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

Cree fell to fingering his moustache and became very thoughtful. Jasperodus said nothing. On a following page was a similar advertisement in rougher terms, inviting men to join the ranks for adventure, service to the Emperor and two imperials a day. Cree merely glanced at it with a grunt.

‘Fellow,’ he called to one clearing tankards from the tables. ‘Bring me another mug of this wine.’

A mood of some despondency seemed to have come over Cree. Many mugs of wine later he was fairly drunk and seemed disposed to sleep, laying his head on his arms. Jasperodus rose and approached the landlord.

‘You have accommodation in this place?’

The other nodded brusquely.

‘My master requires a room at least until tomorrow, in which I also will be domiciled.’

‘If you wish.’ The landlord produced a key and motioned towards some stairs. Jasperodus aroused Cree and they were conducted to an upper room, adequate but not too clean, containing a bed, a table, a cupboard and two chairs.

Cree flung himself on the bed and instantly was asleep. ‘The charge is half an imperial a night,’ the landlord told him, handing Jasperodus the key.

The robot placed the key on the table. ‘If my master wakes and should ask after me, be good enough to inform him that I will return later. I have certain enquiries to make.’

The landlord, who had been about to quit the room, looked at him with new interest. ‘Indeed? Is your owner accustomed to giving you such freedom of action?’

‘He is; I am entirely dependable. You need have no anxieties on my behalf.’

‘Hmmm.’ The landlord pursed his lips and left with a contemplative air.

The enquiries Jasperodus sought to make were in fact of a very general nature. He merely wished to continue his reconnoitre of the city.

After leaving the tavern he walked in the same direction as before, trying to recall the layout of the city as he had observed it from the hilltop. Soon he left the riverside area and had a choice of avenues before him. Some instinct advised him to keep to the poorer districts to begin with; and so he found himself heading deep into Tansiann’s worst slums.

Seven-storey tenements reared on all sides, decrepit and dirty, some derelict, interspersed with waste grounds and piles of junk. Dust was a fact of life, drifting down from the crumbling buildings, hazing the air, blowing across the open spaces. And the inhabitants seemed to swarm everywhere; this was, probably, the most teeming part of Tansiann.

Poverty was much in evidence. Jasperodus found this paradoxical. Out in the west where the tiny kingdoms and principalities boasted little wealth even the lowliest peasants were, generally speaking, comfortably off. But as he and Cree had progressed eastward towards the centre of civilisation a sort of polarisation had begun to manifest, greater riches producing pockets of poverty as if as a by-product. Here in the Imperial Capital was not only unparalleled wealth but also penury and degradation – an unlooked-for concomitant, surely.

As he proceeded Jasperodus mulled over this phenomenon, wondering what its causes might be.

He was surprised to note an unusual number of unattended robots on the streets hereabouts, many of them in a condition of poor repair. Jasperodus hailed one, intending to question it, but it clanked off with great haste and scrambled over a broken wall, after which it went running across a waste ground and disappeared. Several passers-by laughed jeeringly.

Puzzled, Jasperodus continued past some tramps and drunks who had made a camp fire on a vacant lot. A little further on he came across a scene oddly reminiscent of the first. The ruined shell of a building stood separated from the street by a stretch of rubble. Half hidden by a partly tumbled wall, a group of robots appeared to have made a camp also and were sitting round in a circle.

Jasperodus clambered over the rubble towards them. They evinced no reaction as he approached but continued to sit motionless, and he discovered them to be not functioning constructs but dead hulks, their skulls and bodies emptied of all usable parts.

Junk. But why the careful arrangement to suggest a social gathering? … A sound caught Jasperodus’ attention. A group of half a dozen children, boys and girls aged perhaps ten to twelve, came scampering out of a defile between walls and surrounded him, tugging him back the way they had come.

‘Come on, come on, your wanderings are finished!’ the leader bellowed shrilly. ‘We have found you a master! Resistance is useless!’

What? A repetition of this morning’s experience? Robots commandeered by children? With grim amusement Jasperodus allowed them to hustle him through the defile. Behind the ruined building was an empty space hidden from any surrounding streets. Here a fat man waited, bedecked in a gaudy brocaded frock-coat and a flowered shirt stained with sweat. He grinned sourly; the youngsters descended on him with whoops and shouts.