“I must hurry, Master. Must hurry hurry.
“When it was so often claimed that the aliens ‘will come for us in three ways,’ this was not after all meaningless. They have come in three ways.
“They have done sol”
When they finished watching the monitor, and Socrates’s explanation was complete, Levin took Kitty’s hand in his own, and together they sat for a long time, not saying a word: only contemplating what came next.
They had come as screeching warrior-beasts, born in horror from the fragile bodies of the ill.
They had come as ticking soil-dwelling worm-things, gathering strength from the groznium soil before bursting forth from the ground beneath us.
And they had come a third way…
WE CANNOT BE STOPPED, said the Face to Alexei Alexandrovich, which is to say, said to itself, for now the Face was Karenin, and Karenin was the Face.
WE CANNOT BE STOPPED OR DEFEATED. NOT NOW. THIS PLANET BELONGS TO US.
Tsar Alexei had ordered the regiments to fight the aliens in the Nest, and had therefore consigned them to their doom, and left Russia undefended against the onslaught to come. He had done this because that was what the Face wanted, and the man called the Tsar was now entirely the puppet of the Face.
The alien soldiers known as Honored Guests had killed and been killed, but the alien leaders had won their war against humanity years ago. They had won from the moment that Alexei Alexandrovich, with the Face already a part of him, had ascended to power in the Ministry.
The aliens had won from the day of Karenin’s ascendance, and nothing could stop that now, because that day had long passed.
Karenin-that-was-not-Karenin cackled from inside his gleaming silver caul with a terrible laugher; while, somewhere in the deep recesses of what once had been a human heart, there floated and glittered the memory of a woman, a woman he had loved.
CHAPTER 5
LEVIN STRODE ALONG the highroad, absorbed not so much in his thoughts-he could not yet disentangle them-as in his spiritual condition, unlike anything he had experienced before. The words uttered by Socrates in the communiqué had acted on his soul like an electric shock, suddenly transforming and combining into a single whole the whole swarm of disjointed, impotent, separate thoughts that incessantly occupied his mind.
The Golden Hope was not a fight for the sake of robots, or for the importance of technology, but for human freedom. Karenin was the enemy, not because he would take groznium technology from the people, but because he was an alien creature bent on the subjugation of all humanity.
Levin was aware of something new in his soul, and tested this new thing, not yet knowing what it was.
He wished to express this new rush of understanding to his old coconspirator, his darling Kitty.
She understands, he thought; she knows what I’m thinking about. Shall I tell her or not? Yes, I’ll tell her. But at the moment he was about to speak, she began speaking… and he found that she had nearly the same thoughts, almost in the same words.
On that day, in that moment, they began to make their plans. Somehow they would seek out whatever remnants of UnConSciya had survived the summer purges, and begin to regain their trust and rebuild the resistance. Levin would secretly seal off one corner of his mine, ensuring that there was enough of the Miracle Metal left for him to begin experiments. Quietly, invisibly, they would keep humanity’s flame burning until the Golden Hope could finally fly free. Someday, they would find a way to overturn the evil that Karenin had brought to their world, no matter the lengths to which they must go.
Night fell. As they spoke, Levin gazed up into the high, cloudless sky, where somewhere the alien invaders hovered.
“Do I not know that that is infinite space, and that it is not a round arch? But, however I screw up my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it not round and not bounded, and in spite of my knowing about infinite space, I am incontestably right when I see a solid, black dome, and more right than when I strain my eyes to see beyond it. That is how we must think of the future, of the rest of our lives. We cannot see it, but we know it is there to take-and we know it belongs to us, if we have the strength and the courage to seize hold of it.”
Kitty kissed him gently, and went off to bed.
Levin pictured the future in his imagination. Can this be purpose? he thought, afraid to believe in the feelings carrying him away. “Socrates, I thank thee!” he said, gulping down his sobs, and with both hands brushing away the tears that filled his eyes.
“This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith-or not faith-I don’t know what it is-but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.
“I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why hope lives in my breast, and I shall still go on hoping; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no longer meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”
QUIETLY, INVISIBLY, THEY WOULD KEEP HUMANITY’S FLAME BURNING UNTIL THE GOLDEN HOPE COULD FINALLY FLY FREE
A READER’S DISCUSSION GUIDE
1. The famous first sentence of the novel states that “Functioning robots are all alike; every malfunctioning robot malfunctions in its own way.” Which of the novel’s many malfunctioning robots causes the most trouble for the humans around it?
2. Do the Iron Laws of robot behavior function solely on the level of plot, or is Tolstoy drawing an analogy with the societal and moral codes governing human behavior? What are the “iron laws” of your own life, and in what situations do you break them?
3. When Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky first meet, which is the strongest sign that things aren’t going to go that welclass="underline" Lupo’s instinctive growling, the loud and mysterious “crack in the sky,” or the mangled corpse?
4. Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin’s “Face” is a trusted technological device that slowly takes over his brain and makes him evil. Was Tolstoy merely creating an interestingly dichotomous villain, or anticipating people who check their messages too much? How often do you check your messages?
5. How does Kitty’s experience aboard the Venetian orbiter prepare her emotionally for an adult relationship? Is she more “healed” by the ship’s carefully recirculated air, or by watching Madame Stahl get shot into space?
6. Did Tolstoy, in making the aliens horrid, shrieking lizard-beasts-rather than the benevolent light-beings anticipated by the xenotheologists-intend a comment on the nature of faith? Or did he, perhaps, just really like lizard-beasts?
7. In a crucial moment, Levin chooses his wife over Socrates, his beloved-companion robot. Are there any technological devices in your life that you love more than your spouse?
8. The ending of the book is, for both Vronsky and the Shcherbatskys, more of a new beginning. Should they be hopeful, despairing, or-given the malleability of space-time-a little bit of everything?
9. Are you really a human being, or are you a super-intelligent cybernetic organism created by scientists in a laboratory, and programmed to believe that you are, in fact, human?