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

‘Stay here,’ he told Arcturus. ‘I will be back shortly.’

Walking towards the cottage he noticed at once that not all was well with the household. The farming robots went about their work, but they had not been serviced in a long time. The hoeing machine dragged itself across the earth, unable to perform its task with anything like acceptable efficacy.

Nearer to the cottage Jasperodus came upon a simple grave bearing the name of his mother. He paused, walked on and entered the cottage by the open door.

Within, the light was dim, the curtains being drawn across the windows. He stood in the main room of the dwelling, surrounded by the homely furniture that had served the old couple for half a lifetime. Lying on a bed beneath the window casement was the robotician Jasperodus automatically – by reason of some inbuilt mental reflex, no doubt – called his father.

The man’s breathing was shallow and laboured. ‘Who is there?’ he asked in a faint voice.

‘I, Jasperodus, the construct you manufactured close to a score of years ago.’

He stepped nearer, looked down and felt puzzled enough to start reckoning up the years. When he had left them the man and his wife had been just about to enter old age. By now they should be almost twenty years older, but still sound of wind and limb. Yet the face that stared up at him was ancient, in the last stages of an unnatural senility. It looked a thousand years old: the eyes were dull, barely alive, yellow and filmed; the skin sagged and reminded him of rotted fungus; trembling, claw-like hands clutched at the dirty coverlet.

It didn’t add up. Was his father in the grip of some wasting disease? The two stared at one another, each startled by what he saw.

‘Jasperodus…’

‘Yes, it is me.’ Even as he pondered, even as he wondered how far his father’s mind might have deteriorated and whether he would be able to answer, the words Jasperodus had meant to speak started coming out of his mouth. ‘Cast your mind back. I am here to ask you only one thing. Why did you do it? Why did you burden me with this fictitious self-image – this belief in a consciousness I do not possess? A clever piece of work, no doubt, but could you not see how cruel it was – that I was bound to discover the truth?’

The old man smiled weakly. ‘I always knew that unanswerable question would bring you back to us one day.’

‘Fake being: a mechanical trick,’ Jasperodus accused.

‘There is no fictitious self-image, no mechanical trick. You are fully conscious.’

Resentment entered Jasperodus’ voice. ‘It is no use to lie to me. I have talked with eminent roboticians – I have even talked with Aristos Lyos – and besides that I have studied robotics on my own account. I know full well that it is impossible to create artificial consciousness.’

‘Quite so; what you say is perfectly true. Nevertheless – you are conscious.’ The old man moved feebly. ‘My great invention!’ he said dreamily. ‘My great secret!’

Had the oldster’s mind degenerated, Jasperodus asked himself? Yet somehow the robotician did not speak like a dotard.

‘You talk nonsense,’ he said brutally.

But the other smiled again. ‘At the beginning we decided never to tell you, not wishing you to be afflicted with feelings of guilt. But now you evidently need to know. Listen: it is quite true, consciousness cannot be artificially generated. Some years ago, however, I made a unique discovery: while uncreatable it can nevertheless be manipulated, melted down, transferred from one vehicle to another. I learned how to duct it, how to trap it in a “robotic retort” – to use my own jargon. If any other man has ever learned this secret he has kept it well hidden, as indeed I have.’

He paused, swallowed, closed his eyes for a moment, then continued. ‘To perform these operations, of course, one must first obtain the energy of consciousness, necessarily from a human being. We took half of your mother’s soul, half of my soul, and fused them together to form a new, original soul with its own individual qualities. That is how you were born – our son, in every sense of the word, just as if you had been of our flesh and blood.’

A long, long silence followed these words. At length Jasperodus stirred, stunned both by the novelty and by the compelling logic of what he had just been told. ‘Then I am, after all, a person?’ he queried wonderingly. ‘A being? A self?’

‘Just like any human person. In fact you have more consciousness, a more vigorous consciousness, than the normal human, since in the event we both donated somewhat more than half of our souls. I can still remember that day, misty though everything now is. It became a trial in which each tried to prevent the other from giving too much. It was a strange experience, feeling the debilitating drain on one’s being – and yet, too, there was a kind of ecstasy, since when the consciousness began to flow from each of us, we could feel the coalescence of our souls. We have paid the price for the procedure, of course, in the loss of over half our vitality, and in the premature ageing which resulted…’

Jasperodus moved away, pacing the room. ‘A heavy price, perhaps.’

‘Not at all. We knew what we were doing. To lose a part of one’s life – that is nothing. To create a life – that is something to have done. I hope you have not regretted our gift of life.’ The old man’s voice was a quavering whisper now; he seemed exhausted.

‘I have been through many experiences, and I have suffered to some extent, chiefly through not knowing that I am a man.’ He picked up a wooden figurine that rested on a sideboard, contemplating it absently while pondering. ‘How did you come by this discovery? It seems remarkable, to say the least.’

His father did not answer. He was staring at the timbers of the ceiling, burnished by odd rays of light that entered through chinks in the curtains.

Jasperodus returned to the bedside. ‘And why have you made a secret of it? Many people have tried to make conscious robots. It is a major discovery, a real addition to knowledge.’

‘No, no! This technique is much too dangerous. Think what it would mean! At present constructs are not conscious, but some are intelligent, even shrewd. A few of them already begin to suspect what is missing in them. If my method became known it would lead to robots stealing the souls of men. At worst, one can imagine mankind being enslaved by a super-conscious machine system, kept alive only so that men’s souls could be harvested – as it is, lack of consciousness is all that prevents the potential superiority of the construct from asserting itself. So my technique will die with me, and I implore you never to speak of it to anyone.’

Jasperodus nodded. ‘I understand. You have my promise.’

‘Perhaps we should not have used it at all, but this one desire we could not resist: to have a son.’

‘There is an image that has occurred to me from time to time, often in dreams,’ Jasperodus remarked. ‘It shows a blast furnace melting down all manner of metal artifacts. The vision has been so vivid – so frightening – that I have been convinced it contains some meaning. You, I suppose, put it in my mind.’

‘Quite so. It was the only clue to your true nature I gave you. The fire of the furnace, which melts objects so that the metal may be used anew, is an analogy of a supernal fire – a cosmic fire – that melts the stuff of consciousness ready to be fashioned into new individuals. I discovered this fire.’

‘Supernal fire,’ Jasperodus said slowly. He grunted, and shook his head.

‘I am still puzzled,’ he confessed. ‘Apart from the principles of robotics, certain events and circumstances in my life have convinced me that I lack a soul – for instance I was once dismantled, yet when I was reconstituted my feeling of consciousness returned. How may that be explained?’