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

Jasperodus glowered sadly at his unwitting tormentor, his spirits dwindling to nothing. He had been cheated, after all, of the thing he had been most sure of. Just what was this self-awareness possessed by human beings and of which he could have no inkling? Doubtless the robotician was secretly laughing at him for believing his mechanical self-reference to be that godly state of consciousness reserved only for biological beings. Yet even now it seemed incredible to him that this feeling of self-existence he imagined he had was only a fake, a phantom, an illusion, that it didn’t exist. Still, how could he deny Padua’s expert judgment?

The more he thought about it the more his brain whirled until he could bear it no longer. He flung himself full-length on the floor.

‘Get on with your work, Padua,’ he invited, his voice muffled by the floor tiles. ‘I do not wish to believe I exist when in truth I do not. Rectify my brain and release me from this agony.’

After a long pause the robotician knelt beside him. Then there was a slight feeling of pressure and a click as he applied special tools that alone could open Jasperodus’ inspection plate.

For a time Padua employed the extensible monitors on his inspection box, inserting them into the hundreds of checkpoints beneath the plates in Jasperodus’ head and neck. He turned knobs delicately and carefully watched the dials. Jasperodus could scarcely hear him breathe. Eventually he replaced the plates and stood up.

‘A sublime example of robotmanship,’ he said in a tone of reverence. ‘Worthy of the great Lyos himself. I suppose you weren’t …?’

‘No,’ Jasperodus replied shortly. Hastily he scrambled to his feet. ‘You did nothing!’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘Why did you make no adjustment?’

Padua raised his hands in a gesture of resignation. ‘I would not presume to interfere in a work of such superb craftsmanship. Anything I could do to amend your integration state – to use a technical term – would be meddlesome and crude …’ He placed his finger on his lips thoughtfully. ‘I have just thought of something. Your fictitious self-image could be deliberate. It may have been a deliberate device on the part of your designer. At that, it is quite ingenious. Hmm.’ Padua nodded, musing. ‘A means of raising a machine’s status in its own eyes and so lifting its self-reliance to a new level. Very ingenious. Possibly I should have played along with your delusion.’

‘Too late for that now,’ replied Jasperodus dully. If what Padua said was true, then the cruelty of what his parents had done to him was almost unbelievable. Surely their intention had been quite the reverse.

‘Indeed, yes.’ Padua packed up his gear. ‘Well, time for you to be moving.’

‘Where am I going?’

‘You are now a member of the King’s household. I have orders to send you down to the stables, where the machines and animals are quartered. So if you will step this way …’

Jasperodus stepped to the door, then paused and turned to Padua. ‘But you have condemned me to Hell,’ he accused. ‘To a living death. Yet how can I be condemned? I am not a conscious soul, I only appear to myself to be. I do not exist, I only believe that I do. I am nothing, a figment, a thought in the void without a thinker.’ He shook his head in deepest despair. ‘It is a riddle. I cannot understand it.’

Padua gazed at him with something touchingly close to sympathy. ‘If this self-image is pre-programmed, you are indeed faced with a paradox that to a machine-mind is insuperable,’ he admitted. He touched Jasperodus on the arm. ‘Perhaps we shall meet again. I hope so.’ He pointed down the corridor. ‘Please follow the passage to the right. The stable hands will be ready to receive you.’

So Jasperodus, his morale broken, believing his effective worth to be zero, obeyed the robotician and plodded towards the palace stables to begin his servitude.

4

From the animal stables down near the courtyard that opened on to the concourse, came the sound of stamping feet, of snorting horses and the occasional bark of a dog as the kennels stirred in the pre-dawn gloom. Hearing these sounds, Jasperodus envied the animals their common warmth and sensitive restlessness. It would have been better to be stabled among them, he thought, rather than here in the unrelieved tedium of the construct section.

A dreary, creaking voice suddenly came to life in the stall next to his own. ‘One, two, three, four, five, six. All here. Four plates of patterned silver. Five gold goblets engraved with the Royal Coat of Arms. A trencher of platinum, design depicting a rustic scene. Now the earthenware. Fifty plates of assorted glaze. Count them slowly. Handle them carefully, you rotten rusted hulk. Oh dear. Two plates broken. Oh dear, I am a rotten rusted hulk.’