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

Could the characters and worlds within the thespitron, shadows though they were, be said to possess reality? The properties of matter itself could be reduced to purely logical definitions, heretical though the operation was from the point of view of empiricism. The entities generated by the machine, obeying those same logical definitions, could never know that they lacked concrete substance.

Was there identity in the universe? Was that all there was?

Now he understood what had made him include a communication facility in the thespitron; why he had further felt impelled to talk to Frank Nayland, his near-double. He had identified himself with Nayland; he had tried to enlighten him as to the nature of his fictional world, prompted by some irrational notion that, by confronting him, he could somehow prod Nayland into having a consciousness of his own.

Who am I? Naylor wondered. Does my identity, my consciousness, belong to myself, or does it belong to this – he made a gesture taking in all that lay beyond the walls of the habitat – to infinity?

Sitting down again, he switched on the thespitron.

Naylor’s sense of having duplicated the logical development of the universe was further heightened by the inclusion of the ‘credible sequence’ button. This optional control engaged circuits which performed, in fact, no more than the last stage of the plotting process, arranging that the machine’s presentations, in terms of construction, settings and event structure, were consonant, if not quite with the real world, at least with a dramatist’s imitation of it.

With the button disengaged, however, the criterion of mundane credibility vanished. The thespitron proceeded to construct odd, abbreviated worlds, sometimes from only a small number of dramatic elements. Worlds in which processes, once begun, were apt to continue for ever, without interruption or exhaustion; in which actions, once embarked upon, became a binding force upon the actor, requiring permanent reiteration.

The world of Frank Nayland, private investigator, was one of these: a world put together from the bare components of the Hollywood thriller genre , bereft of any wider background, moving according to an obsessive, abstract logic. A compact world with only a small repertoire of events; the terse fictional world of the private dick, a world in which rain was unceasing.

Summoning up Nayland from store, Naylor watched him pursue his investigations, his gaberdine raincoat permanently damp, rain dripping from the brim of his slouch hat. So absorbed did he become in the dick’s adventures that he failed to notice the entry of Watson-Smythe until the MI19 officer tapped him on the shoulder.

‘It’s nine o’clock,’ Watson-Smythe said. ‘Time we were calling on Corngold.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Naylor rose, rubbing his eyes. He left the thespitron running as they went through the connecting tunnel, tapping on Corngold’s door before going in.

A measure of camaraderie had grown up during the hour they had spent with the artist earlier. Naylor had come to look on him more as an eccentric rascal than a real villain, and even Watson-Smythe had mollified his hostility a little. He had still tried to persuade Betty Cooper, the maid allegedly abducted from the home of Lady Cadogan (from whom Corngold had also stolen a valuable antique bracelet), to move in with them pending the journey back to Earth, but so great was Corngold’s hold over her (the hold of a sadist, Watson-Smythe said) that she would obey only him.

There was no sign of the promised dinner party. Corngold stood before his easel, legs astraddle, while Betty posed in the nude, sitting demurely on a chair. Though still a sullen frump, Naylor thought that when naked she had some redeeming features; her body tended to flop, and was pale and too fleshy, but it was pleasantly substantial, in a trollopy sort of way.

Corngold turned his head. ‘Well?’ he glared.

Watson-Smythe coughed. ‘You invited us to dinner, I seem to remember.’

‘Did I? Oh.’ Corngold himself didn’t seem to remember. He continued plying the paint on to the canvas, a square palette of mingled colour in his other hand. Naylor was fascinated. The man was an artist after all. His concentration, his raptness, were there, divided between the canvas and the living girl.

Naylor moved a few paces so he could get a glimpse of the portrait. But he did not see what he had expected. Instead of a nude, Corngold had painted an automobile.

Corngold looked at him, his eyes twinkling with mirth. ‘Well, it’s how I see her, you see.’

Naylor was baffled. He could not see how in any way the picture could represent Betty, not even as a metaphor. The auto was sleek and flashy, covered with glittering trim; quite the opposite of Betty’s qualities, in fact.

He strolled to the other end of the egg-shaped room, glancing at the stacked canvases. Corngold had a bit of a following, he believed, among some of the avant-garde. Naylor took no interest in art, but even he could see the fellow was talented. The paintings were individualistic, many of them in bright but cleverly-toned colours.

Corngold laid down his brush and moved aside the easel, gesturing to Betty to rise and dress. ‘Dinner, then,’ he said, in the tone of one whose hospitality may be presumed upon. ‘Frankly I’d hoped you two would have got tired of hanging around by now and cleared off.’

‘That would have left you in a bit of a spot,’ Naylor said. ‘You have no way of finding your way home.’

‘So what? Who the hell wants to go to Earth anyway. I’ve got everything I need here – eh?’ Corngold winked at him obscenely, and, to the extreme embarrassment of both Naylor and Watson-Smythe, stuck his finger in Betty’s vulva, wiggling it vigorously. Betty became the picture of humiliation, looking distressfully this way and that. But she made no move to draw back.

Naylor bristled. ‘I say! ’ he protested heatedly. ‘You are British, aren’t you?’

Corngold’s manner became suddenly aggressive. He withdrew his finger, whereupon Betty turned and snatched for her clothes. ‘And why shouldn’t I be?’ he challenged.

‘Well, dammit, no proper Englishman would treat a woman this way!’

There was a pause. Corngold gave a peculiar open-mouthed grin which grew broader and broader as he looked first at Betty and then back and forth between Naylor and Watson-Smythe.

‘Fuck me, I must be a Welshman!’

‘Perhaps the best thing would be to leave you here, Corngold,’ Watson-Smythe commented, his tone one of coldest disapproval. ‘It might be the punishment you deserve.’

‘Do it, then! You’d never have got to me at all, you bastards, if I’d found a way to turn off the fucking beacon.’

‘It can’t be done,’ Naylor informed him. It would be typical of such a character, he thought, not to know that. The beacon signal was imprinted on every velocitator manufactured, as a legal requirement. Otherwise habitats would never be able to vector in on one another.

Corngold grunted, and dragged the board table to the centre of the room. Around it he arranged the three chairs his dwelling boasted, and with a casual gesture invited his guests to sit down.

‘What’s all this “Corngold”, anyway?’ he demanded as they took their places. ‘Have I agreed that I am Corngold? Establish the identity of the culprit – that’s the first thing in law!’

‘I am satisfied that you are Walter Corngold,’ Watson-Smythe said smoothly.

Corngold banged on the tabletop, shouting. ‘Supposition, supposition! Establish the identity!’

He laughed, then turned to Betty, who was clothed now and stood by in the attitude of a waitress. ‘Well, let’s eat. Indian curry suit you? How do you like it? Mine’s good and hot.’