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

Inwing shrugged. ‘I become weary of inaction behind a desk. I thought we might recover something of our old comradeship together, until we find other employment. What do you say?’

‘Certainly!’ Jasperodus laughed. ‘But let’s delay no further.’

They left the palace without mishap. Cree hired a horse-drawn cab from the rank permanently on call outside the main gate and they trundled through the darkened streets.

His mood was cheerful. ‘And so, Jasperodus! How does it feel to be mobile and free once again?’

‘This is the second time I have been resurrected from the dead,’ Jasperodus remarked. ‘Repetition is a feature of this life, it seems.’

Dawn was breaking when they ordered the driver to set them down on the outskirts of Subuh. For a distance they proceeded on foot, then Cree disposed of his military uniform on waste ground, changing into civilian garb. Nearby he knocked up the keeper of a disreputable inn, where he proposed they should lie low for a few days.

Jasperodus concurred, but was less cautious. ‘It is easy to hide in Subuh,’ he assured him. ‘Have no fear, I will arrange it.’

In fact he had more than mere refuge on his mind. He thirsted for revenge. A few hours later it was mid-morning. Cree slept, while Jasperodus left the inn and ventured deeper into Subuh.

A single hour’s walk told him much. With grim satisfaction he observed that many of his predictions had been justified – though the rate of change surprised even him. Subuh was a different, much worse place than before. From a slum it was in the process of being transformed into a wild lawless jungle.

The streets were overcrowded, noisy and strewn with uncollected litter. Sharp-faced hawkers openly sold dubious and illegal wares. Jasperodus witnessed robberies, brawls and bloodshed, all unheeded by the general public; the forces of the law had apparently abandoned the area and much of the populace, he saw, had taken to going armed. Great piles of rubbish were in evidence. Jasperodus passed a sprawling heap of defunct and dismantled robots. One unfortunate, thrown on the heap while still partly functional, made feeble efforts to extricate himself from the tangle, but fell back in defeat and despair.

An isolated tenement surrounded by waste ground burned fiercely and no one attended it, except for its inhabitants who did no more than try to drag their few belongings from the slowly collapsing pile. Jasperodus found the sight particularly depressing. A few years ago the city’s fire service would have rushed into action even here in Subuh; now the owners were clearly content to let the building burn to the ground.

In the Diamond, a plaza central to the borough, a great crowd had gathered. Officials in the uniform of the City Administration stood on a wooden platform, backed by a mound of bulging sacks. Jasperodus understood that he was seeing the beginning of the city’s poor-law largesse: the distribution of free grain to the unemployed.

He pushed his way rudely through the crowd and mounted the platform. Ignoring the indignation of the officials, whom he also brushed aside, he turned to address the jostling assembly.

His voice boomed out startlingly over the plaza. ‘Men of Tansiann! You are being given grain, the bounty of the earth. Why do you lack it? If you had land of your own, you would not need to be fed gratis . You are citizens of an empire which calls you masters of the Earth, yet you have no right to one square foot of her soil. Take your grain, then, and live the life of the dispossessed.’

His speech was greeted with blank, silent stares. He turned, stepped past the puzzled officials, descended from the platform and slipped away from the plaza.

His approach had been too abstract, he decided. Coarser arguments would be needed to sway the citizens of Subuh.

But now he came to an area where abstraction was no stranger. Near the heart of Subuh was a small enclave, bounded by Bishi Street on one side and the Tan on the other, that traditionally was totally robot. A construct could enter here without fear of meeting a single human being, not even a slotman. Ignorant slotmen had, in fact, been known to commit suicide after straying into the area and discovering that they were classed as outsiders and aliens.

If anything the robot enclave was slightly better ordered than the rest of Subuh. Unlike the human proletariat, the robots were capable of organising the cleaning of their own streets. Even robots who collapsed were apparently cleared away (perhaps being added to the heap he had seen earlier, Jasperodus thought) and he saw only one or two twitching hulks on the sidewalk, stepped over by the passers-by.

It was, however, no less crowded, despite the high defunction rate that would be suggested by the poor state of repair of many of the constructs. The loss through junking was presumably being made good by a large nett inflow into the enclave. This alone was indicative of a general increase in crime throughout the city, for the commonest way in which a robot gained freedom was by being stolen and then slipping away from its hijackers.

‘Jasperodus!’

He turned on hearing his name called, and espied an old acquaintance. Mark V, more tarnished and more battered, hurried up with a gait that to Jasperodus looked slightly eccentric.

‘Your gimbals need attention,’ he remarked by way of a greeting.

Mark V laughed in embarrassment. ‘One’s machinery deteriorates with age, you know. We cannot expect always to remain in good condition. But how delightful to see you! I followed your career at court with great interest, insofar as one could glean anything from the newspapers, but for some years there has been no mention… I have often wondered what became of you.’

‘As you can see I have given up public service and have decided to return to old haunts,’ Jasperodus said. ‘Tell me what is new in the district.’

The two walked along together, but instead of supplying the information he desired Mark V treated Jasperodus to a description of an involved and abstruse theory of numbers he was working on. Thinking of his music, of his painting, of the vistas of creativity that were open to him, Jasperodus found Mark V’s preoccupations arid and paltry.

Presently they came to the centre of the robot enclave: a large, low-roofed structure known as the Common Room. At Mark V’s suggestion they entered. Here was a meeting place for robots from all over Subuh; beneath its timber beams they discoursed, debated and partook of stimulatory electric jags. Benches and chairs were set out in a loose pattern. A lively hum of conversation filled the air.

Mark V announced Jasperodus with a flourish. Several robots whom Jasperodus remembered from the early days came forward and stared at him curiously, as if unable to believe their eyes.

‘Jasperodus!’ cried one. ‘Is it really you?’

To his pleasure Jasperodus was welcomed as a celebrity and became the centre of attention. He was conducted to the place of honour, an ornate high-backed chair with lions’ heads carved on its arms.

A construct spoke up. ‘We were about to begin a debate on the nature of infinity and on whether time is truly serial. Would you care to participate?’

‘Thank you,’ replied Jasperodus, ‘but I am not in the mood for it.’

Mark V sidled close. ‘You have long been a hero to us free robots,’ he informed him. ‘For a construct to rise so high in the government! Here in Subuh you are famous.’

‘Have a caution,’ Jasperodus warned all. ‘If my presence here becomes famous outside Subuh the city guard will turn the borough upside down looking for me. I am now a renegade.’

A stir of excitement greeted his words. A tall, thin robot stepped near. ‘I once headed the committee that intended to propose you become leader of the wild robots, had you not suddenly disappeared.’