“Do be quick, madame,” he said again. “Please. He will not be happy to find you here. Most unhappy indeed.”

And at the very instant the mécanicien said this, Anna caught the sound of a childish yawn. From the sound of this yawn alone she knew her son and seemed to see him living before her eyes.

“Let me in; go away!” she said, and went in through the high doorway, Android Karenina heeling her closely. On the right of the door stood a bed, and sitting up in the bed was the boy. His little body bent forward with his nightshirt unbuttoned, he was stretching and still yawning. The instant his lips came together they curved into a blissfully sleepy smile, and with that smile he slowly and deliciously rolled back again.

“Seryozha!” she whispered, going noiselessly up to him. Android Karenina glowed warmly, suffusing the scene with delicate pinks of joy.

When Anna was parted from her Sergey, and all this latter time when she had been feeling a fresh rush of love for him, she had pictured him as he was at four years old, when she had loved him most of all. Now he was not even the same as when she had left him; he was still further from the four-year-old tot, more grown and thinner. How thin his face was, how short his hair was! What long hands! How he had changed since she left him! But it was he, with his head, his lips, his soft neck and broad little shoulders.

“Seryozha!” she repeated just in the child’s ear.

He raised himself again on his elbow, turned his tangled head from side to side as though looking for something, and opened his eyes. Slowly and inquiringly he looked for several seconds at his mother standing motionless before him, and just behind her the comforting familiar figure of her beloved-companion.

All at once he smiled a blissful smile, and shutting his eyes, rolled not backward but toward her into her arms.

“Seryozha! My darling boy!” she said, breathing hard and putting her arms round his plump little body.

“Mother!” he said, wriggling about in her arms so as to touch her hands with different parts of him. “I know,” he said, opening his eyes; “it’s my birthday today. I knew you’d come. I’ll get up right now.”

And saying that he fell back asleep.

Anna looked at him hungrily; she saw how he had grown and changed in her absence. She knew, and did not know, the bare legs, so long now, that were thrust out below the quilt, those short-cropped curls on his neck, which she had so often kissed. She touched all this and could say nothing; tears choked her.

“What are you crying for, mother?” Seryozha said, waking completely up. “Mother, what are you crying for?” he cried in a tearful voice.

“I won’t cry… I’m crying for joy. It’s so long since I’ve seen you. I won’t, I won’t,” she said, gulping down her tears and turning away. “Come, it’s time for you to dress now,” she added after a pause, and, never letting go his hands, she sat down by his bedside on the chair, where his clothes were ready for him.

“How do you dress without me? How…” she tried to begin talking simply and cheerfully, but she could not, and again she turned away.

“I don’t have a cold bath, Papa didn’t order it. Why, you’re sitting on my clothes!”

And Seryozha went off into a peal of laughter. She looked at him and smiled.

“Mother, darling, sweet one!” he shouted, flinging himself on her again and hugging her. It was as though only now, on seeing her smile, he fully grasped what had happened.

“I don’t want that on,” he said, taking off her hat. And as it were, seeing her afresh without her hat, he fell to kissing her again. “Why do you carry a smoker? Mother!”

“But what did you think about me?You didn’t think I was dead?”

“They said you were killed! By a koschei that came upon you in the marketplace, while you shopped for apples.”

“Not so!”

“They said it attached itself at the base of your spine, and then burrowed all the way up to your brain.”

“No, indeed, my darling!”

“They said when you were found, your face was so mutilated, it was almost impossible to recognize it.”

Anna’s eyelashes fluttered furiously, as she attempted to conceal her dismay at the wishful thinking that had clearly gone into that particular detail of the story Karenin had concocted for Seryozha.

“I never believed it,” the boy said.

“You didn’t believe it, my sweet?”

“I knew, I knew!” he repeated his favorite phrase, and snatching the hand that was stroking his hair, he pressed the open palm to his mouth and kissed it. He afforded a sweet glance, too, to Android Karenina, who issued a small hum of pleasure and tried in vain to straighten his mess of childish curls with her slender phalangeals.

“You must go,” said Kapitonitch from the door, a note of desperation in his voice. “He must not discover you here. I should not have permitted it. Please, madame.” But neither mother nor son would permit their reunion to be interrupted.

The old mécanicien shook his head, and with a sigh he closed the door. “I’ll wait another ten minutes,” he said to himself, clearing his throat and wiping away tears. “I have made a mistake. A terrible mistake.”

Anna could not say good-bye to her boy, but the expression on her face said it, and he understood. “Darling, darling Kootik!” she used the name by which she had called him when he was little, “you won’t forget me? You…,” but she could not say more.

“Of course not, mother,” he responded simply. And then, seeming to think of something suddenly, he said, “She has not been collected for circuitry adjustment?”

“Not yet, dear son, not yet.”

“Oh. Then are you among the deserving?”

“What?

“Father says only the deserving ones will have their Class Ills returned to them after their circuits have been properly adjusted. Only the deserving are to own robots from now on.”

Anna’s eyes widened in bafflement. “And who has your father spoken of, as being amongst the ‘deserving?’”

Seryozha thought for a moment, and then let out a gale of childish laughter. “Why, he himself, I suppose! None other than he!”

How often afterward she thought of words she might have said. But now she did not know how to say it, and could say nothing. She only trembled, and clutched dearly at Android Karenina like a drowning woman clutches at a lifeboat. Seryozha only understood that his mother was unhappy and loved him. He knew that his father would wake soon, and that his father and mother could not meet, or the consequences would be disastrous. Android Karenina pulled on her mistress’s arm, as it was past time for them to depart, but silently Seroyzha pressed close to her and whispered, “Don’t go yet. He won’t come just yet.”

The mother held him away from her to see what he was thinking, what to say to him, and in his frightened face she read not only that he was speaking of his father, but, as it were, asking her what he ought to think about his father.

“Seryozha, my darling,” she said, “you must temper his hatred with your goodness. You are the only human thing he has left.”

“I fear him!” he cried in despair through his tears, and, clutching her by the shoulders, he began squeezing her with all his force to him, his arms trembling with the strain.

“My sweet, my little one!” said Anna, and she cried as weakly and childishly as he.

“No… please… sir… no…” came a cry from just beyond the door. Anna had only time to reflect how the voice of a man as strong as Kapitonitch could be reduced, in a moment of terror and desperation, to one like that of a frightened child-when the door flew open with a sharp clatter, and the body of the mécanicien came flying into the room. The corpse slammed into the wall above Sergey’s head and slid down the wall, leaving a slick of blood below the colorful tapestry hanging above the boy’s bed.

Sergey wailed like a bobcat and buried his head in his mother’s arms. Android Karenina threw a protective arm around her mistress, and the three of them huddled together, cowering from the tall and dramatic figure of Alexei Karenin, who stood trembling, filling the doorway with his imposing frame.