The Rod of Light (Soul of the Robot)

‘Some of it comes in useful in further landscaping the estate. The rest is dumped some miles away.”

Jasperodus lingered for several minutes watching the work and inspecting the arched roof supports. As a piece of engineering the big chamber was impressive, and far more interesting than the frenetic sports match itself.

‘I hope your preparations will soon be finished,’ he said at length. ‘At present the Borgors have passed by you and gone south. When they have finished there they may well turn in this direction.’

‘Perhaps, though in my view they could equally turn east to outflank the New Empire, or what’s left of it,’ the count replied. ‘Well, what do you say we get back to the house and open a bottle or two?’

For some reason Viss seemed suddenly eager to be going. Briskly he turned from the scene and hurried the pace to the mansion, whose windows now twinkled with dim lights. The moment they were through the entrance he called a foot robot and issued instructions in a hasty voice.

‘Go to the cellar and fetch two bottles of number a hundred and three to the dining room. Bring the box, too. Oh, and come and have jag yourself later.’

He turned to his guests. ‘You’ll have to excuse me. This alimentary canal of mine works a good bit faster than the old one used to….’

At a near-run, he disappeared through a door to one side of the reception hall and slammed it shut behind him. Curiously Jasperodus tuned up his hearing.

Not that he needed the extra sensitivity. He heard a rasping noise, followed by the plopping of lumps of something into water, and a deep sigh of pleasure from the defecating robot.

Cricus was staring into the distance, pretending he heard nothing.

Count Viss was clearly a convivial sort of fellow who in his younger days would have enjoyed an evening drinking with friends. He had kept up the habit, but with his household robots. To this gathering were now added Jasperodus and Cricus.

The wine, obviously, was for his own consumption. But it could not give him the mild intoxication that made it popular among humans. For this, there was ‘the box’.

The device was a familiar one in robot communities. It was a neural generator, interfering with robotic nervous systems in much the same way that alcohol mildly deranged the nervous systems of biological creatures, and producing pretty much the same result. With his every glass of wine, the count applied the box’s leads to his cranium and gave himself a quick ‘jag’.

Any others present were also free to make use of the box, and several of them did so much more liberally than did the count himself. Conversation was desultory at first, until Viss had disposed of one bottle and began telling a series of ancient jokes, laughing raucously with each punchline. Dutifully his servants laughed with him, despite the fact that many were clearly devoid of humour (and would have been baffled by most of the jokes in any case, dealing as they did with human biological functions).

Jasperodus, however, was in no mood for jollity. After little more than half an hour he made enquiries and then slipped out. He mounted the broad staircase in the reception hall, and then walked to the rear of the mansion. At the end of a side corridor he knocked on a wood-panel door whose paint was chipped and scarred.

‘Enter,’ a young-sounding voice said. Jasperodus turned the handle, eased open the door and stepped quietly into a small, cosy room with the atmosphere of a den or study. There was a lamp and a design computer with a graphics screen on a table. Before it a robot sat on a sturdy steel chair. Bookladen shelves lined the walls. There were no tools or components. The workshop, no doubt more spacious, was elsewhere.

Like Viss, the robot had a sculptured face.

Jasperodus had seen his father, as he thought of his manufacturer, only twice, and briefly. He remembered an old, lined face, the expression rather sad, the eyes mild though sure with the sureness of a master technician. The face of the robot was that same face, but it was of a young man of about thirty. There was the same look of harmlessness, the same air of professionalism, but the whitish metal, containing perhaps aluminium or platinum, was moulded to a slimmer, smoother shape. It was fascinating to witness such a backtracking through time.

‘Please tell the count I shall not be joining him tonight,’ the robot said, glancing up.

Jasperodus, struggling with the same mixture of feelings that had assailed him earlier, did not reply immediately.

‘The count did not send me,’ he then said. ‘I came by myself. I would like to talk to you.’

Jasper Hobartus peered. ‘I don’t think I recognise you. Did the count purchase you somewhere?’

‘No.’ Jasperodus moved further into the room. ‘I happen to have paused here during a journey. Now I find that you and I have a connection. You made me. Or rather, the man of whom you are a copy made me.’