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

The Emperor looked at him with such startlement that for a moment Jasperodus thought that he had gone altogether too far. ‘Indeed?’ queried Charrane on a rising note. ‘And what gives you the right to reach such conclusions?’

‘The campaign is being conducted from a dangerously small base area, sire. As yet the Empire covers scarcely one-third of Worldmass. In my view to attempt a recovery of the ancient Mars possessions when you are scarcely consolidated here on Earth was a mistake.’

Charrane leaned back in his seat. His eyes became glazed. He seemed thoughtful. There was a long pause.

‘You are a footloose construct, are you not?’ he said at length, speaking in a caressing tone. ‘You intrigue me. Tell me of your history, where you were made, who owned you and how you came to turn wild.’

The demand took Jasperodus aback. His thoughts raced. Then he came to a sudden decision to tell all. Omitting nothing, he outlined the story of his life so far, from his activation in a darkened cabinet to his arrival here before the Emperor. He gave details of his escapades in Gordona, even when they reflected ill on himself, outlining his reasons and motives.

The tale took well over half an hour. Charrane attended to it all, apparently fascinated.

‘A fictitious self-image!’ he exclaimed with a sardonic chuckle. ‘Fictitiously conscious! There’s a rare twist! Your maker was indeed a master!’

‘He studied under the great Aristos Lyos,’ Jasperodus supplied, though inwardly surly that his one great torment should be a subject for mirth.

The Emperor nodded. ‘That is to be expected. Of all the arts to survive the Dark Period, robotics is perhaps the most perfectly preserved, and Lyos was without doubt its exponent par excellence. Only he, probably, would have known how to pull off such a trick.’

‘Was, sire? Is he no longer alive?’

Charrane frowned slightly. ‘Some years ago he retired from active work. His whereabouts is unknown. Many believe him dead.’

Just then someone behind Jasperodus caught the Emperor’s eye. He raised his head questioningly, then nodded briefly.

Into the hall came a group of five musicians who set themselves up a short distance away. The various instruments they carried were unknown to Jasperodus, and were mostly of metal. He noticed, too, that all the musicians were cross-eyed – a sign, perhaps, that even here at the putative centre of renascent civilisation certain barbarities prevailed.

The musicians blew into their instruments, manipulating them in various ways. The sounds that emerged were smooth and flashing, the rhythms staccato, and quite different from anything Jasperodus had heard before.

‘This is an ancient musical artform that has recently been discovered in old manuscripts,’ Charrane informed him. ‘Do you like it?’

‘It is certainly novel,’ Jasperodus admitted.

Charrane listened further for some moments, nodding his head to the beat of the music. ‘Enough!’ he cried. ‘You will entertain us this evening.’

The musicians packed up and left. Charrane rose to his feet, stretching as if he had spent a long and arduous time upon the throne. ‘Come with me, friend. I will show you something else.’

Jasperodus followed him round the back of the throne dais. The raised platform hid from view of the hall several panels in the polygonal recess forming the apse. On these panels were what Jasperodus took, at first, to be crude paintings of little artistic worth.

‘These, also, demonstrate the classical arts,’ Charrane told him. ‘My archaeologists came upon them while excavating a magisterial villa in Indus. Sometimes it works on robots of advanced type, too. Look at them and tell me of any effects.’

Puzzled, Jasperodus obeyed. The pictures were more in the nature of coloured cartoon drawings than paintings. The colours were pastel and flat, without any shading. On looking closer he realised that they were in fact neither paintings nor drawings but tapestries or cloth pictures of some kind, made up of thousands of tiny tufts which glinted in the light.

The figures depicted were fairly graceful, but stylised. One scene showed a young woman in a flowing shawl, her expression dreamy, both hands lifted as if stroking at something in the air. She stood on the foreshore; white combers broke behind her, while in the sky sailed equally white clouds.

In another, a black ship with a single white sail scudded across a phosphorescent green sea. The sky behind it was a lurid red. The ship appeared to be unmanned; there was no one on deck. But beyond the red sky could faintly be discerned the pale orbs of nearby planets.

‘I notice noth …’ began Jasperodus, and then something seemed to open up in his mind. The picture of the girl was no longer just a meaningless representation; it carried a story with it, a story that unfolded in every detail and went on unfolding, spreading further and further into a fantastic universe of the imagination.