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

Jasperodus scrutinised the newcomer. ‘Good day,’ he ventured hesitantly.

‘Good day,’ answered Socrates in a voice that was a distant murmur.

‘Socrates is intelligent enough to realise that I am conscious but that he is not,’ Lyos remarked. ‘It induces some strange thoughts in him. I keep him by me in my old age to amuse me with the fantastic products of his intellect.’ He twisted round to face Jasperodus again. ‘Concerning one point I am curious. You have gone to some trouble to track me down. Why did you not go directly to the man who made you and direct your questions to him?’

Jasperodus took his time about framing a reply. ‘Shame, perhaps,’ he said eventually. ‘Shame at having deserted them. No, that’s not it. He has inflicted this enormous fraud on me. Why should I expect him to tell me the truth now?’

Lyos nodded. ‘Yes, I see.’

Jasperodus took a step back. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said respectfully. ‘You have not resolved my perplexity, but you have answered my question.’

On leaving, he glanced back at the pair. Socrates had moved close to his master, and they both gazed out to sea. Then the robot bent and spoke some words into the old man’s ear.

Back in Tansiann that evening Jasperodus hurried through the palace towards his apartments but was waylaid suddenly by an acquaintance who appeared from behind a pillar.

‘Jasperodus! I am so glad to have found you. Have you seen Caught in the Web yet? It is superb!’

‘No, I… haven’t found the time.’

‘Please do. The reviews do not mislead. Speeler really demonstrates the use of dynamism when it comes to dramatic content. And such a clever counterbalancing of themes… you’ll get a good laugh out of it, too.’

Jasperodus’ interlocutor was a fellow robot, Gemin by name, one of several whose duties in the administration had led them to enter the social life of the court. He was a more suave version of certain wild robots Jasperodus had been conversant with: witty, elegant, proud of his sophistication. He and his set – which also included humans – looked upon themselves as the whizz-kids of the establishment. Inventive, bursting with enthusiasm for the modern world Charrane was building, amateur experts on the fashionable trends in drama, music and painting, they cultivated an outlook of irreverent cynicism, almost of foppishness.

Gemin lounged against the pillar, one leg crossed over the other. His almost spherical face, with its disconcertingly bright orange eyes, gleamed. ‘I hear the planning staff is buzzing with something big, Marshal. Come on, now, what’s afoot? Don’t tell me you’ve adopted my plan to drop the Moon on Borgor!’ He chuckled.

At any other time Jasperodus would have been glad to discuss Speeler’s new play Caught in the Web with him, or even to exchange banter about top secret decisions. All he wanted now was to depart. There loomed in his mind the knowledge of the emptiness that was within Gemin, and he knew it was a mirror of his own emptiness; the emptiness that by himself he could not see. He fancied he could hear mechanisms grinding, churning out the dead words.

‘Excuse me, I have business,’ he said curtly, and strode on.

Alone in his apartments he wandered through the rooms, trying to quieten his agitation. He had received the answer he had expected, had he not? Then he should be suffering no disappointment.

One of the rooms, the one with the north window, he used as a studio. He stepped to the half-finished canvas on the easel, took up the brush to add a few careful strokes, then desisted. The light was not good enough; he needed morning light, not that of electric bulbs, for this particular picture.

He looked slowly around at the paintings littering the studio, as though wishing to assess his progress so far. He nodded; he knew that his work was good. He had made no attempt to pander to fashion; by many his pictures would be adjudged outdated. His purposes had been purely private, and he had settled upon that style of painting which seemed best suited to express the emotions that ran deep in him. The greater part of the canvases were landscapes or seascapes, depicting his feeling for the planet Earth (which had been heightened on that occasion, seemingly long ago now, when he had floated in space several hundred miles above it). They were largely naturalistic, but lit with flaming flashes of imagination. Thus a bulky boat sat sedately amid a universal fire that was concocted of sunset, sea and sky.

Jasperodus’ other main effort to prove himself in the field of feeling lay in music. He had worked assiduously at the art of composition, begging at one time the help of Tansiann’s most distinguished composer. So far he had exerted himself in a number of chamber works and was beginning to get the measure of his talent. Already he was planning something more ambitious: a definitive work of lasting value. As a singer, too, he had discovered some merit – to the delight of his teacher, for his electronic voice was easier to train than a human one.

Closing the door of the studio behind him he returned to the main lounge, where he sat down, took his head in his hands and uttered a deep sigh (a humanoid habit he had never quite lost).

Then he gave a cry of exasperation. What was the use of brooding over this tormenting enigma? It could only end in total dejection, and possibly, eventual nonfunction.

With a determined effort he forced the gloom from his mind. He could be content with what he had: he was accepted in the world of men, and by his outward works he was no less than they were.

It had been a taxing day and he needed to indulge himself in a pleasurable diversion, and there was one particular diversion that he knew from experience was uniquely consoling.

He made a phosphor-dot communicator call to the set of apartments adjoining his own, then repaired to a small room which was kept locked and which would open only to himself. When he emerged Verita had arrived and was waiting in the boudoir, already naked.

And Jasperodus, his eyes glowing hotly, was now ready and equipped for the one human activity that had once been denied him: sexuality.

This had always been an area of experience where, in common with all other robots, Jasperodus had been totally impotent. Stung by the occasional taunt – and irked by curiosity – he had eventually sought a way to repair his one great deficiency. The expense had been considerable – more than he himself would have cost to make – but inestimably worth it.

The secret to sexual desire lay in the extraordinary range and speed of the impressions which the brain was forced to receive on the denoted subject – in the normal man’s case, on women – a speed which took the process beyond any voluntary control. The problems facing the robotician hired by Jasperodus had been several: first to elucidate this secret, then to translate it into robotic terms, and lastly – most difficult of all – to encompass the new processes in the small space that could be found within Jasperodus’ skull by rearranging the other sections of his brain. The task had carried the techniques of micro-circuitry to their limit; but after nearly a year the almost-impossible had been accomplished, and Jasperodus was financially poorer but also incomparably richer.

Along with his new faculty went the apparatus to make it meaningful. The balance-and-movement ganglia that had occupied the bulge of his loins had been redeployed. In their place Jasperodus was able to bolt in position the artificial sex organ he was now wearing. Of flexible steel clad in a rubberoid musculature, and made in generous proportion to his magnificent body, it was much superior to the natural variety, being capable of endlessly subtle flexions and torsions at his command. When bolted in place it was fully integrated into his body, nerves and brain, all of which could be aroused to orgasm by stimulation of the sensitised layer in the rubberoid cladding. When it was not in use, he detached it only for the sake of appearances.