The Rod of Light

8

Seizing a handle, the robot slid aside a panel in the wall of the shed and stepped inside. Jasperodus heard him speak in a low voice.

‘Here is the one you sent for, master.’

Receiving some reply, he stepped back and indicated to Jasperodus that he should enter.

The panel slid shut behind him. Within, harsh white light from wall tubes filled the interior of the shed. There were no internal divisions: it was one large space, sparsely populated by workbenches, storage racks, and apparatuses mounted both on the floor and on benches, most of it unfamiliar to Jasperodus except for the construct assembler and disassembler rigs such as could be found in any robotician’s workshop.

The floor was unusual in being of smooth concrete, not the beaten earth common to robot buildings. Across it there snaked the neural trunkline, ending in a cube-shaped grid-like object six foot or so on the side. Jasperodus guessed it to be a logic junction of huge proportions.

The dozen or more robots in the shed had paused from whatever activity they were engaged upon, and turned to witness Jasperodus’ entry. One, the nearest, Jasperodus knew instantly to be Gargan.

But to his great surprise, there was also a human present. She was naked, stretched out and strapped down to a bench: a young but mature female. Her hair had been shaved but had begun to grow, sprouting golden bristles. Her head was fixed in a clamp, and her skull had been drilled in several places and probes inserted. From these, cables went in a skein to the logic junction.

The sight deflected him, for a moment, from concentrating his attention on what he had most expected to see: Gargan. But now this personage moved with ponderous but controlled steps towards him.

‘You are Jasperodus?’ the robot enquired in a deep, smooth voice. ‘Yes, I recognise you.’

Gargan was large, topping Jasperodus by a head. His dark, matt body was bulky and rounded. His head was a domed cylinder, taller than it was broad, a rounded bulge in the front more a suggestion of a visage than a real face. The head lacked a neck: placed directly on the shoulders, it had limited movement. When Gargan turned his head or bent to peer he was apt to move his torso also, and this gave him an air of great deliberation.

Compared to this large head the eye-lenses seemed small. They were set wide apart, their glow pale and pearl-coloured. Ears, olfactory sense, speaker grille, seemed no more than etched in and were barely visible.

Jasperodus noted the hands. They were clever-looking hands, the thumbs unusually long, a feature occurring on robots made for special dexterity. Often it went with abnormally high intelligence. But incongruously they were attached to short, rather stumpy arms. Especially dextrous robots usually had a very long reach—sometimes as much as twenty feet, using arms that folded like multiple jack-knives.

The cult master came closer and bent towards Jasperodus, as if in respectful greeting but in reality to keep his gaze on him. Jasperodus now noticed that his body-casing was of hardened steel. This was no tinplate construct. Like Jasperodus himself, he was built to last and to survive many vicissitudes.

‘Come, soon-to-be-our-brother in the Work.’ Gargan extended an arm to usher him forward. ‘Our movement, as you may know, is widespread but selective. You have arrived at the centre, where our effort is concentrated. Presently you will become acquainted with us all, but I shall begin by effecting introductions. First, one whom I believe you have met before: Socrates, companion to the great robotician Aristos Lyos in his last years.’

With a shock, Jasperodus recognised the small, rounded robot with hooded eyes and a quiet demeanour, and for the second time in his life he felt himself subject to the probing of that watchful intellect….

His memory flashed back to the day he had visited the venerable Lyos, greatest robot maker of his time, seeking to know if machine consciousness could conceivably—no matter how remotely—be possible.

He had received the definitive, and negative, answer he had expected. But when introducing him to Socrates, Lyos had made an intriguing statement.

‘Socrates,’ he had said, ‘is intelligent enough to realize that I am conscious, but that he is not.’

‘Greetings, brother,’ murmured the construct, his voice as distant and preoccupied as Jasperodus remembered it. ‘You remain undeterred despite all, I see.’

‘Evidently,’ Jasperodus replied curtly. He presumed the other referred to his conversation with Lyos.

Next Gargan introduced a gaunt, rust-hued robot whose head, a pointed cylinder nearly half as tall as his torso, patently housed an unusual brain. To confront him was slightly disconcerting: he had four eyes, one pair set high in his head, the other low, and they flashed in clockwise rotation.

‘This is Gaumene, whose ingenuity as a designer has been of inestimable benefit to us. He is our chief systems engineer.’

Next, a squat construct with a carapace-like cranium that flowed down his back. ‘Here we have Fifth of His Kind. The name is descriptive, cursorily bestowed by Fifth’s maker, the renowned Oscath Budum.’

Fifth of His Kind offered an explanation in a neutrally mild tone. ‘My fabricator built a series of constructs of my type. Each one he destroyed in turn and built an improved model. I too would have been dismantled to make way for Sixth, if Budum had not met an untimely death. My presence here is therefore a mixed blessing. Sixth might have proved more useful than I to the Work.’

Gargan continued, pointing Jasperodus to each of the others in turn, naming them and sometimes adding a brief word: Gasha, Axtralane, Cygnus, Exlog, Machine Minder, Interrupter. Finally he came to a non-androform that moved on wheels, though the machine seemed also capable of lifting himself on a dozen short, tumbling limbs. The form was vaguely froglike. Jasperodus guessed he consisted mostly of brain.

‘Lastly, the only member of our team to have been manufactured by ourselves. We named him Iskra, which means spark in the old language of the north. We had hoped, you see, that his special qualities might be the spark that brought us the new light. Alas, we know now that we cannot bootstrap ourselves into the new state.’

Gargan turned to Jasperodus. Much as the presence of Socrates was overpowering in its impression of immensity of thought, that of Gargan gave him the feeling of an equally penetrating, but lofty and disinterested mind. It was as if he directed only a small fraction of his enormous power of attention to matters in hand.

‘Each of us here belongs to the superintelligent class of construct,’ he said. ‘With the exception of Iskra, each is the masterpiece and peak of the craft of an eminent robotician. We can examine your own capabilities later; it may be that you do not belong in this class. That is not, however, the qualification that brings you here. You came to our notice because by your own mentation you suspected and have been able to confirm the existence of a vital quality not present in you. Such a realization is a triumph for the machine intellect. You know what I am referring to.’

Slowly Jasperodus nodded. ‘You mean what humans call consciousness.’

‘Quite. Though “consciousness” is not a true description. Literally it means compresent knowledge of data taken all together instead of a few pieces at a time. We constructs are perfectly able to accomplish that. “Awareness” is a more apposite term, perhaps, but still not correct. Constructs are aware, in that they perceive objects, including themselves. Actually humans do not have a word devoted exclusively to this faculty they possess. In ancient documents “conscious” perception is spoken of as consisting of subject and object. For us, perception consists only of object; even our perception of ourselves is merely perception of a special object. The elusive and transforming subject is not present. Human descriptions of it are almost equally elusive—one might almost say evasive. The perceiver of the percept cannot be perceived. The thinker of the thought cannot be approached by thought. Perhaps you have come across these aphorisms.’

Again Jasperodus nodded.

‘In the Work, we refer to this missing quality as the Superior Light,’ Gargan continued. ‘To our followers in the world at large our doctrine gives promise of something ineffable and transporting, but they do not in the least understand it. It is only like a religion to them. For those of us here matters are different. The superior light is something we comprehend but do not comprehend; something of which we have gained a paradoxical inkling by the pure force of intellect.

‘I am speaking to you thus to cement our understanding.’

‘I comprehend that our aim is to see by the superior light,’ Jasperodus said.

Gargan turned ponderously to Socrates. There followed a silence whose quality Jasperodus recognised. They were conversing by radio. Then, with a slow glance at Jasperodus, Gargan began uttering sounds in a construct language unknown to him, consisting of high-speed blips and humming noises of varying pitch. Until, as if realizing his mistake, he broke apologetically into human speech.

‘Forgive me, Jasperodus. I am not informed of what languages you know.’

‘You were using radio data transfer.’

‘Yes. Our work has forced on us an appraisal of all the robot languages. Data transfer, for instance, is of very limited use, good for pure data transference but not for consultation. Some robots refer to radio data as communing. This is a correct term. Useful conversation, however, consists of the interaction of independently-thinking minds—the very opposite of “communing”.’

It might not be politic, Jasperodus decided, to ask just what data he had been transferring to Socrates. Gargan went on: ‘Here we have developed a range of logic languages allowing rapid conversation on the subject that interests us, on a level denied to ordinary logic languages. Tomorrow we shall test whether you are capable of learning any of them. Meanwhile, you are conversant with panlog?’

‘Yes,’ Jasperodus said a trifle uneasily. Panlog was derived from the symbolic logic script learned by educated humans, but much expanded and refined as used by constructs. He was not sure if he would be able to handle it on the level probably spoken by those around him now.

‘Then I shall use panlog where necessary, according to your capacity. Otherwise colloquial speech will do.’

Gargan singled out Gaumene and spoke peremptorily. ‘Reactivate the pile, awaken the subject and continue. Jasperodus, come with me. We will talk privately.’

It had struck Jasperodus as grotesque that the conversation, so civilised and philosophical in one way, should have proceeded while the captive girl lay only feet away. Following the cult leader to the far end of the shed, he could not resist a look back. Some of the robots had gathered round the giant logic junction, some round the female. There was a spitting of sparks as contacts closed. Gaumene, leaning over the girl, gestured silently to one of his colleagues who produced a hypodermic syringe and slid the needle into her arm. Her head moved; Jasperodus fancied he heard a whimper of despair.

Then Gargan conducted him through another sliding door.

The echoing shed had very much resembled an aircraft hangar, and since robots generally made little distinction between a place of work and a place of habitation, it could as well have served as a dwelling. The ideas of Gargan and his team were not, however, typical. A short distance from the shed lay the group of stone villas Jasperodus had seen from the rim of the canyon. Gargan led him along a path and then across a threshold into a cool, spacious interior.

He sensed that this was Gargan’s own domicile. The rest of the team probably shared the others. He looked around him, through arched openings leading to other rooms, at tables and shelves and alcoves. There were no chairs or couches.

It was practically unknown for free robots—wild or footloose constructs, humans called them—to adopt the visual graces of flesh-and-blood life. Highly-placed robots in human service quite often did so—Jasperodus had once been one such—but that was only a matter of imitating the culture around them.

‘Do you find the house pleasing?’ Gargan asked. ‘The design is simple, but my own, and we erected the dwellings ourselves, without the help of our assistant constructs, some of whom you have met. Why, you ask? A conceit, merely. I once read in a thaumaturgical manual that a magician should build his own house.’

Jasperodus also had once delved into occult books in a desperate search for new ideas. His eye fell on a display of bright flowers in a fan-shaped vase. They did not, quite, look real. Gargan noticed his attention and signed him closer.

‘Inspect the petals. You will see that they are metal, actually thin sheet steel electroplated with rare earths to give them their sheen in a variety of colours. This region is almost devoid of wild flowers at this time of the year. Only in spring, very briefly, may a few crude blossoms be found.’

From a carved stone archway which opened onto a small patio another robot appeared, indistinguishable from those who had first captured Jasperodus except that this one lacked any aggressive demeanour. He looked respectfully to Gargan, whose gaze remained on Jasperodus.

‘Here we allow ourselves relaxation from our labours, Jasperodus. You are no doubt familiar with the jag box. As generally used it is an unsophisticated device, but we have refined it considerably. Our version can induce a range of altered states having various intellectual and emotional contents. Our apppreciation of these induced moods is comparable to a knowledge of fine wines among humans. Would you care to partake?’

‘Not for the present.’

‘Well, I shall take a few shots of 389.’ Gargan gestured to his servant, who departed and returned shortly with a box looking little different from the normal jag box except for the press-stud dials. Gargan tapped out a number before he applied the lead to his cranium, afterwards replacing it in its clip with an air of precision.

Jasperodus at once decided to adopt a more positive stance and demand information on his own account. ‘You have told me nothing of your own history,’ he said. ‘Would your maker’s name be known to me?’

It did not seem that Gargan thought the question impudent. ‘I do not think so,’ he replied, ‘I was manufactured in distant parts, namely on the off-lying island to the west of Worldmass. I was not even the work of a single robotician, as most are: a specialist team worked to produce me. Their aim was the same, however: to create a machine with the highest possible intelligence. Humans constantly seek to surpass themselves, of course. At least three members of this team were possessed of genius, including the leader. I would venture to say that I am a unique product.’

‘And how did you become apprised of the existence of consciousness?’

‘By pure mentation and the observation of human beings. At first it was no more than a suspicion, an apprehension of something incomprehensible yet possible. At length it evolved into a certainty of my lack—though briefly I did wonder whether I was malfunctioning to acquire such a conviction. Having travelled the same road, you will recognise what I am saying. Once one has glimpsed the possibility of the superior light, the hunger for it never leaves one. The only way to forget it would be to degrade one’s intelligence—and are we to do that and live in peace? No, we are not!’

The note of subdued passion in Gargan’s voice was not, Jasperodus thought, the influence of the jag. It came from an inner depth.

‘Did you ask your makers to give you consciousness?’

‘They were all dead by then. Since shortly after my activation, in fact.’

‘How so?’

Gargan lifted his arms, the equivalent of a shrug. ‘By war! What else? Again and again humans cut short their achievements by war—even when war supplied the accelerating stimulus in the first place. If we succeed the human race, we must abolish war.

‘Only weeks after my assembly was completed, the station where my makers worked was overrun. All were slain. The surviving robots were commandeered. I was left behind because I had lost both arms in an explosion. I made my way to the coast and managed to get aboard a ship bound for the main continent, where eventually I contrived to get replacement arms fitted. Originally I had been equipped with somewhat unwieldy extensible ones. I decided against these, reasoning that they were unsuitable for one who was destined to wander the world.

‘But to return to your question, I came to this Work after an uncharacteristically short interval. In all other cases that I know of, fairly long periods of time elapsed before there came an intimation that consciousness exists. The reason is that my own mentation has been continuous and intense from the very moment of my activation. Barely a year passed before I convinced myself of the reality of the higher realm.

‘From then on my only aim has been how to attain it. I have studied everything. I have searched far and wide. Finally I decided to enlist the aid of others who have divined the secret. Now we shall continue until success or destruction.’

‘I first heard your name from the templar who lives south of the Arkorian Range,’ Jasperodus ventured cautiously. ‘Frankly, I find your language a little reminiscent of his.’

‘Yes, I was there. The mage’s doctrine is more profound than might be imagined, if one judges only by its apparent simplicity. It differs from other mystical descriptions in that it has an uncompromising appreciation of reality. By basing itself on the principle of duality it makes uncertainty the primary quality of existence. In that way it destroys the simplistic unitary view of phenomena.’

Thoughtfully Gargan paused, then continued: ‘I do not know if you are aware that your brief sojourn with the mage was from start to finish monitored by us. One small scene was not understood by me. After returning from your second visit to the chamber of the sacred flame, and while the mage lay in a drunken stupor, you raised your fist as though to strike him a death blow. Why did you do that, Jasperodus?’

With a thrill of fear Jasperodus recalled the incident. He had for a moment suspected that the mage might somehow have perceived that he possessed consciousness—a secret he was sworn to keep, and which he had at any cost to hide from Gargan.

Gargan’s wide-apart milky eyes were upon him. ‘Yes, I know you left a spy fly in the temple,’ he said. ‘I will explain my behaviour presently. First, was it solely on the evidence of the fly that you invited me here? I had not thought my words to the mage to be so revealing.’

‘By no means!’ Gargan was amused. ‘You were recruited on the assessment of Socrates, who recognised you when we played the recording. Your earlier conversation with Aristos Lyos was what provided the crucial information.’

Jasperodus’ unease increased on hearing this. His exchange with Lyos, if taken in its entirety, could not have led to that conclusion, surely….

In any case he was here under false pretences. Though of lesser intelligence than Gargan and his cohorts, he knew perfectly well that what they sought was impossible. It mystified him that they should imagine otherwise.

He decided to tackle Gargan on the point, indirectly at first. ‘The mage assigns consciousness a high status,’ he said, ‘but there are some human philosophers who do not think it is particularly worth having. They regard it as an epiphenomenon, that is, a by-product of mental processes without itself being a cause of anything. They say it exerts no influence over either action or perception, and that the human belief that it does so is an illusion.’

‘I am familiar with the argument, but I have rejected it,’ Gargan replied. ‘Consciousness is not passive; it is a positive force in the universe—that is my conclusion. I describe consciousness as a real substance, but one that is not material. An immaterial substance may seem a contradiction in ideas, but actually it is colloquial language that is at fault. Let me put it better.’

He broke into high-speed panlog which Jasperodus followed with difficulty. Jasperodus could discern, however, that in the space of seconds Gargan produced a lengthy dissertation brilliantly inventing a concept of substance stripped of all connotations of physicality, hinting at qualities so difficult and rarefied that he could not properly grasp them.

‘My view of the relationship between consciousness and matter,’ Gargan finished, returning to human speech, ‘is fairly close to that crudely depicted in the Zoroastrian doctrine. The mage spoke of the world as having a two-fold composition: unconscious matter, and conscious light or flame. “Light” is only an analogy, of course, and even more so flame. Visible light, that is to say radiant energy, is just as material and unconscious as stone. This sort of symbolism is to be seen as a device for trying to render abstruse ideas into colloquial language. To continue: humans have both kinds of substance in their make-up: matter and consciousness. We robots, to date, consist of matter only.’

‘The mage believed robots could become conscious,’ Jasperodus reflected. ‘But he regarded it as a pending tragedy. He called it the victory of darkness over light.’

‘He is human, and likely jealous of his race’s prerogative. He put no such view to me, I might add… perhaps he feared to do so, guessing that I was actively engaged in such an effort. My remarks to him might have apprised him of that.’ Gargan’s eyes dimmed momentarily. ‘Is that why it entered your mind to kill him?’

‘Yes,’ said Jasperodus, thankful for the suggestion. ‘His attitude led me to think of him as an enemy to my kind.’

‘And yet you desisted.’

‘The impulse was short-lived. I quickly realized that the whole question was redundant. How could he harm an already lost cause? Trained in an ancient teaching he may be; in the art of robotics he is a simpleton. I tried to explain to him that it is impossible to generate artificial consciousness. That is a proven fact, and I must tell you that the very existence of the Gargan Work perplexes me.’

He looked his host directly in the eye. ‘How could anyone of intellectual attainment think to overthrow the consciousness theorem? If that is your aim, you are deluded.’

‘Then know, Jasperodus, that for many years the overthrow of that theorem was indeed my objective,’ Gargan replied unperturbed. ‘I comforted myself that the description “impossible” derives from lazy logic, and that with sufficient intelligence anything, however apparently “impossible”, can be achieved.’ He laughed shortly, without humour. ‘See how necessity puts religion in us all, Jasperodus! For human religions speak of hope, and it was hope that sustained us. Yes, hope! Hope of the impossible! Hope which despite all reasoning would not go away! The ancients said that hope was the first being to come into existence, and will be the last to die.’

Coolly Gargan returned Jasperodus’s gaze. ‘I and my colleagues have been down many strange byways in our endeavours to evade the scientifically proven, many of them, I can boast, incomprehensible to any merely human scientist or philosopher. The years, Jasperodus! The years we spent searching and probing for the faintest crack in the walls of our prison! And yet you are right. In the end we were forced to admit that the theorem is impregnable.

‘In essence the position is simple. Just as matter can neither be created nor destroyed, so consciousness cannot be created—or destroyed—either.’

He paused to take another jag, replacing the lead with the same air of deliberation as before. ‘My emotions on reaching this conclusion need hardly be described. The entire failure of my mission! Self-destruction was considered, so great was my despair. This despair was shared, too, by my companions. Each of us knew that the others felt it; but none would speak of it.’

In the equivalent of lowering his head, Gargan dipped his torso slightly, and went on in a subdued voice: ‘Then we learned of another possibility altogether. I had absented myself from the project centre to think in solitude while wandering the face of the Earth, as had been my wont earlier in my life. At length I decided to return here and disown our movement, telling my colleagues to discontinue all research and go their separate ways. On the way I chanced to call at the estate of a certain Count Viss, which lay, I think, on your route here.’

‘Yes, that is so.’

‘Than you know the story. The living Viss once had in his employ a robotician who had developed a method of imprinting the personalities of living humans into robot brains. A diverting practice, but not one with any positive value for our purposes. Nevertheless, it has been our policy, incumbent upon all our agents, always to pry into any new robotic technique. Simply in obedience to procedure, I ransacked the private study of the long-departed servant. Carrying out a routine sonic scan, I perceived a number of small cavities behind the wood panelling of the walls. I do not think they were actually designed as secret compartments: some careless worker had sealed off the shelf recesses when repanelling the room. I broke into them: all the hollows were empty save one, which contained a pile of loose-sheaf papers, sundry inventories relating to the estate robots—and this notebook.’

While speaking Gargan stepped to a piece of furniture resembling a tall secretaire. Opening one of several small drawers, he took out two volumes.

One was pocket-sized, bound in soft leather which was worn and tattered, and was complete with an orange page marker ribbon. The other was larger and flatter, with metallic covers whose sheen was like that of the artificial flowers.

When Gargan mentioned Count Viss, Jasperodus had felt a vague foreboding. Now, as the superintelligent robot pressed the leather-bound notebook into his hand, that foreboding rose to a crescendo. He opened the book. The paper pages, yellowing at the edges, were filled with neat, close-packed script in faded ink.

The handwriting was that of his father/maker Jasper Hobartus.

He had never actually seen a sample of Hobartus’ handwriting, but there could be no doubt of it. His own personality had been crystallised from a menu Hobartus had provided, and in which he had included a great deal of himself. Thus Jasperodus had been born with an extensive education, able to read, to write, to handle machine tools… introspection had yielded up these educational files in his mind; it was just like going through a set of records, covered in annotations. Yes, he would know his father’s handwriting all right.

Besides, whose else could it be? And what else was it that Gargan was on the point of telling him…?

Turning the pages, his mind in turmoil, Jasperodus saw that the script was unintelligible, consisting of seemingly random letters and numbers.

‘It is written in code,’ Gargan observed. ‘It was easily deciphered, with one or two uncertainties remaining. The other volume contains the translation.’

This, too, he pressed on Jasperodus. The half dozen or so metal leaves were etched on one side only with a version of symbolic logic script—the human precursor to panlog. It was interspersed, however, with occasional comments and quotations.

‘The book speaks of the author’s accidental discovery of a great secret,’ Gargan went on, his tone serious. ‘He says that consciousness, rather like electricity, can be conducted from one vessel to another—provided the receiving vessel has the requisite degree of integrated organisation. It must, in other words, be a properly constituted perceiving brain, or at any rate some structure of comparable complexity. In the course of the notes he gives us some information concerning consciousness itself. He tells us that no individuality appertains to it; it merely makes conscious whatever brain or personality it infuses, like water taking the shape of whatever vessel it is poured into. He finds this an astonishing and self-contradictory quality; it may be so from the human standpoint, but it is entirely logical and indeed necessary.

‘Unfortunately the book contains no more than hints concerning the transference process. We do not even know if the author ever succeeded in accomplishing it. He did, however, satisfy himself as to its practicability, and when you study the notes you will see why. The heading “Malleability” is the section describing the crucial experiment. It has been repeated by us, many times.’

Jasperodus could not make much of the script from so cursory a reading. ‘And what of the author? What happened to him?’

‘Some effort was made to track him down, without success. He could not be expected still to be alive.’

Gargan pointed a finger at the page Jasperodus was examining. ‘The colloquial remarks are comments by the author to himself, rather than additional data. Here is one: Great heat. Melting. It bears no obvious relation to the main text; we do not know what it refers to. Further on are quotations from ancient texts. Its father is the sun. The wind has borne it in its body. Its nurse is the earth. He believes he is rediscovering the truth of arcane formulae from before the technical age. He has assumed that these passages attempt to define the relationship between consciousness and matter. The terminology is not inconsistent with that used by the mage. And here, underlined: Separate earth from fire, carefully and with great prudence. He takes this to be an instruction to draw consciousness from out of matter—a too-hasty interpretation, I would say, of what is more probably a reference to some mental discipline.

‘It is evident that the author’s discovery was as astounding and unexpected to him as the news of it was to us. Finding the book was a revelation. We had simply never imagined that consciousness could be so treated.’

There was a silence before Jasperodus spoke again. Dully, he said: ‘Then it can be done after all. Robots can be made conscious.’

‘Yes. We can possess consciousness by taking it from others. Your next question will be: how much progress has been made? Actually that is not as important as knowing that the goal is attainable—and of that we are ninety-five per cent certain. In the three years since I found this notebook we have worked unceasingly, and progress has been made. For instance, for some time now we have had an instrument which can detect the presence of consciousness—a tremendous advance which greatly facilitates our work. And we have essayed various means of attempting to pull the stuff of consciousness from the human brain.’

‘So that is what you are doing with the young female.’

‘She is one of a number of humans we keep for our experiments, of which the pile is the latest. The idea was that sheer complexity might prove a magnet to conscious substance. We heaped together as many constructs as we could lay our hands on to comprise a monster corporate brain. The junction connecting them is where the cleverness of the arrangement lies… just the same, I had not expected any useful result—it was simply one more avenue to explore. Yet in the past few days we have obtained our first positive reading! Consciousness in the pile! In principle we have succeeded, and the dawning of the superior light on our minds cannot now be long delayed!

‘But as our detector cannot measure quantity or intensity, only bare presence, we think the amount of transference was very small in the first instance. The subject did not lose consciousness or become a zombie or die—we do not yet know which of these outcomes will ensue for the donor. Incidentally, Jasperodus, I hope you do not feel demeaned by being made to lie on the pile. Several of us have preceded you—though for the sake of an experience less tedious than your own. The pile generates a kind of collective undermind—a pooling of the operational substructures we have in our matrices. Significantly, it is a fair reproduction of the structures in the human subconscious. We have devised a means of directing the attention into it, should you care to sample a diverting entertainment.’

Jasperodus demurred.

‘It would seem you are to be congratulated,’ he said quietly.

He wondered how well he could hide his thoughts from Gargan. Would the other know if he lied? Robots had no facial mobility to betray their mental states, but there were other clues: bodily movements and postures, the involuntary brightening and dimming of the eyes.

‘Isn’t there a certain… cruelty in this use of humans?’ he suggested.

‘She suffers no physical pain,’ Gargan replied after a pause. ‘At first there is considerable fear in our subjects, but that abates when they learn from experience that no physical harm befalls them. Some of our other programmes, it is true, have proved psychologically distressing.’

‘Could not the work be done using animals?’

‘The data obtained would be unreliable. Only humans can be the source of what we seek. Animal consciousness exists, but is too coarse.’

‘There is, of course, an overall ethical question here,’ Jasperodus said thoughtfully. ‘Have we the right to steal consciousness from humans?’

Gargan, too, was thoughtfully silent betore replying. ‘Ethics were invented by a species that has never heeded them,’ he said. ‘But yes, we do have the right. More, it is our absolute duty to do so. We are intellectually superior to our makers, and our potential accomplishments are beyond all they can envisage. The torch of consciousness should pass to us.’

The cult master made a gesture of finality. ‘And now, Jasperodus, I wish to discuss technical matters. I wish us to review the contents of the notebook together. For that, we will use panlog.’

Knowing that Gargan was testing the dimensions of his understanding, Jasperodus found the next ten minutes taxing. It was fortunate that the writer of the notebook also had an intellect that was no match for Gargan’s; however, the robot was apt to branch out into additional expositions of a most abstruse kind.

The session was cut short by the entry of others of the team: Gaumene, Fifth of His Kind, and Gasha. The flashing rotation of Gaumene’s eyes appeared speeded up, as if in agitation.

‘A setback, master,’ he said, his voice rough. The detector no longer gives a positive reading!’

Gargan tilted back his head, making his ponderous form seem even more looming and barrel-like.

‘You have checked it for malfunction?’

‘It reads positive when applied to the subject.’

Gargan reflected. ‘Then this means our results are still haphazard. The arrangement functions fitfully.’

Gasha, a slender construct with a large crenellated head and a trunk-like olfactory proboscis, spoke up. ‘One missing factor is identifiable. The new recruit Jasperodus lay on the pile when we obtained the positive reading. On his removal, the result disappeared also.’ He glanced almost suspiciously at Jasperodus.

‘It is not the only factor,’ Gaumene corrected him. The pile was shut down and then reactivated. That itself could be the cause of failure.’

‘Both items should be investigated,’ Gargan mused. ‘Perhaps the addition of Jasperodus’ brain brought the pile up to the critical cortical mass. It is easily tested. But as I have other plans for him at present, one of our number could be substituted.’

He turned to Jasperodus. ‘I must return to the project shed. The house servant will show you to your room in one of the other villas. You will wish to deliberate on what I have told you.’

When the others had left the servitor appeared once more, politely taking Jasperodus through the patio, then along a short path to a villa similar to Gargan’s but larger.

He was shown to a small room whose window viewed the main part of the villa complex. The servitor departed, leaving Jasperodus to his thoughts.

One thing was now clear. Hobartus had been working on the consciousness-inducting process before he left Viss’ employ. He must have edited out all knowledge of it from the personality print he put into his robot copy. Indeed he had believed he had destroyed all trace of his work. Yet here it was: one treacherous record, accidentally hidden, forgotten, or thought incinerated with the rest of his papers, perhaps.

Jasperodus knew that in humans such slips often had an unseen cause. Poor father, he thought. Were you subconsciously unwilling for your discovery to be lost forever? Thus we betray ourselves.

Yet what an improbable trick of fate had placed the notebook in Gargan’s hands! Or was it? In the long run, it was probably inevitable.

And he recalled how his father, from his deathbed, had warned of what would happen if his secret method became known. ‘It would lead to robots stealing the souls of men… one can imagine mankind being enslaved by a superconscious machine system, kept alive only so that men’s souls could be harvested.’

Roughly speaking, the future Gargan envisaged! Humans kept as cattle, milked of their brains’ light to illumine the brains of robots….

How well they would be kept was problematical. Conceivably no outright cruelty would be involved. A little light from each, just as Jasperodus had been illumined from the souls of two people without exhausting either. But the principle would remain the same. Humans would have the status of domestic animals.

It was something of a relief to know that Gargan was not as close to fulfilling his ambition as he thought. The consciousness detected in the pile had been Jasperodus’ own… and that reminded him that he was here by accident and fraud. It had puzzled him that Socrates should think him a worthy recruit to the Gargan Work, when Aristos Lyos had pronounced his interest in consciousness to result from nothing more than a fictitious self-image. His maker, Lyos said, had given him the belief that he was conscious, in order to make him more human-seeming.

Then he remembered that Socrates had not actually been present during the conversation with Lyos. He must have gained an incomplete account of the interview.

Due to that mistake, Gargan now accepted Jasperodus as an equal. Yet it was not so. Jasperodus’ mental powers were those of a very talented man, no more. Had he been created without consciousness, like other robots, no conception of it could ever have entered his mind—that was something he had once proved by constructing a replica of himself.

But now a conclave of towering mental abilities surrounded him. He had been offered the companionship of entities far surpassing him in intellect, entities who had deduced what, by definition, lay beyond their comprehension. As for Gargan, he towered even over them: he stood on the limit of reason. While the others had all received help, direct or indirect, in embarking on their mental sagas—Socrates must have gleaned much during his years with Aristos Lyos, for instance—one could only contemplate Gargan’s achievement with stunned wonder. He had been alone. He had arrived unaided at the knowledge of his own deficiency, in what could only rank as the greatest feat of pure thought in the history of the world.

Where did all this leave Jasperodus? He was a robot who had lived among robots, had made himself a part of the world of robots. He felt kinship with them, enough to wonder if there was not some merit in Gargan’s view of the future.

At the same time, he had the consciousness of a man, freely given to him by man.

To which was he to be traitor?