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

‘I feel I know every foot of this place,’ Kayin said. ‘I feel I know everybody in it. That’s ridiculous, of course – you can’t know two million people. But you understand… I’ll admit I’ve had some good times here. It’s all right if you like living in what is essentially an extended, highly technical village. But there’s something a bit dead about City 5. Nothing ever comes in from outside. Anything that happens has to be generated right here.’

Polla’s expression was both worried and uncomprehending. ‘What are you talking about? What could come in from outside?’

He ignored her question. ‘I’ll tell you something, Poll,’ he said, ‘the City Board ought to have tighter control. I don’t like the kind of symbolisations and plays they’ve been putting on lately. They really shouldn’t allow these independent art groups and independent scientific groups like the Society. Ambition is a curse, it’s frustration.’

‘I never expected to hear you say that! You were always going to be the teenage rebel.’

Kayin shook his head. ‘I still can’t feel happy at having to spend the rest of my life in City 5. I know that’s a queer thing to say. I have my job in the Inertial Stocktaking Department, I spend my time in the same way everybody else spends theirs, and I wish I could be content with that. But instead I feel restless, dissatisfied. I just wish I could go somewhere.’

With an impatient shake of her head Polla stood up. ‘All right. Let’s go home and have a session. I feel randy.’

‘Okay.’ Automatically he rose and followed. But before leaving the park he headed for its most obtrusive feature, the now defunct observatory. The building, a tall, ribbed dome, bulked large against the background of trees and shrubbery. Beside it a squat tower loomed, housing the exploratory nucleon rocket that had once been part of the observatory’s ancillary equipment. He beckoned Polla and, crossing a stretch of sward, led her through a small door in the base of the building.

Although abandoned, the observatory was still kept in good order and any citizen had the right to visit and use it. Few people ever bothered, but Kayin, along with his ex-colleagues in the Astronomical Society, had spent a fair amount of time there lately.

Not that there was anything to see. The experience was a purely negative one, and subsequent visits could do nothing but repeat it. A soft light, faintly tinged with green, filled the vaulted chamber. Kayin switched on the observatory and saw the glow of life come into the control panels, heard the waiting hum from the machinery that moved the main telescope.

The instrument was the best of its type ever designed, fitted with the complete range of auxiliary apparatus – radio, X-ray, laser and maser detectors, image amplification and the rest. When built, its makers had boasted that it could detect emitting matter anywhere in the sidereal universe. Kayin set the big cylinder in motion and brought it to rest pointing directly to zenith. The wall display screens remained dark and opaque. As if performing a ritual Kayin moved the telescope again, directing it towards City-perimeter-west. On the screens, again nothing. North: nothing. East: nothing. South: nothing. Kayin and Polla stood stock-still in the capacious, echoing dome, staring at the black screens like children recalling an often-repeated lesson.

City 5 was an oasis of light in an immense darkness. A few minutes ago Kayin had said he wished he could go somewhere. He realised now that that wasn’t quite right. What he meant was: he wished there was somewhere to go .

He thought of the nearby nucleon rocket. Recently he actually had gone somewhere – almost.

Near the centre of the City, in the upper echelons of the Administrative Ramification, Kord awoke after his customary year of suspended animation.

Strange… the freeze process stopped everything, body and brain. Logically he should come out of it with the feeling that only a second or two had passed since he lost consciousness. Inexplicably, it was not like that. Each time he felt as if he had been gone a long, long time, and privately he suspected that he aged a year mentally despite the biological stop.

He thrust the thought from his mind. If his task was ever completed, perhaps then he could give his attention to philosophical diversions. Until then there was only one thing to occupy his whole being.

Having lifted him out of the casket and given him a thorough check, the doctors helped him down from the inspection slab, one of them assisting Kord to fit on his prosthetic leg, the legacy of a brief period of civil strife early in the history of the City. At length he stood up, feeling fit and alive, and paced the room experimentally, limping slightly on the artificial limb. Other men entered with clothes and attentively helped him to dress.

Not until they had finished did he speak. ‘Are the others awake?’

‘Yes, Chairman. Will you proceed to briefing?’

He nodded, and left the room by a side door to find himself in a small, discreetly lighted chamber containing only a table and a chair. A man wearing the uniform of the Social Dynamic Movements Department entered briefly to hand him a file.

Kord sat down, opened the file and began to read. It was written in the special language of sociodynamic symbology, legible only to specially trained persons, From it Kord could gain a complete picture of social tendencies over the past year, every nuance, every incipient crystallisation and fragmentation, every vibration between the poles of conservation and change. If the symbolic analysis was not enough, Kord had implanted under the skin of his neck a set of filaments connected directly to the memory area of his brain. A lead from the City Archives Monitor Desk, taped to his neck, would induce in them currents carrying audio-visual recordings, of conversations, happenings, a million cameos of life easily gathered and recorded by the watchful electronics of a closed system like City 5. By drawing on the memories he would suddenly find in his mind, Kord’s knowledge of the past year would be experiential, not merely symbolic.

In adjoining cells the other four members of the Permanent Board were reading similar files. As he progressed through his, Kord knew that he would be calling on the Monitor Desk. He had been aware of dangerous tendencies present in the society of City 5, but he had not anticipated this sudden alarming acceleration of events. Grimly he realised that when the twenty-four-hour period was up he would not, as was the custom, be returning to deep freeze.

That night Kayin did not, as he would normally have done, attend the meeting of the Astronomical Society, but spent it instead alone with Polla. Ham-Ra, President of the Society, had already put his decision to him and in fairness Kayin had agreed with his judgement. He was out.

The Society gathered in a comfortable, otherwise unused room in one of the rambling parts of the City. A video recorder in one corner contained the edited minutes of their previous meetings and what little information or few resolutions they had been able to formulate.

The object of the Society was to re-establish the sciences of astronomy and space exploration. It numbered fifteen members, without Kayin, between the ages of seventy and twenty-three. In most societies like this one youth was the order of the day.

‘We have a lot to present this session,’ Ham-Ra said by way of introduction. ‘For the first time we’re really getting somewhere. However, you’ll all have noticed that Kayin isn’t here. A few of you know why. For the rest, it will become plain later just why he can’t attend.

‘Now then, friends, when we last convened over a month ago we were getting depressed and ready to give up. But what Tamm has to show us today is really going to knock you out. Take over, Tamm.’