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

After a few embarrassed pleasantries Mark V took his departure, taking the other robot with him. Jasperodus proceeded out of Subuh and walked for several miles across Tansiann towards the space-ground. As he approached it the great spaceyard took on the aspect of a city whose towers were rearing rocketships and control centres. He paused to watch one interplanetary booster taking off, washing the site with heat, steam and billowing flame. Activity on the space-ground had become almost frenetic of late as the imperial forces sought to counteract the reverses they had met on Mars. From the reports he had read Jasperodus knew that the Empire’s resources were being stretched to the utmost to maintain the Martian outpost. Getting sufficient men and materials to the red planet to fight a protracted war was proving almost prohibitively difficult in the face of harassment by the Borgor Alliance, that coalition of northern nations whose policy was to prevent the expansion of the New Empire by any means. As the Empire’s strength grew, so did that of the Alliance. So far hostilities had not erupted into full-scale war. When they did Jasperodus foresaw that much that Charrane had achieved might be destroyed.

Just outside the twenty-foot high fence surrounding the space-ground he presented himself to the hiring agency that took on repair crews for the orbiting guard posts.

‘You already have my name on your list,’ he said to the clerk. ‘I have taken aptitude tests.’

The clerk consulted his papers. ‘So you have. I see you passed an examination in space welding. And in control unit repair. We could have used you before.’

‘I have only now decided to undertake the work. What rates are you offering?’

‘They’ve gone up,’ the clerk boasted. ‘Half an imperial a trip.’

‘Not enough. I require at least double that.’

‘In that case, friend, goodbye.’

Inwardly Jasperodus cursed his weak bargaining position. ‘Very well,’ he said impatiently, ‘I agree to your derisive payment.’

The clerk was offhandedly indignant as he filled out the entry slip. ‘It’s better than you’ll get anywhere else,’ he said. ‘Almost human rates.’

‘For a street sweeper. And you neglect to mention that the destruction incidence for orbital repair crews is now one in seven.’

The clerk shrugged. ‘What do you robots want to live for anyway?’ he muttered. ‘There’s a shuttle blasting off in an hour. If you want to be on it take this to the main gate.’

Jasperodus accepted the slip, which took him through the two checkpoints guarding the base. He was directed to a corrugated iron shed a few yards inside the perimeter.

Within were a number of robots, fairly high-grade constructs to judge by their appearance, who stood about silently or conversed desultorily in low tones. A fatalistic air filled the hut. The eyes of the robots were listless.

The one-in-seven ratio, Jasperodus thought. They were all aware of it.

But not quite all his fellow crew members were robots. A slight, hunch-shouldered man stepped forward to greet him, smiling up at him nervously from a seamed, fortyish face.

‘Know you, don’t I?’

‘We have met,’ Jasperodus said distantly.

‘Yeah, I remember. In Subuh. I live there.’ The man spoke with an attempt at cockiness. He sported a conceit that had recently become fashionable: his fingers held a tiny bowl filled with burning aromatic herbs, the smoke of which he drew into his mouth through a stem.

Ostentatiously he blew out a streamer of the inhaled smoke. Then he looked at Jasperodus again, frowning as if with a sudden memory, and seemed to become uneasy. A nervous tic started up on the left side of his face. He looked away, his gaze becoming vacant and withdrawn.

Jasperodus was familiar with his type, which was a species of social throw-out known as slotmen, an analogy referring to the delivery slot of a vending machine. Due to personality difficulties, a deep feeling of inadequacy, or simply to repeated failure in the field of human relations, they had fallen from the company of human beings and preferred to live among robots, to whom they need not feel inferior. The delivery chute of this process was the suburb of Subuh.

With unconscious robots slotmen could feel at ease. Among men they quickly went to pieces. Jasperodus looked upon them with disdain. In turn they were generally wary of him. In fact during the days when he had found himself unwittingly adopting the role of a robot leader and the wild robots of Subuh were showing a tendency to gather round him, one of the slotmen had paid him an unsettling compliment.

‘You’re not like the other robots,’ the ragged creature had told him nervously. ‘There’s something different about you.’