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

  Jasperodus quickly grew bored with watching the progress of the game and expressed a wish to depart. The gatekeeper summoned the elevator; they found Count Viss still surveying his domain in the gathering gloom.

  As they left, floodlights came on within the stadium, casting a glow into the air. It did not last long, however. There was a rumbling sound as a flat roof slid across the top of the building, cutting off the light from possible air surveillance.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ said the count cheerfully. He jumped up and folded his chair stick. ‘What do you think? Not bad, eh?’

  Another frantic roar from within almost drowned out his words.

  ‘Very ingenious,’ Jasperodus complimented. ‘But planning for eternity does seem a trifle over-ambitious. For one thing the arrival of the Borgors could cut such a projection very short indeed.’

  ‘Yes, that is the most immediate problem,’ Viss admitted. He set off towards the mansion. Soon they were crossing the ‘lost world’ valley.

  The count seemed thoughtful. Suddenly he turned to Cricus. ‘How trustworthy is your friend here?’

  Cricus hesitated. ‘He is not formally inducted into the Gargan Work,’ he said. ‘But he is reliable, in my opinion.’

  ‘The Borgors could probably get a secret out of him, couldn’t they? All you have to do is ask a damned robot and he’ll tell you anything.’

  ‘I think I know what you are referring to,’ Cricus said quietly. ‘You will have to decide for yourself, but I would say you run no risk.’

  To all this Jasperodus listened with polite detachment. For the rest of the walk Viss seemed to be struggling with himself, bursting to tell Jasperodus something but knowing it was unwise. Finally, as they neared the driveway to the mansion, he could contain himself no longer.

  He stopped on the sand-coloured gravel. ‘I’ve something to show you, old chap. But you’re sworn to secrecy, do you hear?’

  ‘If you feel you can trust me,’ said Jasperodus.

  ‘Come this way.’ Viss limped off towards where the driveway disappeared into the earth. Cricus gave Jasperodus a knowing look as they descended into the cavernous underground tunnel, which was partly illuminated by dim nubs of light in the roof. About thirty feet in, a steel shutter barred the way. It slid aside as they approached, responding to some signal Jasperodus did not see, then slid shut behind them again.

  ‘Even before I died I was deucedly interested in underground excavations,’ the count announced. ‘I started off with an underground ballroom. Held a ball in it, too. Then underground apartments, a railway going round in a circle, even a street of houses. It’s all under the estate still.’

  ‘Had you a reason for doing this?’ But by now Jasperodus knew it was pointless to try to rationalise the actions of an eccentric.

  ‘Premonition, I’d say. Premonition. At the time it just seemed a marvellous thing to do. I like that underground feeling, don’t you? It’s fascinating, though it’s hard to say why. Little did I know it would become a matter of urgency.’

  They had continued to descend, the slope of the tunnel becoming steeper until they must have been at a considerable depth. Now the tunnel widened, until it divided into curved galleries passing to left and right.

  The galleries ran close under the roof of a huge cavern, meeting up on its far side to form a complete circle. On the floor of the cavern, visible over the railing, a robot work force toiled by the light of floodlights. They were constructing a subterranean replica of the sports stadium Jasperodus had just visited.

  ‘The everlasting match will be transferred here as soon as facilities are complete,’ Viss said. ‘A break of only a few minutes will be involved, which is not unusual. I may, indeed, transfer my entire household to the other excavations I mentioned, pending the Borgor threat, and landscape the entrance. The Borgors could overrun the estate and never suspect what lies below.

  ‘Down here, the match could continue in secret for thousands of years. Eventualities occurring after that will have to be tackled as they arise.’

  ‘How do you dispose of the earth and rock that is dug out?’ Jasperodus asked him.

  ‘Some of it comes in useful in further landscaping the estate. The rest is dumped some miles away.”

  Jasperodus lingered for several minutes watching the work and inspecting the arched roof supports. As a piece of engineering the big chamber was impressive, and far more interesting than the frenetic sports match itself.

  ‘I hope your preparations will soon be finished,’ he said at length. ‘At present the Borgors have passed by you and gone south. When they have finished there they may well turn in this direction.’

  ‘Perhaps, though in my view they could equally turn east to outflank the New Empire, or what’s left of it,’ the count replied. ‘Well, what do you say we get back to the house and open a bottle or two?’

  For some reason Viss seemed suddenly eager to be going. Briskly he turned from the scene and hurried the pace to the mansion, whose windows now twinkled with dim lights. The moment they were through the entrance he called a foot robot and issued instructions in a hasty voice.

  ‘Go to the cellar and fetch two bottles of number a hundred and three to the dining room. Bring the box, too. Oh, and come and have jag yourself later.’

  He turned to his guests. ‘You’ll have to excuse me. This alimentary canal of mine works a good bit faster than the old one used to….’

  At a near-run, he disappeared through a door to one side of the reception hall and slammed it shut behind him. Curiously Jasperodus tuned up his hearing.

  Not that he needed the extra sensitivity. He heard a rasping noise, followed by the plopping of lumps of something into water, and a deep sigh of pleasure from the defecating robot.

  Cricus was staring into the distance, pretending he heard nothing.

  Count Viss was clearly a convivial sort of fellow who in his younger days would have enjoyed an evening drinking with friends. He had kept up the habit, but with his household robots. To this gathering were now added Jasperodus and Cricus.

  The wine, obviously, was for his own consumption. But it could not give him the mild intoxication that made it popular among humans. For this, there was ‘the box’.

  The device was a familiar one in robot communities. It was a neural generator, interfering with robotic nervous systems in much the same way that alcohol mildly deranged the nervous systems of biological creatures, and producing pretty much the same result. With his every glass of wine, the count applied the box’s leads to his cranium and gave himself a quick ‘jag’.

  Any others present were also free to make use of the box, and several of them did so much more liberally than did the count himself. Conversation was desultory at first, until Viss had disposed of one bottle and began telling a series of ancient jokes, laughing raucously with each punchline. Dutifully his servants laughed with him, despite the fact that many were clearly devoid of humour (and would have been baffled by most of the jokes in any case, dealing as they did with human biological functions).

  Jasperodus, however, was in no mood for jollity. After little more than half an hour he made enquiries and then slipped out. He mounted the broad staircase in the reception hall, and then walked to the rear of the mansion. At the end of a side corridor he knocked on a wood-panel door whose paint was chipped and scarred.

  ‘Enter,’ a young-sounding voice said. Jasperodus turned the handle, eased open the door and stepped quietly into a small, cosy room with the atmosphere of a den or study. There was a lamp and a design computer with a graphics screen on a table. Before it a robot sat on a sturdy steel chair. Bookladen shelves lined the walls. There were no tools or components. The workshop, no doubt more spacious, was elsewhere.

  Like Viss, the robot had a sculptured face.

  Jasperodus had seen his father, as he thought of his manufacturer, only twice, and briefly. He remembered an old, lined face, the expression rather sad, the eyes mild though sure with the sureness of a master t
echnician. The face of the robot was that same face, but it was of a young man of about thirty. There was the same look of harmlessness, the same air of professionalism, but the whitish metal, containing perhaps aluminium or platinum, was moulded to a slimmer, smoother shape. It was fascinating to witness such a backtracking through time.

  ‘Please tell the count I shall not be joining him tonight,’ the robot said, glancing up.

  Jasperodus, struggling with the same mixture of feelings that had assailed him earlier, did not reply immediately.

  ‘The count did not send me,’ he then said. ‘I came by myself. I would like to talk to you.’

  Jasper Hobartus peered. ‘I don’t think I recognise you. Did the count purchase you somewhere?’

  ‘No.’ Jasperodus moved further into the room. ‘I happen to have paused here during a journey. Now I find that you and I have a connection. You made me. Or rather, the man of whom you are a copy made me.’

  He said the last words slowly. Now the robot leaned back to inspect him more intently. ‘Yes, your scrollwork certainly bears my signature,’ he said. ‘So what bothers you? Do you have a dysfunction?’

  ‘Nothing bothers me, in that regard,’ said Jasperodus.

  There was a pause. ‘You must have been manufactured after my imprint was taken,’ the robot said. ‘To tell the truth I have no knowledge of my career after I left the count’s employ—or rather, after my human pattern left.’ The oddness of his own phrasing seemed to amuse the robot. Had he been able, he might have smiled. ‘What can you tell me on that score?’

  ‘You studied for three years under Aristos Lyos,’ Jasperodus told him. ‘Then you settled in the west and went into retirement. Towards the end of your life, you made me.’

  ‘Aristos Lyos … the great master designer,’ Hobartus said, with a murmur of surprise. ‘I dare say I could learn something from stripping you down … but perhaps you would be uncooperative.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Jasperodus said. He felt awkward. ‘Did you not know he … you … intended to enroll with Lyos?’

  ‘No. My pattern gave no particular reason for leaving. I think he had grown restive because there was so little human company. By then there was only the count left.’

  ‘But you are Jasper Hobartus. Surely you must know what was in his mind?’

  ‘Only up to the time my imprint was taken, and that was over two years before his departure. He did not bother to keep my memory up to date, though he devised such a technique for the Viss imprint. So whatever thoughts occurred to him subsequently were his own.’

  ‘I see.’

  Jasperodus reflected. He could find no way to broach the subject except directly. ‘You will recall, however, that he was interested in the question of investing a construct with consciousness.’

  Hobart stared at him, then shook his head. ‘Ridiculous. It is an axiom of robotic science that no such thing is possible.’

  ‘You have never worked on this problem?’

  ‘What would be the point?’

  ‘But I tell you that Jasper Hobartus was very much interested in such a possibility. Furthermore, I am the result of his efforts in that area.’

  ‘I cannot believe it. Hobartus is too good a robotician to go chasing rainbows.’

  ‘And what if I were to tell you that I am conscious?’

  ‘You would be lying, or deluded.’

  Jasperodus leaned forward. ‘What conception do you have, then, of this “consciousness”? It plainly means something to you.’

  ‘Yes, in a theoretical sort of way. My pattern, of course, was himself conscious, but the condition makes no trace on my memory.’ Hobartus reached out and switched off the glowing graphics screen before him. ‘Your line of questioning tells me something about you. It is plain you belong to the Gargan Work.’

  Jasperodus did not answer.

  ‘Gargan himself was here, some years ago,’ Hobartus added. ‘He, too, pressed me on the subject of consciousness. He asked me to help him. I did everything I could to dissuade him from such a lost cause, but to no avail.’

  ‘I have not met Gargan yet,’ Jasperodus said. ‘A construct by the name of Cricus is taking me to him.’

  ‘Cricus? He is a recruiter for Gargan. He has been here before, quite recently. I regret to say that my master is another who has allowed himself to become beguiled by this mirage of consciousness—but then the count, if the truth be known, is a ready acceptor of improbable propositions.’

  ‘Such as a sports match to be played until time comes to a stop?’

  The other inclined his head in agreement.

  A further silence followed, until Jasperodus gruffly said, ‘You know why I am here.’

  ‘Something to do with my pattern in his later years, may I presume?’ Hobartus ventured, ‘It could be that you miss his company. It is not unusual for a construct to grow attached to its master, much a dog does.’

  ‘Yes, that must be it,’ Jasperodus muttered. He found himself unable to explain that the time he had spent in the presence of his father totalled only minutes, and that the first of only two occasions—that of his initial activation—had lasted but seconds.

  He was surprised to hear the robot deny any inkling of Hobartus’ great discovery. Could he be lying, obedient to his pattern’s adamant insistence that the secret of inducted consciousness must remain lost forever? Or perhaps Gargan had sworn him to secrecy for other reasons….

  No, the hypothesis did not accord with events as Jasperodus saw them. The robot imprint would surely have been deeply interested in his pattern’s final handiwork, had he shared or known of Hobartus’ pursuit of construct consciousness. He would not have dismissed Jasperodus so casually.

  He had to be telling the truth. Possibly Hobartus’ discovery had come as a totally unexpected accident, made long after leaving Count Viss’ estate.

  Jasperodus felt disconsolate. He wished he had not given way to the urge to visit the imprinted Hobartus. Yet how could he not have tried to see the man who had so often occupied his thoughts? Who had sacrificed a part of his own consciousness, as well as years of his life, so that Jasperodus might have consciousness of his own?

  Much as he might have longed to speak to the robot before him as confidingly as he would have spoken to that man, his visit was a miserable failure. It was not just because he knew the robot’s personality was only a kind of picture—a moving, talking picture—that he was deterred. One would have been hard put to it to know the difference in personality alone, for the same gentleness of manner was there, less mellowed with age than the original’s, perhaps.

  No, what deterred Jasperodus was that the robot in no way recognised him; could in no sense understand that this visitor from a departed future was a son to the man who had left long ago.

  Head bent, he turned to take his leave.

  ‘Tell me,’ Hobartus said suddenly, as Jasperodus hesitated by the door, ‘have you ever studied robotics?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jasperodus told him, ‘though not as a practitioner.’

  The imprinted robot turned the graphics screen back on. ‘One of the park machines has developed an aggravating set of disloes. I can’t seem to trace the source. Would you care to go through the schematics with me? Perhaps you will be able to remind me of how my alter ego would have dealt with the problem.’

  Jasperodus knew that the robot did not need his help. Hobartus had merely discerned that he was disappointed, and was responding with kindness. It was a gesture typical of the original of which he was a copy.

  Gladly he joined him at the screen. The mask graphics came up one after another under the controlling fingers of Hobartus, who pointed out feature after feature. With a poignant sense of companionship on Jasperodus’ part, they talked and talked.

  7

  When first agreeing to accompany Cricus, Jasperodus had been prompted by a feeling of curiosity concerning Gargan and his project. It was, he had reasoned, an interesting precursor to those possible trends in future construct soc
iety that were doomed to failure. He had even derived a certain amount of amusement from the thought. But, after a further fifteen days of travel, he began to be oppressed by a more serious, even ominous feeling. The landscape had grown bare and wild. The region was subject to frequent magnetic storms, and a brooding, electric sensation seemed constantly in the air.

  Cricus stopped and linked an arm to his. ‘Inspect the terrain ahead carefully. Do you notice anything amiss?’

  There stretched before them level ground strewn with boulders and scrub. Jasperodus shook his head.

  ‘Then listen. What do you hear?’

  Intently Jasperodus tuned up his hearing. ‘Yes, there is a muffled noise,’ he reported. ‘A sonic muffler is in operation.’ He looked around. ‘Where is it? Underground?’

  ‘Not quite. We are about to descend into a rift valley in the plain. The terrain ahead of us is an illusion, created to make the Gargan Work invisible from the air. Follow me, and be careful how you place your feet.’

  After a few yards Jasperodus noticed that Cricus was seemingly sinking into the ground inch by inch with each step he took. Gingerly he followed, and watched his own feet disappear likewise. The visible ground was insubstantial; they were treading an unseen surface below it.

  Cricus glanced back. ‘The slope becomes steeper here,’ he warned. ‘Do not lose your footing.’

  Except that there was no resistance, it was like wading through water. The false surface rose to Jasperodus’ waist, to his chest, then to his neck to give him a worm’s-eye view.

  Then it closed over his head completely. Instead of the flat plain, he saw a broad, dry canyon spread out below. The bank they were descending was a collapsed section of cliff. Towards the horizon, an opposite cliff reared. The disguise was more than camouflage: it was a trap. Anyone not knowing the proper route but coming on the canyon by accident would likely tumble to his death as solid ground became empty air.

  From below, the fake landscape disappeared altogether. The sun shone through the same cloudy sky as before.

  And there, some distance away on the floor of the canyon, was the site of the Gargan project. Like most robot habitations it was unimpressive to look at. There were sheds of zinc and iron, and a few vehicles, including aircraft. Evidence of small-scale industrial working came from smoke rising from what might have been a foundry, from the thump of engines, more audible now that he was beneath the sonic muffler’s umbrella, and from what he took to be a huge junkheap.