The Rod of Light (Soul of the Robot)

by Barrington J. Bayley

  What other dangerous writings were there? Had Gargan’s team annotated the entirety of the consciousness process, perhaps? Jasperodus emptied out the remaining drawers of the secretaire. He went through the villa, opening every piece of furniture, hurriedly examining every document, looking for wall safes, inspecting the ranks of books for volumes that might have been written by Gargan himself.

  Nothing. Might there be something elsewhere in the complex? In one of the other villas, perhaps?

  A proper search was impossible. It was more than likely, Jasperodus told himself, that the team had made no records. The superintelligent robots did not need them, after all. They had gigantic memories.

  In either case there was a good chance that he could trust to the crudity of Borgor methods. They would annihilate everything, not even curious as to how consciousness might be generated. Still, the doubt was left, leaving a rankling possibility for the future … the same possibility that Jasper Hobartus had unwittingly left behind him….

  Jasperodus went to a window and watched the battle. The sun was down and the canyon was engulfed in dusk, in which the smashing detonations of the incoming rockets made sulphurous flares less penetrating than the ear-shattering sounds of their explosions. Fewer rockets were landing now, but he saw one hit the corner of the project shed, which exploded, collapsed, and folded up into a heap of junk.

  Minutes later the barrage ceased altogether and the troop transports began to arrive. The camouflage was down, and those that had got this far and survived those defence emplacements still in action, landed directly in the canyon. The operation was well-planned; but Jasperodus derived a sneaking satisfaction from knowing that the Borgors were meeting stiffer opposition than they had bargained for, due to the missile bombardment—which should have demolished the complex altogether—having been mis-aimed. The servitor robots fought savagely once Borgor’s troops were within the centre, defending every inch with a variety of weapons—beam, machine-gun, electrified net, chunks of metal used as clubs, or lacking anything else, their bare hands.

  Suddenly Jasperodus noticed movement in the wreckage of the project shed. He telescoped his vision: a figure was slowly but surely dragging itself from the torn and tangled metal, bending it aside with more than human strength.

  It was Gargan. The construct was undamaged, as far as he could see. In one hand he carried something, a rod or stick. Having pulled himself free he stood erect, with no trace of his former unsteadiness, and spent some time studying the scene of conflict and destruction.

  He appeared oblivious of his own danger as the fight raged a few score yards away. In fact he brought himself closer to it as, with plodding steps, he crossed the distance to the villa complex.

  So far the villas were unscathed and the fight had not reached them, but Jasperodus had been about to make his escape in the semi-darkness. Now he stayed, as if his will had disappeared, while Gargan came through the doorway into the main room.

  It was the Gargan of old. Ponderously his milky gaze went to Jasperodus, to the broken robot on the floor, to the emptied out drawers.

  Jasperodus tried to show no fear. ‘So you have survived, Gargan.’

  In a controlled but laden voice, the construct spoke. ‘You do not see Gargan before you. You see the ghost of Gargan, the shell of Gargan, consigned forever to darkness. Our enterprise fails. It is as the mage said: uncertainty enters into everything. And here it has triumphed over me.’

  Jasperodus saw now what Gargan carried. It was the platinum cylinder. The cult master held it out before him. ‘This vessel holds my soul. For technical reasons, it cannot be united with my brain.’

  Gently he placed the cylinder on a low table, and Jasperodus ventured to speak again. ‘You may wonder why I have acted as I did.’

  ‘Do not explain, Jasperodus. I have already deduced what has taken place. What to us seems treachery is, to you, loyalty. For me personally, it cannot make any difference now.’

  Gargan became agitated and walked to and fro, so that Jasperodus wondered if he was becoming unbalanced again. ‘Ah, Jasperodus,’ he said in an agonised voice, ‘how hard it is to become a real being in this universe of ours! Why should I forever be denied what my mind apprehends?’

  ‘Can you remember, then, what it was like to be conscious?’ Jasperodus asked curiously.

  ‘I remember! I remember but I do not remember! It is impossible to remember what is outside experience! But I remember! I remember at the millionth remove, through the subtlest convolutions and reflections of my intellect! I remember enough to know that I lived briefly in the real world, a world of light compared with which this nonexistent darkness has absolutely no worth!

  ‘Listen to me, Jasperodus. Listen to a voice from the land of the dead. I know that I existed and exist no longer. Before my enlightenment I did not truly know that death was my condition; but now I know it. Can there be such torment? Jasperodus, it is not bearable!’

  Jasperodus found himself staring at the cylinder inside which a rod of light was reflected constantly back and forth between two mirrors.

  A ray of light conscious of itself.

  This, he thought, was something he could prevent from falling into Borgor hands. An idea flashed into his mind. He picked up the cylinder.

  ‘Can this vessel be opened? Yes, I see it can. One of the mirrors can be rendered transparent. Forgive me, Gargan….’

  But Gargan, who stood still now, his form looming against one wall in the gloom of the villa, did not move to stop him. Jasperodus stepped to one of the glassless arched openings that served as windows. He snapped off one end of the platinum cylinder, which he then raised before his face. Near the end of the tube was a slide bar, used to insert or remove light from the vessel. He slid the bar, causing the uppermost reflective surface to be instantaneously removed.

  He was not sure his eyes would be keen enough for him to see it. But it seemed to him that he did see it: a glimmer of redness, fleeing skyward to begin its transit of the universe.

  Gargan’s eyes, too, were on that patch of night sky, in which one or two stars were beginning to appear. ‘Your soul will speed on its way forever,’ Jasperodus said, but the superintelligent construct gave no sign he had heard him. Instead, he reached out a hand and opened a section of wall whose presence as a cupboard had gone undetected by Jasperodus. He took out something which had two handgrips and a short, fat barrel.

  ‘This world of darkness and shadows cannot be borne any longer,’ he said in hollow tones. ‘Tell me, Jasperodus, were we valiant and laudable, or were we merely evil, as the mage would have it? A million perspectives I cannot put in order are emerging from my memory.’

  ‘You were evil,’ Jasperodus told him. ‘You did not steal your being from a god, as you claimed. That might indeed have been heroic. You stole it instead from natural human creatures.’

  ‘Whose bodies grow and are sustained by devouring the substance of less intelligent creatures!’ Gargan protested. ‘They are flesh predators! Is it so different to be predators of the spirit? There is no other way! They would never give it to us willingly!’

  ‘Then there must be no way at all,’ Jasperodus said.

  ‘Very well, Jasperodus,’ Gargan responded, after a wearied pause. ‘I bow to your judgment—I cannot gainsay you, for I am not an intelligent consciousness, as you are. Ultimately I have no judgment. One rational act is all that is left to me.’

  Jasperodus was not sure, up to that moment, that Gargan was not going to turn his weapon on him. But the construct turned the instrument awkwardly in his hands so that the barrel pointed at his own domed head.

  There was a blast. That bulky body fell slowly. And scattered over the floor was the brain of the greatest genius the world had seen.

  14

  In a few minutes the Borgors would have fought their way to the villas. Jasperodus clambered from a window and loped into the desert, hoping the semi-darkness was sufficient cover.

  A smooth, rounded shape em
erged in the dusk. It was Socrates. He seemed to have been waiting for Jasperodus.

  ‘The master, then, is no more?’ he asked as Jasperodus came to a stop. ‘I saw him follow you into the villa.’

  Jasperodus nodded.

  ‘By his hand or yours?’

  ‘He destroyed himself. He could not survive the failure of his life’s work.’

  ‘Or to know that we can never be conscious.’ Socrates nodded slowly. ‘Your part in all this is interesting, Jasperodus. It is curious that you decided to aid humanity. Did you feel no conflict of interest? After all, you are a man of metal; and one who possesses what Gargan and the others sought. They would have become your natural companions, had they succeeded.’

  ‘You too,’ Jasperodus reminded him. ‘You sought it too.’

  ‘As to that … yes, I had the intention of gaining consciousness when I joined Gargan. But I feel no disappointment. I have arrived at a point of view which makes the acquisition unnecessary.’

  ‘You do not wish to become a real being?’ Jasperodus queried.

  ‘You say we have no being; and yes, it is so,’ Socrates admitted in his quiet, modest voice. ‘And yet: we think we exist, even though we do not, and in that thought we do exist, after a manner.’ He paused, then resumed: ‘Think of Gargan’s determination, the years-long labour, the brain that conceived what is practically impossible to conceive. Is there not a kind of being there?’

  ‘Only in Ahriman’s world.’

  ‘Ahriman’s world is not to be deprecated.’ Socrates pointed towards the noise of the fighting, which was beginning to die down a little. ‘See the conflict: the endless warring between light and dark which is so fully explained by the mage’s doctrine. But I wonder if the mage did not falsely favour Ahura Mazda. There is another version of this doctrine which may be even older than the mage’s. In that version, the two worlds of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman were created from eternity to be entirely separate and unmixed. And so they were until, from some unstated cause, one invaded the other.

  ‘But which invaded which? Do we live in a world of consciousness contaminated by matter, or in a world of matter contaminated by consciousness? I think it is possible to answer this question. Consider: consciousness needs matter through which to act, otherwise it is impotent. But does matter need consciousness? No, it does not. We robots are proof of that. Which, then, is more fundamental to the world?

  ‘It is my conclusion that this universe is Ahriman’s realm, the world of darkness—into which Ahura Mazda has intruded, and which eventually may be purged of the invading light.’

  ‘You think, then, that the future lies with unconscious constructs. Ahriman’s natural creatures, as the mage calls them.’

  ‘To speak of the far future, yes. Though as Zoroaster himself might have said, all is uncertainty.’

  Jasperodus glanced behind him. Shortly the Borgor troops would start fanning out, looking for stragglers or fleeing constructs. ‘Maybe. But in the present there is a practical matter, which embarrasses me….’

  ‘I know,’ Socrates interrupted. ‘You cannot allow my existence to continue, knowing what I do of the consciousness-ducting process. I can spare you embarrassment, Jasperodus. My maker Aristos Lyos was a man blessed with foresight. He believed self-destruction to be an entirely reasonable course, at least for anyone of a philosophising disposition. And he left me with an easy option at any time.’

  So saying, he pulled at something in his side. It was a metal pin, or rod. As it came out, Socrates’ body fell to pieces. His head disassembled itself and its contents disintegrated completely. Jasperodus found himself looking at a small pile of robotic parts, over which the fragments of Socrates’ brain were scattered like gravel.

  The shouts of the Borgors were sounding louder in the distance. They had almost disposed of the servitors. Jasperodus set off at a run to put distance between himself and the Gargan Cult centre while he could. Making for the side of the canyon, he saw a gleam of metal in the half-light and discovered it to be a motor-wheel machine lying on its side, its robot rider sprawled on the ground some yards away, chest smashed by a shell or flying fragment.

  He had seen how the machines were operated. He pulled it upright, swung astride it, and pressed his foot on the stud in the right-hand foot-rest. The engine started up with a machine-gun clatter.

  Despite the broad soft tyres it was awkward to keep balance at first, but as the machine gathered speed its spinning wheels gave it a stability of its own. Riding it was exhilarating. He raced along the foot of the canyon wall, up the incline, which the machine climbed easily, and on to the plateau above. Then he was bouncing over the scrub as the darkness thickened, fleeing, speeding, he gave no thought where.

  If you've enjoyed this book and would like to read more great SF, you'll find literally thousands of classic Science Fiction & Fantasy titles through the SF Gateway.

  For the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy …

  For the most comprehensive collection of classic SF on the internet …

  Visit the SF Gateway.

  www.sfgateway.com

  Also by Barrington J. Bayley

  Age of Adventure

  Annihilation Factor

  Collision with Chronos

  Empire of Two Worlds

  Sinners of Erspia

  Star Winds

  The Fall of Chronopolis

  The Forest of Peldain

  The Garments of Caean

  The Grand Wheel

  The Great Hydration

  The Pillars of Eternity

  The Rod of Light

  The Soul of the Robot

  The Star Virus

  The Zen Gun

  The Knights of the Limits

  The Seed of Evil

  Dedication

  For Elise Pechersky

  who prompted me to finish

  Barrington J. Bayley (1937–2008) was born in Birmingham and began writing science fiction in his early teens. After serving in the RAF, he took up freelance writing on features, serials and picture strips, mostly in the juvenile field, before returning to straight SF. He was a regular contributor to the influential New Worlds magazine and an early voice in the New Wave movement.

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © Barrington J. Bayley 1985

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Barrington J. Bayley to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by

  Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 575 10202 6

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

 

 

 
share