East of Ealing

27

Professor Slocombe looked up towards the great ormolu mantel-clock and nodded his old head gently in time to the pendulum’s swing. “Good luck, Norman,” he said. Drawing his gaze from the antique timepiece, he turned to stare out through the open French windows. There, in the all-too-near distance, the great black shaft of the Lateinos and Romiith building obscenely scarred the two-hundred-year-old skyline. Its upper reaches were lost high amongst gathering stormclouds. The aura of undiluted evil pressed out from it, seeking to penetrate the very room. The old man shuddered briefly and drew the windows shut. Norman’s homemade double laid aside a bound volume of da Vinci, penned in the crooked mirror-Latin of the great man himself, and peered quizzically towards the Professor.

“I know what you are thinking,” the scholar said. “He is safe thus far, so much is already known to me. But as to the return trip, all depends upon the calculations. It is all in the numbers. We can only offer our prayers.”

“Prayers?”

“They offer some comfort.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said the robot, somewhat brusquely. “Norman did not see fit to log such concepts into my data banks.”

Professor Slocombe watched the mechanical man with unguarded interest. “I should really like to know exactly what you do feel.”

“I feel texture. I think, therefore I am. Or so I have been informed. Every cloud has a silver lining I was also told, and a trouble shared is a bird in the…”

“Yes, indeed. But what causes you to react? How do you arrive at decisions? What motivates you?”

“Impetus. I react as I have been programmed to do. Upon information received, as the boys in blue will have it.”

“Do you believe then that this is how the other duplicates function?”

“Certainly not.” Something approaching pride entered the robot’s voice. “They are merely receivers, created solely to receive and to collect information and perform their tasks. The mainframe of the great computer does all their thinking for them. Clockwork dummies, that’s all they are.”

“Interesting,” said Professor Slocombe.

“You spend a great deal of time in idle speculation,” the robot observed, “considering the gravity of the situation. You seek to detect human emotion in me. I might do the same to you.”

Professor Slocombe chuckled delightedly. “There are more wheels currently in motion than the one which spins in your chest,” said he. “Even now, great forces are beginning to stir elsewhere in the parish.”