Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus: The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

by Barrington J. Bayley

  ‘Smith,’ he said, addressing me, ‘tomorrow we consign twelve tooling factories to a new armaments project. I wish you to supervise.’

  I acknowledged, wondering what this signified. No one could deny that the aliens’ reign had been peaceful, even prosperous, and he had rarely mentioned military matters, although I knew there was open enmity between him and the King of Brazil. Either this enmity was about to become active, I decided, or else the King forecast a civil uprising.

  Which in itself was not unlikely.

  Below us, the bier was held up by a junction hitch. Stationary, it supplemented its dignity by sounding its klaxon loudly and continuously. The King returned his gaze to it, and though I couldn’t read his unearthly face I suppose he watched it regretfully, if he can feel regret. Of the others in the room, probably the two aliens also watched with regret, but certainly no one else did. Of the four humans, three were probably glad he was dead, though they may have been a little unsure about it.

  That left myself. I was more aware of events than any of them, but I just didn’t know what I felt. Sometimes I felt on the King’s side and sometimes on the other side. I just didn’t have any definite loyalties.

  Having witnessed the arrival of the bier from the continent, where Sorn had met his death, we had achieved the purpose of the visit to the Summer Palace, and accordingly the King, with his entourage of six (two fellow beings, four humans including myself) left for London.

  We arrived at Buckingham Palace shortly before sunset. Wordlessly the King dismissed us all, and with a lonely swirl of his cloak made his way to what was in a makeshift manner called the throne-room. Actually it did have a throne: but it also had several other kinds of strange equipment, things like pools, apparatus with what psychologists called threshold associations. The whole chamber was an aid to the incomprehensible, insectile mentality of the King, designed, I suspected, to help him in the almost impossible task of understanding a human society. While he had Sorn at his elbow there had been little need to worry, and the inadequacy of the chamber mattered so little that he seldom used it. Now, I thought, the King of All Britain would spend a large part of his time meditating in solitude on the enigmatic throne.

  I had the rest of the evening to myself. But I hadn’t gone far from the palace when, as I might have guessed, Hotch placed his big bulk square across my path.

  ‘Not quite so fast,’ he said, neither pleasantly nor unpleasantly.

  I stopped – what else could I have done? – but I didn’t answer. ‘All right,’ Hotch said, ‘let’s have it straight. I want nobody on both sides.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, as if I didn’t already know.

  ‘Sorn’s dead, right? And you’re likely to replace him. Right?’

  ‘Wrong,’ I told him wearily. ‘Nobody replaces Sorn. He was the one irreplaceable human being.’

  His eyes dropped in pensive annoyance. He paused. ‘Maybe, but you’ll be the closest to the King’s rule. Is that so?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘It has to be so,’ he decided. ‘So which way is it going to be, Smith? If you’re going to be another traitor like Sorn, let’s hear it from the start. Otherwise be a man and come in with us.’

  It sounded strange to hear Sorn called a traitor. Technically, I suppose he was – but he was also a man of genius, the rarest of statesmen. And even now only the 0.5 per cent of the population roused by Hotch’s super-patriotism would think of him as anything else. Britain had lived in a plentiful sort of calm under the King. The fact of being governed by an alien conqueror was not resented, even though he had enthroned himself by force. With his three ships, his two thousand warriors, he had achieved a near-bloodless occupation, for he had won his victory by the sheer possession of superior weapons, without having to resort much to their usage. The same could be said of the simultaneous invasion of Brazil and South Africa: Brazil by fellow creatures of the King, South Africa by a different species. Subsequent troubles in these two areas had been greater, but then they lacked the phlegmatic British attitude, and more important, they lacked Holath Holan Sorn.

  I sighed. ‘Honestly, I don’t know. Some human governments have been a lot worse.’

  ‘But they’ve been human. And we owed a lot to Sorn, though personally I loathed his guts. Now that he’s gone – what? The King will make a mess of things. How do we know he really cares?’

  ‘I think he does. Not the same way a man would care, but he does.’

  ‘Hah! Anyhow, this is our chance. While he doesn’t know what he’s doing. What about it? Britain hasn’t known another conqueror in a thousand years.’

  I couldn’t tell him. I didn’t know. Eventually he stomped off in disgust.

  I didn’t enjoy myself that evening. I thought too much about Sorn, about the King, and about what Hotch had said. How could I be sure the King cared for England? He was so grave and gently ponderous, but did that indicate anything? His appearance could simply be part of his foreignness and nothing at all to do with his feelings. In fact if the scientists were right about him, he had no feelings at all.

  But what purpose had he?

  I stopped by Trafalgar Square to see the Green Fountains.

  The hand of the invader on Britain was present in light, subtle ways, such as the Green Fountains. For although Britain remained Britain, with the character of Britain, the King and his men had delicately placed their alien character upon it; not in law, or the drastic changes of a conqueror, but in such things as decoration.

  The Green Fountains were foreign, unimaginable, and un-British. High curtains of thin fluid curled into fantastic designs, creating new concepts of space by sheer ingenuity of form. Thereby they achieved what centuries of Terran artists had only hinted at.

  And yet they were British, too. If Britons had been prompted to conceive and construct such things, this was the way they would have done it. They carried the British stamp, although so alien.

  When I considered the King’s rule, the same anomaly emerged. A strange rule, by a stranger, yet imposed so easily.

  This was the mystery of the King’s government: the way he had adopted Britain, in essence, while having no comprehension of that essence.

  But let me make it clear that for all this, the invader’s rule did not operate easily. It jarred, oscillated, went out of phase, and eventually, without Sorn, ended in disaster. It was only in this other, peculiar way, that it harmonised so pleasingly.

  It was like this: when the King and his men tried to behave functionally and get things done, it was terrible. It didn’t fit. But when they simply added themselves to All Britain, and lay quiescently like touches of colour, it had the effect I describe.

  I had always thought Sorn responsible for this. But could Sorn mould the King also? For I detected in the King that same English passivity and acceptance; not just his own enigmatic detachment, but something apart from that, something acquired. Yet how could he be something which he didn’t understand?

  Sorn is dead, I thought, Sorn is dead.

  Already, across one side of the square, were erected huge, precise stone symbols HOLATH HOLAN SORN DIED 5.8.2034. They were like a mathematical formula. Much of the King’s speech, when I thought of it, had the same quality.

  Sorn was dead, and the weight of his power which had steadied the nation would be abruptly removed. He had been the operator, bridging the gap between alien minds. Without him, the King was incompetent.

  A dazzling blue and gold air freighter appeared over the square and slanted down towards the palace. Everyone stopped to look, for it was one of the extraterrestrial machines, rarely seen since the invasion. No doubt it carried reinforcements for the palace defences.

  Next morning I motored to Surrey to visit the first of the ten factories the King had mentioned.

  The managers were waiting for me. I was led to a prepared suite of offices where I listened sleepily to a lecture on the layout and scope of the factory. I wasn’t very interested; one of the King’s
kinsmen (referred to as the King’s men) would arrive shortly with full details of the proposed conversion, and the managers would have to go through it all again. I was only here as a representative, so to speak. The real job would be carried out by the alien.

  We all wandered round the works for a few hours before I got thoroughly bored and returned to my office. A visitor was waiting.

  Hotch.

  ‘What do you want now?’ I asked. ‘I thought I’d got rid of you.’

  He grinned. ‘I found out what’s going on.’ He waved his arms to indicate the factory.

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you say the King’s policy is … ill-advised?’

  ‘You know as well as I do that the King’s policy is certain to be laughably clumsy.’ I motioned him to a seat. ‘What exactly do you mean? I’m afraid I don’t know the purpose of this myself.’

  I was apologetic about the last statement, and Hotch laughed. ‘It’s easy enough to guess. Don’t you know what they’re building in Glasgow? Ships – warships of the King’s personal design.’

  ‘Brazil,’ I murmured.

  ‘Sure. The King chooses this delicate moment to launch a transatlantic war. Old Rex is such a blockhead he almost votes himself out of power.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Why, he gives us the weapons to fight him with. He’s organising an armed native force which I will turn against him.’

  ‘You jump ahead of yourself. To go by the plans I have, no extraterrestrial weapons will be used.’

  Hotch looked more sober. ‘That’s where you come in. We can’t risk another contest with the King’s men using ordinary arms. It would kill millions and devastate the country. Because it won’t be the skirmish-and-capitulate of last time. This time we’ll be in earnest. So I want you to soften things up for us. Persuade the King to hand over more than he intends: help us to chuck him out easily. Give us new weapons and you’ll save a lot of carnage.’

  I saw his stratagem at once. ‘Quit that! Don’t try to lay blood responsibility on my shoulders. That’s a dirty trick.’

  ‘For a dirty man – and that’s what you are, Smith, if you continue to stand by, too apathetic even to think about it. Anyhow, the responsibility’s already laid, whatever you say. It depends on you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You won’t help?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Hotch sighed, and stared at the carpet for some seconds. Then he stared through the glass panels and down on to the floor of the workshops. ‘Then what will you do? Betray me?’

  ‘No.’

  Sighing again, he told me: ‘One day, Smith, you’ll fade away through sheer lack of interest.’

  ‘I’m interested,’ I said. ‘I just don’t seem to have the kind of mind that can make a decision. I can’t find any place to lay blame, or anyone to turn against.’

  ‘Not even for Britain,’ he commented sadly. ‘Your Britain as well as mine. That’s all I’m working for, Smith, our country.’

  His brashness momentarily dormant, he was moodily meditative. ‘Smith, I’ll admit I don’t understand what it’s all about. What does the King want? What has he gained by coming down here?’

  ‘Nothing. He descended on us and took on a load of troubles without profit. It’s a mystery. Hence my uncertainty.’ I averted my eyes. ‘During the time I have been in contact with the King he has impressed me as being utterly, almost transcendentally unselfish. So unselfish, so abstracted, that he’s like a – just a blank!’

  ‘That’s only how you see it. Maybe you read it into him. The psychos say he’s no emotion, and selfishness is a kind of emotion.’

  ‘Is it? Well, that’s just what I mean. But he seems – humane, for all that. Considerate, though it’s difficult for him.’

  He wasn’t much impressed. ‘Yeah. Remember that whatever substitutes for emotion in him might have some of its outward effects. And remember, he’s not the only outworlder on this planet. He doesn’t seem so considerate towards Brazil.’

  Hotch rose and prepared to leave. ‘If you survive the rebellion, I’ll string you up as a traitor.’

  ‘All right!’ I answered, suddenly irritable. ‘I know.’

  But when Hotch did get moving, I was surprised at the power he had gained for himself in the community. He knew exactly how to accentuate the irritating qualities of the invader, and he did it mercilessly.

  Some of the incidents seemed ridiculous. Such as when alien officials began to organise the war effort with complete disregard for some of the things the nation took to be necessities – entertainment, leisure, and so on. The contents of art galleries and museums were burned to make way for weapons shops. Cinemas were converted into automatic factories, and all television transmissions ceased. Don’t get the idea that the King and his men are all tyrannical automata. They just didn’t see any reason for not throwing away priceless paintings, and never thought to look for one.

  Affairs might have progressed more satisfactorily if the set-up had been less democratic. Aware of his poor understanding, the King had appointed a sort of double government. The first, from which issued the prime directive, consisted of his own men in key positions throughout the land, though actually their power had peculiar limitations. The second government was a human representation of the aboriginal populace, which in larger matters was still obliged to gain the King’s spoken permission.

  The King used to listen very intently to the petitions and pseudo-emotional barrages which this absurd body placed before him – for they were by no means co-operative – and the meetings nearly always ended in bewilderment. During Sorn’s day it would have been different: he could have got rid of them in five minutes.

  Those men caused chaos, and cost the country many lives in the Brazilian war which shortly followed. After Hotch gained control over them, they were openly the King’s enemies. He didn’t know it, of course, and now that it’s all finished I often wish I had warned him.

  I remember the time they came to him and demanded a national working week of twenty-five hours. This was just after the King’s men had innocently tried to institute a sixty-hour working week, and had necessarily been restrained.

  The petitioners knew how impossible it was; they were just trying to make trouble.

  The King received them amid the sparse trappings of his Court. A few of his aides were about, and a few human advisers. Then he lifted his head and asked for help.

  ‘Advise me,’ he said to everyone present.

  But the hostile influences in the hall were so great that all those who might have helped him shrugged their shoulders. That was the way things were. I said nothing.

  ‘If the proposal is carried out,’ the King told the ministers, ‘current programmes will not go through.’

  He tried to reject the idea, but they amazingly refused to let it be rejected. They threatened and intimidated, and one gentleman began to talk hypocritically about the will and welfare of the people. Naturally there was no response: the King was not equipped. He surveyed the hall again. ‘He who can solve this problem, come forward.’

  There was a lethargic, apathetic suspension. The aliens were immobile, like hard brilliant statues, observing these dangerous events as if with the asceticism of stone. Then there was more shrugging of shoulders.

  It speaks for the leniency of the extraterrestrials that this could happen at all. Among human royalty, such insolence would bring immediate repercussions. But the mood was contagious, because I didn’t volunteer either. Hotch’s machinations had a potential, unspoken element of terrorism.

  Whether the King realised that advice was being deliberately withheld, I don’t know. He called my name and strode to the back of the hall.

  I followed his authoritatively gyrating cloak, reluctantly, like a dreading schoolboy. When I reached him, he said: ‘Smith, it is knowledge common to us both that my thinkings and human thinking are processes apart. Not even Sorn could have both kinds; but he could translate.�
�� He paused for a moment, and then continued with a couple of sentences of the mixed-up talk he had used on Sorn, together with some of the accompanying queer honks and noises. I couldn’t follow it. He seemed to realise his mistake, though, for he soon emerged into fairly sensible speech again, like this: ‘Honk. Environs matrix wordy. Int apara; is trying like light to; apara see blind, from total outside is not even potential … if you were king, Smith, what would you do?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘people have been angered by the impositions made on them recently, and now they’re trying to swing the pendulum the other way. Maybe I would compromise and cut the week by about ten hours.’

  The King drew a sheaf of documents from a voluminous sash pocket and spread them out. One of them had a chart on it, and lists of figures. Producing a small machine with complex surfaces, he made what appeared to be a computation.

  I wished I could find some meaning in those cold jewel eyes. ‘That would interfere with my armament programme,’ he said. ‘We must become strong, or the King of Brazil will lay Britain waste.’

  ‘But surely it’s important not to foster a discontented populace?’

  ‘Important! So often I have heard that word, and cannot understand it. Sometimes it appears to me, Smith, that human psychology is hilly country, while mine is a plain. My throne-room contains hints that some things you see as high, and others as low and flat, and the high is more powerful. But for me to travel this country is impossible.’

  Smart. And it made some sense to me, too, because the King’s character often seemed to be composed of absences. He had no sense of crisis, for example. I realised how great his effort must have been to work this out.

  ‘And “importance”,’ he continued. ‘Some mountain top?’

  He almost had it. ‘A big mountain,’ I said.

  For a few seconds I began to get excited and thought that perhaps he was on his way to a semantic break-through. Then I saw where I was wrong. Knowing intellectually that a situation is difficult, and why it is difficult, is not much use when it comes to operating in that situation. If the King had fifty million minds laid out in diagram, with all their interconnections (and this is perfectly possible) he would still be no better able to operate. It is far too complex to grasp all at once with the intellect; to be competent in an environment, one must live in it, must be homogeneous with it. The King does not in the proper sense do the former, and is not the latter.