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

The drama ended. The substantial-seeming scenes vanished, leaving behind a handful of actors standing on bare boards. They bowed low to Jasperodus.

‘Excellent!’ Jasperodus commended. ‘A fine performance!’ He would have been content to mull over the play for a while, but an oldster with a bushy white beard slid into view.

‘And now, Your Majesty, permit us to present views of the distant past. These images have been preserved from the Age of Tergov!’

He attended to the laser device. In the space recently occupied by the drama another scene sprang into being. This time it was a still, showing an aerial view of part of a city so vast and magnificent that all present gasped.

‘These pictures are a little smudged because the holograms lay for centuries in the soil before being unearthed,’ the spry old man explained. ‘Here is Pekengu, one of the Four Capital Cities of the Rule of Tergov. When this hologram was taken Tansiann was but an unimportant town of moderate size. Pekengu itself is now little more than a sad shell of ruins, though still inhabited.’ The projector clicked; a second scene appeared. ‘Here we see another of the Four Capitals: Pacifica, the floating city on the Great East Sea. Pacifica was fifty miles across, and its population was two hundred million. The great central shaft you see extended half a mile below the surface of the ocean and two miles into the air.’ The expositor continued to give more facts about the ancient capital, now lying wrecked on the bed of the ocean, and then switched to perhaps the best of his pictures. ‘Here is a view of one of the most consummate architectural triumphs of all time: the Temple of the Brotherhood of Man at Pekengu. Parts of this magnificent edifice still remain, notably the north wall. This picture is believed to have been taken about a hundred years after the temple was built.’

Jasperodus gazed enthralled at the gigantic building. He had never imagined anything even remotely like it. Its central feature was a massive dome about whose middle floated a girdle of clouds, so immense was it. The lower parts of the dome seemed to cascade away into mounds, waves, traceries and runs that spilled and tumbled out over the ground, all seeming to hang from the floating upper mass rather than to support it.

‘Can you show us the inside of this building also?’ he demanded excitedly.

‘Alas, no. Pictures of the interior do exist, so I have heard, but I have none in my collection.’

The expositor exhibited his remaining pictures: the impressively developed territories on Mars; the vast sea barrage that, in those days, altered continental climates by controlling oceanic currents; a stupendous space community that swept through the solar system on an elongated elliptical path so as regularly to cross the orbits of all the planets; a view of Saturn seen over the towers of a town on Tethys, one of its inner satellites.

‘These,’ the expositor told them, ‘are examples of the bygone glory that the Emperor Charrane seeks to revive.’

The sights left Jasperodus stirred and agitated. Here indeed were accomplishments of a high order! He began to feel an immense admiration for the Old Empire and regretted that he could not have lived in the former time.

The picture show ended with a shorter second series showing weird, almost impossible animals. Creatures with ludicrously long necks or with twenty-foot wing spans, cats the size of elephants and horses the size of cats. Some of the animals bore no resemblance to any beast Jasperodus knew of and defied description.

‘None of these animals occur in nature but were created during the classical civilisation by a science now lost,’ the expositor explained. ‘This science could also culture bizarre types of man, but these and all other like species are extinct today, not having survived the wild state that attended the Dark Age.’

He put aside the laser projector; but the show was not yet finished. Another man took the stage and performed baffling feats of magic. Jasperodus watched closely. He could discern faster movements than could the human eye and he was able to see that many of the tricks depended on legerdemain or on misdirecting the attention of the audience. Others, mainly those using cards or apparently demonstrating mind-reading, made use of devious mathematical calculations or ingenious psychology, at both of which the conjurer was clearly an expert. Jasperodus was able to see through the operation of these also; but others mystified even him.

Afterwards the four leaders of the troupe, including the expositor and the conjuror, sat before him relating unusual tales and propounding riddles. Jasperodus had secretly looked forward to this part of the proceedings. These people spent their lives travelling the world, and their knowledge covered a vast range of subjects. The troupe could cater for all tastes: not only could it perform plays, exotic foreign music, displays of dancing, acrobatics, conjuring and buffoonery; it could also debate philosophy with remarkable erudition. Jasperodus needed some stimulating conversation now that Padua, otherwise his only outlet, had become churlish and unfriendly towards him.

After listening for a while he expressed a wish to be posed a riddle or two.

A jolly-faced oldster, his face more wrinkled than the others and fringed by a fluffy white beard, obliged him. ‘Which are more numerous, the living or the dead?’

Jasperodus thought for a moment. ‘The living, for the dead don’t exist.’

‘Correct! Now apply yourself to this ancient conundrum. A judge once sentenced a man to death, informing him that he was to be garotted sometime between the following Monday and Friday, but that up until the moment he was taken from his cell he would not know on which day. That night the condemned man reasoned thus: “I cannot be garotted on Friday, which is the last day, for in that case I would be forewarned of it the instant Thursday midnight had passed, which is against the judge’s ruling. But if Friday is eliminated I cannot be garotted on Thursday either – because I would likewise be forewarned of it the instant Wednesday midnight had passed. By the same argument Wednesday, Tuesday and Monday are each eliminated in turn. I am saved! I cannot be executed.” And so he rested easy. But when Tuesday arrived he was taken from his cell and garotted, unforeseen as the judge had promised. Explain.’

Jasperodus explored the intricacies of the tale and found himself in a paradox. After some abortive attempts to solve it he shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘Pah! It is a play on words merely. The judge lied. He imposed a condition that cannot be carried out in reality, which is something any fool can do. He should have exempted the last day from his promise and then there would be no paradox.’

‘My opinion exactly!’ Shoulders jiggling, the oldster chuckled in amusement. ‘But you would be surprised how many philosophers have taken his words at face value and erected imposing systems of logic on them.’ He gave a crafty laugh, looking sidewise at his colleagues. ‘A ruler with an intellect for a change!’

The remark emboldened Jasperodus. ‘You are all men of discernment,’ he said, adopting an imperious pose. ‘Consider, then, my achievements. I have made myself king of this land and all men here do my bidding. I can out-think most and have determination enough for ten. Do you not think that this gives me equal status with men? That I am, in effect, a man?’

He was answered by a trouper with a lean rubbery face the colour of red brick. ‘By no means. You are a machine for all that. How did you gain your kingdom?’

‘Why, by trickery and deceit!’ Jasperodus said proudly. ‘Is that not the way of men?’

‘The way of most men, just so. By your own admission you add weight to my case. With you, all is imitation.’