“It’s… my Lord, it’s…” Vronsky stammered.
“It is our chance, Alexei,” cried Anna. “For God’s sake, run!”
This alien was the first of many.
Twitching, snarling, slavering, their massive reptilian heads bubbling with eyeballs; their craggy, ridged snouts ending in knife-like beaks; their clutching, slashing claws; their long, scaly tails dragging against the lush carpets-the aliens poured in a great, fearsome horde into the Petersburg Vox Fourteen, dozens and dozens of them, yowling in a loud, high-pitched shriek as they sped up and down the aisles.
But the Vox Fourteen was well defended, more so than anyone had realized: the Toy Soldiers, robots in the form of men, were, it seemed, everywhere. As Vronsky and Anna rushed headlong for the exits, all over the Vox Fourteen people jumped to their feet and revealed themselves to be robots. Husbands, wives, soldiers, singers-hundreds of pretend people, all secreted by the Ministry of Security among the thousands of theatergoers; as, it was later realized, they must have been secreted everywhere. As their shocked companions watched, their faces wavered, blurred, disappeared, and were replaced by the deadly weapon-faces of the Toy Soldiers, and they joined combat with the Honored Guests.
But as has been the way of combat since the times of the Greeks and Romans, it was those with the least stake in the conflict who suffered the most grievously: as the robotic Toy Soldiers defended the Petersburg Vox Fourteen from the onslaught of the alien invaders, it was the human beings who died. The robots shot at the aliens and the humans were caught in the crossfire; the aliens slashed and tore at the robots and the humans were slashed and torn. Not one in ten made it out alive; not one in ten escaped the scalding glow of the smoker or the ragged claw of the lizard-beast, or the trampling boot heels of their fellow theatergoers, desperate for escape.
By morning the stage of the Vox Fourteen was littered with blood and bodies, the aisles with shredded hunks of alien flesh, the orchestra pit with groznium shrapnel and tangles of wire. But Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky had long since made their escape.
By the time the first fingers of dawn crept along the windowsills and into her rented rooms, Anna was packing hurriedly. They were fugitives now, and both knew it. Some new life would have to be forged, a new place found; the alien threat aside, she and Vronsky had obviously earned the status of outlaws, fugitives from the strange new society that was being built-under the leadership, Anna thought darkly, of her own husband.
When Vronsky went up to her, she was in the same dress as she had worn at the theater, madly throwing her things into a valise; as each new article of clothing was tossed in, Android Karenina rapidly took it up again, folded it neatly with fast-flying phalangeals, and placed it back in careful order.
TWITCHING, SNARLING, THEIR MASSIVE REPTILIAN HEADS BUBBLING WITH EYEBALLS, THE ALIENS POURED INTO THE OPERA HOUSE
“Anna,” said Vronsky, passionately, “I nearly lost you.”
“You, you are to blame for everything!” she cried, with tears of despair and hatred in her voice.
“I begged, I implored you not to go, I knew it would be unpleasant…”
“Unpleasant!” she cried. “Hideous! Those men-”
“Robots, Anna, they are robots!”
“You think I don’t know that! As long as I live I shall never forget it. But I will tell you Alexei, those vicious robot soldiers and bloodthirsty creatures were scarcely worse than the sneering expression of Madame Kartasov and her husband.”
“In fairness, Kartasov was also a robot.”
She scowled and continued her feverish preparations for departure.
“Forget it, you must forget all that,” said Vronsky, pacing back and forth, Lupo at his heels. “There are more important things to occupy us now.”
“I hate your calm. You ought not to have brought me to this. If you had loved me…”
“Anna! How does the question of my love come in?”
“Oh, if you loved me, as I love, if you were tortured as I am…!” she said, looking at him with an expression of terror.
He was sorry for her, and angry notwithstanding. He assured her of his love because he saw that this was the only means of soothing her, and he did not reproach her in words, but in his heart he reproached her. He spoke softly to her again of a place he knew, where they could be together and be safe, at least for now, along with their Class Ills.
And the asseverations of his love, which seemed to him so vulgar that he was ashamed to utter them, she drank in eagerly, and gradually became calmer. The next hour, completely reconciled, they and their battered beloved-companions left for the country.
PART SIX: THE QUEEN OF THE JUNKERS
CHAPTER 1
THEY WILL COME for us in three ways”
It was this strange phrase that was on everyone’s lips in the days and weeks after the terrible violence at the Vox Fourteen. “They will come for us in three ways,” a strange scrap of liturgy from the discredited quasi-religion of xenotheologism, once in vogue in certain corners of Moscow and Petersburg, long since discarded along with its primary adherents, women like the farcical Madame Stahl.
“They will come for us in three ways.”
There was no doubting that they had come in one way, not as benevolent light-beings but as the awful, screeching humanoid lizard-things that had wreaked such havoc and spilled the blood of so many Russians at the Vox Fourteen. If, indeed, there was any wisdom in that strange, old, tattered bit of liturgy, then what were the other two ways? And were they to be feared as much as the first? Questions abounded, fears doubled and redoubled, anxious rumors tore wildly like II/Coachman/6-less carriages through the streets of Petersburg and Moscow. One thing that all could agree on was how fortunate it was, on the night of the terrible attack, that so many of the new, powerful, perfectly humanoid Class IV robots had been present to fight off the foe.
Having previously labored to hide the shocking fact of this new creation from society, the Higher Branches of the Ministry of Robotics and State Administration now shifted gears, as it were, proudly proclaiming the arrival of the new generation of servomechanism, proclaiming the Class IV robots Mother Russia’s newest and greatest protectors, whether against lizard-like creatures from the starry beyond, or the scientist-terrorist schemers of UnConSciya. To this much-heralded revelation was coupled, almost incidentally, the confirmation of another rumor: No, came this further announcement from the councils of the Ministry, the old beloved-companion robots would not be coming back. The circuitry adjustment, it seemed, had been a failure; the old machines, due to an inherent and previously undetected flaw in design, could not be properly brought up to date.
And thus, at a stroke, the ancient class of beloved-companion robots entered its obsolescence.
In Moscow, the onion-shaped bulb of the Tower still revolved, framed now by two plumes of black and purple smoke-emanating, or so went the most persistent and disquieting rumor of all, from the sub-sub-basements, where the junkered Class III robots were being melted for scrap.
CHAPTER 2
THESE FOREBODING PLUMES of smoke could not be seen from the groznium mine and surrounding estate at Pokrovskoe, but the changes they represented were as much felt there as anywhere. Konstantin Levin and his new wife, Kitty, now felt united not only by the bonds of matrimony but by a common purpose: having left Socrates and Tatiana behind, disguised as battered old Class IIs, and slaving in a grimy cigarette factory, they vowed never to submit their beloved-companions for “adjustment”-now understood to be a most permanent adjustment indeed-no matter what should happen.