“Sorry,” Socrates muttered, as the horrid tikka tikka tikka doubled in volume, approaching now a near-deafening level.
“I do not understand,” shouted Levin above the din, kicking at the head of the beast with his one free foot. “The Higher Branches declared that all koschei had been flushed from the countryside.”
“And surely this thing is too big to be a koschei!” added Dolly from the carriage, where she stomped at the segmented, gray body of the worm with one boot heel.
Dolly’s youngest boy Grisha crept silently forth from the backseat of the carriage and reactivated his Class I plaything, determined in the naive and valiant way of children to play what part he could in fending off this attack. He aimed the toy at the eyes of the creature and pressed the trigger to activate a sudden and powerful flash of light; the effect was instantaneous and gratifying-like a mole recoiling from the glare of sunlight, the worm-like machine-monster hissed, writhed away, and spun back toward the safety of its underground warren from which it had emerged.
“Why, Grisha!” said Dolly. Levin, meanwhile, still caught in the maw of the original of the two worm-beasts, called out to his beloved-companion. “Socrates!” he hollered. “Would you mind terribly…”
The tall and angular Class III, however, was already in motion, grabbing out of his beard a I/Flashpop of exactly the sort Grisha had used, only vastly more powerful. The burst of irradiation the device subsequently dispensed sent the first worm skittering after its mate, back into the hole-and left a dread silence in its wake, the rattling click at last stilled. It left, too, Konstantin Levin clutching at his bruised leg, Dolly and her family heaving great breaths of exhaustion and relief, and Socrates scouring the dirt for whatever evidence he could find of what, exactly, they had just encountered.
As the carriage resumed its slow progress back to Ergushovo, Levin and Socrates rode beside, discussing the possible provenance of the strange, wormlike attack-robots. The obvious answer was that these were simply a new model of koschei, more powerful than any UnConSciya had previously unleashed-but something about that answer felt dissatisfying to Levin, and Socrates with his higher-level analytical functionality agreed. Could the smaller, more typical wormlike koschei have grown somehow? But what could have caused them to do so?
“Well, whatever has set this unholy machine upon us,” Dolly put in, “I am certainly glad that you were here to act in our defense.”
“Of course,” said Levin, “Though your Grisha seemed more than up to the challenge!”
The youngest of Dolly’s brood beamed his pleasure at the compliment. The children knew Levin very little, and could not remember when they had seen him, but they experienced in regard to him none of that strange feeling of shyness and hostility that children so often experience toward hypocritical, grown-up people, and for which they are so often and miserably punished. Hypocrisy in anything whatsoever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wideawake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised. Whatever faults Levin had, there was not a trace of hypocrisy in him, and so the children showed him the same friendliness that they saw in their mother’s face.
Here, in the country, with children, and with Darya Alexandrovna and her plump, matronly Class III, Dolichka, Levin was in a mood, not infrequent with him, of childlike light-heartedness that she particularly liked in him. After dinner, Dolly, sitting alone with him on the balcony, began to speak of Kitty.
“You know, Kitty’s coming here, and is going to spend the summer with me.”
“Really,” he said, flushing, and at once, to change the conversation, he said: “Then I’ll send you a new cow, shall I? I heard from Stiva you had a bit of trouble with your II/MilkExtractor/47. If you insist on a bill you shall pay me five rubles a month; but you really shouldn’t.”
“No, thank you. We can manage very well now.”
And Levin, to turn the conversation, explained to Dolly the theory of cow-keeping, based on the principle that the cow is simply a kind of machine, designed for the transformation of food into milk, and so on.
He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty, and, at the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the breaking up of the inward peace he had gained with such effort.
“Yes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there to look after it?” Dolly responded, without interest.
“Pardon,” interrupted Socrates, and they all turned to look at the robot; under the weight of their collective stare, he absently began flicking a switch on his hip assembly, on and off, on and off. “I have been running a full analysis on the matter of the worm-beast. I cannot compute: If it is true that the creature we encountered is but a larger version of the koschei that have previously infested the land-for what reason? Why would a simple UnConSciya device grow to such a size? And… how?”
“Oh dear!” said Dolichka.
And, thought Levin, loathe to float such a possibility within the hearing of Darya Alexandrovna and her her children, or even to Socrates, can it be that there are other things the Ministry is hiding from us?
CHAPTER 4
KITTY REPORTS IN HER LATEST communiqué that there’s nothing she longs for so much as quiet and solitude,” Dolly said.
“And how is she-better?” Levin asked in agitation.
“Thank God, she’s quite well again. I never believed her lungs were affected.”
“Oh, I’m very glad!” said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw something touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and looked silently into her face.
“Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitrich,” she said then, smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, “why is it you are angry with Kitty?”
“I? I’m not angry with her,” said Levin.
“Yes, you are angry. Why was it you did not come to see us or them when you were in Moscow?”
“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, blushing up to the roots of his hair, “I wonder really that with your kind heart you don’t feel this. How it is you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when you know…”
“What do I know?”
“You know I made an offer and that I was refused,” said Levin, and all the tenderness he had been feeling for Kitty a minute before was replaced by a feeling of anger for the slight he had suffered.
Dolly traded expressions of mock astonishment with Dolichka.
“What makes you suppose I know?”
“Because everybody knows it…”
“That’s just where you are mistaken; I did not know it, though I had guessed it was so.”
“Well, now you know it.”
“All I knew was that something had happened that made Kitty dreadfully miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of it, and then they left to orbit Venus. And if she would not tell me, she would certainly not speak of it to anyone else. But what did pass between you? Tell me.”
“I have told you.”
“When was it?”
“When I was at their house the last time.”
“Do you know that,” said Darya Alexandrovna, “I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. You suffer only from pride…”
“Perhaps so,” said Levin, “but-”
She interrupted him.
“But she, poor girl… I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I see it all.”
“Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me,” he said, getting up and signaling to Socrates his readiness to depart.
“No, wait a minute,” she said, clutching him by the sleeve, as tears came into her eyes. “Wait a minute, sit down. If I did not like you, and if I did not know you, as I do know you…”
The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up and took possession of Levin’s heart.