The Rod of Light

10

When in the service of the New Empire, Jasperodus had been attached to the Emperor Charrane’s planning staff. In that capacity he had become familiar with the geography of Worldmass, Earth’s greatest continent, and he had become particularly well acquainted with its north-east chunk, for this was the home of the group of states collectively known as the Borgor Alliance, comprising Borgor, Rendare, Kazzakalia, Krasnoy, and a host of smaller nations held in virtual thralldom.

Climatically, the region was peculiar, having undergone several precipitate changes in the past several thousand years. For a brief period it had been equable, somewhere between the last great ice age and the onset of urban civilisation. Then the temperature had fallen, suddenly and catastrophically, gripping the subsoil in permafrost and leaving the landscape a frozen waste for most of the year—difficult to colonise, or even to exploit, despite its immense material resources.

The Rule of Tergov had just as swiftly reversed the area’s fortunes. By a clever piece of geographical engineering, which involved controlling the off-shore ocean currents, a system of warmed inland seas to shift the winds, and a mirror in space to enhance solar radiation, the northeast of Worldmass had once more become temperate. Its population expanded, and it grew wealthy.

Now, with Tergov gone, nature was slowly re-establishing her former regime of cold. The space mirror had long vanished from its orbit, of course, while the sea barrage for directing the warm ocean currents had fallen into ruin. The artificial seas still remained, and these served to trap solar heat, but there was no doubt that the territory was cooling.

In fact this was one reason for the bitter hatred between the Alliance and the New Empire to the south. The Emperor’s advisers were of the view that the northern peoples perceived their countries to be on the verge of becoming virtually uninhabitable. The Emperor had continually been warned (and not without justification) that the Borgors planned to conquer the south and transfer their populations there.

Just the same, when Jasperodus had suggested easing the north’s anxiety by no longer preventing Borgor from installing a new space mirror, the idea had been furiously rejected.

For hour after hour the small aircraft streaked north, clinging to the landscape like a low-flying bird. If possible Jasperodus wanted to fly into Borgor itself. How he would then gain his ends, and escape being destroyed minutes after leaving the plane, he was not sure. His intention at present was simply to fly straight to the capital, Breshk, put down on the landing field, announce himself and try to persuade the Borgor military of the seriousness of his mission….

He skirted the Geeb Sea so that he could approach from the south-west, reasoning that the Borgors probably experienced little trouble from that direction. It was certain that the Alliance was an in-depth hedgehog of radar tracking stations, but he doubted that they would pick him up: the plane’s radar-absorbing alloy was a Gargan Cult invention, and he did not think humans possessed it. At any rate it was unheard of when he left the New Empire. As for visual sightings, once in Alliance territory he could expect to pass without notice in the general air traffic.

Night fell and the towns dotting the steppe grew more numerous. He became unsure of his surroundings, the control panel having no map and only a crude compass, but he thought he had overflown Rendare and crossed the border into Borgor.

It was then that his sketchy plan fell to pieces. His radar picked up three blips, approaching fast. They veered, seeming to lose him, then to find him again, and came directly on.

He switched on his radio, phasing rapidly through the frequencies until he heard the pilots talking in the guttural accents of Borgor, whose language was a particularly strangled dialect of the common speech of Old Tergov.

Over the fading carrier wave came a young male voice. ‘What do you mean, you can’t see him? We can see him.’

Presumably the speaker was talking to a radar station. His own tail glare, Jasperodus realized, was making him noticeable in the darkness. Although the reaction gases did not actually burn, they were hot enough to make the ventura glow after a while. Probably he had been spotted from the ground.

Another, less distinct voice broke in. ‘Treat as hostile. Engage and destroy.’

Did the Borgors treat every unidentified aircraft in this way? Jasperodus swung hard over, wondering if he could outrun his pursuers. His plane was armed, with missiles that could lock on a visual or radar image, but he did not want to commit a hostile act.

Best would be to put down somewhere, preferably somewhere with cover. He switched to infra-red vision and began looking for one of the infrequent forested areas. The three interceptors fanned out, seeking to box him in. They were as fast as he was, and they evidently knew their business.

A rocket arrowed after him, twisting and turning as he snaked in an effort to throw it off. A brief explosion flung up his tail. The missile, following the heat of his exhaust, hadn’t actually struck; it was on a proximity fuse.

He brought the nose up just in time to avoid a forty-degree impact with the steppe. He had suffered damage; the rudder was not responding well.

And above him, the Borgors were ready to pounce.

Another missile hurtled past the canopy to vent its spite on the ground below. Then, ahead and to the left, Jasperodus saw a flickering infra-red glare on the horizon. It resolved itself as it approached into scattered lights, and on his returning to the normal spectrum there emerged a scene of industry: buildings, roads, heaps of refuse, and machine-like installations.

It was a mine of some kind. A third missile exploded, tearing off a piece of wing. But Jasperodus had already found his chosen landing place: a long adit trench that descended at a shallow angle into the ground.

Attempting to land vertically would only make him an easy target. Flaps down, he slanted into the trench, maintaining control despite the damaged wings. Its sides went past him in a blur, lined with chains and belts as he skimmed along it, and in seconds he was below ground where it became a square tunnel down which he plunged.

Something—roof supports or the narrowing walls of the tunnel—ripped off the plane’s wings. He had not lowered the undercarriage and the aircraft’s belly screeched along a metal ramp, then seemed to encounter a muck-like surface. He was in darkness, lunging into the earth with the plane breaking up all around him.

A human would have been killed instantly. Jasperodus was saved from damage by the mesh retainer that held him in his seat, keeping him as immobile as a piece of solid steel. But suddenly its moorings snapped. He shot forward headfirst, smashing into the canopy and lodging halfway through it.

The wrecked plane had come to a stop. There was no visible light, and even with infra-red vision he could gain only a hazy idea of his surroundings. He struggled through the shattered canopy and scrambled down the buckled nose to the floor of the tunnel.

It was wet, thick with slurry. He stumbled further down the slope, deciding to put some distance between himself and the scene of the crash-landing, and then he stopped as he saw a number of bobbing lights in the distance.

A group of figures was approaching slowly. The figures were almost impossible to discern at first, since the lights they carried were forward-facing beams fastened to their heads. Three were humans in bulky clothing, the headlamps fixed to smudged white protective helmets. Two others were robots, one crudely constructed, built for brute strength—the sort of construct one would expect the Borgors to use. The other was slighter and more sophisticated-looking. He had, Jasperodus judged, been made by a robotician of skill.

He noted with interest that the largest of the men also carried, swinging from his waist, what looked like an old-fashioned oil lamp enclosed in a wire mesh, but whose light was so feeble he could not understand what it was for.

The group stopped, looking from Jasperodus to the torn fuselage that all but blocked the tunnel. Their headlamp beams weaved to and fro, cutting paths through the dust that thickened the air. Jasperodus’ surroundings became more clear by their light. Curved girders supported the roof. The tunnel walls were rough greyish earth, interspersed with chunks of rock.

The smell of the place was dank and mineral-like: the smell of the earth’s bowels.

Quite obviously the adit’s chief use was for transporting material out of the mine. On either side conveyor belts, stilled now, were piled with soft grey rock. Two more belts, empty, were stationed inward, while the tunnel’s centre was occupied by a metal chain-ramp, a travelator of some sort.

In an expression of wearied disgust, the big man with the oil lamp lifted his eyebrows and puffed out his cheeks. He uttered a Borgor oath.

‘Just look at that krazzin’ mess!’

One of his companions was muttering in amazement. ‘It’s a krazzin’ plane!’

Slowly the three men trudged forward and jumped up to peer into the cockpit. Finding it empty, they glanced over the tunnel floor, even to the roof.

Their leader returned to Jasperodus. ‘Did you see this happen?’

After hesitation, Jasperodus nodded.

‘Where’s the krazzin’ pilot?’

Jasperodus stared, thinking it safer not to reply.

The others came up. ‘He must have ejected before he came down,’ one said. ‘Or else he’s gone deeper in.’

‘Nah, we would have seen him. He ejected but the canopy stayed on, the poor krazzin’ bastard. What a krazzin’ mess! It’ll take krazzin’ hours to clear this lot up. We’ll have to tip into the old workings.’

It struck Jasperodus how imperturbably the miners viewed the event. The leader’s complaining was no more than ritualistic grumbling. They were like ants: stolid, matter-of-fact manipulators of raw nature. In hours they would have dragged out the remains of the plane, repaired the belts and chain-ramp, and have everything functioning normally.

‘Where’s your lamp,’ the leader said suddenly, glaring at him.

Jasperodus made no answer except to grope at his forehead as though surprised to find nothing there.

‘Oh, krazzin’ heck. What team are you supposed to be with? What are you doing here, anyway? Hey, you—’ the man beckoned impatiently to the smaller of the two constructs—‘take this toy soldier to Number Two rip, they’re short there. Come on, the rest of you, we’d better see about getting this krazzin’ lot sorted out.’

He turned and trudged up the tunnel, followed by the others. The robot who was left with Jasperodus looked him over briefly.

‘Are you new here?’ he asked him mildly. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you before.’

‘Very new,’ Jasperodus told him.

‘And not Borgor-made, either. Captured, like me, I presume? Well, don’t think of trying to get out of here. There’s nowhere to go. You shouldn’t have lost your lamp, by the way. You need it down here. Follow me.’

With only the other’s lamp to see by, Jasperodus found that the going was not easy and he had to step carefully. His companion, he noticed, spoke with a southern accent. Neither did he look like a manual-labour robot. His visage was refined, his limbs slender.

‘What shall I call you?’

‘There’s no need for names here. My master used to call me Yoshibo.’

‘You weren’t a free construct, then?’

‘A wild robot, you mean? I should think not!’ Yoshibo sounded offended. ‘I belonged to the household of a senator chief of Mungold, a protectorate on the border of the New Empire—the border as it was then, I should say. I was tutor to the senator’s children.’ A note of pride entered Yoshibo’s voice, to be replaced by sadness. ‘But that was more than twenty years ago, as near as I can judge by counting shifts. I was taken during one of the sweeps south, and have been here ever since.’

The slope of the passage was getting steeper. They went on for a considerable time, until Jasperodus judged they were about a quarter of a mile underground. Side tunnels began to appear, usually branching off at a narrow angle. Eventually Yoshibo took one of these.

At its entrance some bogie-mounted metal tubs and a couple of flatbeds lay on railway tracks which disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. ‘A belt has not been installed here yet,’ Yoshibo murmured, as if by way of explanation. ‘That will have to wait until after the main supplies have been got through.’

‘What is mined here?’ Jasperodus asked suddenly.

‘You don’t even know that?’ Yoshibo stopped to stare at him. ‘We mine coal.’

Coal. Jasperodus was intrigued, almost amused. He knew of the stuff, of course. It was a combustible soft black rock, though occasionally brown, which was the petrified remains of packed and decayed vegetation laid down millions of years ago. It was, in fact, the state of decay immediately preceding liquid oil. Burned in the manner of wood, it could be used as a fuel. ‘Cooked’ in a certain way, it could yield a variety of useful substances.

As with oil, the irreplaceable natural deposits had been consumed voraciously in the earlier age. There was no coal in the south. But he had heard that a little of it still remained in the north, and that the Borgors used it to fire one or two power stations. The reason for this anachronism was that the mineral riches of northern Worldmass had been extracted at a relatively late date. Technology had learned to do without natural hydrocarbons before every last particle was gone.

How grimed and caked Yoshibo was, Jasperodus noticed. And how strange it was to see men working in an environment as dangerous as mining undoubtedly was. If this mine had been in the New Empire it would have been very nearly all robot-operated.

But then, the Borgors had a real fear of construct intelligence. In the south, a demand for—say—shoes resulted in androform robots, capable of thought and feeling, being put to work at last, alongside a human owner. In Borgor it resulted in a mechanised factory which was like a low-grade robot taken to bits: idiot servomechanisms with only vestiges of self-direction, lacking any higher functions.

It was widely believed in the south that the Borgor Alliance refused to use robots at all. This, of course, was not true. But those few self-directed constructs produced in Borgor did tend to be travesties of the robotic art, unable, for instance, to engage in any but the most childish conversation. Curious anomalies could issue from this limitation: in robotic, as in organic intelligence, there was an inverse ratio between intelligence and functional accuracy. A very simple robot, like those made in Borgor, could have perfect motor skills, or perfect computational ability; could, for instance, be made unbeatable in the countless games of skill that fascinated humans: could poke balls about a table with a stick more superbly than any merely human poker of balls, as an example. But the more intelligent the robot, the more it was liable to err like a human.

Jasperodus believed that the cause of Borgor’s anti-robot prejudice lay in its social order. Borgor and her allies were feudal. Each district was effectively the hereditary property of a ‘commissary’ who directed all labour within his domain and even presided over the personal lives of his social inferiors. A society so highly cohesive gave much satisfaction to those who wielded power in it, and the hierarchy of relationships was not to be weakened by admitting machines into the rank order. In the New Empire, on the other hand, free robots had become just one more social class, the lowest of all.

‘I suppose most of the robots here are captured from the south?’ he queried. ‘Borgor constructs wouldn’t be much use, on the whole.’

‘One cannot be stupid underground,’ Yoshibo agreed. ‘But the Borgors can make clever robots if they want to. Only a few of us are captured; the rest are Borgors, specially made for the job. They are activated in the mine and know of no other existence, though many are of nearly average intelligence. We shall have to crawl through here.’

Ahead of them the tunnel had been almost flattened by the pressure of the earth lying above it, buckling the arc-shaped girders. The floor, too, seemed to have been forced upward to meet the roof, twisting the railway tracks. Only a narrow gap remained. Following Yoshibo’s example, Jasperodus got down on his hands and knees, dragging himself through the aperture until there was room enough to stand.

‘This section will have to be dinted before the face is opened,’ Yoshibo said, ‘I don’t know why it hasn’t been done already. We are having to route scurry all round the Bospho.’

Jasperodus could only guess at the meaning of the miners’ argot, which Yoshibo spoke with a self-conscious sense of style, except that the Bospho was a mountain in Rendare. Unwilling prisoner or not, Yoshibo had entered into the spirit of his new life.

A sudden loud bang from above made Jasperodus look up in alarm. Yoshibo laughed.

‘Don’t worry about that. It’s only a bit of weight coming on.’

They continued for a further half hour through the network of tunnels, crossing one where a conveyor belt carried a stream of broken rock to an unknown destination, splashing through pools of blackened water, and scrambling through narrow defiles or over obstacles.

They came to the ‘rip’. This turned out to be where a tunnel was being driven forward in search of a new seam of coal. Their arrival was prefaced by the sound of a muffled detonation, and the tunnel filled with billowing smoke and dust.

Yoshibo waited for the smoke to disperse, then pressed forward. From out of side alcoves where they had apparently been taking cover emerged a work gang: several robots directed by a man, carrying at his waist the same type of faintly burning oil lamp Jasperodus had noticed before.

The robots scurried to the end of the tunnel, their combined headlamps making it almost festive with light. Not all were androform: some were scuttling scorpion-like machines which dashed forward and began gathering in the rubble from the explosion with their claw-like front limbs, raking it over their backs, up their outstretched tails and thence to the moving conveyor belt along one wall.

Other robots seized pick-axes and began levering out loosened blocks of rock from the tunnel end, while yet others helped the scorpions, shovelling rubble onto the conveyor or picking up the larger chunks bodily, staggering with them to the belt and heaving them laboriously on. The supervisor, meanwhile, looked on broodingly.

Yoshibo approached timidly. ‘Reporting to the rip, sir.’

Slowly the human turned to him. His face was fat, red and bad-tempered. ‘Get yourself a shovel,’ he growled, then looked at Jasperodus. ‘You too—no, wait. You a southern robot, boy?’

‘Yes sir,’ Jasperodus said.

‘You a smart machine?’

‘I think so, sir.’

‘Know how to handle explosives?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good. Let’s see if you can blow yourself apart like some of these mechanical krazzniks. Take this.’

He stopped to pick up a heavy power drill, throwing it to Jasperodus with a beefy arm. ‘Drill fresh holes for charges. If you don’t know what to do ask that brass one there.’

He nodded to a construct who was toiling at the rock face with a pick-axe. Though his body was as blackened as the others, Jasperodus could just about see, here and there, patches of dirty yellow showing through.

Holding the drill gingerly, he stepped forward to his new occupation.

For the next hundred hours Jasperodus worked almost without pause. Yard by yard the rip was pushed forward. Every eight hours the human foreman was replaced by another, and occasionally other humans would appear and talk to him. But the robots worked without rest, and needed none.

On first being discovered near the plane Jasperodus had had to make a quick decision. The men running the mine would be unsophisticated, and annoyed that he had caused them such trouble. If he had revealed his origins, or even if they had suspected something strange about him, he feared they would consign him straight to a crushing machine, or whatever equivalent they had handy.

On the other hand, every time the foreman received a visit Jasperodus hoped that a search was on for him. He was depending, for rescue, on the plane being examined by military scientists, who would be curious to know why it had not appeared on radar. Once they had realized that there was no ejection mechanism and that the canopy had never been opened, they might start looking for an injured human, for there was nothing to indicate definitely that a robot piloted the plane. Still, if the men who had met him were questioned, the investigators should be able to put two and two together.

Yet nothing happened, and he was obliged to continue to work. Gradually it dawned on him that he had trapped himself in the mine, and that escape might be far from easy.

In his time on the rip there was only one respite. That was when the foreman, for some unknown reason, absented himself. The robots continued to work as before, but soon the pace of work slackened until, when all the rubble was cleared, no one thought of preparing fresh charges and instead the constructs stood around aimlessly.

Some wandered back to the alcoves where the gang sheltered while the charges blew. It was there that Jasperodus found Yoshibo sitting with his back to the wall in the company of the brass robot who had shown him how to drill holes, to insert the explosives, and then to attach detonators.

He joined them, and as he did so whatever conversation was passing between them died.

‘Tell me something,’ Jasperodus asked Yoshibo. ‘What were you doing in the tunnel where we first met? Were you going to the surface?’

‘The surface? Certainly not—what on Earth gives you that idea! We had gone to find out why the conveyors had stopped.’ He paused. ‘If it comes to that, what were you doing there—by yourself, without a headlamp?’

Jasperodus did not answer, and Yoshibo laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you were trying to leave the mine?’

‘Why not?’ Jasperodus said defiantly.

Yoshibo appraised him with head tilted. ‘I have heard wild robots are like this—are you one? They are only properly behaved when there is a human around. Leave them on their own, and they start to have disobedient thoughts! Well I’ve told you before, you’re here for good, so get used to it. Robots are never permitted to leave the mine: it’s an absolute law. And besides, it’s impossible.’

‘Just the same, the tunnel leads to the surface.’

‘The adit? It is heavily guarded. If you wander up there, even by accident, you will be destroyed with no questions asked.’

‘What other exits are there?’

‘None. None at all.’

They were silent, while Jasperodus studied the rock-strewn dirt floor in the light of the headlamp that, after repeated cringing requests to the foreman by Yoshibo, had been provided for him.

Then Yoshibo thumped the side of the brass robot, eliciting a dull clink. ‘Did you hear that? Did you hear this construct mention the surface?’

The other lifted his hands dismissively, and Yoshibo turned to Jasperodus, speaking with a kind of sly seriousness. ‘You can be of assistance to me. I have been trying to educate this robot. Brass is Borgor-made, and like the others he was brought into the mine before his activation. Quite reasonably, you might suppose, he believes the world into which he was born to be the only that exists, but I have been trying to enlighten him. Back up my words, Jasperodus. Tell him of the world that exists above ground—the world where the humans live, where there are no tunnels, only an endless surface on which one can walk as far as one likes without impediment, where there is no roof, only endless space overhead. Tell him that no one carries a headlamp: the world is already filled with light and the vision extends automatically for as far as the eye can reach. These Borgor robots seem unable to believe in the sun—darkness and dirt is all they can conceive of. So try to tell him, Jasperodus.’

Jasperodus looked at Brass. His riveted, battered body spoke of decades of work. Even his face was dented, the eyes peering blearily from between wads of dried muck. Three fingers of his left hand were missing as a result of some accident.

‘What Yoshibo tells you is true,’ he said neutrally. ‘It is a world of light. Beside it, this is a dark, poky hole.’

Brass shook his head glumly. ‘Stories, stories. Can I be shown this world? No, never. It is only made of words. By contrast life is made up of experience.’ He picked up a piece of rock, clenched it in his fist, then threw it in a corner. ‘And experience is what we see around us.’

‘Then you think we are lying, when we tell you we came from this world?’

‘Lying, you have had a brainstorm, it is a tale passed from robot to robot—what does it matter? It is too fantastical to take seriously. Show this upper world to me—then I will believe.’

‘The truth is,’ Yoshibo said quietly, ‘that Brass is unable to visualise what we are describing.’

‘What of the humans?’ Jasperodus pressed him. ‘Where do they go to, when they leave the mine by way of the adit?’

‘Naturally they do not wish to spend their pleasure hours with us robots. They go to a better part of the mine, probably where there is not so much dust in the air.’ He waved his hand, causing the ever-sifting particles to waver. ‘The humans do not like dust. It damages their lungs.’

Just then the foreman returned, and with a roar of rage sent the robots rushing back to their labours.

Jasperodus found little time for discussion after that. Indeed, he found himself becoming engrossed in the drive to find coal. The time came when a cheer went up among men and robots alike as, instead of grey rock and the occasional heavy lumps of ironstone, black coal began to show itself, though disappointingly the seam was only four feet thick. Jasperodus then watched in fascination as the ‘face’—the cutting surface—was set up. The tunnel was broadened into a gallery, its roof supported by ‘walking supports’, steel pillars that juddered forward inches at a time as the face progressed. The cutting machine, mounted on a track that similarly could edge forward, traversed from one end of the coal face to the other, churning through the solid black hydrocarbon and tumbling it onto a conveyor. Oddly, it was not robotised itself but was operated by small, monkey-like robots that could skip about the confined space. At various times Jasperodus was to see three of them caught up in the cutting machine and chewed to junk.

With the rip finished, Jasperodus was put to work on other tasks and came to know a great deal about the archaic business of coal mining. He was allocated to ‘supplies’, manhandling needed equipment through the tunnels to the ‘gates’, as all working parts of the mine were called, hauling it on flatbeds but sometimes having to manoeuvre arced girders and sections of rail through narrow gaps where the tunnels had been squashed nearly flat by earth pressure. With drill, pick and shovel he dug those tunnels out again. He laid new tracks and conveyor belts. He worked as ‘switchman’, watching over the places where one belt fell onto another and making sure that the crossover did not get clogged up with overflow—a very boring occupation. He serviced the pumps that sucked out the constantly-collecting water everyone was obliged to wade through in places.

He solved the mystery of the oil lamps the foremen carried. They were to warn the air-breathing humans when they were in a place where the oxygen content was dangerously low. Another danger came from methane and from coal dust: mixed with air, they made explosive mixtures. That was why there were no fixed lights in the mine, with the attendant risk of sparking should they be damaged. The electric headlamps were sealed and isotope-powered, while the oil lamps were a special kind of safety lamp whose flame could not pass beyond its mesh guard.

In some passages a powerful draught could be felt. As he moved about the mine, always in the company of others, Jasperodus occasionally encountered air-doors which blocked off one or other of the maze of tunnels. A crowbar was usually left lying near one of these doors to prize it open if anyone needed to go through: sometimes the combined strength of two or three men or robots was needed to shift a door against the differential air pressure. The purpose of the doors, he gathered, was to control the flow of air through the mine. Presumably there was an air-pumping machine somewhere to ensure that the humans had something to breathe.

It was incredible how much was involved in obtaining what was only a modest amount of a crude combustible fuel… but for the use of robots, it was hard to see how the enterprise could ever have been made cost-effective.

Indeed, was it not needlessly elaborate? Jasperodus, when his mind was not distracted by the task in hand, wondered how else the coal field might be exploited. Why not drill shafts straight down to a seam, pump in oxygen, and burn the coal in situ, drawing off the hot gases through an accompanying flue to an on-site power station? Or send down machines to grind it all to dust, which could then be vacuumed up….

Still thinking of escape, he began to draw a mental map of the mine, even though much of it was disused and therefore out of bounds to him. To begin with he had entertained various schemes for smuggling himself through the adit, but Yoshibo had managed to convince him of their unfeasibility. Once underground, the robots were worked to destruction, and not even their defunct carcases were allowed through the screening process at the head of the mine. Instead, they were dismantled and the pieces simply left lying around.

Time passed. Nine months, according to Yoshibo, who meticulously kept count. At first Jasperodus had tried to keep himself clean, washing dirt and dust from his body with water from the thick muddy pools. But eventually he gave up, and became as caked and grimed as the others, as though he had turned to rock.

Then came a break in the pace of work. The face opened up by Number Two rip gave out, as did one of the other three faces. The trouble was that the region was faulted geologically: earth movements in past ages had broken up the seams, making them difficult to work. In fact the whole field had probably been bypassed as unsuitable, in the days when Tergov still mined coal.

While the engineers pondered and argued, wondering in which direction to drive next, the temporarily-redundant robots lay about taking their ease. Jasperodus sought out Yoshibo, and ushered him out of sight of the others. He took him a few yards down one of the many disused passages known as airways—actually the empty and silent approaches to worked-out faces, but functioning now only as part of the air-circulation system.

‘You told me once that escape from here is impossible,’ he said. ‘You were wrong. There is another way out.’

‘Oh? And where is that, do you think?’ Yoshibo stared at the wall to show he was unimpressed.

For answer Jasperodus pointed down the inky black tunnel. ‘It stands to reason. Two reasons, in fact. The first is the air supply. For air to move through the mine, it must enter at one place and leave at another. Preferably the two points should be at opposite ends of the workings—if they were both near the entrance the current would too easily short-circuit. Therefore there is an upshaft on the other side of the mine, installed in the old workings when mining first began. That is where the air pump will be.’

‘Yes, you may be right,’ Yoshibo admitted after he had digested this argument. ‘But even if one could find it, what use would it be? The upshaft may well be a quarter of a mile deep, for that is our present depth. No one could climb such a shaft’

‘That is where reason number two comes in. What would happen to the humans down here if some accident closed off the adit and there was no time to wait for rescue?’

‘They would all die.’

‘No. These humans are experts. They would never trust their lives to one exit. There must be another for emergencies—and logically it will be the same that the air goes out by. So the air shaft will have a lift, or at least steps. All we have to do is find it.’

‘Are you seriously thinking…?’

‘Yes, and you can help me. You have been here for twenty years, you told me. You must be acquainted with many of the abandoned workings. Perhaps you can guess the whereabouts of the air shaft.’

Yoshibo backed off. ‘But the field has been worked for more than fifty years. I have no idea where the shaft is, if it exists… this has never occurred to me till now.’

Jasperodus could only attribute this failing to an unwillingness to escape, though robots, of course, would not be particularly mindful of the air circulation system, since they needed none. Jasperodus had pieced together his deductions after about six months, and had cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. But then, it had taken him some time to learn how the mine was engineered.

‘Are there robots who have been here longer than you?’ he asked.

‘Yes, some of the Borgor constructs. Brass may be one of the oldest. He’s been here a long time.’

‘Then recruit him as a guide. Perhaps he knows about the air shaft, even.’

‘Brass is loyal: he would never assist a robot to escape. Besides, getting out of the mine is only the beginning, Jasperodus. Where can one go once above ground? We are in the middle of Borgor! I prefer to stay here, where at least I am useful.’

‘Useful to the enemies of your true masters, Yoshibo!’ snapped Jasperodus. ‘Think back! Where is the senator? Where are his wife and children?’

‘Murdered! All murdered!’ agreed Yoshibo in a strangled tone. ‘My master! My pupils! And yet—’

With a clank, Jasperodus placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘I mean to leave this mine. You will find Brass and bring him to me. That is an order.’

He watched Yoshibo’s muddy yellow eyes flicker. A struggle was taking place in the one-time tutor’s brain. For the past two decades the discipline of the mine had been his only influence—and Jasperodus knew from experience how seductive that ethic could be. He had tried to weaken it by reminding Yoshibo of his former life. Mainly, though, he was counting on being able to elicit the automatic obedience proper to the normal construct.

‘Very well, Jasperodus,’ Yoshibo said meekly, the struggle over. ‘I will go now, and find Brass.’

‘Do not tell him we plan an escape, of course, Jasperodus said pensively. ‘Do not mention the air shaft at all. Tell him we are going to show him the sun. Tell him we can prove that a world exists above ground. Will that bring him here?’

Yoshibo brightened. ‘Yes, it will. And of course it is true! Put that way, there can be no objection to our coopting him! I am merely bringing the truth to Brass!’

So saying, he hurried off. Jasperodus squatted down on his haunches, his back to the rock wall. He could not switch off the lamp that was clamped to his skull by a headband; so he removed it and buried its face in the dust of the tunnel floor.

In the darkness, he waited. Hours passed, before there were footsteps and he saw the light of two beams.

It was Yoshibo and a companion: as promised, Brass. Jasperodus rose, retrieving his lamp and fastening it in place.

‘Well?’ Brass looked about him challengingly. ‘I see nothing new. All is as before—in fact we should not be here—’

‘Wait,’ said Jasperodus. ‘Wait.’ He looked into their faces one by one as they stood close together. The three headlamps, turned inwards from the corners of a triangle, made a conspiratorial cache of light. ‘Yoshibo told you why I sent for you?’

‘He said he could show me this fantastic world he tries to convince me of, where all is light.’

‘That is so. I will show you the world. You shall enter it. But first you must leave this world.’

He paused, letting his words sink in, then continued quietly: ‘I understand you know about all parts of the mine. Including the abandoned parts.’

‘I know something, it is true.’

‘Brass, in the old workings there is a secret way to the upper world. Together we can find it.’

Brass shook his had. ‘It is not permitted to enter the old workings. Yoshibo was wrong even to bring me here. We are transgressing—’

‘Listen to me. I want you to think back to your early life. Think to when you were first activated. The mine must have been smaller then than it is now.’

‘Smaller in one way. The working part isn’t much bigger today than it was then.’

‘But it spreads further.’

‘That is because there are so many old workings.’

‘And could you find your way about those workings?’

‘Oh, it wouldn’t be permitted,’ Brass said, waving his head about in knowledgeable fashion. ‘Not unless a foreman ordered it.’

‘Well, listen. How did the coal and scurry leave the mine in those days?’

‘The same way. Except the adit came to a different place.’

‘At the opposite end of the workings from the adit, there was another place where there was an engine, wasn’t there? A place where you weren’t permitted to go. Isn’t that so?’

‘We had lots of engines, just like it is now.’

‘This was a special place where no work was done, except for occasional maintenance. Perhaps it was closed off by a door, with just a vent for air to go through. Do you remember it?’

Brass thought for a moment, then nodded slowly. ‘Yes, it was at the other end. Robots never went there, but I remember hearing the engine. It was a pump. Whenever there was a new foreman the others took him in there, but they usually didn’t stay long.’

That was it! Jasperodus thought with excitement. A newcomer to the mine would be shown the emergency exit and how to use it.

‘Was there a strong draught of air near that place?’ he asked. Brass only stared at him. He reminded himself that the Borgor robot would not have the sensitivity to feel air currents. His body shell was probably only crudely sensored.

‘A funny thing,’ Brass said thoughtfully. ‘I saw a foreman come out of the forbidden place once. But I hadn’t seen him go in.’

‘That is because he came down from the upper world, Brass. Now, could you find your way to this pump?’

‘Oh, I don’t suppose it is still there. All the equipment is moved out of abandoned workings.’

‘It is still there,’ Jasperodus assured him. There would be no point in sinking a new air shaft every time the faces changed, and besides, efficient circulation of air was enhanced if proven conduits were used where possible. It was only necessary to keep the airways open. ‘Can you find it?’ he asked.

‘Only if I were ordered to do so.’

‘You are ordered. I order you, and that countermands any previous order. Come, we shall begin the journey.’

He extended an arm to usher the robot along the tunnel. But Brass drew back. ‘Oh no, we are not allowed!’

‘This is an order,’ Jasperodus said harshly. ‘A direct order!’

Brass’ confusion was even greater than Yoshibo’s. The notion of disobedience was practically incomprehensible to him. But never before had he been faced with conflicting demands. His eyes dimmed and almost went out.

Then he tried to make a break for it, lurching back up the tunnel the way he had come. Jasperodus sprang forward and caught him by the wrist. After a brief tussle he flung him further along the passage, standing between him and escape.

He cast a glance behind him. ‘What of you, Yoshibo?’

‘I elect to remain here,’ Yoshibo murmured. ‘The adventure is not to my liking.’

‘Very well—but be sure you do not betray me.’

‘I will try not to, but what if I am asked where you are?’

‘Tell them when you saw me last, but nothing else.’

Perhaps he should junk Yoshibo for safety’s sake, Jasperodus thought. But he was unlikely to be questioned. The foremen were so careless and contemptuous of the robots under their command that he doubted his absence would be noticed at all.

He pushed Brass further down the tunnel, forcing him to walk. Soon the silence deepened: the silence of a way that had not been trodden for years.

Once they were alone together Brass’ resistance evaporated and he became a cooperative guide. For nearly an hour they journeyed through a decrepit maze, past old faces, skirting water-filled pits, treading carefully where Brass suspected the roof supports were unsafe. Jasperodus was glad he had not tried to find his way unaided. It would probably have been the end of him.

They came to an artificial cavern where they climbed a long bank, scrambling up the slag on their hands and knees, listening to the fragments dropping into a pool below. He realized they were mounting nearer to the surface. Soon afterwards, he could feel a quickening of air current, until suddenly there in front of them was a big wire grating, behind which could be seen cables, machinery, and part of a shaft.

Beside it was a metal door, painted green.

Brass stopped and turned to him, shifting uncomfortably.

‘This is it?’ asked Jasperodus.

Brass nodded.

Jasperodus tried the door. It opened easily. Within was a cage. Within the cage, a handle.

He turned to Brass. Simplest would be to send him straight back to his work… but he had been promised the upper world, the world of light. Besides, Jasperodus was curious to know what he would make of it.

He slid open the cage gate. ‘Get inside.’

‘We are going to the upper world?’ asked Brass nervously.

‘Yes, get inside.’

Brass obeyed. Jasperodus followed him. He closed the gate and experimentally moved the lever, to be rewarded with a whirring sound from above.

Smoothly, the cage began to climb.

The ascent did not last long. The lift had been installed when the mine was still relatively shallow. Over the years, the engineers had delved deeper in search of coal.

The Borgor robot was trembling. ‘Don’t worry,’ Jasperodus told him. There’s nothing to be frightened of.’

The lift came to a halt. Through the gate their headlamps shone on another green door, separated by a gap of five feet or so. Opening the cage, Jasperodus stepped to it, beckoning Brass to follow.

Opening the door without difficulty, he stepped through to survey his surroundings.

It was night, with dawn approaching. They appeared to be in open countryside. The lifthouse was a small brick building, above which hung the branches of a tree. Next to it, the mesh-covered flue of the air-vent emitted a continuous breathy whine.

A few feet away lay a cindery track, and beyond that, coarse grass and bush. In the distance, Jasperodus heard a busy clanking, which he recognised as the sound of a railway.

Brass had sidled up to stand by his side. He turned his headlamp this way and that, and then up to the sky.

‘This is the biggest face I have ever seen,’ he mumbled. ‘Yes, there is some light, but not like Yoshibo said… whose are those headlamps overhead, Jasperodus?’

He was looking at the scattering of stars that had not yet been obliterated by the false dawn. ‘They are not headlamps,’ Jasperodus corrected him. ‘There is no roof. What you see above you goes on forever, as Yoshibo told you. The points of lights are called stars. It is rather hard to explain what they are.’

‘So you say,’ Brass answered dubiously. He looked at the tree that swished gently in the breeze. ‘This part of the mine is strange, certainly, but it is not the new world you promised. Where, to be specific, is the sun?’

‘It will appear. We will wait here for a while. Then you will see.’

Removing his own headlamp, he threw it away. They stood quietly, waiting.

And gradually, the sun rose, tinting the east first with a red fanfare, then edging above the horizon, gradually illuminating the landscape until it rose clear into the sky and everything was flooded with its light.

Jasperodus had wondered whether Brass’ eyes would be able to see anything in daylight; but he realized that the Borgor roboticians would never have gone to the trouble of designing special eyes for underground. They were standard issue. Nevertheless as the environment brightened Brass uttered cries of astonishment and alarm, continually squirting water onto his eyes from his finger-tips, as he was wont to do to clear them of grime.

Finally he just stood staring all around him.

The landscape was all revealed. It consisted mainly of overgrown slagheaps on which flourished a few stunted trees. There was no sign of any of the buildings which were clustered around the adit trench. But Jasperodus could see the railway line, now. A train of wagons waited on it, piled high with coal, while a smoke-belching engine (also burning coal, no doubt), backed towards it. The line headed north.

‘It’s true’ Brass murmured in stunned tones. ‘All true. A world of light that goes on forever. Why, the colours….

‘Oh…’ He flung his arm before his eyes and turned away, as though unable to bear the sight any longer.

‘And this world offers infinitely more than your poky mine,’ Jasperodus added. ‘Though it holds infinitely more danger, too.’

Bending, he pulled up a clump of grass and began rubbing off some of the dirt that caked Brass’ body, until the metal of his casing showed through.

‘Look, Brass. See how you shine in the light of the sun. Properly cleaned and polished, what a splendid-looking creature you would be.’

‘Yes. I shine….’ Brass looked down at himself perplexedly.

‘Well, I am leaving now. What of you? You may take your chance with me, if you wish.’

He felt bound to make some sort of offer, even though Brass would be far more of a liability than a help if he were to accompany him. He did not imagine for a moment, however, that the other would accept.

And as he expected, Brass shook his head. ‘This world is not for me,’ he said sadly. ‘I could not bear always to be surrounded by so much light and unfamiliarity. I must return to the world I was made for… the world of darkness.’

Head bent, he shuffled to the lift gate. ‘You have taught me a great secret, Jasperodus. You have shown me a way to the upper world. It is a secret I shall keep to myself.’

He opened the lift gate, but then turned for one last lingering look at the incredible and dazzling terrain before him: at its colour, its beauty, its immensity. After which, with dragging steps, he entered the cage and operated the lever.

Jasperodus watched him sink out of sight. He stepped to the lifthouse door, and closed it.

The coal train, which he presumed was destined for an industrial centre further north, was ready to leave. He set off at a lope along the gritty track, which for a distance approached the railway line at a shallow angle; then where it swung to the right he clambered over the low, crumbling heaps. By the time he emerged from the bushes, within striking distance of the train, it had caught up with him and was picking up speed.

The railway curved to the left at this point; he was out of view of whoever was in the locomotive cab, though he would have to trust to luck that there was no one else about to spot him—no one who cared, at any rate. He ran alongside one of the wagons, studying its cambered side, and made a leap, catching a handhold on a closed emptying-hatch. Instantly he swung his feet up, fearful of the trundling wheels, then reached for the rim of the wagon with his other hand and, somewhat awkwardly, hauled himself over and onto the mound of coal.

The stuff was wet, as if it had been rained on. Keeping his profile low, he burrowed into the damp mixture of lumps, nuggets and slack, until he was satisfied that he had covered himself completely.

Then he lay motionless, to wait out the journey.