The Rod of Light (Soul of the Robot)

‘Well, keep looking.’ He studied the graph again. Interesting that it should have been thought worth inscribing on gold … The ancients had set great store on the idea of periodic cycles, applying them to all kinds of phenomena, including history. There had even been an attempt to ascribe social variations to changes in solar activity, by matching the rise and fall of trade levels to sunspot cycles. Superficially there was some merit in the idea: sunspots, like societies, were apt to display regular periodicity for centuries at a time, only to break rhythm suddenly and produce violent flurries, or else disappear altogether for a while. There was no evidence of unusual solar activity to coincide with the onset of the Dark Age, however.

Jasperodus set down the plate as another of the robots entered, speaking in a voice of subdued agitation. ‘Aircraft approach from the north! We have counted fifteen blips!’

Questioningly Glyco turned his head to Jasperodus. ‘This would seem to be a more determined attack than previously.’

‘Quite plainly we will not be left in peace to pursue our researches,’ Jasperodus decided. ‘Give the order to depart. Get everything you can aboard the transporter.’

He stepped from beneath the awning. Some distance beyond the trench two robots were manning the radar set and missile board. Almost immediately there was a WHOOSH and a slim rocket shot from its rack, gathering speed to disappear over the horizon, closely followed by a second.

The small but efficient defence unit would delay the attackers for the extra few minutes needed to make a getaway. Glyco bawled commands, striding hither and thither. Constructs crawled hastily up out of the trench. The huge earthmover, self-directed but of low mentality, caught the sense of urgency and auto-started, trundling to and fro in panic.

While the hoard of artifacts and photographs were being piled aboard the air carrier Glyco returned to Jasperodus. There will be no time to dismantle the earthmover. It will have to be abandoned.’

‘It cannot be helped.’

Loosing off their remaining target-seeking missiles, the defence robots ran for the transporter, which had already ignited its engines. At that moment a Borgor plane came spearing over the horizon: a grey, thruster-driven arrowhead. The last missile released swerved to engage it, and for a while the two performed an aerial dance until the more nimble rocket struck home, knocking the injured attack plane to the ground.

Behind it, streaking close to the landscape, came a second plane, this time to be greeted from the carrier by a fast-firing cannon which zipped out a line of tracers. Shortly another carrier-mounted weapon came into action: a beam gun whose dimly glowing ray wavered about the sky.

Neither succeeded in hitting the plane, but it banked and sped away like a startled bird. Borgor pilots would disdain to risk their lives simply to destroy robots. Just the same, Jasperodus told himself that his long journey to the archaeological site had all been for nothing. Perhaps he should have travelled by air after all … But no, that would only have brought the Borgors down on the team even sooner.

In the moments before the transporter lifted away from the dirt, he swung aboard. The carrier little resembled a conventional aircraft such as would be used to convey humans, but looked more like a winged girder bridge with swivel-mounted engines distributed one at either end and one in the middle. There were no cabins, only a cargo box; windshields welded to the girder-work provided the only protection for the passengers. Behind these, robots clung to girders as the vehicle moved forwards and began to gather speed.

Jasperodus glanced below. The earthmover had tried to join the general rush to board the carrier. It seemed desperate not to be left behind; as the carrier soared away it continued to charge haplessly after it, treads gouging twin tracks across the plain.

2

Crossing the rolling hills, the air transporter flew for some hours over a semi-arid region. Eventually it neared a prominent rubbly hill that protruded out of the middle of a flat plain.

A curious feature of the hill was the natural earth ringwall that surrounded it, looking like nothing so much as the wall of a lunar crater. Outside this rampart there sprawled for miles in every direction a sheet metal shanty town, rambling and disordered. The carrier slanted down over sheds and shacks, the scream of its barrel-shaped thrusters falling to a purling moan as it alighted on a stretch of wasteground, the jar of its landing dislodging numbers of robots from their perches and tumbling them to the cindery surface. They staggered to their feet flexing their limbs, whose lubrication had been made stiff by the coldness of the journey.

Jasperodus, on the other hand, dropped lithely from the girderwork and approached the disembarking Glyco.