The other soldier uncrossed his arms and spoke curtly, gesturing roughly at the two companion robots. “These are the machines to be taken?”
Tatiana took a sidelong, slippered step toward Kitty, and the two locked arms and stood upright, like dancers preparing to launch into a partnered minuet.
“But no!” Kitty announced suddenly, with a wide-eyed, innocent expression. “They cannot go!”
Levin drew breath to speak, intending to upbraid his wife for indulging in such childish defiance of authority. Gazing upon her, however, arm in arm with her beloved-companion, he was softened by the distress evident on her face. What is more, he felt in his heart-especially when his intelligent eyes saw the concern evident in the flickering eyebank and nervous twitching of his own loyal Class III-that Kitty was absolutely correct in her defiance.
For how could they?
“Gentlemen, I beg that you pardon my wife the rashness of her young age and tenderhearted spirit. Naturally we shall comply and submit these machines for the necessary adjustments. But I wonder if you, in your official capacity, might first perform a service for a local landowner.”
Speaking rapidly, directing his words primarily to the first Toy Soldier, the one who seemed to him to have the friendliest nature, Levin explained what he and Socrates had observed at the old farmhouse: the skeleton stripped of flesh; the signs of struggle; the puddle of viscous ochre goo. He told them, too, of his own encounter with the gigantic, wormlike koschei outside Ergushovo. “Could you not, as long as your official business has brought you to this province, ride out to these spots I have mentioned and investigate? The threat of such unusual and deadly monsters is a cause of deep distress, as you can imagine, to myself and my household.”
But the Toy Soldier to whom Levin directed his appeal scratched his head and squinted, seemingly entirely uninterested in the bizarre creatures Levin spoke of. “That is indeed a most alarming tale,” he said softly, “but it does not, alas, have to do with us and our business.” Levin glanced from the corner of his eye at Socrates, and saw that he had brought one end-effector up to gently touch Tatiana where her torso unit met her lower portion-a touchingly human gesture. “Sir, we have precise instructions from the Ministry.”
Levin was inwardly cursing the seeming singlemindedness of the soldiers when the other one, who had been standing mute with arms crossed, seeming not to pay attention, held up an open palm. “This wormlike machine,” he said, “did it emit a sound-like a sort of ticking, a tikka tikka tikka sound?”
Levin nodded his assent, at which the Toy Soldier sighed and spoke in a whisper to his companion. As they turned on their slim black boots and walked back toward the door, the first of the soldiers glanced amiably over his shoulder at Levin, and said in a casual tone, “We shall return shortly, and complete our previously announced business here. We have no desire to perform our commission by force.”
“No,” said the second soldier, as he pulled the big front door of the manor house behind them. “Not yet.”
Kitty burst into tears, running to her Class III and hiding her face in Tatiana’s thin metal bosom. “I could not bear for her to be taken!” she said through her tears.
“Nor I, my dear,” was Levin’s reply, as he looked gravely out the front window, watching the Toy Soldiers ride off. “Nor I.”
“And what will they do with them? I mean, really do?”
“I don’t know, Kitty.”
“Madame?” interjected Tatiana anxiously, as Levin and Kitty embraced.
“Sir?” echoed Socrates.
“Yes, yes, beloved-companions,” Levin said. “You are quite right. Now we must leave Pokrovskoe. And fast.”
CHAPTER 9
IMMEDIATELY THERE COMMENCED in the Levin household that frenzy of activity, among robots and humans alike, attendant upon a rapid and secret flight to safety. What to take? How much luggage? How best to travel undetected? And where to go?
“I shall take the Class Ills with me to the small provincial town of Urgensky, where my brother Nikolai is residing,” Levin said. “In his last communiqué he said his own Class III, Karnak, has not been taken in for adjustment. We may hope that Urgensky is too out of the way, with too few Class III companion robots in residence there, to be considered worth the effort of the state to collect them.”
Kitty’s face changed at once.
“When?” she said.
“Immediately! A visit to my ailing brother is a perfectly reasonable excuse for travel, and I shall carry the Surceased robots with my luggage.”
“And I will go with you, can I?” Kitty said.
“Kitty! What are you thinking of?” he said reproachfully.
“How do you mean?” she said, offended that he should seem to take her suggestion unwillingly and with vexation. “Why shouldn’t I go? I shan’t be in your way. I-”
“The journey is to be long, and likely dangerous,” said Levin, all the fire of their earlier quarrel returning. “Why should you-”
“Why? For the same reason as you.”
“Ah!” said Levin, and bitterly muttered to Socrates, though loud enough for Kitty to hear. “At a moment of such gravity, she only thinks of her being dull by herself, alone here in the pit-house without me or Tatiana.”
“Now now,” counseled Socrates, looking guiltily at Kitty. “Do not be cross with her.”
“No!” said Levin sternly. “It’s out of the question.”
Tatiana brought Kitty a cup of tea from the I/Samovar/1(8); Kitty did not even notice her. The tone in which her husband had said the last words wounded her, especially because he evidently did not believe what she had said.
“I tell you, that if you go, I shall come with you; I shall certainly come,” she said hastily and wrathfully.
“It is out of the question!”
“Why out of the question? Why do you say it’s out of the question?”
“Because I’ll be going God knows where, by all sorts of roads and to all sorts of hotels. And my brother lives in entirely unsuitable circumstances! That would be reason enough to bar your coming, before one even considers the danger of our being discovered by agents of the Ministry and prosecuted as Januses for disobeying the compulsory adjustment order. You would be a hindrance to me,” said Levin, trying to be cool.
“What dangers you can face, I can!” replied Kitty hotly.
“Yes, yes. But think, too, of where we are going, and whom we will meet. For one thing then, this woman’s there whom you can’t meet.”
“I don’t know and don’t care to know who’s there and what. My husband is undertaking a risk, to protect his beloved-companion as well as mine, and I will go with my husband too…”
“Kitty! Don’t get angry. But just think a little: this is a matter of such importance that I can’t bear to think that you should bring in a feeling of weakness, of dislike to being left alone. Come, you’ll be dull alone, so go and stay at Moscow a little.”
“There, you always ascribe base, vile motives to me,” she said with tears of wounded pride and fury. “I didn’t mean, it wasn’t weakness, it wasn’t… I feel that it’s my duty to be with my husband when he’s in trouble, but you try on purpose to hurt me, you try on purpose not to understand…”
“No, this is awful! To be such a slave!” cried Levin, getting up, and unable to restrain his anger any longer. But at the same second he felt that he was beating himself.