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

Kord held up his hand to quell the brewing quarrel. ‘Have no fear, the material of the City is sound as far as science can tell. Also, we shall not run out of energy provided we lose no appreciable mass: it has been found that we are in a privileged position here, in that there is a conservation of mass-energy. The material polarity, as you correctly call it, is self-conserving. When atomic energy, say, is released from matter to perform useful work, it is not dissipated but we absorb it elsewhere in the City. Thus as long as the total mass remains constant the same energy can be released again and again in a cyclic action. Apart from that we have proved that we can keep the genetic material of the population stable. So our problem concerns only the conscious, active life of the City, without which none of these principles can be maintained.’

He clenched his fist. ‘Get this! Everything that happens, happens beneath the crystal dome. There is no external world. There is no longer any universe, any creation … so any uncontrolled process beneath the dome is a danger to the City. The element in the human psyche that reaches out, explores and discovers must be eradicated. It means destruction to us. The outward, aspirational life must be replaced by an inward life of symbolism and extremely close personal relationships.

‘None of this can happen at once, of course. In a sense we are still in our first stages of arrival in the empty void. We have still to make the adjustment, which we are doing by degrees, progressing two steps forward and one step back. Thus at the moment the dome is transparent and lets out a blaze of light. This means a loss of energy but for us it is a symbol, an announcement of our presence. At some date in the future the dome will be made totally impervious and no quantum of mass-energy will ever be allowed to leave the City. Then again, we still call the City by its original name, City 5, bringing with it the awareness that there were other cities and other places. Eventually it will be known simply as the City.’

‘And is ignorance also part of the prescription for survival?’ Haren’s tone was mildly contemptuous.

‘A careful balance is needed.’ The long arguing was making Kord tired, but he refused to let his energy flag. ‘Full consciousness of our situation would be too much for the collective mind; it would cause mental disorders and ultimately destroy us. Likewise, complete ignorance would destroy us for different reasons. We must steer a middle course until the day when the non-deviating republic has been established and we can safely permit the whole city to live with the full knowledge and consciousness of where we are.’

Kord stood up, his bulk looming over them. ‘I trust I have made things clear. We will recess for a short while and meet in the Executive Complex in three hours’ time. It will be necessary to make some arrangements.’

With opaque faces the Temporary Board rose and left the room. The others remained behind, looking pensively at the table top.

‘A fairly bad business,’ Elbern said.

‘We can handle it. But I think the Board we leave behind when we freeze again will have some different names in it.’ Kord picked up the file he had thrown at Kiang and leafed through it moodily. The section on the Archetypal Dramas had been the first give-away. Kord had always known that the symbols and archetypes that would emerge from the collective unconscious would decide the fate of City 5 in the long run. That was why he had encouraged the development of art forms for which practically the whole City was an audience, films, plays and archetypal dramas delivered in a semi-hypnagogic state, in which these entities could find expression, symbols, characters and stories merging into a dream-like, hypnotic blend. The section on the dramas was always the first thing he turned to when given the briefing. If the symbols were rounded, square, on the Jungian mandala or quaternity patterns, then he was pleased. The image he looked for was the cave, the female, the square table, the square room, the circle. Today there was an altogether unacceptable number of thrusting, probing images, the tower on the plain, the pointed lance, the long journey, the magician, the supreme effort. These images were all culled from the generalised social unconscious of the time. Aware of the part played by the sexual polarity in the structure of the social psyche, Kord had long since realised that it was necessary to create a womb-centred, vulva-centred civilisation, instead of a phallus-centred one.

Brooding, he closed the file. He had faced many difficulties in the past. It was disappointing to find that they might not, after all, be diminishing.