One of the women screamed.
Jasperodus unhooked his repeater. ‘Used me as a plaything, did you?’ he growled. ‘You believed me to be your slave. Poor moron, you were my tool, not I yours!’
The gun voiced its hideous chatter. Okhramora jerked again and again, edged along the floor by the impact of the bullets. While blood seeped from his body horrified screams filled the chamber.
‘SILENCE!’ Jasperodus roared. ‘Silence, or I will deal thus with you all!’
They became hushed. Jasperodus saw Count Osbah sidling to the back of the gathering, trying to gain the doors unnoticed. But he did nothing to stop him and stood as if momentarily paralysed. Unexpected emotions coursed through him and the Crown seemed to burn his metal fingers.
Before the Count could reach the doors they were flung suddenly inwards and Craish entered with his men. At the sight of Jasperodus standing with the throne at his back and the Crown in his hands they came to a halt.
‘Enter,’ Jasperodus commanded in a booming, almost trembling voice that reverberated about the chamber. ‘Enter and witness.’ He paused, feeling slightly dizzy. He tried to remind himself of his carefully laid plans, of the calculated moves and periods that must pass before he became King. But all went by the board. A madness had come over him; a madness of pride, of power and of victory. He was not in control of himself. His voice roared out wildly.
‘ALL KNEEL!’
Though startled, Craish’s men obeyed immediately – all but two or three who had thought themselves to be working for Okhramora’s cause. But something supernatural seemed to have happened to the bronze-black robot; his charismatic presence filled the room, overpowering all present, and in seconds not only these but the civilians, too, sank to their knees, brought down by a combination of fear and personal force.
Jasperodus lifted the Crown and brought it slowly down on his head. As the gold touched his metal skull a feeling of ecstasy swept through his brain.
‘I, I, I am your King!’ he proclaimed, lifting his voice so that it resonated in everyone’s consciousness. ‘I am the sole initiator of my deeds, architect of your destinies!’
Craish set up a cry which was echoed in frightened tones by the others. ‘Long live the King!’
Jasperodus sank back majestically to seat himself upon the throne and looked upon his minions, his head rotating slowly, his eyes glaring red with power and ferocity.
Moments later another soldier came into the Throne Room. He seemed astonished by what he saw, but managed to splutter out his message.
‘King Zhorm has entered the palace, Commander!’
‘And where is he?’
‘He was seen to make directly for the nursery, Commander.’
Jasperodus nodded. That would naturally be his target. He had three small children, two boys and a girl, between the ages of five and ten.
He rose from the throne. ‘Put these hangers-on of Okhramora’s under lock and key,’ he said to Craish. ‘What follows, I must do alone.’
He left the Throne Room, laying aside the Crown, and made his way through the palace. The corridors were silent and dim, empty except for an occasional sentry at an intersection. He was near the nursery when a movement ahead caused him to halt and peer suspiciously.
Major Cree Inwing was lurking in the shadows, probably not realising he was visible to Jasperodus’ spectrum-shifting vision.
‘Show yourself, Major, or you’re as good as dead,’ Jasperodus threatened.
Major Inwing slipped into the feeble light, his face pale. ‘I am alone and unarmed,’ he said curtly.
Jasperodus studied the other’s face. There was a brisk but open quality to it that he found likable; however, Inwing was also too loyal to be drawn into treasonable plots, and so he had left him out of his machinations.
‘How did you get here?’ he demanded. ‘I thought I had you detained in the officers’ quarters.’
‘True, but I escaped. Mutiny is an ugly thing.’ Jasperodus saw that Inwing’s arm was bloody where a bullet had nicked it. ‘I have to admit that I misjudged you badly, Commander. All this is Prince Okhramora’s work, I suppose?’
Jasperodus did not reply to the question. ‘I have word that Zhorm is in the nursery,’ he said. ‘You, I imagine, know that also.’
Inwing went even whiter, and Jasperodus saw that he was sweating. ‘What do you intend?’ he said quickly. ‘No – it’s too obvious. Trust Okhramora to use you for work like that.’ His voice was heavy with contempt.
‘It would be folly to do otherwise. My throne would never be safe while Zhorm and his children live.’
‘The children too?’ Inwing seemed not to notice how Jasperodus framed the statement in his revulsion for its main import. ‘You can’t do it, Commander – it’s going too far. Not even you can do it, whatever you are. You mustn’t do it.’ The young Major was pleading with him now.
‘I see no great difficulty,’ Jasperodus replied, and made to move on.
‘Wait …’ Inwing stepped in his path, ‘How do you think the people will take to knowing that their King has been murdered? Think of that.’
‘Again I see no great difficulty,’ Jasperodus answered. He wondered why he lingered to talk to Inwing, instead of getting on with his business. Nevertheless he went on: ‘A small, compact armed force is all that is necessary to hold down a country the size of Gordona. Such a force of men can always be raised, if there are suitable inducements.’
Inwing’s face looked tragic as he recognised the logic of the argument. But he made one last try. ‘Listen, Commander, your control of the country will be much easier if you have the whole of the Guard with you. I can give you that: you know that at least half the men will follow my lead when it comes to a showdown. I’ll serve you, faithfully, absolutely faithfully – you or your master – for the rest of my life. I swear it. My only condition is that King Zhorm and his family must be allowed to go with their lives.’
Inwing’s popularity was already a factor in Jasperodus’ mind. ‘You are previously sworn to serve King Zhorm,’ he pointed out.
‘I can do him no greater service than to strike this bargain with you,’ Inwing retorted. But suddenly Jasperodus’ obduracy seemed to come home to him and he became angry and despairing. ‘It’s hopeless, isn’t it?’ he sneered, looking as though he were about to spit. ‘Here I am trying to appeal to your better nature! You may be clever, but you’re a robot – there’s nothing to appeal to in that dead brain.’
Jasperodus shoved him aside and strode onwards.
Finding the nursery door locked, he smashed it inwards and surveyed the scene inside.
Two nurses were hurriedly dressing the children, who seemed sleepy and upset. Zhorm was on his knees, helping them. At Jasperodus’ intrusion he swung round with a glare of fear and hatred, clutching an impotent pistol.
The robot’s gaze flicked quickly around the nursery: the beds on which the children slept, the toys strewn around the floor, the colourful pictures of soldiers and animals on the walls.
He had not made any decision as to how he would act; but when he spoke the words came out of his mouth as if unbidden.
‘You will take your family and leave Gordona forever. Do you hear me, Zhorm? Forever! My men will be here in ten minutes to take you to the border. Be ready!’
He stormed away, ignoring the anxious Cree Inwing as he swept past him. But further along the corridor his path was blocked by a distraught Padua, who looked at him accusingly.
‘I helped you, Jasperodus. You would be junk without me. And now you have betrayed my trust to an unimaginable degree!’
Jasperodus could not help but give vent to a low, ugly laugh. ‘You are the robotician, Padua. I am merely a mechanism. You should have known of my future conduct in advance, and therefore your criticism is misplaced.’
6
Hands, soft and caressing, moved all over him, paying close attention to every inch of his body surface. Jasperodus lay passively, concentrating on the pl
easant sensations.
The girl was the same red-head who had helped to clean him that first time nearly two years ago. Now that he was master of the royal household she had volunteered to perform the service daily, cleaning and polishing him so as to preserve his appearance of gleaming majesty. She plainly enjoyed the task, getting some degree of arousal from it. Sometimes her breathing would deepen and occasionally, when lingering around the box-like bulge at the divide of his legs, she would seem to become momentarily frantic and her hand would pummel the air, as though manipulating the missing phallus.
Masculinity, thought Jasperodus. Apparently he exuded masculinity. How a machine could possess such a quality was presumably baffling, but for some reason he did.
He, of course, failed to share her excitement. Sexuality was still a mystery to him: the sensations were deliciously soothing, but otherwise neutral.
‘Are you pleased, Lord?’ she asked in an eager voice. And suddenly she clambered over his body to lie on him full length, pressing her pelvis down on him.
He pushed her off and stood up. He did not like to be reminded of his deficiencies.
Stepping to his nearby office, he found Craish and Cree Inwing waiting for him. Foreseeably, the news they brought was unsettling.
‘There is little doubt that the main attack will come tomorrow, if not tonight,’ Inwing told him, explicating over a map that was laid out on a table. ‘Here is Zhorm and his force, and here are we, camped outside the town of Fludd. We are under-strength, owing to the necessity of posting forces in other parts of the country to forestall the rebellions that are expected.’
Jasperodus nodded, inspecting the map with scant interest. As he had anticipated, his double impetuosity – in seizing the crown prematurely, and in afterwards sparing Zhorm – had borne troublesome fruit. It had been necessary to hold down Gordona by forceful means, using the methods of a police state, and the population was in consequence discontented. This had made it easier for Zhorm, having taken refuge in a neighbouring kingdom, to win support for his cause. Around the nucleus of a small foreign force loaned to him by his host monarch he had gathered together enough armed loyalists to invade the country and was proceeding in fair order.
Cree Inwing had been as good as his word; Jasperodus had not once needed to remind him of his oath. He had organised the policing of the kingdom, weeded out the diehard elements in the Guard and won over all the rest. He had automatically risen to be Commander of the Guard – Craish was his Second-in-Command – and now, in an ironic twist of events, he was fighting with Jasperodus against Zhorm himself.
‘The dispositions seem satisfactory,’ Jasperodus announced. ‘All is in order; we can hold them.’ Privately he reckoned the chances to be about fifty-fifty. He was unhappily aware that the intensity of his own enthusiasm would be the factor most decisive for the outcome.
‘Has Your Majesty any special instructions regarding public order?’ Inwing asked. ‘There are bound to be local uprisings.’
‘The main thing is to break Zhorm’s assault,’ Jasperodus replied. ‘Afterwards your bully-boys can always put down any other trouble – eh, Craish?’
Craish nodded, grinning.
‘In that case we will repair directly to Fludd,’ Inwing said stiffly.
Jasperodus made a vague gesture. ‘Craish, you go. Inwing can stay here for a while and we shall travel to Fludd together.’ His voice fell to a mutter. ‘We may as well entertain ourselves while we can.’
Inwing looked surprised and puzzled, but said nothing. Craish saluted and departed.
Contesting thoughts flitted through Jasperodus’ mind. He glanced around his office, and noticed for the first time how desultory, how temporary, everything looked. Chaotic piles of documents and lists littered the tables that had been crammed into the room with no regard for their ordered arrangement. There were not even any chairs, since he was equally at ease standing, and only one inadequate filing-cabinet.
Why had he been so careless about his daily working environment? Had the sense of urgency left him once he had attained his object? No, that could not be. He would have known it …
He motioned Inwing to follow him. In the long corridor outside all the drapes were flapping violently in the damp gusts of wind that were coming through the open windows. The evening air was heavy with threatened thunder, and he told himself that the weather would be too bad for Zhorm to attack tonight.
The banqueting hall, however, was more cheerful. A wood-burning fire had been lit in the huge fireplace and the audience that had already gathered made a lively contrast to the stream of dour officers and ministers he had been receiving all day. He settled himself on a wrought-iron chair overlooking the assembly, then signalled for the entertainment to begin.
The players were that same group of travelling entertainers who had figured, albeit peripherally, in his seizure of power. It was not by their own choice that they still performed for his court; he had refused to let them leave Gordona, wishing to sample their wares for himself but up until now finding little time for it. They accepted their enforced stay with equanimity, which suggested that they had met this kind of cavalier treatment before.
They bowed and set up their apparatus, a tripod surmounted by an arrangement of small tubes at various angles, emitting pencil-thin beams of coloured light.
Suddenly the cleared space in the centre of the hall sprang to life. In place of emptiness was a market place with people moving about it.
The illusion was complete: the picture had colour, depth and parallax, so that it presented a different aspect if viewed from a different angle. The scene betokened some ancient time, to judge from the architecture and the costumes; into it walked living, flesh-and-blood actors from the players’ troupe.
Neither the eye nor the ear could tell which of the characters were real and which were projected by the laser device – except that occasionally the projector produced special effects, flattening the picture into a plane, or into a receding series of planes, against which the living actors stood out starkly. But even this could be achieved by imagery alone. Only when the living actors emerged from the picture and approached the audience to deliver monologues did they truly reveal their presence.
The play’s dramatic effect was heightened by the fact that the key characters were all acted live, and occasionally emerged from the scene, while the minor ones were images only. Jasperodus found it totally absorbing. It was written, he guessed, by some author of antiquity, and unfolded in dazzling language a story of dukes and princes, of ill-fated lovers from hostile houses. Inwardly he congratulated the inventor of this type of drama, as well as of the device itself. But then such marvels were probably common out in the East; this thought reminded him of how recently he had been born. For all he had done, he had not yet penetrated very far into the world.
The drama ended. The substantial-seeming scenes vanished, leaving behind a handful of actors standing on bare boards. They bowed low to Jasperodus.
‘Excellent!’ Jasperodus commended. ‘A fine performance!’ He would have been content to mull over the play for a while, but an oldster with a bushy white beard slid into view.
‘And now, Your Majesty, permit us to present views of the distant past. These images have been preserved from the Age of Tergov!’
He attended to the laser device. In the space recently occupied by the drama another scene sprang into being. This time it was a still, showing an aerial view of part of a city so vast and magnificent that all present gasped.
‘These pictures are a little smudged because the holograms lay for centuries in the soil before being unearthed,’ the spry old man explained. ‘Here is Pekengu, one of the Four Capital Cities of the Rule of Tergov. When this hologram was taken Tansiann was but an unimportant town of moderate size. Pekengu itself is now little more than a sad shell of ruins, though still inhabited.’ The projector clicked; a second scene appeared. ‘Here we see another of the Four Capitals: Pacifica, the floating city on the Great Ea
st Sea. Pacifica was fifty miles across, and its population was two hundred million. The great central shaft you see extended half a mile below the surface of the ocean and two miles into the air.’ The expositor continued to give more facts about the ancient capital, now lying wrecked on the bed of the ocean, and then switched to perhaps the best of his pictures. ‘Here is a view of one of the most consummate architectural triumphs of all time: the Temple of the Brotherhood of Man at Pekengu. Parts of this magnificent edifice still remain, notably the north wall. This picture is believed to have been taken about a hundred years after the temple was built.’
Jasperodus gazed enthralled at the gigantic building. He had never imagined anything even remotely like it. Its central feature was a massive dome about whose middle floated a girdle of clouds, so immense was it. The lower parts of the dome seemed to cascade away into mounds, waves, traceries and runs that spilled and tumbled out over the ground, all seeming to hang from the floating upper mass rather than to support it.
‘Can you show us the inside of this building also?’ he demanded excitedly.
‘Alas, no. Pictures of the interior do exist, so I have heard, but I have none in my collection.’
The expositor exhibited his remaining pictures: the impressively developed territories on Mars; the vast sea barrage that, in those days, altered continental climates by controlling oceanic currents; a stupendous space community that swept through the solar system on an elongated elliptical path so as regularly to cross the orbits of all the planets; a view of Saturn seen over the towers of a town on Tethys, one of its inner satellites.
‘These,’ the expositor told them, ‘are examples of the bygone glory that the Emperor Charrane seeks to revive.’
The sights left Jasperodus stirred and agitated. Here indeed were accomplishments of a high order! He began to feel an immense admiration for the Old Empire and regretted that he could not have lived in the former time.
Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus: The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis Page 8