“Please…”
“It had to be his wife. It had to be you.”
Anna wept silently on the sofa, not wanting to hear more, but helpless to move.
“As the Mechanism took root within you, its programming slowly amplified your natural distaste for a cold and awkward husband into utter repulsion. That hatred should have led you finally to kill him-but we underestimated the depth and power of your loving nature and your urge for freedom. Rather than letting your passion drive you to murder, you seized upon it to fuel your surprising new love for Count Vronsky. You abandoned Alexei Alexandrovich rather than slaying him-but, alas, Anna, that only hastened his descent into inhuman tyranny. Thus, despite all our years of secret struggle, the mission failed.”
Anna looked up, tears pouring down her face, trying to understand. “So the godmouth-the flower trap-all efforts by UnConSciya to… to destroy me?”
“No. Efforts to destroy Vronsky, in the hopes that with him dead, you would return to your household, take up again the mantle of unhappily dutiful wife, and complete your mission. But, again, the timestream is difficult to shift.”
Sadness and confusion filled Anna’s body like black ink poured into a glass. She felt, as she had felt so many times in the past, Android Karenina’s comforting embrace around her shoulders. Then her beloved-companion-no! a different android! oh, but beloved still-said: “It’s not too late.”
In her mind, burning and wild with emotion, Anna grasped at what she thought Android Karenina was telling her, and the strong face of Vronsky swam up before her mind. “Yes! It’s not too late-I have sent a note… he’ll return…” She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes had passed. “By now he has received the note and is coming back. Not long, ten minutes more… But what if he doesn’t come? No, that cannot be. He mustn’t see me with tear-stained eyes. I’ll go and wash. Yes, yes; did I do my hair or not?” she asked Android Karenina, who stared back at her, and then spoke again, her voice changing to a low, sad whisper.
“It is not too late to complete your mission, Anna. You can agree to follow the program.”
Anna stared back. “Android Karenina… no…”
“Go to Petersburg. Kill Alexei Alexandrovich with your own hands. You are the only one who can.”
“I am not a killer! I am a human being!”
“Alas… you are no longer.”
Anna Karenina jabbed wildly for her beloved-companion’s neck, but to no avail: this model had eliminated the exterior Surcease switch entirely. But when Android Karenina lifted her end-effectors from Anna’s shoulders to swat her away, Anna rolled off the sofa, leaped out the empty hole where the windowpane had been, and escaped down the street.
CHAPTER 16
IT WAS BRIGHT AND SUNNY. A fine ram had been falling all morning, and now it had not long cleared up. Anna tore along the rain-slicked streets, her boot heels skidding on the muddied stones, racing through the broad avenues and down the grimy alleys of Moscow, in and out of crowds, around corners, past posters bearing the formidable non-face of her husband. It was not long before she heard the clatter of metal footsteps close behind her. Android Karenina Class IX, her pursuer, her shadow, similarly dressed, of similar shape and size-and constructed, she now knew, of the same materials that hid within her own being. She herself, hot on her own heels.
How can I do what she bids me? Anna asked herself. To slay my own husband, with my own hands, in cold blood-no matter what kind of monster he is or may become! I have done many selfish things, and yes, I have been crueler than I meant to be, but I am not a murderer!
And yet, she thought with bitterness and spiraling confusion, if what Android Karenina says is true-and already, in a dark corner of her heart, she had admitted to herself that it was, it must be true-then I am not even a person at all!
The iron roofs, the flags of the roads, the flints of the pavements, the wheels and leather, the brass and the tinplate of the carriages-all glistened brightly in the May sunshine as she ran past them, Android Karenina behind her in determined, mechanical pursuit. It was three o’clock, and the very liveliest time in the streets.
Anna ran up alongside a passing carriage, and with a burst of strength pulled herself onto the running board. Turning her head, she beheld the figure of Android Karenina, framed in the doorway of a grocery shop, growing smaller behind her in the distance. Anna exhaled, pushed her way into the window of the empty carriage, and threw herself in a seat. With a pang of pained longing, Anna thought of Android Karenina, thought of the odd sensation she had had long harbored, of feeling more connected somehow to her Class III companion than others felt to theirs. And no wonder! Both of us machines!
As she sat in a corner of the comfortable carriage, which hardly swayed on its supple springs, while the horses trotted swiftly, in the midst of the unceasing rattle of wheels and the changing impressions in the pure air, Anna ran over the events of the last days, tried in her feverish mind to arrange the pieces of the world into something making sense. The one thing she knew was that, despite everything, despite what she now knew of the true nature of her being, she yet loved Alexei Kirillovich.
I entreat him to forgive me. I have given in to him. I have owned myself in fault. What for? Can’t I live without him? And leaving unanswered the question, she fell to reading the signs on the shops. “Office and Warehouse. Dental Surgeon. Filippov, Bun Shop. They say they send their dough to Petersburg. The Moscow water is so good for it. Ah, the springs at Mitishtchen, and the pancakes!”
And she remembered how, long, long ago, when she was a girl of seventeen, she had gone with her aunt to Troitsa. “Riding, too. Was that really me, with red hands? That was before, before this thing happened to me, when I was still a creature of flesh and spirit, not an android with a mind of spinning metal! How much that seemed to me then splendid and out of reach has become worthless, while what I had then has gone out of my reach forever! Could I ever have believed then that I could come to such humiliation?”
Anna peeked up from the rear seat, in time to see Android Karenina run out from a side alley and plant herself in front of the carriage, her veil flown back and her eyebank flashing.
“A Class Three!” the coachman screamed, as Android Karenina pivoted on her back foot, turned one shoulder toward the carriage, and leaned forward into the oncoming vehicle, letting the horses pass on either side of her and the trap smash into her body. At impact, the coachman flew from his seat and landed on the street, while the horses bucked and whinnied. Android Karenina climbed calmly and deliberately into the carriage and cornered Anna in one side of the seat.
“You are blessed, Android Karenina Twelve,” the beloved-companion intoned in that strong and loving voice. “So few people have a purpose in life, but unto you a purpose has been given.”
Anna sank back into the seat, calculating her odds of out-muscling her tormentor and slipping through the opposite window of the coach. I am, after all, she thought bitterly, the more advanced model. But Anna saw no escape.
“A simple mission, so easy to discharge. Accept your destiny, Anna. Accept what you are.”
Android Karenina grasped her by the midsection and began to drag her trembling body from the seat of the carriage. Anna saw over her shoulder, through the opposite window of the carriage, two girls in animated conversation. She wondered what they could be smiling about. Love, most likely. They don’t know how dreary it is, how low… The boulevard and the children. Three boys running, playing at horses. Seryozha! And I’m losing everything and not getting him back. I will go and kill him… what point to resist? Yes, I will do it… Yes, I’m losing everything… These horses, this carriage-how loathsome I am to myself in this carriage… I won’t see them again…