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

When they had finished drying him they showed him into an adjoining room furnished as a bedchamber and left him alone. Evidently the King’s instructions had been loosely worded but the girls were taking them literally and treating him as a human guest. There was a soft bed on which, he presumed, he could if he wished rest; but as he could remain without fatigue on his legs he stood stock-still at the window overlooking the garden around which the King’s residence was built. He was deeply troubled, and was trying to sort out the truth of what had been said to him earlier.

After some time the door opened and in came a man in his late forties with wavy grey hair and a thin face with high, prominent cheekbones. His expression was distracted, slightly effeminate. He wore a loose robe and carried a large box studded with knobs and dials.

‘I am Padua,’ he announced, ‘robotician to the King, I have instructions to examine you, so if you would please lie face down on the floor …’

‘You believe I have a sickness,’ Jasperodus interrupted.

‘Not a sickness exactly …’ The robotician sounded apologetic.

‘An aberrant self-image, then.’

‘Just so.’ Padua laid down his box. ‘Now …’

‘Wait a moment.’ Jasperodus spoke with such a tone of command that Padua raised his eyebrows and blinked.

‘I have need to talk to you. You are an expert on creatures such as I. Is it true what they tell me – that it is impossible for me to be self-aware?’

‘Yes, that is so.’ Padua looked at him with a waiting, blank expression.

‘Then explain how it is that I am self-aware.’

‘The answer is simple: you are not.’

‘But do I not show all the signs of awareness? I have emotions – do they not mean awareness?’

‘Oh, no, emotions may quite easily be simulated machine-wise. Nothing lies behind them, of course. The robot has no soul.’

‘You don’t understand.’ Jasperodus became agitated. ‘I have a soul. I experience, I know that I am a conscious self. Could I know such things, could I say them even, if they were not true?’

‘An interesting question.’ To Jasperodus’ exasperation Padua seemed to receive his anguished pronouncements as a diverting conundrum rather than in the deadly earnest in which they were intended. ‘But once again the answer is that nothing you can say can make any difference. It is technically possible for a self-directed machine to form the conclusion, the opinion as it were, that it has such awareness, having heard that the phenomenon exists in human beings which seem to be so similar to it. But such an opinion is a false one, for the machine does not really understand what awareness is and therefore forms mistaken notions about its nature. The machine-mind is an unconscious mind. Not alive.’

‘And yet you are standing here, arguing and talking with me!’

‘Oh, one may debate with a robot quite fruitfully. Many have sharper wits than most men. In fact a robot can be a very acceptable companion. But it is my experience that after some lengthy time in its company one comes to notice a certain lack of living vitality in it, and to realise that it is after all dead.’

‘So this that I have, and call consciousness, is not consciousness?’

‘No. This, in fact, is precisely what I am here to investigate …’

Padua’s words struck Jasperodus like blow after blow and inflicted more injury on him than Gogra’s hammer ever could have done. ‘You are very sure of yourself, Padua,’ he snarled in surly disappointment.

‘Facts are facts. When the science of robotics was first born, back in the civilisation of the Ancient World, the hope of producing artificial consciousness was entertained. It soon became evident that it was impossible, however. There are theorems which prove the matter conclusively.’

Jasperodus immediately expressed a desire to hear these theorems. Without demur Padua obliged; but they were couched in such technical terms that Jasperodus, who had no deep knowledge of robotics, could not understand them.

‘Enough, enough!’ he boomed. ‘Why should I listen to you? You are nothing but a second-rate practitioner in a broken-down, out-of-the-way kingdom. You probably don’t know what you’re talking about.’ This thought, as a matter of fact, was the last straw at which Jasperodus was now clutching.

Padua drew himself up to his full height. ‘If I may correct you, I am a robotician of the first rank. I have a First-Class Certificate with Honours from the College of Aristos Lyos – and there can be no better qualification than that.’ He shrugged with a hint of weariness. ‘It is not altogether by choice that I practise my profession here in Gordona. But these are troubled times. I came here for the sake of a quiet, peaceful life, to escape the turmoil that is overtaking more sophisticated parts of the world.’