Android Karenina - By Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy & Ben H. Winters & Leo Tolstoy Page 0,1

so often the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had met his wife’s words. What happened to him at that instant happens to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed toward his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even—anything would have been better than what he did do—his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyich, who from his work at the Ministry understood the simple science of motor response)—utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile. Still worse, Small Stiva emitted a nervous, high-pitched series of chirps, clearly indicating a guilty thought-string.

Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the room, Dolichka springing pneumatically along behind her. Since then, Dolly had refused to see her husband.

“But what’s to be done? What’s to be done?” he said to Small Stiva in despair, but the little Class III had no answer.

CHAPTER 2

STEPAN ARKADYICH was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He wasn’t the type to tell small, self-consoling lies to his Class III, and Small Stiva was programmed to console, but not to offer or confirm dishonest impressions. So Stiva was incapable of pretending that he repented of his conduct, either to himself or to his Class III. He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her. He had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out quite the other way.

He idly activated the Galena Box, praying the gentle fluttering of the Class I device’s thinly hammered groznium panels would have their usual salutary effect on his disposition.

“Oh, it’s awful!” said Stepan Arkadyich to Small Stiva, who echoed him, chirping “Awful awful awful” from his Vox-Em, but neither could think of anything to be done. “And how well things were going up till now!”

“How well you got on,” noted the Class III, falling into his familiar role as comforter and confidant.

“She was contented and happy in her children!”

“You never interfered with her in anything!”

“I let her manage the children and the Is and IIs just as she liked. It’s true it’s bad her having been a mécanicienne in our own house.”

“Yes, bad. Very very very very bad!”

“There’s something common, vulgar, in flirting with one’s mécanicienne, in getting the grease-oil on one’s cuffs, as it is said. Oh—but what a mécanicienne!” Responding unhesitatingly to his master’s implied request, Small Stiva cued his monitor with a flattering Memory of Mile Roland: her roguish black eyes; her smile; her figure slyly making itself known within her silver jumpsuit.

Stiva sighed, and Small Stiva sighed with him, and in unison they murmured, “But what is to be done?”

Small Stiva had a relatively advanced empathetic and communicative function, compared for instance to Dolly’s Class III, Dolichka, whose Vox-Em could barely produce sentences—but on the other hand, she had more advanced use of her end-effectors. Small Stiva’s stubby midtorso appendages were several clicks short of full phalangeal function. His short legs worked adequately on their pistons, but Stiva’s Class III was for all intents and purposes a very clever little torso and head. In moments of pique or jovial teasing, Stiva called him his little bustling samovar.

Drawing a deep breath of air into his broad, bare chest, Stepan Arkadyich walked to the window with his usual confident step, turning out his