Android Karenina by Ben H. Winters Read Free Book Online Page A

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 afist-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 anyoneof 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,”