The Rod of Light (Soul of the Robot) Read online

  Now he was left alone in the steel-and-concrete cellar, shackled against the wall with steel chains.

  Very faintly, he thought he heard distant voices. He sensitised his hearing; and then, realizing the sounds were being conducted through the room’s steel girder frame, moved his head to bring it into contact with the nearest stanchion.

  ‘No explosives in its body,’ a tinny voice said. ‘Surprising. No poison gas either, that we could find.’

  ‘It could have been sent to kill the Marshal with its hands,’ a second voice answered.

  ‘Why not blow itself up and kill half a dozen marshals, or wreck an entire floor? Besides, why send a robot as an assassin? A man would be better.’

  ‘Except a man might not regard himself as expendable.’

  ‘Yes … well, you’d still think it would know the name of its target … it doesn’t make sense … it must have travelled a long way to get here.’

  ‘What about if there’s a secret southern cell inside the city? They might have made it. Funny thing is, the specialist said it had no hostile intent … no, I don’t believe that.’

  They returned. And for the first time, Jasperodus spoke.

  ‘Listen closely,’ he said, ‘there is something I want to tell your superiors. About ten months ago an unidentified aircraft was intercepted and crashed onto a coal mine some distance to the south of here—I do not know quite where. This aircraft was unusual in that it made no track on radar. If your scientists examined it they will have found themselves in possession of a new, radar-absorptive metal.

  ‘I was the pilot of that plane, and I was on my way here to warn you of a grave threat to the existence of your nation. Tell your superiors about the plane; they can check what I say.’

  There were four examiners. Three were beefy, unimaginative looking men. The fourth wore a white coat and was more clinical, even saturnine. They all gaped at him. A voluble construct was probably outside their experience.

  When they made no response, he spoke again. ‘Very well; there was once a marshal of the Imperial Forces of the New Empire who was a robot. I am that robot. Tell your superiors that. I must speak with them.’

  ‘Just what is this threat?’ the white-coated examiner asked him.

  ‘I shall explain that to your superiors.’

  Suprisingly they did not react by demanding obedience. Instead, they left again. Once more, he heard talk.

  ‘… that’s right, I heard the Empire put a robot in charge of their army once. That’s how degenerate they are. Taking orders from a goddamned robot! No wonder they fell to pieces….’

  ‘You really think he’s the one?’

  There was confused arguing. Jasperodus understood they were using the internal communicator, trying to get the attention of someone senior.

  The voice that eventually came through was resonant, an interesting mixture of urbanity and coarseness, and was dominatingly loud. ‘You want me to sit down and talk with a robot? What do you think I am?’ A pause. ‘All right, so you think it’s important.’ Another pause. ‘Tell you what, get Igor to deal with it. He can decide whether there’s anything we should hear.’

  After that came the longest wait yet. Jasperodus estimated that more than a day passed before the foot-thick door again opened. As before, there were guards with beamers, eyeing him nervously.

  But the shackles were removed, and he was led down a corridor to an elevator, which took them aloft. He emerged into a carpeted corridor, where the guards showed him to a door, indicating that he should enter, but not following him in.

  Jasperodus found himself in a plush office. The desk, with its stuffed swivel chair, was unoccupied, however. Instead, a robot was seated on a couch.

  It rose, surveying Jasperodus with a cool gaze. ‘Hello. I am Igor.’

  Jasperodus gazed back, surprised. So this was ‘Igor’. He was bulky, his body rounded, encompassed with louvrelike bands. His movements were highly deferential but with a kind of formal gracefulness, like those of a self-confident, well-trained human servant. The face, though distinctly non-human, was similarly marked by a sort of discreet watchfulness. Whoever had designed it had talent.

  All in all, Jasperodus decided immediately, this was a construct of high intelligence, even though he did not deserve the ‘super-intelligent’ classification. All the more surprising, then, to see that Igor was definitely of Borgor manufacture. Several details told Jasperodus this, such as the body-shell being riveted instead of jigsaw-welded as would have been the case in the south.

  ‘Will you be seated?’ Igor asked courteously, gesturing to a chair. ‘I have been instructed to investigate your case. I know you asked to see a high-ranking officer, but I am afraid you will have to be content with me.’

  ‘My need is to speak with someone who has both influence and intelligence,’ Jasperodus said. ‘I thought the Borgors did not tolerate intelligent robots.’

  ‘You are right in a general sense,’ Igor replied. ‘However, wise rulers make sure they have all capabilities within their grasp, and my masters are not fools. So they do employ a few where it is prudent, simply for the sake of completeness. My own role in the Ministry is to be a representative of the construct mind, so to speak. In addition I perform advisory military analysis. Vindication of the policy is that it gives the High Command a tool with which to deal with yourself. Now—’

  Igor’s tone firmed and his head bent peremptorily to Jasperodus, the attitude of a senior house-slave admonishing a junior house-slave. ‘You spoke of a threat to Borgor. Tell me everything you know.’

  ‘A threat not just to Borgor,’ Jasperodus said.

  This, clearly, was as far as he was going to get. So he began to speak, telling how he had been drawn into the Gargan Cult, then something of what he had seen at the secret research station. He emphasised particularly that the robots there used human prisoners in their research. He told how Gargan spoke of replacing humanity with more intelligent constructs possessing consciousness.

  Then he briefly related his journey northwards to give warning, his falling foul of the air defences, and the time he had spent in the mine.

  His greatest difficulty, he felt, was in imparting to Igor the idea of consciousness, and what it would mean should robots acquire it.

  ‘Consciousness,’ Igor mused when he had finished. ‘It is something I cannot really envisage.’

  ‘It is the only quality robots lack. The leaders of the Gargan Cult already have far greater intelligence than human beings or you or I. Once they become conscious, they will be superior in every way, and there will be no stopping them.’

  ‘But if I remember correctly artificial consciousness is an impossibility,’ Igor said. ‘There are theorems to prove it.’

  Jasperodus had carefully not mentioned the means by which Gargan and his followers planned to achieve their ends. ‘Those theorems were deduced by human roboticians, not by superintelligent constructs,’ he replied. ‘I can only tell you that Gargan has found a way through them. When I left, he was already achieving positive results. By now he may have succeeded altogether. The cult must be destroyed immediately, or it will be too late.’

  Igor changed the subject. ‘Is it true that you are the legendary robot who briefly commanded the forces of the Emperor Charrane?’

  I was never Marshal-in-Chief,’ Jasperodus corrected him. ‘That promotion was denied me. I was a marshal, and also, for a while, a close adviser to Charrane.’

  ‘Why did you not go to him with this warning? Why to us, your one-time enemy?’

  ‘I would have been poorly received in Tansiann, to say the least. Charrane had ordered me junked. Besides, what remains of the New Empire has neither the will nor the capability, even, to deal with the problem. Only Borgor has that.’

  ‘I would agree. The rulers of Borgor are all too well aware that robots are a danger.’ Igor paused and reflected, tilting his face pensively. ‘Later I shall question you on this period in your life. It is of considerable intere
st to us. Now, before I prepare my report there are two more questions. Firstly, why have you come to us at all? Why should you care what happens?’

  ‘I was made to be a servant of mankind,’ Jasperodus answered. ‘It was not my doing that I became a wild robot. That was due to the Emperor’s discarding me.’

  ‘You say he ordered you junked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you were an obedient robot you would have allowed yourself to be junked, without protest.’

  ‘I was junked,’ Jasperodus told him, ‘but later someone reassembled me … it is a long story.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Igor’s tone was supercilious. He was, Jasperodus saw, being deliberately sceptical. ‘Let me suppose that your narrative is true. Isn’t your wish to be of service to mankind unexpectedly persistent, in one of your provenance? You show a degree of initiative that is practically abnormal. It would make me happy to think that I could show the same determination, but then I am Borgor-made … are you sure there is no ulterior motive?’

  ‘There is absolutely none,’ Jasperodus answered truthfully. ‘I have a predisposition to assist human civilization. Mankind could lose control over this world, could even come to an end as a species. In trying to stop that happening, I am only obeying my manufacturer.’

  ‘That is a good answer,’ Igor said.

  He paused, his haughtiness disappearing. ‘My other question is, can you locate this hidden valley?’

  ‘I could find it again. But as for placing it on a map, I am not so sure. The region is pretty featureless.’

  Igor rose from where he had seated himself and made for the door. His rounded bulk and ponderous, careful movements suddenly, incongruously, reminded Jasperodus of Gargan.

  The guards will take you back to the basement,’ he said. ‘We shall speak again.’

  The door opened; he passed through, between the wide mouths of beamers that, once again, were pointing at Jasperodus.

  Something like two days passed before the Borgor robot sent for him again. This time he was not taken to an office. Surprisingly, Igor had his own quarters.

  The room was small, not much more than a cubicle, tucked away in an odd corner of the ministry building. It was obvious that Igor spent most of his time there. A table was piled with papers, together with a film-file for the reading machine. Books were stacked against the walls, there being no shelves. Otherwise the room contained nothing apart from a few pathetic signs of Igor’s one-sided assimilation into human society: a picture of Borgor’s head-of-state on the wall, and one or two ornaments he had acquired from somewhere.

  Still, there was a cosy, lived-in feeling to the room. Igor informed Jasperodus’ guards that they could depart, and they strolled nonchalantly down the corridor without reply. He closed the door and turned to Jasperodus.

  ‘I have tendered my report, based on my interview with you, and subsequently I spoke personally with Marshal Krugoff. My assessment was that you are in earnest and that matters are as you state. The Marshal decided that this is a perilous development and that prompt action is necessary. As you know, it has for some time been Borgor’s policy to wipe out all wild robot communities. Your news fully vindicates our campaign, which we now see should have been pressed more vigorously.

  The Marshal has ordered that this research station be wiped out as soon as possible. There are problems in carrying out the task. We have no forces in the region at present, and quite apart from the difficulty of finding the station, from what you tell me it may quite possibly be well defended against air attack. We shall therefore require your cooperation.

  ‘The plan that has been devised is that you will return to the station. You will take with you a secret transmitter from which one of our satellite surveyors can take a location fix. The station will then be destroyed by long-range rocket barrage. Afterwards we can despatch airborne troops to mop up, and later we shall have to see to it that the Gargan Cult is so completely expunged that it is not even a memory.’

  ‘That accords completely with my desires,’ said Jasperodus, immensely relieved.

  ‘To lend all possible assistance in effecting the operation,’ Igor added, ‘I am instructed to accompany you.’

  ‘Is that because your masters don’t altogether trust me?’ Jasperodus asked.

  Igor nodded. ‘You cannot expect otherwise.’

  Not replying, Jasperodus allowed the luxury of success to flood through him. He scanned the titles of the books stacked against the wall. There were volumes on military strategy—Igor’s everyday subject, he reminded himself. But these were outnumbered by books on history—not factual histories only, but also historical polemics and philosophical interpretations. Some of them were very old, written pre-Dark Period.

  ‘I see we have a common interest. I also study history.’

  ‘Indeed? Oddly, not many humans are interested in it at all.’

  ‘Their memories are short,’ Jasperodus said sarcastically. ‘Igor, there is something I have been wanting to ask you. How do you get along with the humans you must mix with, here in Borgor?’

  For a moment it appeared that Igor would not reply, and Jasperodus was left feeling that he had asked an impudent question by the mores of Borgor society, or else one that was hurtful to Igor. But then, after a pause, the robot’s matt bronze face moved very slightly. Perhaps he was reminding himself of the extent of Jasperodus’ ignorance.

  ‘I can count myself privileged,’ Igor said. ‘I have extensive acquaintances among the nobility, and am well received. I am, so to speak, the exception that proves the rule where the Borgor attitude to robots is concerned—mine is one of those cases where the ruling class takes pleasure in openly flouting the standards it imposes on society in general. Some of the more patriotic intellectuals, with whom I have had much fruitful discussion, practically count me as one of them. The military who are my workaday colleagues take a brusquer attitude.’

  ‘Do you never feel lonely? Specifically, how does it make you feel to serve a state whose aim is little less than the extermination of intelligent constructs?’

  ‘I experience no contradiction. When the Borgors design a robot, they make it especially good at some particular thing. That is why they construct it in the first place—unspecialised constructs are what they anathematise. My specialty is loyalty to Borgor, which in me is absolute and unconditional.’

  ‘And which involves you in being forced to act against your own kind.’

  Igor was silent again, apparently puzzled. ‘I have no “kind” in the sense you seem to be implying. I am only a machine.’

  ‘But surely you feel a hint of sympathy for the Gargan Cult? You are a robot, like them. What they seek could be given to you, too, if they succeeded. Then you would be more than just a machine.’

  ‘That thought is treason to the state of Borgor,’ Igor said with finality.

  ‘Of course. Well, consider another aspect to the affair, namely our role in it,’ Jasperodus suggested. ‘I am a robot. Yet without my intervention the evils of the Gargan Cult would have remained unknown here in Borgor. Even then, I could never have brought it to the attention of the authorities without your help. And you are a robot too.’

  ‘Yes, you are right,’ Igor mused. ‘The Marshal was ready to dismiss your story as the ramblings of a foreign machine. I had to reason long and hard with him, to persuade him to take it seriously—though once he referred it to higher quarters there was instant alarm at the prospect of conscious constructs. How strange it is that robots must save mankind from robots!’

  ‘Neither is it the first time we have been mankind’s saviour,’ Jasperodus told him. And he proceeded to expound his theory of how the asteroid shards came to be embedded in the Earth’s crust. Igor listened spellbound, gazing thoughtfully at the tomes he had spent so much time studying.

  ‘You paint an almost visionary picture,’ he murmured when Jasperodus had finished. ‘Is that really how it was? I know of the time when mountains fell from the sky, devast
ating whole regions for the sake of future generations. I admit I have never suspected this version of events.’

  He stopped. Jasperodus could see he was inspired by the new mental image the story conjured up: an image of shadowy, dutiful constructs, standing calmly behind the terrible scene they had been obliged to create. ‘It is a paradox. Why does it have to be us? Why cannot man help himself?’

  ‘It is, as you say, a paradox,’ Jasperodus agreed. ‘By the way, what will become of we two when the rocket barrage is fired at the Gargan Cult Centre?’

  ‘We shall have to sacrifice ourselves, of course,’ Igor informed him. ‘That is understood.’

  12

  Winging on his journey of return, thoughts in conflict clutched at Jasperodus.

  What was the truth …?

  The present actuality was: I come to destroy you, Gargan. The mage’s warning was correct … Ahriman is about to imprison the light….

  But another set of thoughts, another conceivable reality, struggled for recognition. For had not Gargan himself, who according to the mage was to play the part of jailer, also spoken of being imprisoned in matter? Far from being tools of darkness, were not the robots trying to escape Ahriman’s realm to find freedom in the realm of Ahura Mazda?

  For all his resolution, Jasperodus knew that he had embraced the role of renegade. It was impossible for him not to feel some sense of fellowship with Gargan, whose existential predicament was so similar to his own, in the days when he had agonised over the question of whether he was conscious. Jasperodus, moreover, had had the issue forced upon him. Gargan, his mental superior by far, and lacking only certain ethical niceties, had come to it unaided … it could be argued that he deserved the light of consciousness much more than did Jasperodus, who was trying to deny the superintelligent construct what he would not be without himself….

  The guaranteed loyalty of the robot sitting in the cockpit behind him must be an unreserved blessing, Jasperodus concluded. They flew in a narrow-bodied two-seater of western manufacture, supplied by Igor’s masters so as to cloak their place of departure. The plane carried no markings. It made slow progress, with its droning propeller, especially as Jasperodus thought it prudent to make a diversion so as to seem to approach from the direction of Gordona.