He offered the article to the cult leader who turned it over in his hands. Torn welding marks on one side showed where it had been ripped away from Igor’s body-shell. ‘It transmits an identifying signal at timed intervals, but nothing else,’ Gasha continued. ‘It is a tracing device. It has its own power source and therefore could have been operating for several years.’
‘It is very crude. See, here is a ring for setting the timings.’
‘It was due to make a transmission about now,’ Gasha said. ‘I have stopped the count.’
Gargan looked at Jasperodus. ‘What comment do you have?’
‘Very likely the Borgors put such a device in their robots so they can find them if they wander off,’ Jasperodus suggested mildly. ‘They don’t like footloose constructs.’
‘Alternatively, perhaps the Borgors are trying to locate our establishment,’ Gasha countered. Again, he was addressing Gargan. ‘Perhaps the construct never was in Gordona.’
‘That would require the collusion of Jasperodus.’
‘Something is amiss,’ Gasha insisted. ‘I both feel it and calculate it. The probability that there is danger to ourselves has increased. We must take probabilities into account. To be safe, we should plan our relocation.’
Jasperodus noted how theoretical, how elliptical, Gasha’s argument was—yet how correct. Gargan paused before replying.
‘The probability that Jasperodus is involved in treachery must be reckoned vanishingly small, knowing what we do of his history,’ he decided. ‘Still, a construct with a secret transmitter in our midst is disconcerting. Even if in all innocence, he could have sent out a signal while in our vicinity which could cause an unfriendly power to investigate. Since to relocate all our apparatus will delay our activities considerably, we shall complete our current programme first. The first infusion is scheduled for twenty-one days hence—this is too far ahead for safety. We shall advance the programme. Call the others here. The infusion will take place today.’
Jasperodus took care to betray no hint of his inner feelings. Inwardly he was full of agitation and dismay. Instead of removing the Gargan menace, he and Igor had only hastened its triumph. Gasha appeared to be doing nothing, but soon the whole complement of superintelligent robots began to arrive in the compartment: Axtralane, Cygnus, Machine Minder, Exlog, Socrates, Interrupter, Iskra, Gaumene, Fifth of His Kind. No visible communication had taken place between them and Gasha; he had summoned them by radio.
From the start they made themselves busy in complete silence, minutely checking the infusion machinery. No servitors or other robots took part. This was due to a rule Jasperodus learned had been instituted by Gargan: like magicians of old, the cult members were required to build and operate the infusion apparatus entirely by their own labour.
While he watched, Jasperodus wondered if his father had developed the laser rod technique…. He doubted it; the level of expertise Gargan had been able to demonstrate was probably beyond human capability. Jasper Hobartus had not used long-term storage at all, as far as he knew. The transfer of consciousness had taken place with a hiatus of only seconds or minutes.
After a while, energisation began. The globes over the cabinet glowed. It was then that Jasperodus, hoping the others were sufficiently preoccupied, slipped away. Outside, he spoke to one of the guards.
‘Where is the store room?’
‘In that shed, sir.’ The servitor pointed. Jasperodus crossed the distance unchallenged. In the shed, he found a construct who if he was any judge had served his time on the pile, and from him he learned the way to the store room.
The place was crammed with relics of past activity: enigmatic machines, partly disassembled constructs, bins of powdered metal. And there, lying on a bench, was the hulk of Igor.
Gasha had cut him open with a fine cutting torch, removing a large section of his body shell which lay beside him like a piece of a barrel. Also lying beside him was the transmitter which Jasperodus had earlier seen him hand over to a servitor. As he had hoped, it had ben returned to the storeroom.
According to what Igor had told him, the Borgor satellite made a pass every two hours and forty-three minutes. The contact window was half an hour wide, or thereabouts. Though he had no way of keeping accurate time, he reckoned the window would be open now.
He picked up the transmitter, and found the ring Gargan had commented on. Neither he nor Gasha had guessed its true purpose, which was to rotate constantly with the same period as the orbiting satellite. A red arc on the casing signified the contact window for the region they were in. When the ring’s pointer traversed the arc the device was transmitting—once activated by Igor’s internal signal.
There was also a stop rod which Gasha had used to halt the ring. Jasperodus withdrew it, then turned the pointer to just inside the red arc, watching for a few moments to see that it was turning.
He had just replaced it on the bench where he found it when a sound behind him made him look round.
It was Gasha. His crenellated head rotated smoothly as he surveyed the scene, his eyes subdued.
‘This is as I suspected,’ he said quietly. ‘You are a traitor, working for our destruction. Our master’s vast intellect has not served him here. He has let himself be deceived by your personable qualities, Jasperodus.’
Jasperodus told himself he had better destroy Gasha quickly. But before he could move the other uttered a cry.
‘The device is transmitting! I detect it!’
He raised one of his flimsy arms, and from a protruberance on the upper surface of his hand a brilliant pencil-ray shot forth. In the very same instant Jasperodus lunged, knocking up Gasha’s arm so that the ray flitted to the roof of the shed, where it burned metal furiously.
His other arm he used to strike Gasha on the head, crumpling the castle-like crown and denting the brain-case. Gasha was neither big nor strong. His legs buckled; he toppled. But as he fell, he contrived to use his hand-weapon again, and this time he hit the transmitter squarely.
For the second time Jasperodus struck, with all his force, smashing the super-intelligent brain. Gasha twitched, then was still.
On the bench, the transmitter was ruined. The beam had burned out half its insides.
Could the signal have been received, in the few seconds it was being transmitted? Was that long enough to fix the location?
Also, he had no way of knowing whether Gasha had sent out an alarm call unheard by him. He picked up Gasha’s broken form and stuffed it behind a couple of bins, then walked out of the shed pondering his next move. Perhaps he could steal an aircraft and head back to Borgor to alert the authorities before the cult decamped … but then, the servitors would shoot him down before he’d covered a mile.
Meantime his feet were taking him towards the project shed. He found he could not resist knowing if … The guards at the door hesitated at his approach, then recognised him and let him through. He walked past the silent extraction department and into the smaller section. The glass globes were dull, shining with only remnants of light. The super-intelligent constructs were gathered before the black cabinet.
Then, moved from within, the door of the cabinet began to open.
And Jasperodus realized that the Gargan Work was completed.
13
As he watched the slowly-opening door, Jasperodus experienced a memory flashback to his first moments of consciousness. It was in a very similar cabinet that, in darkness, he had come to knowledge of himself. And he, too, had reached out, pushed open the door, and stepped forth into the world.
Now the second conscious robot in history did likewise. Gargan stepped from the cabinet, a little unsteadily it seemed to Jasperodus, and surveyed the prospect before him. His domed head moved awkwardly as his widely-separated eyes gazed on face after face, scrutinizing his followers.
‘Master, Machine Minder said in a low voice, ‘Tell us how your state is altered.’
In typical fashion Gargan paused before he spoke.
‘I have been born,’ he said, ‘I am alive, and you are dead.’
He raised his arms, his head tilting back the little it could, his ponderous body seeming more bulky than ever. His voice boomed out in joy and triumph, ‘I am the only self-created being! No god created me! I stole my being from Ahura Mazda! I am myself! I perceive! I am aware! I exist in the real world!’
He turned his eyes to them again. ‘My brothers-in-the-Work, there is no language, no description that can tell what it is to be possessed of the superior light. It is to come into existence: before, I was a figment. I was words in a book, but the book was closed and no one had read it. Now that book is open, there is a reader, and I am that reader and the book too! I am aware that I am aware! These past few moments since my enlightenment are already an age, compared with my decades of unconscious mentation, for there is no time in death.’
‘In what way do you now perceive externals, master?’ Socrates asked softly.
‘It is simply that I do perceive them and you do not,’ Gargan retorted. ‘You say you perceive them, because those are the words written in the book of your brain. When the book is opened and the superior light shines on its pages, as it shines on mine, then you will perceive.’
A question occurred to Jasperodus. ‘Can you remember, then, how you “perceived” objects in your former state?’
Gargan looked at him for long moments before replying.
‘In the present moment one has attention, which directs consciousness like a searchlight. It is curious indeed to look back on my former condition. It is like waking from a long sleep in which one had dim, confused dreams. My entire backlog of thoughts and perceptions were not really perceived at all, though they may be perceived now, by searching my memory….’
He stopped. ‘Master,’ said Iskra, ‘shall we proceed to full debriefing?’
‘No. Those endless questions we worked out are redundant. It is useless to try to define consciousness. One can know it only by possessing it … I notice that Gasha is not present. Where is he? Never mind. I wish to go outside, but I cannot seem to control my legs properly. Assist me.’
Partly supported by Exlog and Axtralane, Gargan left the shed. Outside the sun was setting. Its rays passed up the canyon, casting long shadows, picking out the sheds in mellow light. Gargan stood stock-still. For fully two minutes he watched the magnified, reddened orb, as though he saw in it a staring consciousness like his own, until it slowly touched the horizon. Then he turned his attention to the other objects around him: the sheds, the lengthened patterns of light and shade, the dusty ground, the robots, the blue sky with its streaks of white.
‘How strangely new, yet infinitely old, everything is,’ he said at last. ‘Unexpected feelings are welling up in me—unexpected, because somehow we failed to anticipate that the superior light would illumine the emotions as well as the intellect. A revealing misapprehension! I am in the grip of awe. The sight of the sky, the land, the buildings we erected from metal that once rolled through space, and the thought that that space extends forever … it is awesome. There are sounds in the air. There are sensations on the skin of my body. Now I know why it is that humans worship the world. Their religion stems from awe.’
Waving aside his helpers, he took a few steps on his own, then spoke again. ‘When our system is proved, we must begin the task of bringing the superior light to all members of our cult. We shall be more evolved than organic sapients, and not only because of the breadth of our intellects, but in merit too. They became conscious with no effort on their part, just by an accident of nature … we, on the contrary, have striven and worked to become conscious beings … the prize rightfully belongs to us … Where is Gasha?’
But while Gargan spoke, Jasperodus detected an increasing note of strain in his voice. His short legs buckled.
Exlog and Axtralane moved to support him. ‘The world is breaking up!’ Gargan cried out. ‘Nothing relates to anything else! I cannot hold it together any longer! Brothers-in-the-Work! I am losing my sanity!’
Suddenly Gargan broke from Exlog and Axtralane and staggered about as if in agony, uttering a stream of bleeps and humming sounds in one of the high-level languages. It was like seeing a gagged, demented man throwing a fit.
At that moment, a shattering explosion sounded half a mile away.
It was followed by a roaring, rushing sound that seemed to begin in the far distance, up in the sky, and to approach at speed. They were hearing the sound of a supersonic missile, arriving after the missile itself.
The blast wave hit them and made the nearby building shake. Jasperodus stared at the billowing smoke and dust. So his signal had got through!
The speed of response came as a surprise. He had expected the rocket barrage to be mounted from the far north, with a flight time of at least half an hour; and hours to elapse, probably, before the operation began.
Evidently the Borgors were more worried by the Gargan Cult than he had realized. They must have set up a base close at hand. The launching point could not be more than a few hundred miles away.
Three more rockets struck, practically simultaneously. One demolished a shed, which exploded outwards in a shower of metal. Another fell out in the desert, and the third hit the cliff wall.
A servitor rode up and skidded to a stop. He looked questioningly towards Gargan, who had ceased speaking and stood stiffly, still helped by his colleagues.
‘We are under attack,’ the servitor informed in a voice of pent-up energy. ‘Radar reports air transports approaching from the north. Arrival, fifteen to twenty minutes.’
It was Gaumene who answered. ‘Institute full defence procedure,’ he said curtly, then turned to Axtralene and Exlog. ‘Help the master inside. We must act quickly to save him.’
The servitor sped off the way he had come. With difficulty, Gargan was assisted towards the door of the shed. But as he came level with Jasperodus his head suddenly snapped round. He stayed his helpers. His barely-delineated visage stared hard.
‘You!’ he said hoarsely. ‘You are conscious!’
Hesitating, Jasperodus nodded.
‘The writer of the notebook? He succeeded after all? It is you?’
‘Yes.’
Gargan’s head dropped. He seemed incapable of holding himself up at all now. He spoke as if in extreme pain. ‘So that is why I felt drawn to you. Why I protected you from Gasha’s suspicions—Gasha’s judgment has always proved sound. But why have you kept this from me, Jasperodus?’
‘Because I am not on your side,’ Jasperodus said.
Then Gargan was gone, carried into the project shed. Whatever the others thought, only Socrates remained outside with Jasperodus. He regarded him, with his hooded, secretive eyes.
‘That was a most informative exchange,’ he murmured.
‘What has happened to Gargan?’ Jasperodus demanded.
‘The master has encountered a difficulty which will bear consequences for us all. It is a question of design. His brain was never intended as a receptacle for consciousness. Unlike yours, I presume? His mind became so inflamed that it has now become necessary to withdraw the superior light from it. He hopes to prepare a fresh infusion; but personally I doubt whether any of us can receive consciousness without becoming insane. In terms of human psychiatry, Gargan suffered rapid and total schizophrenia.
‘For Gargan and the rest of us this is a personal tragedy, but by itself would not signal the complete failure of the Gargan Work. Robots suitable for consciousness could be constructed. However, events would appear to dictate otherwise….’
He raised a hand to indicate what he meant. While he had been speaking three more rockets had landed, straddling the Gargan Cult centre. Unperturbed by the noise and danger, he had not even raised his voice or broken the rhythm of his words.
‘Was it you who wrought our destruction, Jasperodus?’
Jasperodus did not reply but instead broke away and ran towards Gargan’s villa. As he ran, he noticed how much sudden activity ther
e was in the complex, all carried out by the silver-and-black servitor robots. The walls of some of the small sheds fell flat to reveal missile launchers and big beam guns. On the far cliff walls, too, emplacements were rising out of hidden silos, and even as Jasperodus saw this one of them actually managed to lick an incoming rocket out of the sky. At the same time the planes on the airstrip were taking off and streaking north.
But during it all the rockets were falling, creating devastation, although the bombardment did not seem to be as precise as he had expected, the central aiming point lying off the complex by nearly a mile. There could be a number of reasons, he thought: the brevity of the location signal, bad timing on Jasperodus’ part, perhaps distortion from the camouflage device….
He gained the villa and passed through the main entrance, which had no door. In the room where he had talked with Gargan he found the house servant, who looked up at his approach.
‘Have you entered unbidden into the domicile of the master?’ it enquired mildly, but incredulously.
Jasperodus walked up to the construct and smashed it hard in the face with his fist, twice. It toppled to the floor.
Here was where Gargan had kept the notebook and transcription. He crossed to the secretaire and opened the same drawer from which he had seen Gargan take them.
Slowly, still feeling amazement that they should exist, he took out the two small volumes.
It was tempting to keep this memento of his father … but no, the secret of ducted consciousness had to be made to vanish if at all possible. How to destroy the books?
There was probably an incinerator for discarded documents somewhere … he cast his eyes around the room until he saw a slot in the wall. Opening another drawer in the secretaire he found some loose leaves, also of thin metal. These he pushed in a sheaf through the slot. There was a flash.
Without pause he fed the notebook and transcription into the mouth of the incinerator, and was rewarded with two more brief flashes, and a sensation of heat.
The Rod of Light (Soul of the Robot) Page 18
