CHAPTER 8

IN SPITE OF VRONSKY’S apparently frivolous life in society, he was a man who hated irregularity. He liked to know, for instance, that all of his weapons were in proper working order at all times, and particularly when (according to the rumor currently making the regimental rounds) the Ministry’s Department of War was preparing to deploy them against some new, unnamed threat. So he would shut himself up alone and go through each weapon, from grip to muzzle, to satisfy himself that all was in proper working order. This he called his day of reckoning or faire la lessive.

On waking up the day after the Cull, Vronsky put on a white linen coat, and without shaving or taking his bath, he distributed about him all the different pieces of weaponry he used, whether frequently or infrequently. Lupo padded in happy circles in a square of sunlight on the floor of the room, ready to be of use if needed, prepared even to act as a moving target if his master was in a mood to practice his aim.

As he worked, Vronsky considered the complexities of his life. Every man who knows the minutest details of the conditions surrounding him cannot help imagining that the complexity of these conditions, and the difficulty of making them clear, is something exceptional and personal, peculiar to himself, and never supposes that others are surrounded by just as complicated an array of personal affairs as he is. So indeed it seemed to Vronsky. And not without inward pride, he thought that any other man would long ago have been in difficulties, would have been forced to some dishonorable course, if he had found himself in such a difficult position. But Vronsky felt that now especially it was essential for him to clear up and define his position if he were to avoid getting into difficulties. As he thought, he bent over his work table.

What Vronsky attacked first were the small arms, the special favorite pieces he kept on his person, and for which he was known. These amounted to: the smokers, which sat with pride on his belt, one jutting forth from each hip; the smoldering hot-whip that coiled around his upper thigh in its transparent skin; and the gleaming crackle dagger tucked into his handsome, black leather boot.

He found all in excellent condition: the smokers unloaded their sizzling streams at the rate of sixteen’a’second, twice the regimental standard. At the pressure of his thumb on the hilt, the hot-whip leaped to life like an extension of his arm, and snapped across the length of the room in all directions. The crackle dagger he hurled with deadly accuracy into the far corner of his lodgings, propelling it into the body of a raccoon, which had picked the wrong moment to emerge from hiding behind the wastepaper basket.

He plucked the twitching, electrocuted raccoon from the blade, and tossed it to Lupo before, remembering his conversation with Anna from the previous day, he sank into meditation.

Vronsky’s life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles that defined with unfailing certitude what he ought and what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered only a very small circle of contingencies, but then the principles were never doubtful, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that circle, had never had a moment’s hesitation about doing what he ought to do. In his own mind, he jokingly referred to these principles as the “Bronze Laws,” in winking homage to the Iron Laws that regulated robot behavior.

Vronsky’s Bronze Laws were a set of invariable rules: that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat anyone, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one; and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his head up. Only quite lately in regard to his relations with Anna, Vronsky had begun to feel that his code of principles did not fully cover all possible contingencies, and to foresee in the future difficulties and perplexities for which he could find no guiding clue.

He sighed and turned his little tour of inspection to the complex pieces of ordnance: there was the shoulder-mounted Disrupter; the Demagnetizing Wand; the gleaming obsidian Sapper Gun; and, of course, the dreaded organ-destabilizing propellant gun known as the “Tsar’s Vengeance.” One by one, he picked up each deadly machine, and with practiced ease disassembled it, inspected the connections, slicked the gears with fresh humectant, and snapped all back in place.

The familiar and repetitive actions cleared his mind and gladdened his heart. His present relation to Anna and to her husband was to his mind clear and simple. It was clearly and precisely defined in the code of principles by which he was guided.

She was an honorable woman who had bestowed her love upon him, and he loved her, and therefore she was in his eyes a woman who had a right to the same, or even more, respect than a lawful wife. He would have had his hand chopped off before he would have allowed himself by a word, by a hint, to humiliate her, or even to fall short of the fullest respect a woman could look for.

His attitude to society, too, was clear. Everyone might know, might suspect it, but no one might dare to speak of it. If any did so, he was ready to force all who might speak to be silent and to respect the nonexistent honor of the woman he loved.

“Ah!” he shouted as, in his split concentration, he closed the clip of the Disrupter over his hand, pinching his fingertips. “Dratted thing.”

Vronsky’s attitude to the husband was the clearest of all. Thinking of Alexei Alexandrovich, he selected the next weapon from the table, an experimental device called a Particulate Intensifier—one of only seven yet in existence, according to the conspiratorial gadgetman who had sold it to him—and leveled it at the target bay he’d had constructed in the far corner of his chamber.

Vronsky paused before firing the Particulate Intensifier. From the moment that Anna loved him, he had regarded his own right over her as the one thing unassailable. Her husband was simply a superfluous and tiresome person. No doubt he was in a pitiable position, but how could that be helped? He squinted, drew his aim, and pictured superfluous and tiresome Alexei Alexandrovich standing in the target bay, imagined the smirking, half-metal face, and squeezed the trigger.

The target rattled violently for three long seconds, then exploded in a tumult of splintered wood and orange flares; Lupo howled his approval, dancing on his four legs about the room catching sparks and shards on his tongue like snowflakes. Vronsky smiled and looked at this new weapon admiringly. If it crossed his mind that Alexei Alexandrovich was no ordinary husband, and that he might have powers both literally and figuratively greater than any Vronsky may have previously encountered, he did not let that fact bother him. Striding about in his regimental barracks, surrounded by the deadly accoutrements of his trade, Vronsky could feel no sense that there was any man in the world more powerful than he, nor more deserving of the woman upon whom he had settled his attentions.

And yet, of late, new inner relations had arisen between him and her, which frightened Vronsky by their indefmiteness. Only the day before she had told him that she was with child. And he felt that this fact and what she expected of him called for something not fully defined in that code of principles by which he had hitherto steered his course in life. And he had been indeed caught unawares, and at the first moment when she spoke to him of her position, at that awful moment when the godmouth had yawned open and threatened to swallow her away forever, his heart had prompted him to beg her to leave her husband. He had said that, but now thinking things over he saw clearly that it would be better to manage to avoid that; and at the same time, as he told himself so, he was afraid whether it was not wrong.

“If I told her to leave her husband, that must mean uniting her life with mine; am I prepared for that? How can I take her away now, when I have no money? Supposing I could arrange . . . But how can I take her away while I’m in the service? If I say that, I ought to be prepared to do it, that is, I ought to have the money and to retire from the army. But . . . to retire from the army? Can I?” he said to Lupo, bending to scratch the wolf-like Class III in the sensitive spot above his Third Bay.

He flung his crackle dagger again, with an extra curl of the wrist, and watched it sail toward the wall before swinging itself around like a Carpathian throwing stick toward the opposite corner of the room, where it embedded itself solidly in the heart of a second racoon.

Vronsky let out a long whistle, low and admiring, while Lupo retrieved the catch. He had worked all the days of his life to earn his place: the right to wield such powerful devices. Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream which he did not confess even to himself, though it was so strong that now this passion was even doing battle with his love.

“Women are the chief stumbling block in a man’s career,” his old friend Serpuhovskoy had pronounced the previous night, as they raised glasses together in memoriam of poor Frou-Frou. “It’s hard to love a woman and do anything. There’s only one way of having love conveniently without its being a hindrance—that’s marriage.”

“But Serpuhovskoy has never loved,” Vronsky murmured softly now, looking straight before him and thinking of Anna. Sensing the drift of his master’s thoughts, Lupo yelped sharply in protest, regarding Vronsky with eyes like slits; a Regimental Class III, he was naturally anxious that Vronsky should remain in the service.

“Yes, yes, you’re right,” Vronsky said. “If I retire, I burn my ships. If I remain in the army, I lose nothing. She said herself she did not wish to change her position.” And slowly twirling his mustache, he got up from the table and walked about the room. His eyes shone particularly brightly, and he felt in that confident, calm, and happy frame of mind which always came after he had thoroughly faced his position. Everything was straight and clear, every piece of his armory having been checked and rechecked and fired—except the Tsar’s Vengeance, which even the most elite soldiers were not permitted to discharge outside of combat situations—and stowed in its proper place.

Except his oldest and dearest friends: his simple, beloved smokers. Before reholstering them, Vronsky took one more trick shot, admiring the way the weapons’ hot blast lit up the four corners of the room.

Lupo ducked and rolled, his Vox-Em howling in vigorous approval of his master’s steady eye.