Android Karenina by Ben H. Winters Read Free Book Online

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