The Rod of Light (Soul of the Robot)

Perhaps. Perhaps not. In either case a world poor in metals would have had few robots. As it was, the present upsurge in robotic activity was entirely due to the presence of the asteroid deposits. They were what enabled robots to manufacture robots with a fervour not too different from a reproductive urge. They provided the physical resource for a construct civilisation that was developing its own customs, its own obsessions, and which was destined to mutate considerably away from its human origins, if it was not destroyed first by the human nations around it.

Jasperodus left the indolents’ quarter behind him. From all around him came the noises of the township’s activity—noises of metal, a susurration of clinking, clanking and clanging, of banging and gonging, of dragging of sheet on sheet, mingled with an occasional shout, cry or bellow, the purr or thump of an engine. He walked through a market area where citizens bartered products made in their personal workshops: toys, scientific instruments, curiosities or wholly novel devices (robots, not needing to earn their livings beyond the occasional replacement isotope battery, had much time for projects of an experimental or desultory nature), small doll-robots which took the place of pets in construct society, paltry in intelligence but endowed with endearing mannerisms. Heavier industry was concentrated closer to the iron-nickel mountain. There were to be found spacious workshops belonging to organised companies of robots, and from which there would typically emerge huge machines based on abstruse philosophical concepts which, more often than not, proved fallacious in practice. It did not seem to matter to the originators of these follies how often their ideas failed; they never counted the cost, either in time or effort, of anything they undertook. Wedged up against the ringwall that had been thrown up crater-fashion by the impact of the asteroid was also a ghetto district inhabited by non-androforms—wheeled, box-type, multiped, segmented and assorted robots, self-directed special-labour types scarcely classifiable as sentient (the earthmover abandoned at the archaeological site was one such) and a number of immobiles. Androforms largely disdained this social minority, for robot-makers, like nature, had discovered the humanoid shape to be the most convenient and versatile, and it had come to be associated with normality. The ghetto dwellers bore no grudge over their inferior status. They had no species feeling, and did not reproduce.

Jasperodus’ route, however, took him not towards the ringwall but through a quarter where the production of new citizens was concentrated. The singed smell of hot metal was in the air, the smell of smoke and tempering steam. From long slant-roofed sheds rose the chimneys for the furnaces and rolling mills where sheet metal was made and body parts stamped out. Scattered around them were the homes and assembly shops of the robot-makers themselves, as well as the studies of those who specialised in design.

There was considerable reverence for those who spent their time creating their own kind. A crowd had gathered in a beaten-earth plaza, forcing Jasperodus to slow his pace. Suddenly it parted respectfully to make way for a figure which had stepped from a nearby assembly shed.

Though vaguely androform, it was a very specialised class of robot. It was, in fact, one of the new designer class, made especially for procreation. From huge shoulders extended clusters of long slender limbs bearing point-like tools for manipulating microcircuitry. There was no clearly defined head section, but the visual area was large. From it projected a variety of microscopes, photonic, electronic and acoustic, some more than two feet long, for peering into the minute world in which the designer worked (for every designer was also an assembler).

Its gait a ponderous lurch, the top-heavy construct walked carefully across the square and disappeared.

Jasperodus then saw why the crowd had gathered. A famed robot-maker by the name of Logos was hectoring it on his favourite theme: his belief in the eventual superiority of machines over organic beings. By way of demonstration he was pointing to a construct of his own manufacture who sat leaning against a pillar, one of the roof supports of Logos’ dwelling.

The lolling robot was masturbating. Logos had provided it with a penis-like organ which it fondled with one hand, jogging its tubular sleeve up and down and plainly deriving a pleasurable sensation from the motion. The construct was probably low-grade. Unusually for a robot, it had eyelids: they drooped half-closed over dull orange eyes, quivering in self-absorbed ecstasy.

‘See how the wretch spends his time!’ thundered Logos. ‘Instead of directing his activities into his environment, he turns them into a closed loop of self-gratification! He is both agent and patient of his world!