Android karenina by Ben H. Winters & Léon Tolstoï

Author:Ben H. Winters & Léon Tolstoï [Winters, Ben H. & Tolstoï, Léon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SF
ISBN: 9781594744600
Published: 2010-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

EVERYONE TOOK PART in the conversation except Kitty and Levin. At first there rose to Levin’s mind what he had to say on the Robot Question. He thought of his recent foray deep into the bowels of his mine, swinging an axe alongside his clever and industrious Pitbots; how he had come to admire them, like one admires a fellow man, though they were technically but Class IIs. But these ideas, once of such importance in his eyes, seemed to come into his brain as in a dream, and had now not the slightest interest for him. It even struck him as strange that they should be so eager to talk of what was of no use to anyone. Kitty, too, should, one would have supposed, have been interested when the subject turned to the supreme value of Class Ills to women, as a means of relieving them from the drudgery of household labor. How often she had mused on just this subject, how Class Ills were more than mere chore-doers, how they offered bosom companionships—how useful Tatiana had been to her as emotional support in her long and painful days aboard theVenutian orbiter.

But it did not interest her at all. She and Levin had a conversation of their own, yet not a conversation, but some sort of mysterious communication, which brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of glad terror before the unknown into which they were entering.

At first Levin, in answer to Kitty’s question of how he could have seen her last year in the carriage, told her how he had been coming home from the smeltworks along the highroad and had met her.

* * *

Over time the evening’s conversation turned from cold robotics to warm human passions. Turovtsin, another of the party, as a means of drawing attention away from the Robot Question, about which he knew nothing, mentioned an acquaintance involved in an intrigue.

“You heard, perhaps, about Pryatchnikov?” said this Turovtsin, warmed up by the champagne he had drunk. “Vasya Pryatchnikov,” he said, with a good-natured smile on his damp, red lips, addressing himself principally to the most important guest, Alexei Alexandrovich, “they told me today he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has killed him.”

Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so Stepan Arkadyich felt now that the conversation would by ill luck fall every moment on Alexei Alexandrovich’s sore spot. Small Stiva, as attuned as his master to conversational nuance, brought himself up short in his round of bustling, flashing with alarm at Oblonsky. Together they would have contrived to pull the brother-in-law away, but Alexei Alexandrovich himself inquired, smiling neutrally from behind his mask:

“What did Pryatchnikov fight about?”

“His wife. Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and blasted him!”

“Ah!” said Alexei Alexandrovich indifferently, and lifting his eyebrows, he went into the drawing room, and the rest of the party resumed their conversation.

“How glad I am you have come,”

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