The Rod of Light (Soul of the Robot)

THE ROD OF LIGHT

Barrington J. Bayley

www.sfgateway.com

Enter the SF Gateway …

In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

Welcome to the SF Gateway.

Contents

Title Page

Gateway Introduction

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

Website

Also by Barrington J. Bayley

Dedication

Author Bio

Copyright

1

Reddened and magnified, the sun had descended through a clear sky and was poised over the edge of the hilly landscape, when its radiance picked out a burnished metal figure that had climbed to the summit of a turfed ridge. The traveller paused, and for a considerable while gazed intently at the mellowed orb, as though endeavouring to return its eternal stare. For his eyes, like the evening sun itself, were also red and glowing, and seemed to project the same intense presence.

His body was bronze-black, man-shaped and handsome, decorated from head to foot with scroll-like engravings. The face was an enigma: an immobile machine-visage, its expression stern yet hinting at tenderness. Suddenly the robot’s head tilted up, as his attention was caught by a glint of golden light. The sun had caught the underside of a plane’s wing, moving slowly on the end of a newly appeared contrail.

Jasperodus stepped back into the shadow of the ridge, and waited half-kneeling, one arm rested on a bended knee, hoping that the plane’s pilot had not, in turn, spotted him.

When he emerged the plane was gone, and for the first time he looked down the west-facing slope.

He saw a compact, cirque-like valley. Toward the bottom of the slope, a little to his left, stood a building, the first he had come across in this wilderness. It was about the size of a three-storey villa but had the form of a ziggurat, constructed of well-fitting stone blocks, with a porch projecting from one side. In front of this porch stood an oddly shaped cowl, also carved from stone, which acted as a windshield for an elegant bowl mounted on a pedestal. In the bowl, a pale flame burned.

The place had the appearance of a temple. Jasperodus was surprised to find an intact and apparently inhabited building of any kind in so isolated a spot. He estimated its age at no more than a hundred years, in which case it was of no interest to him archaeologically, having been built long after the collapse of the Old Empire. He would have passed it by, had not his sighting of the aircraft disconcerted him. These bare hillsides offered little concealment from what could possibly be a photographic reconnaissance with robots as its object. He would try to take shelter in the building until dark.

Making his way down the slope, he reached the porch, lingering to inspect the fire in the bowl. The wick was a fleecy wad floating in perfumed oil. The flame burned steadily. It was alive with sparkling flecks which swarmed up it to vanish at its fringe, releasing a powerful scent of roses.

Jasperodus found the arrangement charming. Cautiously he stepped into the porch, to find the passage blocked by a slab of reddish stone he recognised as porphyry. He pounded on it with his fist, tuning up his hearing so as to detect any response. He heard nothing, and began to think the building unoccupied after all, but then there came the hiss of a pneumatic mechanism, and the slab drew aside.