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

THE END