After that solemn event, all the world in which she had been living was transformed for Kitty. She did not give up everything she had learned, but she became aware that she had deceived herself in supposing she could be what she wanted to be. Her eyes were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty of maintaining herself without hypocrisy and self-conceit on the pinnacle that she had wished to mount. Moreover, she became aware of all the dreariness of the world of sorrow, of sick and dying people, in which she had been living. The efforts she had made to like it seemed to her intolerable, and she felt a longing to get back quickly into the fresh air, to Russia, to Ergushovo, where, as she knew from letters, her sister Dolly had already gone with her children.
But her affection for Varenka did not wane. As she said good-bye, Kitty begged her to come to them in Russia.
“I’ll come when you get married,” said Varenka.
“I shall never marry.”
“Well, then, I shall never come.”
“Well, then, I shall be married simply for that. Mind now, remember your promise,” said Kitty.
The doctor’s prediction was fulfilled. Kitty returned home to Russia cured. She was not so gay and thoughtless as before, but she was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.
PART THREE: WHAT LIES WITHIN
CHAPTER 1
ONCE, INA PREVIOUS YEAR, Levin had gone to look in on the work in the groznium mine, and being made very angry by the deteriorated condition of the chief II/Excavator/8, and the lazy mécanicien who had not reported it, he had sought recourse in what would become his favorite means for regaining his temper: he retrieved an antique pickaxe (such as peasants had once wielded) from the cellar of his home, donned a helmet and everlit, was lowered by the great pneumatic dumbwaiter to the floor of the mine pit, chose a tunnel extension, entered the inky blackness, and began to dig.
He liked the work so much that he had several times tried his hand at mining since. This year, ever since the early spring, he had cherished a plan for digging for a whole day together with the nimble Pitbots, lightshedding Glowing Scrubblers, and big and inexhaustible II/Extractor/4s who served in his groznium mine.
“I must have physical exercise, or my temper will certainly be ruined,” he announced one spring day to loyal Socrates, who was bent at the Herculean task of tabulating the receipts and filling out the Ministry paperwork relating to that season’s excavation and extraction. “I fancy the spring extraction is in full swing. Tomorrow I shall start mining.”
Socrates lifted his head, and looked with interest at his master.
“Mine like a Pitbot? All day long?”
“Yes, it’s very pleasant,” said Levin.
“Splendid exercise, except you’ll hardly be able to stand it,” replied Socrates, without a shade of irony.
“No, I don’t think so. It’s so delightful, and at the same time such hard work, that one has no time to think about it.”
The next morning, Konstantin Levin got up earlier than usual, but he was detained reviewing communiqués from the Ministry’s Department of Groznium Management, and by the time he arrived pit-side and donned his goggles, air canister, lead-lined suit, and thick-soled boots, the miners were already at the declension point.
He stared down from the outer rim of the crater, surveying his beloved gash in the earth. Lying in rich deposits in this crater and the soil below it were vast quantities of groznium, the Miracle Metal, the blood of Russian life. But before it could be transformed into devices of every shape and class, it had to be pried out by the mechanical axes of the Pitbots and the shovels of the imperturbable Extractors; pried from where it lay buried in thick chunks along tunnel walls; from where it sat in thick clusters along cragged rock walls, each rough nugget of groznium more valuable than any diamond.
Gripping the edge of the dumbwaiter as it descended, Levin gazed at the cluster of tunnel entrances on the far wall of the pit: in and out of the tunnel entrances flowed his dear rough-hewn Class IIs like ants, clutching their buckets and axes in their sturdy end-effectors. He waited impatiently, his soul crying out to begin work, as the dumbwaiter clicked slowly downward, inch by inch, before at last depositing him on the floor of the pit.
From the declension point, he hastily picked his way down the sloping crater wall into the heart of the pit, and the main tunnel entrance. The robots swarmed around him-the industrious surface-machines; the Pitbots gunmetal gray where they weren’t yet caked in ore; the Glowing Scrubblers shedding their famous dirty-red subterranean glow; and the heavy, tank-like Extractors, rumbling like sentient carriages, their shovellike face attachments primed to bore into the soil. Levin counted forty-two robots altogether.
THE ROBOTS SWARMED AROUND HIM-THE PITBOTS, THE GLOWING SCRUBBLERS, THE EXTRACTORS; LEVIN COUNTED FORTY-TWO ALTOGETHER
Just as Levin joined the line of robots they broke off into a dozen or more small groups and branched off the pit floor into the small side-tunnels where the good clusters of extractable ore could be found. He fell in with a small buzzing band as they moved slowly into an uneven, freshly dug tunnel, sloping steadily downward away from the honeycomb of tunnel entrances and into the pit’s sulfurous heart. Levin recognized some of his own robots, many of whom his old father had given names to, when he was lord of the mine: here was old Yermil, a dented Pitbot with a very long, white frontplate, bending forward to swing his axe; there was a newer model, Vaska, thrusting at the pit wall with a wide sweep. Here, too, was Tit, a thin little android whose thin fingertips were built for crevice-cleaning. Tit was in front of all, and swung away at the tunnel wall without bending, as though playing with the axe.
Levin, carrying his old-fashioned axe and shining his headlamp forward in the dim gloom of the cavern, went to meet Tit, who burbled respectfully at the master. Tit produced a newer pickaxe from his torso, more appropriate to the task at hand, and gave it to him.
“Like a razor, sir” intoned Tit. “Like a razor, cuts of itself.”
Levin took the axe, and clacked it three times against the wall of the tunnel before pronouncing himself ready to begin. The robots all stared at him till a tall, old Glowing Scrubbier bent its red-glowing frame respectfully at Levin’s side.
“Look’ee now, master,” tweedled the Scrubbier apologetically in the curious argot of the hypogeal Class IIs. “Look’ee, look’ee, look’ee. Once joining the line there’s no going back!”
“I shall not be turning back,” Levin said, taking his stand behind Tit, and waiting for the time to begin. Tit made room, and Levin started swinging his axe. The wall here was thick with chunks of groznium, so large you could see big pieces glinting at you, as if winking, begging to be driven free. But Levin knew that it was harder than it seemed, that the alloy did not simply crumble forth, that it took strength and the precise angling of one’s axe to drive it forth. The group’s II/Extractor/4, nicknamed Old Georgy, scuttled forward, its treads working laboriously over the rutted, rock-strewn path, its brush-and-magnet effectors collecting the precious dust left behind by the extraction of the bigger rocks. The Pitbots buzzed efficiently in the Extractor’s wake, axing out or vacuuming up chunks of groznium that Old Georgy missed with its broader efforts.
Levin, who had not done any mining for a long while, and was disconcerted by the robots’ curious lenses locked upon him, dug badly for the first moments, though he swung his axe vigorously. Behind him he heard soft mechanical chirrups: