“You, you are to blame for everything!” she cried, with tears of despair and hatred in her voice.

“I begged, I implored you not to go, I knew it would be unpleasant…”

“Unpleasant!” she cried. “Hideous! Those men-”

“Robots, Anna, they are robots!”

“You think I don’t know that! As long as I live I shall never forget it. But I will tell you Alexei, those vicious robot soldiers and bloodthirsty creatures were scarcely worse than the sneering expression of Madame Kartasov and her husband.”

“In fairness, Kartasov was also a robot.”

She scowled and continued her feverish preparations for departure.

“Forget it, you must forget all that,” said Vronsky, pacing back and forth, Lupo at his heels. “There are more important things to occupy us now.”

“I hate your calm. You ought not to have brought me to this. If you had loved me…”

“Anna! How does the question of my love come in?”

“Oh, if you loved me, as I love, if you were tortured as I am…!” she said, looking at him with an expression of terror.

He was sorry for her, and angry notwithstanding. He assured her of his love because he saw that this was the only means of soothing her, and he did not reproach her in words, but in his heart he reproached her. He spoke softly to her again of a place he knew, where they could be together and be safe, at least for now, along with their Class Ills.

And the asseverations of his love, which seemed to him so vulgar that he was ashamed to utter them, she drank in eagerly, and gradually became calmer. The next hour, completely reconciled, they and their battered beloved-companions left for the country.

PART SIX: THE QUEEN OF THE JUNKERS

CHAPTER 1

THEY WILL COME for us in three ways”

It was this strange phrase that was on everyone’s lips in the days and weeks after the terrible violence at the Vox Fourteen. “They will come for us in three ways,” a strange scrap of liturgy from the discredited quasi-religion of xenotheologism, once in vogue in certain corners of Moscow and Petersburg, long since discarded along with its primary adherents, women like the farcical Madame Stahl.

“They will come for us in three ways.”

There was no doubting that they had come in one way, not as benevolent light-beings but as the awful, screeching humanoid lizard-things that had wreaked such havoc and spilled the blood of so many Russians at the Vox Fourteen. If, indeed, there was any wisdom in that strange, old, tattered bit of liturgy, then what were the other two ways? And were they to be feared as much as the first? Questions abounded, fears doubled and redoubled, anxious rumors tore wildly like II/Coachman/6-less carriages through the streets of Petersburg and Moscow. One thing that all could agree on was how fortunate it was, on the night of the terrible attack, that so many of the new, powerful, perfectly humanoid Class IV robots had been present to fight off the foe.

Having previously labored to hide the shocking fact of this new creation from society, the Higher Branches of the Ministry of Robotics and State Administration now shifted gears, as it were, proudly proclaiming the arrival of the new generation of servomechanism, proclaiming the Class IV robots Mother Russia’s newest and greatest protectors, whether against lizard-like creatures from the starry beyond, or the scientist-terrorist schemers of UnConSciya. To this much-heralded revelation was coupled, almost incidentally, the confirmation of another rumor: No, came this further announcement from the councils of the Ministry, the old beloved-companion robots would not be coming back. The circuitry adjustment, it seemed, had been a failure; the old machines, due to an inherent and previously undetected flaw in design, could not be properly brought up to date.

And thus, at a stroke, the ancient class of beloved-companion robots entered its obsolescence.

In Moscow, the onion-shaped bulb of the Tower still revolved, framed now by two plumes of black and purple smoke-emanating, or so went the most persistent and disquieting rumor of all, from the sub-sub-basements, where the junkered Class III robots were being melted for scrap.

CHAPTER 2

THESE FOREBODING PLUMES of smoke could not be seen from the groznium mine and surrounding estate at Pokrovskoe, but the changes they represented were as much felt there as anywhere. Konstantin Levin and his new wife, Kitty, now felt united not only by the bonds of matrimony but by a common purpose: having left Socrates and Tatiana behind, disguised as battered old Class IIs, and slaving in a grimy cigarette factory, they vowed never to submit their beloved-companions for “adjustment”-now understood to be a most permanent adjustment indeed-no matter what should happen.

They were united, too, in their fear of the Honored Guests; Kitty had watched as Levin with determination set his army of Pitbots and Extractors to the building of strong fencing and the digging of trenches around the grounds of the estate, in hopes of repelling the alien hordes.

But for Kitty and Levin, all this tension and fear and looming dread only reaffirmed and even heightened their love.

They were playing host to a small party up from Moscow, and Levin and Kitty were particularly happy and conscious of their love that evening. The presence of Dolly, and of Kitty’s mother, the old princess-both of whom who had grudgingly submitted their own Class Ills to be adjusted, and now knew they had lost them for good-only made their shared bond that much stronger. They loved each other and their happiness in their love seemed to imply a disagreeable slur on those who would have liked to feel the same and could not-and they felt a prick of conscience.

Kitty longed to tell her mother their secret, of how Socrates and Tatiana were yet extant and well. But she was urged by Levin to hold her tongue, for he feared that this forbidden knowledge would inevitably travel from the princess to Dolly, and from Dolly to Stepan Arkadyich-who Levin felt had far too casual a manner to be trusted with the confidence.

That evening they were expecting Stepan Arkadyich to come down by Grav, and the old prince had written that possibly he might come too.

“Mark my words, Alexander will not come,” said the old princess. “And I know why: he says that young people ought to be left alone for a while at first.”

“But Papa has left us alone. We’ve never seen him,” said Kitty. “Besides, we’re not young people!-we’re old married people by now.”

“If he doesn’t come, I shall say good-bye to you children,” said the princess, sighing mournfully.

“What nonsense, Mamma!” both the daughters fell upon her at once.

“How do you suppose he is feeling? Why, now…”

And suddenly there was an unexpected quiver in the princess’s voice. Her daughters were silent, and looked at one another. These days, Mamma always finds something to be miserable about, they said in that glance. Ever since she had married off her last and favorite daughter, and her beloved-companion La Shcherbatskaya had been carted off, the old home had been left empty.

In the middle of the after-dinner conversation they heard the hum of an engine and the sound of wheels on the gravel. Dolly had not time to get up to go and meet her husband, when from the window of the room below, where Levin was helping Grisha with his Latin lesson, Levin leaped out and lifted Grisha out after him.

“It’s Stiva!” Levin shouted from under the balcony. “We’ve finished, Dolly, don’t worry!” he added, and started running like a boy to meet the carriage.

“Is ea id, ejus, ejus, ejus!” shouted Grisha, skipping along the avenue.