The Iron Chancellor Read online

  Carmichael groaned. He did not look at his wife and his children. Physical attack on Bismarck was now out of the question. He began to feel as if he had been condemned to life imprisonment—and that his stay in durance vile would not be extremely prolonged.

  In the upstairs bathroom, six days after the beginning of the blockade, Sam Carmichael stared at his haggard fleshless face in the mirror before wearily climbing on the scale.

  He weighed 180 pounds.

  He had lost twelve pounds in less than two weeks. He was fast becoming a quivering wreck.

  A thought occurred to him as he stared at the wavering needle on the scale, and sudden elation spread over him. He dashed downstairs. Ethel was doggedly crocheting in the living room; Joey and Myra were playing cards grimly, desperately now, after six solid days of gin rummy and honeymoon bridge.

  “Where’s that robot?” Carmichael roared. “Come out here!”

  “In the kitchen,” Ethel said tonelessly.

  “Bismarck! Bismarck!” Carmichael roared. “Come out here!”

  The robot appeared. “How may I serve you, sir?”

  “Damn you, scan me with your superpower receptors and tell me how much I weigh!”

  After a pause, the robot said gravely, “One hundred seventy-nine pounds eleven ounces, Mr. Carmichael.”

  “Yes! Yes! And the original program I had taped into you was supposed to reduce me from 192 to 180,” Carmichael crowed triumphantly. “So I’m finished with you, as long as I don’t gain any more weight. And so are the rest of us, I’ll bet. Ethel! Myra! Joey! Upstairs and weigh yourselves!”

  But the robot regarded him with a doleful glare and said, “Sir, I find no record within me of any limitation on your reduction of weight.”

  “What?”

  “I have checked my tapes fully. I have a record of an order causing weight reduction, but that tape does not appear to specify a terminus ad quem.”

  Carmichael exhaled and took three staggering steps backward. His legs wobbled; he felt Joey supporting him. He mumbled, “But I thought—I’m sure we did—I know we instructed you—”

  Hunger gnawed at his flesh. Joey said softly, “Dad, probably that part of his tape was erased when he short-circuited.”

  “Oh,” Carmichael said numbly.

  He tottered into the living room and collapsed heavily in what had once been his favorite armchair. It wasn’t any more. The entire house had become odious to him. He longed to see the sunlight again, to see trees and grass, even to see that excrescence of an ultramodern house that the left-hand neighbors had erected.

  But now that would be impossible. He had hoped, for a few minutes at least, that the robot would release them from dietary bondage when the original goal was shown to be accomplished. Evidently that was to be denied him. He giggled, then began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny, dear?” Ethel asked. She had lost her earlier tendencies to hysteria, and after long days of complex crocheting now regarded the universe with quiet resignation.

  “Funny? The fact that I weigh 180 now. I’m lean, trim, fit as a fiddle. Next month I’ll weigh 170. Then 160. Then finally about 88 pounds or so. We’ll all shrivel up. Bismarck will starve us to death.”

  “Don’t worry, Dad. We’re going to get out of this.”

  Somehow Joey’s brash boyish confidence sounded forced now. Carmichael shook his head. “We won’t. We’ll never get out. And Bismarck’s going to reduce us ad infinitum. He’s got no terminus ad quem!”

  “What’s he saying?” Myra asked.

  “It’s Latin,” Joey explained. “But listen, Dad—I have an idea that I think will work.” He lowered his voice. “I’m going to try to adjust Clyde, see? If I can get a sort of multiphase vibrating effect in his neural pathway, maybe I can slip him through the reversed privacy field. He can go get help, find someone who can shut the field off. There’s an article on multiphase generators in last month’s Popular Electromagnetics and it’s in my room upstairs. I—”

  His voice died away. Carmichael, who had been listening with the air of a condemned man hearing his reprieve, said impatiently, “Well? Go on. Tell me more.”

  “Didn’t you hear that, Dad?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The front door. I thought I heard it open just now.”

  “We’re all cracking up,” Carmichael said dully. He cursed the salesman at Marhew, he cursed the inventor of cryotronic robots, he cursed the day he had first felt ashamed of good old Jemima and resolved to replace her with a new model.

  “I hope I’m not intruding, Mr. Carmichael,” a new voice said apologetically.

  Carmichael blinked and looked up. A wiry, ruddy-cheeked figure in a heavy peajacket had materialized in the middle of the living room. He was clutching a green metal toolbox in one gloved hand. He was Robinson, the robot repairman.

  Carmichael asked hoarsely, “How did you get in?”

  “Through the front door. I could see a light on inside, but nobody answered the doorbell when I rang, so I stepped in. Your doorbell’s out of order. I thought I’d tell you. I know it’s rude—”

  “Don’t apologize,” Carmichael muttered. “We’re delighted to see you.”

  “I was in the neighborhood, you see, and I figured I’d drop in and see how things were working out with your new robot,” Robinson said.

  Carmichael told him crisply and precisely and quickly. “So we’ve been prisoners in here for six days,” he finished. “And your robot is gradually starving us to death. We can’t hold out much longer.”

  The smile abruptly left Robinson’s cheery face. “I thought you all looked rather unhealthy. Oh, damn, now there’ll be an investigation and all kinds of trouble. But at least I can end your imprisonment.”

  He opened his toolbox and selected a tubular instrument eight inches long, with a glass bulb at one end and a trigger attachment at the other. “Force-field damper,” he explained. He pointed it at the control box of the privacy field and nodded in satisfaction. “There. Great little gadget. That neutralizes the effects of what the robot did and you’re no longer blockaded. And now, if you’ll produce the robot—”

  Carmichael sent Clyde off to get Bismarck. The robutler returned a few moments later, followed by the looming roboservitor. Robinson grinned gaily, pointed the neutralizer at Bismarck and squeezed. The robot froze in midglide, emitting a brief squeak.

  “There. That should immobilize him. Let’s have a look in that chassis now.”

  The repairman quickly opened Bismarck’s chest and, producing a pocket flash, peered around in the complex interior of the servomechanism, making occasional clucking inaudible comments.

  Overwhelmed with relief, Carmichael shakily made his way to a seat. Free! Free at last! His mouth watered at the thought of the meals he was going to have in the next few days. Potatoes and Martinis and warm buttered rolls and all the other forbidden foods!

  “Fascinating,” Robinson said, half to himself. “The obedience filters are completely shorted out, and the purpose nodes were somehow soldered together by the momentary high-voltage arc. I’ve never seen anything quite like this, you know.”

  “Neither had we,” Carmichael said hollowly.

  “Really, though—this is an utterly new breakthrough in robotic science! If we can reproduce this effect, it means we can build self-willed robots—and think of what that means to science!”

  “We know already,” Ethel said.

  “I’d love to watch what happens when the power source is operating,” Robinson went on. “For instance, is that feedback loop really negative or—”

  “No!” five voices shrieked at once—with Clyde, as usual, coming in last.

  It was too late. The entire event had taken no more than a tenth of a second. Robinson had squeezed his neutralizer trigger again, activating Bismarck—and in one quick swoop the roboservitor seized neutralizer and toolbox from the stunned repairman, activated the privacy field once again, and exultantly crushed the fragile neutral
izer between two mighty fingers.

  Robinson stammered, “But—but—”

  “This attempt at interfering with the well-being of the Carmichael family was ill advised,” Bismarck said severely. He peered into the toolbox, found a second neutralizer and neatly reduced it to junk. He clanged shut his chest plates.

  Robinson turned and streaked for the door, forgetting the reactivated privacy field. He bounced back hard, spinning wildly around. Carmichael rose from his seat just in time to catch him.

  There was a panicky, trapped look on the repairman’s face. Carmichael was no longer able to share the emotion; inwardly he was numb, totally resigned, not minded for further struggle.

  “He—he moved, so fast!” Robinson burst out.

  “He did indeed,” Carmichael said tranquilly. He patted his hollow stomach and sighed gently. “Luckily, we have an unoccupied guest bedroom for you, Mr. Robinson. Welcome to our happy little home. I hope you like toast and black coffee for breakfast.”