The Rod of Light (Soul of the Robot)

by Barrington J. Bayley

  ‘Oh, I don’t suppose it is still there. All the equipment is moved out of abandoned workings.’

  ‘It is still there,’ Jasperodus assured him. There would be no point in sinking a new air shaft every time the faces changed, and besides, efficient circulation of air was enhanced if proven conduits were used where possible. It was only necessary to keep the airways open. ‘Can you find it?’ he asked.

  ‘Only if I were ordered to do so.’

  ‘You are ordered. I order you, and that countermands any previous order. Come, we shall begin the journey.’

  He extended an arm to usher the robot along the tunnel. But Brass drew back. ‘Oh no, we are not allowed!’

  ‘This is an order,’ Jasperodus said harshly. ‘A direct order!’

  Brass’ confusion was even greater than Yoshibo’s. The notion of disobedience was practically incomprehensible to him. But never before had he been faced with conflicting demands. His eyes dimmed and almost went out.

  Then he tried to make a break for it, lurching back up the tunnel the way he had come. Jasperodus sprang forward and caught him by the wrist. After a brief tussle he flung him further along the passage, standing between him and escape.

  He cast a glance behind him. ‘What of you, Yoshibo?’

  ‘I elect to remain here,’ Yoshibo murmured. ‘The adventure is not to my liking.’

  ‘Very well—but be sure you do not betray me.’

  ‘I will try not to, but what if I am asked where you are?’

  ‘Tell them when you saw me last, but nothing else.’

  Perhaps he should junk Yoshibo for safety’s sake, Jasperodus thought. But he was unlikely to be questioned. The foremen were so careless and contemptuous of the robots under their command that he doubted his absence would be noticed at all.

  He pushed Brass further down the tunnel, forcing him to walk. Soon the silence deepened: the silence of a way that had not been trodden for years.

  Once they were alone together Brass’ resistance evaporated and he became a cooperative guide. For nearly an hour they journeyed through a decrepit maze, past old faces, skirting water-filled pits, treading carefully where Brass suspected the roof supports were unsafe. Jasperodus was glad he had not tried to find his way unaided. It would probably have been the end of him.

  They came to an artificial cavern where they climbed a long bank, scrambling up the slag on their hands and knees, listening to the fragments dropping into a pool below. He realized they were mounting nearer to the surface. Soon afterwards, he could feel a quickening of air current, until suddenly there in front of them was a big wire grating, behind which could be seen cables, machinery, and part of a shaft.

  Beside it was a metal door, painted green.

  Brass stopped and turned to him, shifting uncomfortably.

  ‘This is it?’ asked Jasperodus.

  Brass nodded.

  Jasperodus tried the door. It opened easily. Within was a cage. Within the cage, a handle.

  He turned to Brass. Simplest would be to send him straight back to his work … but he had been promised the upper world, the world of light. Besides, Jasperodus was curious to know what he would make of it.

  He slid open the cage gate. ‘Get inside.’

  ‘We are going to the upper world?’ asked Brass nervously.

  ‘Yes, get inside.’

  Brass obeyed. Jasperodus followed him. He closed the gate and experimentally moved the lever, to be rewarded with a whirring sound from above.

  Smoothly, the cage began to climb.

  The ascent did not last long. The lift had been installed when the mine was still relatively shallow. Over the years, the engineers had delved deeper in search of coal.

  The Borgor robot was trembling. ‘Don’t worry,’ Jasperodus told him. There’s nothing to be frightened of.’

  The lift came to a halt. Through the gate their headlamps shone on another green door, separated by a gap of five feet or so. Opening the cage, Jasperodus stepped to it, beckoning Brass to follow.

  Opening the door without difficulty, he stepped through to survey his surroundings.

  It was night, with dawn approaching. They appeared to be in open countryside. The lifthouse was a small brick building, above which hung the branches of a tree. Next to it, the mesh-covered flue of the air-vent emitted a continuous breathy whine.

  A few feet away lay a cindery track, and beyond that, coarse grass and bush. In the distance, Jasperodus heard a busy clanking, which he recognised as the sound of a railway.

  Brass had sidled up to stand by his side. He turned his headlamp this way and that, and then up to the sky.

  ‘This is the biggest face I have ever seen,’ he mumbled. ‘Yes, there is some light, but not like Yoshibo said … whose are those headlamps overhead, Jasperodus?’

  He was looking at the scattering of stars that had not yet been obliterated by the false dawn. ‘They are not headlamps,’ Jasperodus corrected him. ‘There is no roof. What you see above you goes on forever, as Yoshibo told you. The points of lights are called stars. It is rather hard to explain what they are.’

  ‘So you say,’ Brass answered dubiously. He looked at the tree that swished gently in the breeze. ‘This part of the mine is strange, certainly, but it is not the new world you promised. Where, to be specific, is the sun?’

  ‘It will appear. We will wait here for a while. Then you will see.’

  Removing his own headlamp, he threw it away. They stood quietly, waiting.

  And gradually, the sun rose, tinting the east first with a red fanfare, then edging above the horizon, gradually illuminating the landscape until it rose clear into the sky and everything was flooded with its light.

  Jasperodus had wondered whether Brass’ eyes would be able to see anything in daylight; but he realized that the Borgor roboticians would never have gone to the trouble of designing special eyes for underground. They were standard issue. Nevertheless as the environment brightened Brass uttered cries of astonishment and alarm, continually squirting water onto his eyes from his finger-tips, as he was wont to do to clear them of grime.

  Finally he just stood staring all around him.

  The landscape was all revealed. It consisted mainly of overgrown slagheaps on which flourished a few stunted trees. There was no sign of any of the buildings which were clustered around the adit trench. But Jasperodus could see the railway line, now. A train of wagons waited on it, piled high with coal, while a smoke-belching engine (also burning coal, no doubt), backed towards it. The line headed north.

  ‘It’s true’ Brass murmured in stunned tones. ‘All true. A world of light that goes on forever. Why, the colours….

  ‘Oh …’ He flung his arm before his eyes and turned away, as though unable to bear the sight any longer.

  ‘And this world offers infinitely more than your poky mine,’ Jasperodus added. ‘Though it holds infinitely more danger, too.’

  Bending, he pulled up a clump of grass and began rubbing off some of the dirt that caked Brass’ body, until the metal of his casing showed through.

  ‘Look, Brass. See how you shine in the light of the sun. Properly cleaned and polished, what a splendid-looking creature you would be.’

  ‘Yes. I shine….’ Brass looked down at himself perplexedly.

  ‘Well, I am leaving now. What of you? You may take your chance with me, if you wish.’

  He felt bound to make some sort of offer, even though Brass would be far more of a liability than a help if he were to accompany him. He did not imagine for a moment, however, that the other would accept.

  And as he expected, Brass shook his head. ‘This world is not for me,’ he said sadly. ‘I could not bear always to be surrounded by so much light and unfamiliarity. I must return to the world I was made for … the world of darkness.’

  Head bent, he shuffled to the lift gate. ‘You have taught me a great secret, Jasperodus. You have shown me a way to the upper world. It is a secret I shall keep to myself.’

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nbsp; He opened the lift gate, but then turned for one last lingering look at the incredible and dazzling terrain before him: at its colour, its beauty, its immensity. After which, with dragging steps, he entered the cage and operated the lever.

  Jasperodus watched him sink out of sight. He stepped to the lifthouse door, and closed it.

  The coal train, which he presumed was destined for an industrial centre further north, was ready to leave. He set off at a lope along the gritty track, which for a distance approached the railway line at a shallow angle; then where it swung to the right he clambered over the low, crumbling heaps. By the time he emerged from the bushes, within striking distance of the train, it had caught up with him and was picking up speed.

  The railway curved to the left at this point; he was out of view of whoever was in the locomotive cab, though he would have to trust to luck that there was no one else about to spot him—no one who cared, at any rate. He ran alongside one of the wagons, studying its cambered side, and made a leap, catching a handhold on a closed emptying-hatch. Instantly he swung his feet up, fearful of the trundling wheels, then reached for the rim of the wagon with his other hand and, somewhat awkwardly, hauled himself over and onto the mound of coal.

  The stuff was wet, as if it had been rained on. Keeping his profile low, he burrowed into the damp mixture of lumps, nuggets and slack, until he was satisfied that he had covered himself completely.

  Then he lay motionless, to wait out the journey.

  11

  How oddly familiar, yet strangely unfamiliar, it was to be back in the world of men after so many years.

  Peeping from his shallow coal grave, Jasperodus had passed roads, fields, buildings, small towns, until after two days of slow but steady progress, the wagon train had stopped in a marshalling yard somewhere in the suburbs of a city.

  There it was left standing, waiting, Jasperodus guessed, for re-routing to its final destination. For several hours he lay listening to the busy noises of the yard, the rolling of wheels, the clank of couplings, the drone and chuff of engines. In the New Empire, he reminded himself, he had been accustomed to thinking of this as an enemy city, a sentiment that still lingered. Now he experienced what many others before him had experienced on such occasions: vague surprise to see that the enemy lived, worked and organised just as one’s own people did.

  He waited until about midnight. Then, though the yard was just as busy as before, he clambered down from the wagon and made his way across the labyrinth of tracks, keeping to the shadows where he could, to where he could climb an embankment.

  At the top was a prickle-wire fence. After a glance around to make sure he was not observed, he snapped some of the wires and eased himself through.

  He was in a narrow gap between the fence and blank-walled grey buildings that lined the top of the embankment. Walking along it until he could turn into an alley, he found himself in a maze of dark passages. The buildings, it would seem, were warehouses.

  At length he was able to make his way out and came to open wasteground. Pressing forward towards where he guessed the centre of the city lay, he crossed a park of coarse grass, and came to a river.

  It was a broad, slow-moving waterway, hemmed in by concrete walls. On the other side dark, looming shapes rose. That would be the less industrialised half of the city, he thought. Large conurbations tended to allocate their functions to either side of a river.

  Studying the turbid water, he spotted some steps in the concrete. He moved to them and descended to a small stone jetty. The river was shallow: here was a chance to clean himself. He lowered himself into the water, found the bed muddy but firm, stepped out until the surface closed over his head and let the current slowly wash away the grains of slack, the dried mud and dust and grime of months.

  An idea occurred to him. He was not sure what sort of reception a robot would get on the streets of a Borgor city, though as far as he knew it would simply be ignored—for a while, at least. The river might be a good place for him to hide, emerging only when he thought it was safe, until he became acquainted with his surroundings and decided on a plan of action. His body was sealed against water; he could stay submerged indefinitely.

  With this thought in mind, he set off across the river bed, picking his way through tangles of scrap metal embedded in the mud, swaying in the current, towards the far bank.

  The morning was far advanced, about ten days later, when Jasperodus left a ruined shed on the waterfront, partially screened by the embankment’s overhang, and walked to the nearby thoroughfares.

  He had early on abandoned his water refuge for the scarcely less cheery shelter on the mud flat. His brief forays, usually in the early hours of the morning, had reconnoitred the city centre and gained some information, mainly from news-sheets picked out of waste bins.

  He was in luck: the city was Breshk, Borgor’s capital. The river, called the Novyob, emptied into one of the artificial seas. Here was the government, the headquarters of the military (though the two were identical) and so forth.

  He had racked his brains to think of some indirect way to gain the attention of Borgor’s leaders, but without avail. Finally, the question of time had begun to torment him. It was now getting on for a year since he had left Gargan.

  What progress might the cult have made in that time?

  Therefore he had decided to delay no longer, but to take the only course that immediately occurred to him.

  The architecture of Breshk differed markedly from that of Tansiann. Borgor city buildings were grey, cubical blocks for the most part, surmounted by incongruously colourful domes which often had peculiar tapering curves. The dress and manners of the people, too, were foreign to him. The fashion was for ankle-length fur-trimmed coats worn by both men and women, and universally-worn conical fur-lined hats. In conduct, the inhabitants showed none of the acerbic self-assertiveness typical of the south. They were reserved, formal, and respected some rank order whose visible badges were not immediately evident to Jasperodus, stepping off pavements at the approach of a social superior, or instantly doffing headgear if spoken to by one. Yet there appeared to be no open disdain or arrogant lordliness among those of higher rank. There was, rather, a common recognition of one’s place in society.

  Street traffic was surprisingly light. A rail-mounted public transport system—an institution practically unheard of in Tansiann—served the needs of the general populace. The private carriages that roamed the mainly unpaved roads were restricted by law to the ruling class.

  From what Jasperodus had heard while on the planning staff in Tansiann (though knowledge of Borgor society had been astonishingly meagre in the New Empire) the social order here was based on an ancient political dictum that had even played a part in the philosophy of Tergov: To each according to his need, from each according to his ability. It was the perfect principle on which to found an ordered, stratified society. The cultivated needs of the educated upper classes went far beyond those felt by the relatively rude working population, while the latter had the manual ability to serve those needs.

  To walk as a robot in broad daylight in the streets of Breshk was unnerving. People stopped and stared as he passed. Children followed him, though keeping their distance. But no one barred his path; no uniformed lawkeeper stopped him to ask his business. It was presumed that, like one of the electric omnibuses that rattled and sparked along the badly-laid rails, he was a machine with a task allotted by the government.

  He walked the length of Neszche Prospect until coming to a building that was larger and more prominent than the others, that protruded, in fact, into the roadway, narrowing the street at that point. It was the War Ministry. Typically, there was no guard at the entrance. Jasperodus passed straight through into the small foyer, whose walls were decorated with enlarged pictures of Borgor military and civic dignitaries. He approached the female secretary sitting behind a reception desk.

  ‘I have to speak to Commissary Chief Marshal Mexgerad,’ he said. ‘I carry important i
nformation for him.’

  The woman was middle-aged, and practised at her occupation. Just the same she stared at him in startlement. It was quite probable that she had never been addressed by a construct before.

  She was also physically afraid. He could sense the revulsion she felt for him.

  ‘Give me this information,’ she said crisply when she recovered herself. ‘I will pass it on.’

  ‘It is for Commissary Chief Marshal Mexgerad alone. I must see him personally.’

  She became flustered. ‘Ch-chief Marshal Mexgerad died five years ago,’ she stuttered. ‘Who sent you?’

  ‘Then his successor. Whoever is Commissary Chief Marshal at present.’

  He detected a movement of her right leg. She was pressing a button on the floor.

  Instantly, with a terrifying bang, steel shield-walls fell into place from the ceiling, cutting off the desk, the street entrance, and the other exit at the end of the foyer. He was imprisoned, in what turned out to be no more than a plush, moderately sized cell.

  He waited, and after about a minute a hidden panel in the wall snicked open. Three figures in bulky white armour emerged, with great caution, the projecting snouts of their gas masks making them look like padding polar bears. They aimed large tube-like weapons at him: beamers, effective against robots.

  ‘Over here, robot,’ a harsh impersonal voice said.

  Obeying, he let them usher him to the opening, the mouths of their tubes pointing always at his chest. Once he was through, the panel closed behind him. The dark cubicle he was now in had the feel of concrete, and it plummeted deep underground.

  When it stopped there was a long wait. When eventually it opened, they were ready for him.

  The examination began.

  There had been no questions. No one had spoken to him except to give him orders. They had scanned his body with ultrasound. A Borgor technician had opened his inspection plate and taken a long series of readings, with an instrument so big it had to be pulled in on a trolley.