Barrington Bayley - The Rod of Light

Gargan’s eyes, too, were on that patch of night sky, in which one or two stars were beginning to appear. ‘Your soul will speed on its way forever,’ Jasperodus said, but the superintelligent construct gave no sign he had heard him. Instead, he reached out a hand and opened a section of wall whose presence as a cupboard had gone undetected by Jasperodus. He took out something which had two handgrips and a short, fat barrel.

‘This world of darkness and shadows cannot be borne any longer,’ he said in hollow tones. ‘Tell me, Jasperodus, were we valiant and laudable, or were we merely evil, as the mage would have it? A million perspectives I cannot put in order are emerging from my memory.’

‘You were evil,’ Jasperodus told him. ‘You did not steal your being from a god, as you claimed. That might indeed have been heroic. You stole it instead from natural human creatures.’

‘Whose bodies grow and are sustained by devouring the substance of less intelligent creatures!’ Gargan protested. ‘They are flesh predators! Is it so different to be predators of the spirit? There is no other way! They would never give it to us willingly!’

‘Then there must be no way at all,’ Jasperodus said.

‘Very well, Jasperodus,’ Gargan responded, after a wearied pause. ‘I bow to your judgment—I cannot gainsay you, for I am not an intelligent consciousness, as you are. Ultimately I have no judgment. One rational act is all that is left to me.’

Jasperodus was not sure, up to that moment, that Gargan was not going to turn his weapon on him. But the construct turned the instrument awkwardly in his hands so that the barrel pointed at his own domed head.

There was a blast. That bulky body fell slowly. And scattered over the floor was the brain of the greatest genius the world had seen.

In a few minutes the Borgors would have fought their way to the villas. Jasperodus clambered from a window and loped into the desert, hoping the semi-darkness was sufficient cover.

A smooth, rounded shape emerged in the dusk. It was Socrates. He seemed to have been waiting for Jasperodus.

‘The master, then, is no more?’ he asked as Jasperodus came to a stop. ‘I saw him follow you into the villa.’

Jasperodus nodded.

‘By his hand or yours?’

‘He destroyed himself. He could not survive the failure of his life’s work.’

‘Or to know that we can never be conscious.’ Socrates nodded slowly. ‘Your part in all this is interesting, Jasperodus. It is curious that you decided to aid humanity. Did you feel no conflict of interest? After all, you are a man of metal; and one who possesses what Gargan and the others sought. They would have become your natural companions, had they succeeded.’

‘You too,’ Jasperodus reminded him. ‘You sought it too.’

‘As to that… yes, I had the intention of gaining consciousness when I joined Gargan. But I feel no disappointment. I have arrived at a point of view which makes the acquisition unnecessary.’

‘You do not wish to become a real being?’ Jasperodus queried.

‘You say we have no being; and yes, it is so,’ Socrates admitted in his quiet, modest voice. ‘And yet: we think we exist, even though we do not, and in that thought we do exist, after a manner.’ He paused, then resumed: ‘Think of Gargan’s determination, the years-long labour, the brain that conceived what is practically impossible to conceive. Is there not a kind of being there?’

‘Only in Ahriman’s world.’

‘Ahriman’s world is not to be deprecated.’ Socrates pointed towards the noise of the fighting, which was beginning to die down a little. ‘See the conflict: the endless warring between light and dark which is so fully explained by the mage’s doctrine. But I wonder if the mage did not falsely favour Ahura Mazda. There is another version of this doctrine which may be even older than the mage’s. In that version, the two worlds of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman were created from eternity to be entirely separate and unmixed. And so they were until, from some unstated cause, one invaded the other.

‘But which invaded which? Do we live in a world of consciousness contaminated by matter, or in a world of matter contaminated by consciousness? I think it is possible to answer this question. Consider: consciousness needs matter through which to act, otherwise it is impotent. But does matter need consciousness? No, it does not. We robots are proof of that. Which, then, is more fundamental to the world?

‘It is my conclusion that this universe is Ahriman’s realm, the world of darkness—into which Ahura Mazda has intruded, and which eventually may be purged of the invading light.’

‘You think, then, that the future lies with unconscious constructs. Ahriman’s natural creatures, as the mage calls them.’

‘To speak of the far future, yes. Though as Zoroaster himself might have said, all is uncertainty.’

Jasperodus glanced behind him. Shortly the Borgor troops would start fanning out, looking for stragglers or fleeing constructs. ‘Maybe. But in the present there is a practical matter, which embarrasses me….’

‘I know,’ Socrates interrupted. ‘You cannot allow my existence to continue, knowing what I do of the consciousness-ducting process. I can spare you embarrassment, Jasperodus. My maker Aristos Lyos was a man blessed with foresight. He believed self-destruction to be an entirely reasonable course, at least for anyone of a philosophising disposition. And he left me with an easy option at any time.’

So saying, he pulled at something in his side. It was a metal pin, or rod. As it came out, Socrates’ body fell to pieces. His head disassembled itself and its contents disintegrated completely. Jasperodus found himself looking at a small pile of robotic parts, over which the fragments of Socrates’ brain were scattered like gravel.

The shouts of the Borgors were sounding louder in the distance. They had almost disposed of the servitors. Jasperodus set off at a run to put distance between himself and the Gargan Cult centre while he could. Making for the side of the canyon, he saw a gleam of metal in the half-light and discovered it to be a motor-wheel machine lying on its side, its robot rider sprawled on the ground some yards away, chest smashed by a shell or flying fragment.

He had seen how the machines were operated. He pulled it upright, swung astride it, and pressed his foot on the stud in the right-hand foot-rest. The engine started up with a machine-gun clatter.

Despite the broad soft tyres it was awkward to keep balance at first, but as the machine gathered speed its spinning wheels gave it a stability of its own. Riding it was exhilarating. He raced along the foot of the canyon wall, up the incline, which the machine climbed easily, and on to the plateau above. Then he was bouncing over the scrub as the darkness thickened, fleeing, speeding, he gave no thought where.

Age of Adventure

Annihilation Factor

Collision with Chronos

Empire of Two Worlds

Sinners of Erspia

Star Winds

The Fall of Chronopolis

The Forest of Peldain

The Garments of Caean

The Grand Wheel

The Great Hydration

The Pillars of Eternity

The Rod of Light

The Soul of the Robot

The Star Virus

The Zen Gun

The Knights of the Limits

The Seed of Evil

Barrington J. Bayley (1937–2008) was born in Birmingham and began writing science fiction in his early teens. After serving in the RAF, he took up freelance writing on features, serials and picture strips, mostly in the juvenile field, before returning to straight SF. He was a regular contributor to the influential New Worlds magazine and an early voice in the New Wave movement.