ah! What have I done!” he cried. “The battle lost! And my fault! Shameful, unpardonable! And the poor darling, ruined machine! Ah! What have I done!”
A crowd of men, a doctor and his assistant, the officers of his regiment, ran up to him as he exited the arena. To his misery he felt that he was whole and barely burnt, but the poor machine had been wounded past repair, and it was decided to junker it. Vronsky could not answer questions, could not speak to anyone. He turned, and leaving his helmet in a charred mess by the pond, walked away from the match course, not knowing where he was going. He felt utterly wretched. For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond remedy, and caused by his own fault.
Half an hour later Vronsky had regained his self-possession. But the memory of that Cull remained for long in his heart, the cruelest and bitterest memory of his life.
CHAPTER 15
WHEN ALEXEI ALEXANDROVICH reached the death-match arena Anna was already sitting in the stands beside Betsy, in that area where all the highest society had gathered. She caught sight of her husband in the distance. Two men, her husband and her lover, were the two centers of her existence, and even unaided by Android Karenina’s vibratory sensors she was aware of their nearness. She was aware of her husband approaching a long way off, and she could not help following him in the surging crowd in the midst of which he was moving. She watched his progress toward the pavilion, saw him now responding condescendingly to an ingratiating bow, now exchanging friendly and nonchalant greetings with his equals, now assiduously trying to catch the eye of some great one of this world, and tapping his metal cheek with an elegant forefinger. All these ways of his she knew, and all were hateful to her. Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that’s all there is in his soul, she thought. As for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for getting on.
From his glances toward the ladies’ pavilion she saw that his mechanical oculus was scanning the stands for her, but she purposely avoided noticing him.
“Alexei Alexandrovich!” Princess Betsy called to him. “I’m sure you don’t see your wife: here she is.”
He smiled his chilly smile, and his metal face glinted almost beautifully in the bright sun.
“There’s so much splendor here that one’s eyes are dazzled,” he said, and then added, humorlessly “or rather, one’s eye.” He smiled to his wife as a man should smile on meeting his wife after only just parting from her, and greeted the princess and other acquaintances. There was an interval between the races, and so nothing hindered conversation. An adjutant-general expressed his disapproval of the death matches, and Alexei Alexandrovich, carrying when he spoke the authority of the Higher Branches, defended them at length, explaining grandiloquently why the contests had been deemed necessary by those in a position to understand their importance.
Anna heard his high, measured tones, not losing one word, and every word struck her as false and stabbed her ears with pain.
When the Cull was beginning and the dazzle of heavy fire lit up the course, she bent forward and gazed with fixed eyes at Vronsky as he went up to his Exterior and climbed inside it, and at the same time she heard that loathsome, never-ceasing voice of her husband. She was in an agony of terror for Vronsky, but a still greater agony was the never-ceasing, as it seemed to her, stream of her husband’s shrill voice with its familiar intonations.
“I’m a wicked woman, a lost woman,” she said in a grave whisper to Android Karenina. “But I don’t like lying, I can’t endure falsehood, while as for him-” her eyes flickering quickly toward her husband-“it’s the breath of his life, falsehood. He knows all about it, he sees it all; what does he care if he can talk so calmly? If he were to kill me, if he were to kill Vronsky, I might respect him. No, all he wants is falsehood and propriety.” Android Karenina offered no reply, other than to decorously suggest, with a small motion of one hand, that her mistress would do well to lower her voice.
Anna did not understand that Alexei Alexandrovich’s peculiar loquacity that day, so exasperating to her, was merely the expression of his inward distress and uneasiness. As a child who has been hurt skips about, putting all his muscles into movement to drown the pain, so in that same way Alexei Alexandrovich needed mental exercise to drown the thoughts of his wife that, in her presence and in Vronsky’s, and with the continual iteration of his name, would force themselves on his attention. And it was as natural for him to talk well and cleverly as it is natural for a child to skip about.
“Princess, bets!” sounded Stepan Arkadyich’s voice from below, addressing Betsy. “Who’s your favorite?”
“Anna and I are for Kuzovlev,” replied Betsy. “That thing looks well-nigh impenetrable!”
“I’m for Vronsky. A Class One on it? Winner’s choice?”
“Done!”
“But it is a pretty sight, isn’t it?”
Alexei Alexandrovich paused in what he was saying while there was talking about him, but he began again directly.
“I admit that manly sports do not…,” he was continuing.
But at that moment the racers started, and all conversation ceased. Alexei Alexandrovich too was silent, and everyone stood up and turned toward the stream. Alexei Alexandrovich took no interest in the Cull, and so he did not watch the combatants, but fell listlessly to scanning the spectators with his weary eyes. His mechanized eye bore into Anna.
Her face was white and set. She was obviously seeing nothing but one Exterior, thinking of no one but the man inside it. Her hand had convulsively clutched her fan, and she held her breath. Alexei Alexandrovich looked at her and hastily turned away, scrutinizing other faces.
“But here’s this lady too, and others very much moved as well; it’s very natural,” Alexei Alexandrovich thought for the benefit of the Face, but the Face did not answer-did it chuckle? was it possible he heard a droll, low chuckle reverberating in the chambers of his mind?-and he gazed as if absently through his I/Binocular/8 and tried to remain calm. He tried not to look at her, but unconsciously his gaze was drawn to her. His oculus scanned her again, trying not to read what was so plainly written on her face, and against his own will, with horror read on it what he did not want to know.
The first massive collisions-when the arachnid Exterior was exploded by the hussar’s missile and sent its razor-sharp leg into the neck of the shambling golem suit-these agitated everyone, but Alexei Alexandrovich saw distinctly on Anna’s pale, triumphant face that the man she was watching had not fallen. A shudder of horror passed over the whole public, but Alexei Alexandrovich saw that Anna did not even notice it, and had some difficulty in realizing what everyone was talking of. But more and more often, and with greater persistence, he watched her. Anna, wholly engrossed as she was with the Cull, became aware of her husband’s cold eyes fixed upon her from one side.
She glanced round for an instant, looked inquiringly at him, and with a slight frown turned away again.
“Ah, I don’t care!” he thought he saw her say to her android, and she did not once glance at him again.
CHAPTER 16
THE CULL WAS UNUSUALLY, even disturbingly successful in its purpose of identifying the weak officers and the strong: mere minutes into the bout, more than half of the seventeen officers competing had already been downed, and half of that number clearly had not survived.