Levin’s oxygen-depleted brain took him on a long, slow Memory sequence through the days of his life. He saw himself at eighteen, first attuning his gleaming new beloved-companion, Socrates… on his wedding day, choked by love and terror… at age six, his sister crying over a malfunctioning Class I dance-toy…

… the ballerina…

Konstantin Dmitrich struggled to maintain focus… the ballerina had spun too fast, whirling dangerously, shooting off sparks. What had Mother done?

Summoning every ounce of his remaining strength, Levin flailed back with his powerful right hand and pushed open the wooden shutters of the bedroom; immediately the powerful sound and fresh smell of pouring rain filled the room. Levin kicked out at his adversary’s thin ankle, trying not to injure but to dislodge it… to throw it just enough off balance to…

There! Levin drove his whole body forward and with his last reserves of air he pushed the machine-man backward until it was bent over the sill, the cruel mechanical non-face outside and looking up, lashed by the rain.

“An old wives’ tale that happens to be true,” Mamma had said, so many years ago, cracking the faceplate of the Class I ballerina toy with the peen of a hammer. “Just get a bit of rainwater behind the eyes…”

“Grazzle… furglazzle…,” spat the Veslovsky machine nonsensically, as its insides popped and hissed. “Grllllllll…” Levin, unrelenting, kept him-it, he told himself-it!-under the fierce flow of the rain like a man bathing a reluctant pet. At last the hands on his throat slackened their grip, and Levin breathed hard, watching with grim fascination as Veslovsky melted into some sort of hideous, unwholesome, forced Surcease. Levin then collapsed beneath the window, the robot slumped beside him with its head lolling from the neck at a crooked angle, still spitting out nonsense phrases in wildly modulated tones. “Vizz… poj… markkkklzz…”

Finally, like a real dying man summons one final burst of lucidity, the thing that had been Veslovsky spoke very quietly, in perfect Russian: “You can’t escape. You can’t win.”

With that, the last energy fled from his body, and Veslovsky ceased to be.

“What madness is this?” Stepan Arkadyevitch said when, after hearing from Dolly that his friend was being turned out of the house, he found Levin in the garden. “Mais c’est ridicule! “What fly has stung you? Mais c’est du dernier ridicule! What did you think, if a young man…”

“Please don’t go into it! I can’t help it. I feel ashamed of how I’m treating you and him,” replied Levin, absently massaging the sides of his neck. “But it won’t be, I imagine, a great grief to him to go, and his presence was distasteful to me and to my wife.”

And Levin gave Oblonsky an apologetic nod, signaling the conclusion of the interview and dismissing his friend from the garden; when Stepan Arkadyich had angrily departed, Levin returned to smoothing over the uneven patch of soil where he had buried the disassembled pieces of Vassenka Veslovsky.

CHAPTER 6

SOME WEEKS AFTER the stormy conclusion of Vassenka Veslovsky’s tenure at Pokrovskoe, Kitty answered the door at the sound of a quiet though insistent knocking, and found on the doorstep a very thin woman wrapped in a ratty old blanket. Immediately Kitty beckoned the bedraggled creature inside, assuming this was one of the poor peasants they had lately heard of, those wandering the countryside, their homes having been destroyed by the alien marauders. Kitty had even heard that some had found employment in the homes of the wealthy as intimate worker-friends-in other words, as poor substitutes for the absented Class Ills, though she herself was horrified by the idea of employing a human in that function.

But once inside, the woman pushed back the cowl of the blanket, revealing not the haggard face of a hungry peasant, but an obsidian faceplate, flashing a frantic electric green.

“It’s…” Kitty put a hand before her mouth. “My goodness, it’s a Class III!”

“A fugitive,” said Levin, hastening down the stairs and closing the front door behind the machine.

The Class Ill’s name was Witch Hazel, and she would not speak of who her mistress was, or how she had escaped the circuitry adjustment protocol; there could be no doubting, however, that her journey had been a perilous one. Witch Hazel’s head unit jerked nervously about as she spoke, and she generally displayed all the sensory twitchiness and navigational confusion inherent in masterless beloved-companions. She insisted instead that she had a communiqué to deliver, which turned out to be intended not for Kitty and Levin, but for Darya Alexandrovna.

Dolly was duly summoned, and the communiqué viewed-it was from Anna Karenina, and its substance was simple: Dolly was invited to visit Anna and Vronsky in their secret encampment. Witch Hazel would act as her guide.

Darya Alexandrovna decided right away to accept this invitation and go to see Anna. She was sorry to annoy her sister and do anything Levin disliked. She quite understood how right the Levins were in not wishing to have anything to do with Vronsky. But she felt she must go and see Anna, and show her that her feelings could not be changed, in spite of the change in her position. It was decided that she and Witch Hazel would leave the next morning; the machine-woman, whose reluctance to speak further of her past and current situation was manifestly clear, gratefully accepted a dosing of humectant and was Surceased for the night.

That she might be independent of the Levins for the expedition, Darya Alexandrovna sent to the village to hire a carriage for the drive; but Levin, learning of it, went to her to protest.

“What makes you suppose that I dislike your going? But, even if I did dislike it, I should still more dislike your not taking my carriage and engine,” he said. “Hiring Coachmen in the village is disagreeable to me, and, what’s of more importance, they’ll undertake the job and never get you there. I have a four-treaded II/Puller. And if you don’t want to wound me, you’ll take mine.”

Darya Alexandrovna had to consent, and Levin made ready for his sister-in-law a four-tread and carriage set-not at all a smart-looking conveyance, but capable of taking Darya Alexandrovna the whole distance in a single day, if the pointedly vague information of the location and direction of travel that Witch Hazel had provided could be believed.

Dolly and the robot, by Levin’s advice, started before daybreak. The road was good, the carriage comfortable, and the carriage hummed along merrily, and on the box sat the junker, the mysteriously ownerless robot. With the steering shaft in her end-effectors, Witch Hazel’s formerly nervous, scattered mien dissipated, leaving Dolly to wonder whether, before the adjustment protocol had torn her from her duties, this robot had been beloved-companion to a hunter or racewoman.

As Dolly rode, she thought. At home, looking after her children, she had no time to think. So now, during this journey of four hours, all the thoughts she had suppressed before rushed swarming into her brain, and she thought over all her life as she never had before, and from the most different points of view. Her thoughts seemed strange even to herself, the words bouncing around in her skull-how odd, this Class-III-less life, without Dolichka to speak her thoughts aloud to! At first she thought about the children, about whom she was uneasy, although the princess and Kitty (she reckoned more upon her) had promised to look after them. If only Masha does not begin her naughty tricks, if Grisha isn’t bit by the dog, and Lily isn’t upset again! she thought.

Witch Hazel, at this point in the journey, pulled the coach off to the side of the road and, with stammering apologies, fit her passenger with a silken blindfold. “We must be drawing closer to our destination,” Dolly thought out loud, her musings turning to her sister-in-law.