The only thing missing was the loving couple. Every time there was heard the creak of the opened door, the conversation in the crowd died away, and everybody looked round expecting to see the bride and bridegroom come in. But the door had opened more than ten times, and each time it was either a belated guest or guests, who joined the circle of the invited on the right, or a spectator, who had eluded the II/Policeman/56s, and went to join the crowd of outsiders on the left. The Galena Box sent its waves of oscillation through the room, but was proving insufficient to dampen the mood of confused anxiety; both the guests and the outside public had by now passed through all the phases of anticipation. The long delay began to be positively discomforting, and relations and guests tried to look as if they were not thinking of the bridegroom but were engrossed in conversation.
At last one of the ladies, glancing at her I/Hourprotector/8, said, “It really is strange, though!” and all the guests became uneasy and began loudly expressing their wonder and dissatisfaction.
Kitty meanwhile had long ago been quite ready, and in her white dress and long veil and wreath of orange blossoms she was standing in the drawing room of the Shcherbatskys’ house. Beside her was her pink-flushed Class III, Tatiana, one of the last beloved-companions left in Moscow. Kitty had been allowed to forestall her Class III’s collection for “adjustment” until after the wedding, thanks to the intercession of her father, Prince Shcherbatsky with a childhood friend who sat on the Higher Branches. (“A girl cannot be wed without the soothful presence of her Class III,” the prince had pleaded; meanwhile, all across Russia, less well-connected brides were somehow making do.) Tatiana was looking out of the window, and had been for more than half an hour piping a soft and calming lullaby from her Third Bay, to keep her mistress from becoming too anxious that her bridegroom was not yet at the church.
Levin meanwhile, in his trousers, but without his coat and waistcoat, was walking to and fro in his room at the hotel, with Socrates pacing directly behind him, his beard clanking. (He, too, had been granted a reprieve, exhausting the favors due to the old prince). Man and machine took turns poking their heads out of the door and looking up and down the corridor. But in the corridor there was no sign of the Class II who had been dispatched to bring Levin his shirtfront, which had been forgotten. The shirtfront had been left at home by Levin’s best man, Stepan Arkadyich, who placed the blame on Small Stiva-or rather, the absence of Small Stiva. Oblonsky had assumed that his beloved-companion, ever mindful of such details, would bring the necessary accoutrements, and it slipped his mind entirely that his dear friend was by now at a Robot Processing Facility in Vladivostok, in deep Surcease with his mechanical guts splayed out on a workbench.
While Socrates frantically paced, Levin addressed Stepan Arkadyich, who was smoking serenely.
“Was ever a man in such a fearful fool’s position?” he said.
“Yes, it is stupid, and I feel awful,” Stepan Arkadyich assented, smiling soothingly. “I’m a simple block of wood without my Little Samovar. But don’t worry, it’ll be brought directly.”
“No, what is to be done!” said Levin, with smothered fury. “What if it’s been lost?”
“It’s not been lost,” reassured Stepan Arkadyich.
“It may have been lost. Yes, probably it’s lost,” intoned Socrates.
“That is not helpful,” said Stepan Arkadyich with a glare suggesting a wish that Socrates, too, were in a Vladivostok R.P.F. Addressing himself to Levin, he said: “Just wait a bit! It will come round.”
And so while the bridegroom was expected at the church, he was pacing about his room like a caged Huntbear, peeping out into the corridor, and with horror and despair recalling what absurd things he had said to Kitty and what she might be thinking now.
At last the II/Runner/470 zipped into the room with the shirt held aloft from a pincer, like a dog with a bagged quail. Three minutes later Levin ran full speed into the corridor not looking at his I/Hourprotector/8 for fear of aggravating his sufferings.
“It’s eleven thirty…,” moaned Socrates, motoring quickly behind him. “eleven thirty-one! We are very late, very late indeed!”
“Not helpful,” sighed Stepan Arkadyich as he tossed his cigarette into an ashtray, where it sputtered, hissed, and disappeared. “Not helpful at all.”
CHAPTER 3
“THEY’VE COME!” “Here he is!” “Which one? The tall yellow robot?” “No, fool! The robot’s master!” “Rather young, eh?” were the comments in the crowd, when Levin at last walked with Socrates into the church.
Stepan Arkadyich told his wife the cause of the delay, and the guests were whispering it with smiles to one another. Levin saw nothing and no one; he did not take his eyes off his bride as she walked up the aisle toward him.
Everyone said she had lost her looks dreadfully of late, and was not nearly so pretty on her wedding day as usual; but Levin did not think so. He looked at her hair done up high, with the long white veil and white flowers and the high, stand-up, scalloped collar, her strikingly slender figure, and it seemed to him that she looked better than ever-not because her beauty was accented by these flowers, this veil, this gown from Paris, and by the gentle pink backlight shed by Tatiana-but because, in spite of the elaborate sumptuousness of her attire, the expression of her sweet face, of her eyes, of her lips was still her own characteristic expression of guileless truthfulness.
“I was beginning to think you meant to run away,” she said, and smiled at him.
“It’s so stupid, what happened to me, I’m ashamed to speak of it!” he said, reddening.
Dolly came up, tried to say something, but could not speak, cried, and then laughed unnaturally. She was more affected than she had anticipated by the absence of Dolichka. How perfectly ridiculous, she thought, to have no nimble metal fingers to hand her tissues, no strong metal shoulder to lean on, at her own sister’s wedding!
Kitty looked at her, and at all the guests, with the same absent eyes as Levin.
Meanwhile the officiating clergy had gotten into their vestments, and the priest and deacon came out to the lectern, which stood in the forepart of the church. The priest turned to Levin saying something, but it was a long while before Levin could make out what was expected of him. For a long time they tried to set him right and made him begin again-because he kept taking Kitty by the wrong arm or with the wrong arm-till he understood at last that what he had to do was, without changing his position, to take her right hand in his right hand. When at last he had taken the bride’s hand in the correct way, the priest walked a few paces in front of them and stopped at the lectern. The crowd of friends and relations moved after them, with a buzz of talk and a rustle of skirts. Someone stooped down and pulled out the bride’s train. The church became so still that one could hear the faint buzz of the I/Lumiére/7s in their sconces.
All eyes were fixed upon the altar, and no one noticed that outside the church, the II/Policeman/56s were motoring in arbitrary circles, periodically colliding harmlessly, a sure sign of having been severely, and purposefully, maltuned.