Chapter 8
THEY SHOULD BE rounded up,” said Stepan Arkadyich, reaching for another oyster from the large pile that sat on the table between he and Konstantin Dmitrich. “Every last one of them should be rounded up and slaughtered in the streets, like the vile beasts they are.”
Such was the gist of the evening news feed, and such therefore was the firm opinion espoused by Stepan Arkadyich over dinner. Levin, though he had witnessed the violence firsthand, offered a more tempered and analytical response. “You do not think, old friend, that we have had enough bloodshed in our struggle with UnConSciya? You do not think an offer of amnesty, to discuss and perhaps address their grievances, might be the wiser path?”
“Yes, yes! A truce for the moderate elements, certainly, certainly!” Stepan Arkadyich agreed genially. “But these violent lunatics? With their koschei and their godmouths and their emotion bombs? Let them be rounded up and subjected to the harshest possible punishment, in the most public of ways.”
The conversation continued in this vein for another five or ten minutes before trailing away. Oblonsky held no real opinions on the subject, beyond what he had received from the evening’s feed, and Levin was too distracted by the undertaking that had brought him to Moscow to let his mind be consumed, as often it could be, by political questions.
“You don’t care much for oysters, do you?” said Stepan Arkadyich finally, emptying his wine glass. “Or you’re worried about something. Eh?”
He wanted Levin to be in good spirits. But it was not that Levin was not in good spirits; he was ill at ease. With what he had in his soul, he felt sore and uncomfortable in the restaurant, in the midst of private rooms where men were dining with ladies, in all this fuss and bustle; the surroundings of bronzes, looking glasses, gas, and II/Server/888s—all of it was offensive to him.
He glanced anxiously toward Socrates, looking to have his own emotions explained to him. “You are afraid,” the beloved-companion pronounced in a simple and quiet voice. “Afraid of sullying what your soul is brimful of.”
“Oh, I say, are you going tonight to our people, the Shcherbatskys’, I mean?” said Stiva suddenly, alighting unerringly on the very topic causing Levin’s consternation. His eyes sparkled significantly as he pushed away the empty rough shells, and drew the cheese plate toward him with a snappy little wrist-borne force projector.
“Yes, I shall certainly go,” replied Levin slowly and with emotion,
“Oh, what a lucky fellow you are!” broke in Stepan Arkadyich, looking into Levin’s eyes.
“Why?”
“I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
And by his eyes I know a youth in love,”
declaimed Stepan Arkadyich. “Everything is before you!”
“Why, is it over for you already?”
“No; not over exactly, but the future is yours! You are the master of present and future alike, as surely as if you were a part of the Phoenix Project.”
Oblonsky laughed heartily at his own jest, reaching for a third oyster. For all the technological strides that had been made in Russia in the Age of Groznium, the Phoenix Project—through which, it had been hoped, a machine could be built, using the unique properties of the Miracle Metal, that could tear a hole in the fabric of space-time—was one that had been long since abandoned. Indeed, it was the abandonment of that project, among several others of similar ambition, which had outraged the cell of government scientists who ultimately would form the dreaded UnConSciya. By now the very idea of time travel was so ridiculous as to be a source of ready amusement for Stiva and his fashionable set.
“Hi! Take away!” he called to their II/Server/888, and then turned back to his friend. “Well, why have you come to Moscow, then?”
“You guess?” responded Levin, his eyes like deep wells of light fixed upon Stepan Arkadyich.
“I guess, but I can’t be the first to talk about it. You can see by that whether I guess right or wrong,” said Stiva, gazing at Levin with a subtle smile.
“Well, and what have you to say to me?” said Levin in a quivering voice, feeling that all the muscles of his face were quivering too. “How do you look at the question?”
Stepan Arkadyich slowly emptied his glass of Chablis, never taking his eyes off Levin. He tossed a scrap of beef to Small Stiva, who opened a fist-sized hole in his faceplate and vacuumed it up with a hoselike extension that suddenly snapped forward. The loyal little servomechanism did not need the food, of course, but both master and Class III found delight in the ritual.
“I?” said Stepan Arkadyich. “There’s nothing I desire so much as that—nothing! It would be the best thing that could be.”
“But you’re not making a mistake? You know what we’re speaking of?” said Levin, piercing him with his eyes. “You think it’s possible?” Socrates bent forward at a precisely calibrated, inquiring angle.
“I think it’s possible. Why not possible?”
“No! Do you really think it’s possible? No, tell me all you think!” Socrates bent forward another six degrees, his deepening incline reflecting Levin’s urgency. “Oh, but if. . . if refusal’s in store for me! . . . Indeed I feel sure . . .”
“Why should you think that?” said Stepan Arkadyich, smiling at his excitement.
“It seems so to me sometimes. That will be awful for me, and for her too.”
“Oh, well, anyway there’s nothing awful in it for a girl. Every girl’s proud of an offer.”
“Yes, every girl, but not she.”
Stepan Arkadyich smiled. He so well knew that feeling of Levin’s, that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class—all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with all sorts of human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls: the other class—she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all humanity.
“Stay, take some sauce,” he said, holding back Levin’s hand as it pushed away the sauce.
Levin obediently helped himself to sauce, but would not let Stepan Arkadyich go on with his dinner.
“No, stop a minute, stop a minute,” he said. “You must understand that it’s a question of life and death for me. I have never spoken to anyone of this. And there’s no one I could speak of it to, except you. You know we’re utterly unlike each other, different tastes and views and everything; but I know you’re fond of me and understand me, and that’s why I like you awfully. But for God’s sake, be quite straightforward with me.”
Socrates bent forward further and a sharp luteous light began to flash from within his eyebank.
“I tell you what I think,” said Stepan Arkadyich, smiling. “But I’ll say more: my wife is a wonderful woman. . . .” He sighed, remembering his position with his wife, and, after a moment’s silence, resumed. “She has a gift of foreseeing things. She sees right through people, as if she had a physiometer in her face; but that’s not all; she knows what will come to pass, especially in the way of marriages!”
Both of them laughed lightly, though Levin’s laughter was more out of nervousness than anything like genuine amusement. His true state was reflected by what was happening in Socrates’ eyebank, where lights were blinking rapidly, in alternating shades of yellow, topaz, and orange.
“She foretold, for instance, that Princess Shahovskaya would marry Brenteln. No one would believe it, but it came to pass. And she’s on your side.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s not only that she likes you—she says that Kitty is certain to be married to you.”
Levin’s face suddenly lighted up with a smile, a smile not far from tears of emotion.
“She says that!” cried Levin. “I always said she was exquisite, your wife. There, that’s enough, enough said about it,” he said, getting up from his seat. Socrates got up just after him, one step behind his master, the deep-set lamps of his eyebank now a flickering blur of red and orange, orange and yellow, yellow and red.
“Do sit down,” cried Stiva to both of them, as Small Stiva twittered with alarm at the other robot’s wild display of lights.
But Levin could not sit down. He walked with his firm tread twice up and down the little cage of a room, blinked his eyelids so that his tears might not fall, and only then sat down to the table.
“You must understand,” he said, “it’s not love.”
“Not merely love,” Socrates echoed in a high-pitched burble.
“I’ve been in love, but it’s not that. It’s not my feeling, but a sort of force outside me has taken possession of me.”
“A force, a force, a powerful force!”
“I went away, you see, because I made up my mind that it could never be, you understand, as a happiness that does not come on earth; but I’ve struggled with myself, I see there’s no living without it. And it must be settled.”
“It must, it must, it must be settled now!” blared Socrates.
“What did you go away for?” inquired Oblonsky, but Levin charged on: “Ah, the thoughts that come crowding on one! The questions one must ask oneself!” Socrates now was pacing at furious speed around the dining table, beeping and whirring and whistling in a paroxysm of agitation. “You can’t imagine what you’ve done for me by what you said. I’m so happy that I’ve become positively hateful; I’ve forgotten everything. I heard today that my brother Nikolai . . . you know, he’s here . . . he’s ill. . . . I had even forgotten him. But what’s awful . . . Here, you’ve been married, you know the feeling. . . .” Socrates was now turning, twisting rapidly in place, his eyebank a wild xanthic blur, but Levin hardly noticed. “It’s awful that we—old—with a past . . . not of love, but of sins . . . are brought all at once so near to a creature pure and innocent; it’s loathsome—”
“Loathsome! Loathsome!”
“And that’s why one can’t help feeling oneself unworthy.”
“Unworthy! Unworthy! Unworthy!” Socrates bleated, and then there was a loud grinding noise and a small hiss of steam, as Socrates overheated, and went to unintentional Surcease.