As the alien rolled off Tortoiseshell and clutched in evident agony at its burned undercarriage, a new sound welled up, as if from underground: a kind of humming… or, rather, a ticking… the alien shrieked again, blotting out the new sound for a moment, but in the next moment it returned, louder than before…
tikka tikka tikka
tikka tikka tikka
tikkatikkatikkatikkatikkatikka
And as they watched, a gigantic, long worm shot out from beneath the earth, like a slow-motion bullet fired from a Huntgun, and then loomed above them, a flat eyeless head topping a long, grey, segmented mechanical body following behind, the dread mechanical tikkatikkatikka still radiating from somewhere within.
The robots and the humans cowered together, staring wonderingly as this terrible machine.
But the Honored Guest did not stare-instead, it ran toward the prodigious worm, driven as if by instinct, bounding along in three great pumps of its lizard-like hind legs, and jumped on the back of the beast.
Their sounds then combined into one horrifying symphony: tikka tikka tikka SHRIEK-tikka tikka tikka SHRIEK-tikka tikka tikka SHRIEK-
The alien, now astride the robot-worm like a cavalry officer, let out one last yowling war cry and spurred its mount with a knobby, reptilian knee. A terrible thought struck Vronsky, as the worm contracted along the length of its articulated body and then shot up into the air: They shall come for us in three ways, he recalled. This, then, was the second way: these worm-bots, too, were alien, sent to serve and protect the terrible lizard-men.
The sinuous machine, with its rider, arced smoothly over the heads of the astonished denizens of Vozdvizhenskoe, then disappeared into a new hole in the soil.
“Merciful Saint Peter,” said Dolly, and fainted to the ground.
When she awoke she was indoors, and Count Vronsky was standing over her and smiling. He told her that Antipodal in Android Karenina’s care was slowly being restored and revivified; that Lupo with his powerful olfactory sensors was prowling the grounds of the encampment, looking for more of the wormholes. Darya Alexandrovna was interested by everything. She liked everything about Vozdvizhenskoe more than she might have expected, but most of all she liked Vronsky himself with his natural, simple-hearted eagerness. Yes, he’s a very nice, good man, she thought several times, not hearing what he said, but looking at him and penetrating into his expression, while she mentally put herself in Anna’s place. She liked him so much just now with his eager interest that she saw how Anna could be in love with him.
CHAPTER 10
SHE IS AWAKE,” Vronsky called to Anna, who responded happily and ran in to give Dolly a kiss. “I shall escort the princess to her cabin, and we’ll have a little talk,” he said, “if you would like that?” he added, turning to her.
“I shall be delighted,” answered Darya Alexandrovna, rather astonished. She saw by Vronsky’s face that he wanted something from her. She was not mistaken. As soon as they had passed through the little gate back into the garden, he looked in the direction Anna had taken, and having made sure that she could neither hear nor see them, he began:
“You guess that I have something I want to say to you,” he said, looking at her with laughing eyes. “I am not wrong in believing you to be a friend of Anna’s.” He took off his hat, and taking out his handkerchief, wiped his head, which was growing bald. Dolly made no answer, and merely stared at him with dismay. When she was left alone with him, she suddenly felt afraid; his laughing eyes and stern expression scared her. The wolf-robot, Lupo, trotted beside them, and she saw with distaste that he was working at a hunk of the alien’s hide with his back teeth. The most diverse suppositions as to what Vronsky was about to speak of to her flashed into her brain. He is going to beg me to come to stay in this rebel cantonment with them with the children, and I shall have to refuse; or isn’t it Vassenka Veslovsky and his relations with Anna? Or perhaps about Kitty, that he feels he was to blame? All her conjectures were unpleasant, but she did not guess what he really wanted to talk about to her.
“You have so much influence with Anna, she is so fond of you,” he said. “Do help me.”
Darya Alexandrovna looked with timid inquiry into his energetic face, which under the lime trees was continually being lighted up in patches by the sunshine, and then passing into complete shadow again. She waited for him to say more, but he walked in silence beside her, scratching with his cane in the gravel.
“You have come to see us, you, the only woman of Anna’s former friends-I know that you have done this not because you regard our position as the right one but because, understanding all the difficulty of the position, you still love her and want to be a help to her. Have I understood you rightly?” he asked, looking round at her.
“Oh, yes,” answered Dolly, retracting her I/Sunshade/6, “but…”
“No,” he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward position into which he was putting his companion, he stopped abruptly, so that she had to stop short too. “No one feels more deeply and intensely than I do all the difficulty of Anna’s position; and that you may well understand, if you do me the honor of supposing I have any heart. I am to blame for that position, and that is why I feel it.”
“Yes, but here, so far-and it may be so always-you are happy and at peace. Not literally at peace, far from it given the severity of the threats that face you, but at peace in your hearts, which is after all the more valuable. I see in Anna that she is happy, perfectly happy, she has had time to tell me so much already,” said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling; and involuntarily, as she said this, at the same moment a doubt entered her mind whether Anna really was happy.
But Vronsky, it appeared, had no doubts on that score. “Yes, yes,” he said, “I know that she has revived after all her sufferings; she is happy. She is happy in the present. But I?… I am afraid of what is before us… I beg your pardon, you would like to walk on?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
“Well, then, let us sit here.”
Darya Alexandrovna sat down on a garden seat in a corner of the avenue. He stood up facing her.
“I see that she is happy,” he repeated, and the doubt whether she was happy sank more deeply into Darya Alexandrovna’s mind. “But can it last?”
A junker named Vespidae, employing a very limited propeller-driven hovering capacity as he patrolled the perimeter of the camp, swung low overheard and flashed an all-clear light on its undercarriage to Vronsky, who gave a desultory wave in return and continued.
“Whether Anna and I have acted rightly or wrongly is another question, but the die is cast,” he said, “and we are bound together for life. We are united by all the ties of love that we hold most sacred. We have a child. We have these machine-men and -women who have sought what they perceive as safety in our shadow. But the conditions of our position are such that thousands of complications arise that she does not see and does not want to see. And that one can well understand. But I can’t help seeing them.” Vronsky absently ran his fingers along Lupo’s spine, and the dog thrummed with pleasure. Dolly wondered what Vronsky was getting at.