The Rod of Light

12

Winging on his journey of return, thoughts in conflict clutched at Jasperodus.

What was the truth…?

The present actuality was: I come to destroy you, Gargan. The mage’s warning was correct… Ahriman is about to imprison the light….

But another set of thoughts, another conceivable reality, struggled for recognition. For had not Gargan himself, who according to the mage was to play the part of jailer, also spoken of being imprisoned in matter? Far from being tools of darkness, were not the robots trying to escape Ahriman’s realm to find freedom in the realm of Ahura Mazda?

For all his resolution, Jasperodus knew that he had embraced the role of renegade. It was impossible for him not to feel some sense of fellowship with Gargan, whose existential predicament was so similar to his own, in the days when he had agonised over the question of whether he was conscious. Jasperodus, moreover, had had the issue forced upon him. Gargan, his mental superior by far, and lacking only certain ethical niceties, had come to it unaided… it could be argued that he deserved the light of consciousness much more than did Jasperodus, who was trying to deny the superintelligent construct what he would not be without himself….

The guaranteed loyalty of the robot sitting in the cockpit behind him must be an unreserved blessing, Jasperodus concluded. They flew in a narrow-bodied two-seater of western manufacture, supplied by Igor’s masters so as to cloak their place of departure. The plane carried no markings. It made slow progress, with its droning propeller, especially as Jasperodus thought it prudent to make a diversion so as to seem to approach from the direction of Gordona.

The journey was nearing its end. He circled, looking for features he could recognise. Finally, he selected a fairly level stretch of scrub and put down, to scrutinise the landscape from the ground.

‘This is the place,’ he said to Igor. ‘Don’t be surprised at what I do.’

Propeller whirling, he took to the air once more, flying low. Then he dived straight at the ground. The aircraft ploughed into scrub, pebbles and dust, impossibly submerging. An observer would have seen the plane totally disappear, as they broke through the illusion into the hidden rift that revealed itself below. Jasperodus skimmed the floor of the canyon, making for the sheds and villas of the Gargan Cult Centre. But in order to allay any alarm he put down short of the brief airstrip, taxiing the rest of the way.

The roaring plane was met by two motor-wheel-mounted servitors who turned to race alongside it until it came to a stop on the runway. Jasperodus opened the canopy and stood with one foot on the wing, looking about him. All was quiet. A new shed had been built a short distance from the others. It sparkled in the sun. The robot heap was still there, but it was smaller now.

The black-and-silver-faced robots were staring silently up at him. He spoke to one. ‘Go and tell Gargan that Jasperodus has returned from Gordona.’

The construct nodded, gunned its machine and sped off. Jasperodus lowered himself to the ground. As his eyes came level with Igor’s he uttered a barely audible word.

‘When?’

‘In half an hour,’ Igor replied, in a similarly faint mumble.

Jasperodus helped him down to the concrete. The Borgors had decreed that Igor should be the one to carry the Judas transmitter. It was welded inside his body casing, timed to transmit only in the intervals when the Borgor spy satellite made its passes over the region.

The messenger servitor had dismounted from his machine and was entering the same shed where, nearly a year ago, Jasperodus had seen human prisoners connected to the logic junction. He set off towards it, followed by Igor and accompanied by the other servitor, who kept a precarious balance astride his tandem-wheeled vehicle.

When they reached the shed, the messenger re-emerged from it. ‘Gargan is within. He is waiting for you.’

Jasperodus led the way into the cool interior. Much was changed. The previous equipment had all been removed. Instead, the shed was filled with a maze of honeycombed banks through which moved an assortment of robots, mostly taken from the depleted heap outside by the look of them. Their task involved constant inspection of the honeycombs. Often they removed spindly components and replaced them from trolleys they towed through the aisles.

Near the entrance stood Gargan, with Exlog and Gasha. The cult master turned ponderously to greet Jasperodus, his short arms moving with a clicking sound. His milky eyes gazed impassively from the broad dome of his head.

‘You have been gone a long time, Jasperodus,’ he said in his smooth voice. ‘Who is this you have brought with you?’

‘Allow me to introduce Igor. He is all I could find, I am afraid, of the group I went to seek. He had worked as an assistant to the group.’

Suddenly Gasha took a stride forward. He pointed a finger at Igor.

‘Enemy. This is a Borgor construct.’

‘I found him in Gordona,’ Jasperodus lied. ‘He escaped from Borgor control a long time ago.’

‘Impossible. Borgor robots practically do not have the capacity for free action. No such construct could ever be counted one of us.’

‘You will find that Igor is an exception.’

Gasha turned to address Gargan. ‘We can expect only treachery from this Borgor construct.’

‘Then let him be disabled,’ Gargan commanded.

Exlog stepped past Jasperodus, moving with astonishing swiftness. Coming to Igor’s rear, he deftly opened his inspection plate. Igor began speaking, in the tone of ingratiating humility he was accustomed to employing in Borgor. ‘If there is any way I can be of assistance, sirs, I pledge my fullest cooperation—’

And then he was switched off, to stand like a metal statue.

‘Have the servitors put him in the store room,’ Gargan said. His eyes fell on Jasperodus. ‘We may reactivate him later, pending your debriefing and a full examination of his mental condition.’

Jasperodus nodded. It made no difference now. Igor had already connected the transmitter to its power source.

‘Did you bring back any useful information from Gordona?’ Gargan enquired.

‘I am afraid not, apart from a few details Igor can provide.’

‘No matter. The end of darkness is near. Since your departure our work has been of the greatest intensity, our progress rapid. I can reveal that we have perfected the arts alluded to in the notebook, solving all requisite problems and duplicating the missing processes. One step alone remains to be accomplished, and as to that, all is ready.’

Gargan’s tone was triumphant. He raised an arm to indicate the honeycomb maze. ‘Before you is one part of the new proceeding. It is a type of capacitor storing what we think of as a new species of energy: informational energy. We call it such because it is information with a signal content so high it develops new properties. The components are delicate, with a high failure rate. As you see, they require frequent replacement.

‘The capacitor acts as a buffer store for the main part of the process, which is housed in a new building. Come, let me show you.’

Leaving the shed, Gargan conducted Jasperodus towards the new erection he had observed when landing. When they were halfway across the dusty ground it suddenly seemed to Jasperodus that its zinc and iron sang, making the air shimmer. He faltered in his step. But the impression vanished just as quickly.

Servitors guarded the entrance. Gargan ignored them, passing directly within. Jasperodus followed, and found the scene confusing at first. The shed was clearly divided into two or more large compartments, for the west wall fell short of its true extent. The east wall was lined with a row of cubicles. Most of the interior, however, was filled with a horizontal array of milky translucent tubes, not unlike fluorescent lighting tubes but running the length of the section. Through the interstices of the array a few robots could be glimpsed, including some of Gargan’s team.

‘You behold success, Jasperodus. Here is the apparatus for extracting consciousness from the human brain.’

He paused for Jasperodus to take in the scene. ‘Our great task can be resolved into three main stages or problems. First, how to extract consciousness from a conscious mind. Second, how to store this consciousness in a neutral retort. Third, how to infuse it into another, robotic brain. In that same order—for they proved progressively difficult—the three phases have been mastered.

‘The root nature of the problem is not properly describable in colloquial language, or even in panlog. I will essay a few remarks, based on analogy. To be brief, consciousness cannot be coextensive with simple physical structures, but only with structures that have a very high degree of integrated complexity. A stone cannot be conscious, but a human brain fulfils the condition; not that it is the only condition, or you and I would automatically be conscious.

‘In the consciousness-ducting process we treat the brain to be exhausted as a negative terminal, and arrange a potential difference with a positive terminal of higher charge. The energy, of course, is the informational energy I have described. On connection there is a resultant current which acts on consciousness like electromotive force. Consciousness then flows to the positive terminal. You now understand the function of the buffer store.’

What surprised Jasperodus was the giantism of everything he saw. Jasper Hobartus could hardly have built anything so huge; all his equipment had been housed in a small cottage. Of course, Hobartus had worked on his process for many years. Perhaps he had been obliged to refine it until it was of manageable proportions. The robots, on the other hand, working at full speed, were not limited in the size of their equipment.

As Gargan finished his last sentence a high-pitched shriek filled the air, accompanied by vivid flaring from the tubes. The suddenness of it was shocking. The shriek seemed to emanate from everything—from the metal of the shed, from the tubes, from the air itself—and in some strange way to consist of light rather than sound. It was as if nature herself were being tortured.

‘The operation frequently produces a superfluity of light,’ Gargan explained when the disturbance was over. ‘Our phrase “the superior light”, it emerges, is something more than mere analogy. There is an affinity between it and physical light, as you shall see.

‘Those cubicles,’ he added didactically, ‘are for the human donors. Gradually the method is being made reliable enough for regular operation; but at present we are able to recover only about one-twentieth part of the consciousness from each human brain we exhaust. The rest is dissipated.

‘This made the need to master the second stage of the proceeding all the more pressing,’ Gargan continued. ‘It is a quirk of this type of work, as I believe the writer of the notebook discovered too, that consciousness cannot be transferred directly from brain to brain. A mediator, in the form of a neutral containing vessel, is required. In our case this retort is also called upon to act as an accumulator, for we decided not to attempt infusion until enough of the superior light for full illumination had been collected.

‘How may such a retort be constructed? A vessel that is not itself a brain, that is neutral, yet that can retain the immaterial substance of consciousness for as long as may be necessary?

‘Come this way, Jasperodus. I am going to show you something that I promise will produce amazement.’

The section of the shed beyond the partition was smaller. A proportion of the milky tubes projected through the upper part of the dividing panel, ending in staggered clusters which made them resemble lateral organ pipes. Otherwise, in stark contrast to the crammed arrangement in the other section, the compartment contained only three objects which were positioned with an almost ceremonial sense of spaciousness.

Bulkiest was the apparatus, quite weird in appearance, that extended from the floor to just under the roof, consisting mainly of a descending series of glass globes, each smaller than its superior neighbour. The topmost of these was fully fifteen feet in diameter: a monstrous, delicate sphere. The smallest, no more than a foot across, was embedded in the roof of a black metal cabinet of a size to accommodate a standing man—or robot. But it was not to this apparatus that Gargan directed Jasperodus’ attention. Instead, he walked to a nearby table spread with a golden cloth. There, resting on a mounting carved from sparkling crystal, was a platinum cylinder about one foot long by three inches thick.

Gargan paused before the table. The scene made an odd impression on Jasperodus, for it was as though Gargan had presented himself before an altar; an impression that was reinforced by the reverential care with which he then picked up the cylinder, turned slowly, and displayed it in both hands.

‘Light: nearly immaterial, immortally mobile, ever-lively, ever-diffractive, infinitely absorptive of data. Remember I told you that physical light has an affinity with the superior light. All these qualities render it uniquely adapted to our aim. This evacuated cylinder which I hold in my hands, Jasperodus, is the container of a container. Within it is a beam of lased light in the red wavelength, preserved by being reflected between two mirrors. It is a beam of light which is conscious of itself. For light is our storage retort.’

‘Conscious…’ Jasperodus echoed in a dazed murmur.

‘I promised you amazement.’

With the same air of ceremony, Gargan replaced the cylinder on its crystal mounting.

‘Not simple coherent light, of course,’ he went on quietly. That would have been as useless as a stone. The light had to be given structure, internal integration, a charge of informational energy. There is impressed upon it a schematic which the whole team laboured for several months to create. A schematic, so to speak, of pure intelligence.

‘Some idea of its complexity will be conveyed if I explain the type of modulation used to incorporate it into the beam. The interrupt method sometimes used to stamp data on light is of course much too crude. However, amplitude modulation, frequency modulation and phase modulation all proved inappropriate also. We developed a new, advanced technique: coherence modulation. In this method every photon in the beam is utilised, being phase-shifted to a precisely-controlled degree with reference to the primary phase-train of the beam. You will appreciate the informational density that is achievable by this means. Each photon holds one of a number of values, according to the degree of phase-shift; but it also acquires a hierarchy of significances when related to the phase-shifts around it. The beam therefore holds holistic information, not serial information, and this is a vitally important feature, for without it one could not speak of internal integration in something that does not comprise a mechanism.

‘The highly-refined light I have just described is able to conjugate with, and be a carrier for, consciousness.’

Jasperodus spoke admiringly. ‘Conjugation apart, this modulation you have accomplished is a technical miracle.’

‘It is the least of what we have done.’

‘You moved the cylinder,’ Jasperodus observed. ‘Is that not to risk deterioration of the beam?’

‘No; the schematic is tolerant of small accelerations—the container can be handled. Some deterioration does occur because the beam is reflected from mirrors, near-perfect though these are. Serious degradation will begin after a period of about one year, so that is the maximum period of storage.

‘The beam, incidentally, is exactly one imperial foot in length, as measured by an observer at relative rest. More interesting, perhaps, is that for the sake of stability we took special steps to ensure that it is perfectly parallel: it will never diverge from its vector of its own accord. The reflecting mirrors are absolutely flat, not slightly parabolic as would have to be the case for an ordinary laser beam.’

‘It will never spread?’

‘Never. It is a perfect rod of light, conscious of itself. If released into the endless void, it would speed on its way forever, never deteriorating. There is poetry in that thought.’

‘A rod of conscious light,’ Jasperodus repeated softly. ‘Gargan, you have triumphed. You have accomplished the impossible.’

‘Or we shall, when the final operation is executed.’

‘Yes. You have not yet carried out the infusion process.’

Gargan swivelled his head briefly to the ranked glass globes. ‘A whole new set of difficulties arises there, Jasperodus! But all have been overcome, and yonder is the requisite instrument. You can guess for yourself where the main difficulty lay. To draw consciousness out of a brain, we attract it to a higher potential. To do the reverse, we are trying to pass it from a higher potential to a lower, which is against the general law of nature. When this situation is met with in more mundane technology a pump of some kind is employed, but if consciousness could be pumped how much simpler our task would have been!

‘We have outflanked the difficulty with a subterfuge. We set up a terminal of even higher potential yet—no mean feat, I assure you. The target brain is interposed in the current created between this and the containment vessel, which is used now as the negative terminal. In the instant that consciousness is transferred, both terminals are abruptly, totally, absolutely disconnected. The stuff of consciousness is stranded, left without residence. A proportion of it, rather than dissipate is attracted to the target brain and settles there. The timing of the disconnection, which must occupy an interval of less than one picosecond, is troublesome. This is, of course, the merest sketch of the operation.’

‘Can one speak of quantity in relation to consciousness? Of intensity…?’

‘One can, though as it is not material, all quantitative descriptions are both inaccurate and interchangeable.’

‘And how much have you collected…?’ Jasperodus asked, eyeing the cylinder.

‘In the retort is sufficient to illuminate five human brains at full strength,’ Gargan told him.

‘Why… at one-twentieth efficiency, that means you must have exhausted one hundred!’

Jasperodus mulled over the figure, then in an attempt to hide his involuntary horror, he asked: ‘What is the efficiency of infusion?’

‘Due to that ratio, we are finding it difficult to obtain a sufficient number of donors, isolated as we are,’ Gargan responded. ‘Something must be done soon to arrange a regular supply. As for infusion, paradoxically it is more efficient. Loss should not be more than fifty percent. With the content of this retort, then, I can acquire a soul two to three times stronger than a human soul. There is no reason for us to restrict ourselves to a human intensity of consciousness; we shall all be greater than they.

‘Jasperodus, perhaps you would care to see some of the beam schematic.’ Jasperodus realized that Gargan took pride in expounding the project to him. He stepped to the third item in the compartment: an oblong, walnut-panelled piece of furniture with a polished top. He touched the top: it immediately became a limpid viewscreen.

Against an inky background, a glowing red beam became visible, for all the world like a ruby rod. The beam expanded, selecting a small section of itself which in turn expanded, and expanded, until there emerged what looked like a gargantuan marshalling yard with millions of tracks and billions of locomotives. They were seeing the wave tracks of the beam, plan style.

Gargan began to describe how the pattern had been designed. He seemed to take pleasure in the exposition. But after a few minutes he was interrupted by the entry of Gasha.

Olfactory proboscis bobbing, Gasha carried in one hand an object which Jasperodus recognised as the transmitter Igor had secretly been carrying. ‘Master, I took the precaution of examining the Borgor robot internally,’ he said to Gargan. ‘I found this transmitting device.’

He offered the article to the cult leader who turned it over in his hands. Torn welding marks on one side showed where it had been ripped away from Igor’s body-shell. ‘It transmits an identifying signal at timed intervals, but nothing else,’ Gasha continued. ‘It is a tracing device. It has its own power source and therefore could have been operating for several years.’

‘It is very crude. See, here is a ring for setting the timings.’

‘It was due to make a transmission about now,’ Gasha said. ‘I have stopped the count.’

Gargan looked at Jasperodus. ‘What comment do you have?’

‘Very likely the Borgors put such a device in their robots so they can find them if they wander off,’ Jasperodus suggested mildly. ‘They don’t like footloose constructs.’

‘Alternatively, perhaps the Borgors are trying to locate our establishment,’ Gasha countered. Again, he was addressing Gargan. ‘Perhaps the construct never was in Gordona.’

‘That would require the collusion of Jasperodus.’

‘Something is amiss,’ Gasha insisted. ‘I both feel it and calculate it. The probability that there is danger to ourselves has increased. We must take probabilities into account. To be safe, we should plan our relocation.’

Jasperodus noted how theoretical, how elliptical, Gasha’s argument was—yet how correct. Gargan paused before replying.

‘The probability that Jasperodus is involved in treachery must be reckoned vanishingly small, knowing what we do of his history,’ he decided. ‘Still, a construct with a secret transmitter in our midst is disconcerting. Even if in all innocence, he could have sent out a signal while in our vicinity which could cause an unfriendly power to investigate. Since to relocate all our apparatus will delay our activities considerably, we shall complete our current programme first. The first infusion is scheduled for twenty-one days hence—this is too far ahead for safety. We shall advance the programme. Call the others here. The infusion will take place today.’

Jasperodus took care to betray no hint of his inner feelings. Inwardly he was full of agitation and dismay. Instead of removing the Gargan menace, he and Igor had only hastened its triumph. Gasha appeared to be doing nothing, but soon the whole complement of superintelligent robots began to arrive in the compartment: Axtralane, Cygnus, Machine Minder, Exlog, Socrates, Interrupter, Iskra, Gaumene, Fifth of His Kind. No visible communication had taken place between them and Gasha; he had summoned them by radio.

From the start they made themselves busy in complete silence, minutely checking the infusion machinery. No servitors or other robots took part. This was due to a rule Jasperodus learned had been instituted by Gargan: like magicians of old, the cult members were required to build and operate the infusion apparatus entirely by their own labour.

While he watched, Jasperodus wondered if his father had developed the laser rod technique…. He doubted it; the level of expertise Gargan had been able to demonstrate was probably beyond human capability. Jasper Hobartus had not used long-term storage at all, as far as he knew. The transfer of consciousness had taken place with a hiatus of only seconds or minutes.

After a while, energisation began. The globes over the cabinet glowed. It was then that Jasperodus, hoping the others were sufficiently preoccupied, slipped away. Outside, he spoke to one of the guards.

‘Where is the store room?’

‘In that shed, sir.’ The servitor pointed. Jasperodus crossed the distance unchallenged. In the shed, he found a construct who if he was any judge had served his time on the pile, and from him he learned the way to the store room.

The place was crammed with relics of past activity: enigmatic machines, partly disassembled constructs, bins of powdered metal. And there, lying on a bench, was the hulk of Igor.

Gasha had cut him open with a fine cutting torch, removing a large section of his body shell which lay beside him like a piece of a barrel. Also lying beside him was the transmitter which Jasperodus had earlier seen him hand over to a servitor. As he had hoped, it had ben returned to the storeroom.

According to what Igor had told him, the Borgor satellite made a pass every two hours and forty-three minutes. The contact window was half an hour wide, or thereabouts. Though he had no way of keeping accurate time, he reckoned the window would be open now.

He picked up the transmitter, and found the ring Gargan had commented on. Neither he nor Gasha had guessed its true purpose, which was to rotate constantly with the same period as the orbiting satellite. A red arc on the casing signified the contact window for the region they were in. When the ring’s pointer traversed the arc the device was transmitting—once activated by Igor’s internal signal.

There was also a stop rod which Gasha had used to halt the ring. Jasperodus withdrew it, then turned the pointer to just inside the red arc, watching for a few moments to see that it was turning.

He had just replaced it on the bench where he found it when a sound behind him made him look round.

It was Gasha. His crenellated head rotated smoothly as he surveyed the scene, his eyes subdued.

‘This is as I suspected,’ he said quietly. ‘You are a traitor, working for our destruction. Our master’s vast intellect has not served him here. He has let himself be deceived by your personable qualities, Jasperodus.’

Jasperodus told himself he had better destroy Gasha quickly. But before he could move the other uttered a cry.

‘The device is transmitting! I detect it!’

He raised one of his flimsy arms, and from a protruberance on the upper surface of his hand a brilliant pencil-ray shot forth. In the very same instant Jasperodus lunged, knocking up Gasha’s arm so that the ray flitted to the roof of the shed, where it burned metal furiously.

His other arm he used to strike Gasha on the head, crumpling the castle-like crown and denting the brain-case. Gasha was neither big nor strong. His legs buckled; he toppled. But as he fell, he contrived to use his hand-weapon again, and this time he hit the transmitter squarely.

For the second time Jasperodus struck, with all his force, smashing the super-intelligent brain. Gasha twitched, then was still.

On the bench, the transmitter was ruined. The beam had burned out half its insides.

Could the signal have been received, in the few seconds it was being transmitted? Was that long enough to fix the location?

Also, he had no way of knowing whether Gasha had sent out an alarm call unheard by him. He picked up Gasha’s broken form and stuffed it behind a couple of bins, then walked out of the shed pondering his next move. Perhaps he could steal an aircraft and head back to Borgor to alert the authorities before the cult decamped… but then, the servitors would shoot him down before he’d covered a mile.

Meantime his feet were taking him towards the project shed. He found he could not resist knowing if… The guards at the door hesitated at his approach, then recognised him and let him through. He walked past the silent extraction department and into the smaller section. The glass globes were dull, shining with only remnants of light. The super-intelligent constructs were gathered before the black cabinet.

Then, moved from within, the door of the cabinet began to open.

And Jasperodus realized that the Gargan Work was completed.