Date: 2011-10-01 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: THE IRON CHANCELLOR was Robert Silverberg’s second contribution to GALAXY (his first a year earlier in 1956 was BLAZE OF GLORY); he was 22 when it appeared and it shows a remarkably developed talent. Silverberg in his memoirs remembers how Horace Gold, the editor of GALAXY magazine, was simultaneously entranced by Silverberg’s precocity and angered by what he felt was the young writer’s eagerness to settle for production, stylistic facility and prolific output. Like all of the editors with whom Silverberg dealt in his early career, Gold alternated between impatience and admiration but he did f
Publisher: RosettaBooks

The Iron Chancellor

The Galaxy Project

Robert Silverberg

Series Editor Barry N. Malzberg

Copyright

The Iron Chancellor
Copyright © 1958 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation, renewed 1986 by Agberg, Ltd.

THE IRON CHANCELLOR: Professionalism at the Level of Genius
Copyright © 2011 by David Drake

Jacket illustration copyright © 1951 by the Estate of Ed Emshwiller
Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC

Special materials copyright © 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.
ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795321771

Contents

About Galaxy Magazine

About Science Fiction Novelettes and Novellas

About the Author

About the Author of the eForeword

About the Jacket
eForeword

The Iron Chancellor

ABOUT GALAXY MAGAZINE

The first issue of Galaxy, dated October 1950, already heralded to the highest standards of the field. The authors it published regularly contributed to the leading magazine Astounding, writing a kind of elegant and humanistic science fiction which although not previously unknown had always been anomalous. Its founding editor, H. L. Gold (1914–1996), was a science fiction writer of some prominence whose editorial background had been in pulp magazines and comic books; however, his ambitions were distinctly literary, and he was deliberately searching for an audience much wider and more eclectic than the perceived audience of science fiction. His goal, he stated, was a magazine whose fiction “Would read like the table of contents of a literary magazine or The Saturday Evening Post of the 21st century, dealing with extrapolation as if it were contemporary.” The magazine, although plagued by distribution difficulties and an Italian-based publisher (World Editions), was an immediate artistic success, and when its ownership was transferred with the issue of August 1951 to its printer Robert M. Guinn, it achieved financial stability for the remainder of the decade.

Galaxy published every notable science fiction writer of its first decade and found in many writers who would become central figures: Robert Sheckley, James E. Gunn, Wyman Guin, and F. L. Wallace, among others. Galaxy revivified older writers such as Frederik Pohl and Alfred Bester (whose first novel, The Demolished Man, was commissioned and directed page by page by Gold). John Campbell fought with Astounding and remained an important editor, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (inaugurated a year before Galaxy) held to high standards of literary quality while spreading its contents over two fields, but Galaxy was incontestably the 1950s’ flagship magazine for the acidly satiric, sometimes profoundly comic aspect of its best contributions. Galaxy had a lasting effect not only upon science fiction but upon literature itself. J.G. Ballard stated that he had been deeply affected by Galaxy. Alan Arkin, an actor who became a star after 1960 and won an Oscar in the new millennium, contributed two stories in the mid-fifties.

At this point Gold was succumbing to agoraphobia, physical ills, and overall exhaustion (some of this perhaps attributable to his active service during WWII) against which he had struggled from the outset. (There is creditable evidence that Frederik Pohl was the de facto editor during Gold’s last years.) Gold would return some submissions with notes like: “Garbage,” “Absolute Crap.” Isaac Asimov noted in his memoir “Anthony Boucher wrote rejection slips which read like acceptances. And Horace wrote notes of acceptance which felt like rejections.” Despite this, the magazine retained most of its high standard and also some of its regular contributors (William Tenn, Robert Sheckley, Pohl himself). Others could no longer bear Gold’s imperiousness and abusiveness.

ABOUT SCIENCE FICTION NOVELETTES AND NOVELLAS

In the view of James E. Gunn, science fiction as a genre finds its peak in the novella (17,500–40,000 words) and novelette (7,500–17,500 words). Both forms have the length to develop ideas and characters fully but do not suffer from padding or the hortatory aspect present in most modern science fiction novels. The longer story-form has existed since science fictions inception with the April 1926 issue of Amazing Stories, but Galaxy developed the form to a consistent level of sophistication and efficiency and published more notable stories of sub-novel length than any other magazine during the 50s…and probably in any decade.

The novella and novelette as forms make technical and conceptual demands greater, perhaps even greater than the novel, and Galaxy writers, under founding editor H. L. Gold’s direction, consistently excelled in these lengths. Gold’s most memorable story, “A Matter of Form” (1938) was a long novelette, and he brought practical as well as theoretical lessons to his writers, who he unleashed to develop these ideas. (John Campbell of course, had also done this in the 40s and continued in the 50s to be a directive editor.) It is not inconceivable that many or even most of the contents of the 1950’s Galaxy were based on ideas originated by Gold: golden technology becomes brass and jails its human victims when it runs amok—is certainly one of his most characteristic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Silverberg (b. 1935) sold his first story to Nebula in 1954 and two years later won the Most Promising New Author Hugo Award. He published more than a dozen novels and several hundred short stories in the genre before 1960, and then embarked upon an early retreat, returning at an entirely new level of literary accomplishment in 1962 with the famous short story “To See The Invisible Man” (published in Galaxy’s sister magazine Worlds of Tomorrow). Over the next fourteen years, Silverberg produced in science fiction an unparalleled body of work at the height of literary achievement and conceptual rigor. Forty novels and three times as many short stories plumbed every aspect of science fiction and significantly advanced it: Born with the Dead, Dying Inside, The Book of Skulls, Thorns, The Stochastic Man, Up The Line, and finally Shadrach in the Furnace in 1976. He won every award in the field multiple times. After Shadrach, Silverberg went silent for two years, then returned with the long fantasy novel Lord Valentine’s Castle and went on to a major career in fantasy, while continuing to publish science fiction novels, three of them in collaboration with Isaac Asimov. He continued to win Hugo and Nebula Awards at the shorter lengths and published a dozen stories in Playboy. He has also edited notable anthologies such as The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame, Legends, and two Nebula Award annuals. A resident of California since the early seventies, Silverberg continues to write and edit prolifically. A novelette titled “The Way They Wove the Spells in Sippulgar” appeared in 2009 in the 60th anniversary issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Subterranean Press is publishing his science fiction short stories in several volumes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE eFOREWORD

David Drake, a veteran of the Vietnam Tank Corps, is the author of the Hammers Slammers series which over the last quarter century has become the most successful military science fiction series in the history of the genre. He has also published many bestselling fantasy novels and short stories in Omni, Analog, and elsewhere.

ABOUT THE JACKET

COVER IMAGE: “Relics of an Ancient Race” by Ed Emshwiller

Ed Emshwiller (1925–1990) was Galaxy’s dominant artist through the 1950s. His quirky images, perspective, and off-center humor provide perhaps the best realization of the magazine’s iconoclastic, satirical vision. Emshwiller was—matched with Kelly Freas—science fiction’s signature artist through the decade and a half initiated by this color illustration. He and Carol Emshwiller, the celebrated science fiction writer, lived in Long Island during the period of his prominence in science fiction. (Nonstop Press published Emshwiller: Infinity X Two: The Art & Life of Ed and Carol Emshwiller, a joint biography and collection of their work in visual and literary medium, in 2007.) In the early 70s, Emshwiller became passionately interested in avant-garde filmmaking, and that passion led him to California, where he spent his last decades deeply involved in the medium of independent film and its community. He abandoned illustration: in Carol’s words “When Ed was through with something he was really through with it.” He died of cancer in 1990. His son, Peter Emshwiller, published a fair amount of science fiction in the 80s and 90s.

THE IRON CHANCELLOR: Professionalism at the Level of Genius

Robert Silverberg has been one of the most respected figures in the science fiction field since he sold his first story in 1954. The next year his first novel was published, and the year after that he won the Hugo Award for Best New Writer at the World Science Fiction Convention.

The science fiction field has changed a great deal since Silverberg entered it, and he has remained on top of it by changing also—more radically and more successfully than any other writer of his day. There have been three very different Robert Silverbergs writing science fiction, all of them the same man. Most recently—say, from the publication of Lord Valentine’s Castle in 1980—Silverberg has been the writer of sprawling, colorful fantasies. Highly literate and intelligent, these novels are calculated to leave readers with a good feeling. This is an amazing difference from the Silverberg of the 70s, who wrote some of the most brilliant and probing novels of the human mind, human cultures, and humanity itself ever published in the field. Silverberg’s focus was generally too tight for these novels to be called dystopian, but “bleak” is a fair (perhaps even mild) description of their spirit.

But the Robert Silverberg we have here, the Silverberg who wrote The Iron Chancellor, is the original model: a writer just starting out and rising immediately to the top, not only through native talent but also by the intelligent analysis of the field’s requirements and the professional execution of stories which met those requirements. Silverberg (writing to other professionals) gives his own description of his technique in the March 1961 issue of The Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies:

“A writer can make a great deal more money in New York than anywhere else, provided he’s the kind of writer who’ll write to editorial order.

“I am, of course.”

And:

“Since 1958 or so, 98% of my published material has been first-drafted. (And since 1958 I’ve sold 98% of the wordage I’ve offered for publication.)”

This Silverberg was omnipresent in the magazines of his day not because he wrote vast quantities of material daily, but because he wrote precisely what a particular editor was looking for. Note here that the basic requirement which every editor needs is work of publishable quality: editorial foibles and slants are secondary. Silverberg’s work was always of publishable quality straight from the typewriter.

Super-Science Fiction (SSF) is not a well-known magazine today, but in the late ’50s its word rate was bettered in the field only by Astounding and Galaxy (the top markets in prestige as well as payment). Harlan Ellison, a regular in SSF, described its editorial requirement as “puerility,” and Algis Budrys accused W. W. Scott, the editor, of harming the field because he paid so well. Silverberg had a story in every issue of SSF except the second, in which he had an article. Furthermore, he had two or three stories (under various pen names) in most issues. He was making a very good living instead of complaining about the situation. I want to emphasize that these were good stories. If Scott wanted monsters (the last four issues of SSF had an all-monster theme), Silverberg provided horrible, ravening monsters—but there was also real tension, real characterization, and a solid structure to the stories in which those monsters appeared.

Occasionally there are aspects which might cause a reader today to blink. Silverberg wrote “The Loathsome Beasts” as Dan Malcolm for the October 1959 SSF (one of his two stories in that issue). The story is set on a recently colonized planet, but one doesn’t have to look very hard to realize that the monsters which are horrifically crushing and dismembering the happy crowd on the beach are really giant six-legged sea turtles. After the carnage, the hero realizes that the solution is to dig up the turtles’ egg clutches and drive the species to quick extinction.

This brings up a second critical point: not only are stories written for editors, they are written in—and effectively set in—their own times. I don’t believe writers can avoid discussing their own present in their fiction, whatever their pretended past or future settings. Even someone who quarrels with that opinion will admit that writers cannot sell stories to popular magazines that do not address the concerns of the people reading those magazines.

The Iron Chancellor is set in 2060 AD, but it appeared in the May 1958 issue of Galaxy, and the concerns of the characters are those of a suburban family of 1958. The surface concern is dieting (exercise as a way to control weight is dismissed with barely a nod), but the underlying theme of the story is a fear that at the time was second only to nuclear holocaust: The Machines Are Taking Over.

The Iron Chancellor is an example of Silverberg writing a story for H. L. Gold, the most respected editor in the science fiction field, and for Galaxy, the most admired magazine in the science fiction field. I will stand by those statements, but both require qualification: Galaxy and Astounding were by general agreement at the top of the field (and paid more, sometimes considerably more, than the other science fiction magazines), but they were at opposite poles from one another.

In the 1950s, Astounding, under John W. Campbell, published excellent stories by excellent writers, but the magazine’s emphasis was on continuity with its past. The Golden Age of Science Fiction, as it is described now, was basically a creation of Astounding in the late 30s/early 40s, so there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this continuity; but it would be fair to say that by the 50s Astounding lacked excitement.

Galaxy made waves before the first issue appeared in October 1950 because Gold was offering a higher word rate than ever before seen in the field. (Campbell, complaining, was forced to raise Astounding’s rate to match.) More important, Gold emphasized change rather than continuity, boasting that Galaxy would be like no previous science fiction magazine. Despite cavils (at the time as well as later), Galaxy pretty well justified that boast.

But while Gold was unquestionably respected, he was the most generally execrated editor in the field also. He had a vision for Galaxy, and he was determined to make every story in the magazine conform to his vision. He edited stories ruthlessly, no matter who the writer was, and if the writers didn’t like it, they could go elsewhere. He preferred colorful extrapolation, even wild extrapolation, to plodding realism: if people wanted a magazine edited by an engineer for engineers, they could read Astounding. Writers claimed Gold was whimsical, but the consistency—and consistent excellence—of Galaxy while he was editor make that unlikely. It may be that Gold’s editing—meddling, some called it—made some stories less good than they would otherwise have been, but all one can say with certainty is that those stories differed from their writers’ conceptions when they appeared in Galaxy.

Silverberg didn’t complain: he wrote. The Iron Chancellor is witty, wryly humorous, and crisply written, making it a perfect example of a Galaxy story. The themes are addressed with skill; the characters are believable within the context of a satirical story; and the plot twists, twists again, and ends on a mordant note.

It is precisely the sort of story that a professional writer of genius would sell to Galaxy.

—David Drake

The Iron Chancellor

The Carmichaels were a pretty plump family, to begin with. Not one of the four of them couldn’t stand to shed quite a few pounds. And there happened to be a superspecial on roboservitors at one of the Miracle Mile roboshops—40% off on the 2061 model, with adjustable caloric-intake monitors.

Sam Carmichael liked the idea of having his food prepared and served by a robot who would keep one beady solenoid eye on the collective family waistline. He squinted speculatively at the glossy display model, absentmindedly slipped his thumbs beneath his elastobelt to knead his paunch, and said, “How much?”

The salesman flashed a brilliant and probably synthetic grin. “Only two thousand nine hundred ninety-five, sir. That includes free service contract for the first five years. Only two hundred credits down and up to forty months to pay.”

Carmichael frowned, thinking of his bank balance. Then he thought of his wife’s figure, and of his daughter’s endless yammering about her need to diet. Besides, Jemima, their old robocook, was shabby and gear-stripped, and made a miserable showing when other company executives visited them for dinner.

“I’ll take it,” he said.

“Care to trade in your old robocook, sir? Liberal trade-in allowances—”

“I have a ’43 Madison.” Carmichael wondered if he should mention its bad arm libration and serious fuel-feed overflow, but decided that would be carrying candidness too far.

“Well—ah—I guess we could allow you fifty credits on a ’43, sir. Seventy-five, maybe, if the recipe bank is still in good condition.”

“Excellent condition.” That part was honest—the family had never let even one recipe wear out. “You could send a man down to look her over.”

“Oh, no need to do that, sir. We’ll take your word. Seventy-five, then? And delivery of the new model by this evening?”

“Done,” Carmichael said. He was glad to get the pathetic old ’43 out of the house at any cost.

He signed the purchase order cheerfully, pocketed the facsim and handed over ten crisp twenty-credit vouchers. He could almost feel the roll of fat melting from him now, as he eyed the magnificent ’61 roboservitor that would shortly be his.

The time was only 1810 hours when he left the shop, got into his car and punched out the coordinates for home. The whole transaction had taken less than ten minutes. Carmichael, a second-level executive at Normandy Trust, prided himself both on his good business sense and his ability to come quickly to a firm decision.

Fifteen minutes later, his car deposited him at the front entrance of their totally detached self-powered suburban home in the fashionable Westley subdivision. The car obediently took itself around back to the garage, while Carmichael stood in the scanner field until the door opened. Clyde, the robutler, came scuttling hastily up, took his hat and cloak, and handed him a Martini.

Carmichael beamed appreciatively. “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!”

He took a healthy sip and headed towards the living room to greet his wife, son and daughter. Pleasant gin-induced warmth filtered through him. The robutler was ancient and due for replacement as soon as the budget could stand the charge, but Carmichael realized he would miss the clanking old heap.

“You’re late, dear,” Ethel Carmichael said as he appeared. “Dinner’s been ready for ten minutes. Jemima’s so annoyed her cathodes are clicking.”

“Jemima’s cathodes fail to interest me,” Carmichael said evenly. “Good evening, dear. Myra. Joey. I’m late because I stopped off at Marhew’s on my way home.”

His son blinked. “The robot place, Dad?”

“Precisely. I bought a ’61 roboservitor to replace old Jemima and her sputtering cathodes. The new model has,” Carmichael added, eyeing his son’s adolescent bulkiness and the rather-more-than-ample figures of his wife and daughter, “some very special attachments.”

They dined well that night, on Jemima’s favorite Tuesday dinner menu—shrimp cocktail, fumet of gumbo chervil, breast of chicken with creamed potatoes and asparagus, delicious plum tarts for dessert, and coffee. Carmichael felt pleasantly bloated when he had finished, and gestured to Clyde for a snifter of his favorite afterdinner digestive aid, VSOP Cognac. He leaned back, warm, replete, able easily to ignore the blustery November winds outside.

A pleasing electroluminescence suffused the dining room with pink—this year, the experts thought pink improved digestion—and the heating filaments embedded in the wall glowed cozily as they delivered the BTUs. This was the hour of relaxation in the Carmichael household.

“Dad,” Joey began hesitantly, “about that canoe trip next weekend—”

Carmichael folded his hands across his stomach and nodded. “You can go, I suppose. Only be careful. If I find out you didn’t use the equilibriator this time—”

The door chime sounded. Carmichael lifted an eyebrow and swiveled in his chair.

“Who is it, Clyde?”

“He gives his name as Robinson, sir. Of Robinson Robotics, he said. He has a bulky package to deliver.”

“It must be that new robocook, Father!” Myra Carmichael exclaimed.

“I guess it is. Show him in, Clyde.”

Robinson turned out to be a red-faced, efficient-looking little man in greasy green overalls and a plaid pullover-coat, who looked disapprovingly at the robutler and strode into the Carmichael living room.

He was followed by a lumbering object about seven feet high, mounted on a pair of rolltreads and swathed completely in quilted rags.

“Got him all wrapped up against the cold, Mr. Carmichael. Lot of delicate circuitry in that job. You ought to be proud of him.”

“Clyde, help Mr. Robinson unpack the new robocook,” Carmichael said.

“That’s okay—I can manage it. And it’s not a robocook, by the way. It’s called a roboservitor now. Fancy price, fancy name.”

Carmichael heard his wife mutter, “Sam, how much—”

He scowled at her. “Very reasonable, Ethel. Don’t worry so much.”

He stepped back to admire the roboservitor as it emerged from the quilted swaddling. It was big, all right, with a massive barrel of a chest—robotic controls are always housed in the chest, not in the relatively tiny head—and a gleaming mirror-keen finish that accented its sleekness and newness. Carmichael felt the satisfying glow of pride in ownership. Somehow it seemed to him that he had done something noble and lordly in buying this magnificent robot.

Robinson finished the unpacking job and, standing on tiptoes, opened the robot’s chest panel. He unclipped a thick instruction manual and handed it to Carmichael, who stared at the tome uneasily.

“Don’t fret about that, Mr. Carmichael. This robot’s no trouble to handle. The book’s just part of the trimming. Come here a minute.”

Carmichael peered into the robot’s innards. Pointing, Robinson said, “Here’s the recipe bank—biggest and best ever designed. Of course it’s possible to tape in any of your favorite family recipes, if they’re not already there. Just hook up your old robocook to the integrator circuit and feed ’em in. I’ll take care of that before I leave.”

“And what about the—ah—special features?”

“The reducing monitors, you mean? Right over here. See? You just tape in the names of the members of the family and their present and desired weights, and the roboservitor takes care of the rest. Computes caloric intake, adjusts menus, and everything else.”

Carmichael grinned at his wife. “Told you I was going to do something about our weight, Ethel. No more dieting for you, Myra—the robot does all the work.” Catching a sour look on his son’s face, he added, “And you’re not so lean yourself, Buster.”

“I don’t think there’ll be any trouble,” Robinson said buoyantly. “But if there is, just buzz for me. I handle service and delivery for Marhew Stores in this area.”

“Right.”

“Now if you’ll get me your obsolete robocook, I’ll transfer the family recipes before I cart it away on the trade-in deal.”

There was a momentary tingle of nostalgia and regret when Robinson left, half an hour later, taking old Jemima with him. Carmichael had almost come to think of the battered ’43 Madison as a member of the family. After all, he had bought her sixteen years before, only a couple of years after his marriage.

But she—it, he corrected in annoyance—was only a robot, and robots became obsolete. Besides, Jemima probably suffered all the aches and pains of a robot’s old age and would be happier dismantled. Carmichael blotted Jemima from his mind.

The four of them spent most of the rest of that evening discovering things about their new roboservitor. Carmichael drew up a table of their weights (himself, 192; Ethel, 145; Myra, 139; Joey, 189) and the amount they proposed to weigh in three months’ time (himself, 180; Ethel, 125;. Myra, 120; Joey, 175). Carmichael then let his son, who prided himself on his knowledge of practical robotics, integrate the figures and feed them to the robot’s programming bank.

“You wish this schedule to take effect immediately?” the roboservitor queried in a deep, mellow bass.

Startled, Carmichael said, “T-tomorrow morning, at breakfast. We might as well start right away.”

“He speaks well, doesn’t he?” Ethel asked.

“He sure does,” Joey said. “Jemima always stammered and squeaked, and all she could say was, ‘Dinner is serrved’ and ‘Be careful, sirr, the soup plate is very warrm.’”

Carmichael smiled. He noticed his daughter admiring the robot’s bulky frame and sleek bronze limbs, and thought resignedly that a seventeen-year-old girl could find the strangest sorts of love objects. But he was happy to see that they were all evidently pleased with the robot. Even with the discount and the trade-in, it had been a little on the costly side.

But it would be worth it.

Carmichael slept soundly and woke early, anticipating the first breakfast under the new regime. He still felt pleased with himself.

Dieting had always been such a nuisance, he thought—but, on the other hand, he had never enjoyed the sensation of an annoying roll of fat pushing outward against his elastobelt. He exercised sporadically, but it did little good, and he never had the initiative to keep a rigorous dieting campaign going for long. Now, though, with the mathematics of reducing done effortlessly for him, all the calculating and cooking being handled by the new robot—now, for the first time since he had been Joey’s age, he could look forward to being slim and trim once again.

He dressed, showered and hastily depilated. It was 0730. Breakfast was ready.

Ethel and the children were already at the table when he arrived. Ethel and Myra were munching toast; Joey was peering at a bowl of milkless dry cereal, next to which stood a full glass of milk. Carmichael sat down.

“Your toast, sir,” the roboservitor murmured.

Carmichael stared at the single slice. It had already been buttered for him, and the butter had evidently been measured out with a micrometer. The robot proceeded to hand him a cup of black coffee.

He groped for the cream and sugar. They weren’t anywhere on the table. The other members of his family were regarding him strangely, and they were curiously, suspiciously silent.

“I like cream and sugar in my coffee,” he said to the hovering roboservitor. “Didn’t you find that in Jemima’s old recipe bank?”

“Of course, sir. But you must learn to drink your coffee without such things, if you wish to lose weight.”

Carmichael chuckled. Somehow he had not expected the regimen to be quite like this—quite so, well, Spartan. “Oh, yes. Of course. Ah—are the eggs ready yet?” He considered a day incomplete unless he began it with soft-boiled eggs.

“Sorry, no, sir. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, breakfast is to consist of toast and black coffee only, except for Master Joey, who gets cereal, fruit juice and milk.”

“I—see.”

Well, he had asked for it. He shrugged and took a bite of the toast. He sipped the coffee; it tasted like river mud, but he tried not to make a face.

Joey seemed to be going about the business of eating his cereal rather oddly, Carmichael noticed next. “Why don’t you pour that glass of milk into the cereal?” he asked. “Won’t it taste better that way?”

“Sure it will. But Bismarck says I won’t get another glass if I do, so I’m eating it this way.”

“Bismarck?”

Joey grinned. “It’s the name of a famous nineteenth-century German dictator. They called him the Iron Chancellor.” He jerked his head towards the kitchen, to which the roboservitor had silently retreated. “Pretty good name for him, eh?”

“No,” said Carmichael. “It’s silly.”

“It has a certain ring of truth, though,” Ethel remarked.

Carmichael did not reply. He finished his toast and coffee somewhat glumly and signaled Clyde to get the car out of the garage. He felt depressed—dieting didn’t seem to be so effortless after all, even with the new robot.

As he walked towards the door, the robot glided around him and handed him a small printed slip of paper. Carmichael stared at it. It said:

FRUIT JUICE
LETTUCE-TOMATO SALAD
(ONE) HARD-BOILED EGG
BLACK COFFEE

“What’s this thing?”

“You are the only member of this family group who will not be eating three meals a day under my personal supervision. This is your luncheon menu. Please adhere to it,” the robot said smoothly.

Repressing a sputter, Carmichael said, “Yes—yes. Of course.”

He pocketed the menu and made his way uncertainly to the waiting car.

He was faithful to the robot’s orders at lunchtime that day; even though he was beginning to develop resistance to the idea that had seemed so appealing only the night before, he was willing, at least, to give it a try.

But something prompted him to stay away from the restaurant where Normandy Trust employees usually lunched, and where there were human waiters to smirk at him and fellow executives to ask prying questions.

He ate instead at a cheap robocafeteria two blocks to the north. He slipped in surreptitiously with his collar turned up, punched out his order (it cost him less than a credit altogether) and wolfed it down. He still was hungry when he had finished, but he compelled himself to return loyally to the office.

He wondered how long he was going to be able to keep up this iron self-control. Not very long, he realized dolefully. And if anyone from the company caught him eating at a robocafeteria, he’d be a laughing stock. Someone of executive status just didn’t eat lunch by himself in mechanized cafeterias.

By the time he had finished his day’s work, his stomach felt knotted and pleated. His hand was shaky as he punched out his destination on the car’s autopanel, and he was thankful that it took less than an hour to get home from the office. Soon, he thought, he’d be tasting food again. Soon. Soon. He switched on the roof-mounted video, leaned back in the recliner and tried to relax as the car bore him homeward.

He was in for a surprise, though, when he stepped through the safety field into his home. Clyde was waiting as always, and, as always, took his hat and cloak. And, as always, Carmichael reached out for the cocktail that Clyde prepared nightly to welcome him home.

There was no cocktail.

“Are we out of gin, Clyde?”

“No, sir.”

“How come no drink, then?”

The robot’s rubberized metallic features seemed to droop. “Because, sir, a Martini’s caloric content is inordinately high. Gin is rated at a hundred calories per ounce and—”

“Oh, no. You too!”

“Pardon, sir. The new roboservitor has altered my responsive circuits to comply with the regulations now in force in this household.”

Carmichael felt his fingers starting to tremble. “Clyde, you’ve been my butler for almost twenty years.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You always make my drinks for me. You mix the best Martinis in the Western Hemisphere.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And you’re going to mix one for me right now! That’s a direct order!”

“Sir! I—” The robutler staggered wildly and nearly careened into Carmichael. It seemed to have lost all control over its gyro-balance; it clutched agonizedly at its chest panel and started to sag.

Hastily, Carmichael barked, “Order countermanded! Clyde, are you all right?”

Slowly, and with a creak, the robot straightened up. It looked dangerously close to an overload. “Your direct order set up a first-level conflict in me, sir,” Clyde whispered faintly. “I—came close to burning out just then, sir. May—may I be excused?”

“Of course. Sorry, Clyde.” Carmichael balled his fists. There was such a thing as going too far! The roboservitor—Bismarck—had obviously placed on Clyde a flat prohibition against serving liquor to him. Reducing or no reducing, there were limits.

Carmichael strode angrily towards the kitchen.

His wife met him halfway. “I didn’t hear you come in, Sam. I want to talk to you about—”

“Later. Where’s that robot?”

“In the kitchen, I imagine. It’s almost dinnertime.”

He brushed past her and swept on into the kitchen, where Bismarck was moving efficiently from electrostove to magnetic worktable. The robot swiveled as Carmichael entered.

“Did you have a good day, sir?”

“No! I’m hungry!”

“The first days of a diet are always the most difficult, Mr. Carmichael. But your body will adjust to the reduction in food intake before long.”

“I’m sure of that. But what’s this business of tinkering with Clyde?”

“The butler insisted on preparing an alcoholic drink for you. I was forced to adjust his programming. From now on, sir, you may indulge in cocktails on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I beg to be excused from further discussion now, sir. The meal is almost ready.”

Poor Clyde! Carmichael thought. And poor me! He gnashed his teeth impotently a few times, then gave up and turned away from the glistening, overbearing roboservitor. A light gleamed on the side of the robot’s head, indicating that he had shut off his audio circuits and was totally engaged in his task.

Dinner consisted of steak and peas, followed by black coffee. The steak was rare; Carmichael preferred it well done. But Bismarck—the name was beginning to take hold—had had all the latest dietetic theories taped into him, and rare meat it was.

After the robot had cleared the table and tidied up the kitchen, it retired to its storage place in the basement, which gave the Carmichael family a chance to speak openly to each other for the first time that evening.

“Lord!” Ethel snorted. “Sam, I don’t object to losing weight, but if we’re going to be tyrannized in our own home—”

“Mom’s right,” Joey put in. “It doesn’t seem fair for that thing to feed us whatever it pleases. And I didn’t like the way it messed around with Clyde’s circuits.”

Carmichael spread his hands. “I’m not happy about it either. But we have to give it a try. We can always make readjustments in the programming if it turns out to be necessary.”

“But how long are we going to keep this up?” Myra wanted to know. “I had three meals in this house today and I’m starved!”

“Me, too,” Joey said. He elbowed himself from his chair and looked around. “Bismarck’s downstairs. I’m going to get a slice of lemon pie while the coast is clear.”

“No!” Carmichael thundered.

“No?”

“There’s no sense in my spending three thousand credits on a dietary robot if you’re going to cheat, Joey. I forbid you to have any pie.”

“But, Dad, I’m hungry! I’m a growing boy! I’m—”

“You’re sixteen years old, and if you grow much more, you won’t fit inside the house,” Carmichael snapped, looking up at his six-foot-one son.

“Sam, we can’t starve the boy,” Ethel protested. “If he wants pie, let him have some. You’re carrying this reducing fetish too far.”

Carmichael considered that. Perhaps, he thought, I am being a little oversevere. And the thought of lemon pie was a tempting one. He was pretty hungry himself.

“All right,” he said with feigned reluctance. “I guess a bit of pie won’t wreck the plan. In fact, I suppose I’ll have some myself. Joey, why don’t you—”

“Begging your pardon,” a purring voice said behind him. Carmichael jumped half an inch. It was the robot, Bismarck. “It would be most unfortunate if you were to have pie now, Mr. Carmichael. My calculations are very precise.”

Carmichael saw the angry gleam in his son’s eye, but the robot seemed extraordinarily big at that moment, and it happened to stand between him and the kitchen.

He sighed weakly. “Let’s forget the lemon pie, Joey.”

After two full days of the Bismarckian diet, Carmichael discovered that his inner resources of will power were beginning to crumble. On the third day he tossed away the printed lunchtime diet and went out irresponsibly with MacDougal and Hennessey for a six-course lunch, complete with cocktails. It seemed to him that he hadn’t tasted real food since the robot arrived.

That night, he was able to tolerate the seven-hundred-calorie dinner without any inward grumblings, being still well lined with lunch. But Ethel and Myra and Joey were increasingly irritable. It seemed that the robot had usurped Ethel’s job of handling the daily marketing and had stocked in nothing but a huge supply of healthy low-calorie foods. The larder now bulged with wheat germ, protein bread, irrigated salmon, and other hitherto unfamiliar items. Myra had taken up biting her nails; Joey’s mood was one of black sullen brooding, and Carmichael knew how that could lead to trouble quickly with a sixteen-year-old.

After the meager dinner, he ordered Bismarck to go to the basement and stay there until summoned.

The robot said, “I must advise you, sir, that I will detect indulgence in any forbidden foods in my absence and adjust for it in the next meals.”

“You have my word,” Carmichael said, thinking it was indeed queer to have to pledge on your honor to your own robot. He waited until the massive servitor had vanished below; then he turned to Joey and said, “Get the instruction manual, boy.”

Joey grinned in understanding. Ethel said, “Sam, what are you going to do?”

Carmichael patted his shrunken waistline. “I’m going to take a can opener to that creature and adjust his programming. He’s overdoing this diet business. Joey, have you found the instructions on how to reprogram the robot?”

“Page 167. I’ll get the tool kit, Dad.”

“Right.” Carmichael turned to the robutler, who was standing by dumbly, in his usual forward-stooping posture of expectancy. “Clyde, go down below and tell Bismarck we want him right away.”

Moments later, the two robots appeared. Carmichael said to the roboservitor, “I’m afraid it’s necessary for us to change your program. We’ve overestimated our capacity for losing weight.”

“I beg you to reconsider, sir. Extra weight is harmful to every vital organ in the body. I plead with you to maintain my scheduling unaltered.”

“I’d rather cut my own throat. Joey, inactivate him and do your stuff.”

Grinning fiercely, the boy stepped forward and pressed the stud that opened the robot’s ribcage. A frightening assortment of gears, cams and translucent cables became visible inside the robot. With a small wrench in one hand and the open instruction book in the other, Joey prepared to make the necessary changes, while Carmichael held his breath and a pall of silence descended on the living room. Even old Clyde leaned forward to have a better view.

Joey muttered, “Lever F, with the yellow indicia, is to be advanced one notch…umm. Now twist Dial B9 to the left, thereby opening the taping compartment and—oops!”

Carmichael heard the clang of a wrench and saw the bright flare of sparks; Joey leaped back, cursing with surprisingly mature skill. Ethel and Myra gasped simultaneously.

“What happened?” four voices—Clyde’s coming in last—demanded.

“Dropped the damn wrench,” Joey said. “I guess I shorted out something in there.”

The robot’s eyes were whirling satanically and its voice box was emitting an awesome twelve-cycle rumble. The great metal creature stood stiffly in the middle of the living room; with brusque gestures of its big hands, it slammed shut the open chest plates.

“We’d better call Mr. Robinson,” Ethel said worriedly. “A short-circuited robot is likely to explode, or worse.”

“We should have called Robinson in the first place,” Carmichael murmured bitterly. “It’s my fault for letting Joey tinker with an expensive and delicate mechanism like that. Myra, get me the card Mr. Robinson left.”

“Gee, Dad, this is the first time I’ve ever had anything like that go wrong,” Joey insisted. “I didn’t know—”

“You’re darned right you didn’t know.” Carmichael took the card from his daughter and started towards the phone. “I hope we can reach him at this hour. If we can’t—”

Suddenly Carmichael felt cold fingers prying the card from his hand. He was so startled he relinquished it without a struggle. He watched as Bismarck efficiently ripped it into little fragments and shoved them into a wall disposal unit.

The robot said, “There will be no further meddling with my program tapes.” Its voice was deep and strangely harsh.

“What—”

“Mr. Carmichael, today you violated the program I set down for you. My perceptors reveal that you consumed an amount far in excess of your daily lunchtime requirement.”

“Sam, what—”

“Quiet, Ethel. Bismarck, I order you to shut yourself off at once.”

“My apologies, sir. I cannot serve you if I am shut off.”

“I don’t want you to serve me. You’re out of order. I want you to remain still until I can phone the repairman and get him to service you.”

Then he remembered the card that had gone into the disposal unit. He felt a faint tremor of apprehension.

“You took Robinson’s card and destroyed it.”

“Further alteration of my circuits would be detrimental to the Carmichael family,” said the robot. “I cannot permit you to summon the repairman.”

“Don’t get him angry, Dad,” Joey warned. “I’ll call the police. I’ll be back in—”

“You will remain within this house,” the robot said. Moving with impressive speed on its oiled treads, it crossed the room, blocking the door, and reached far above its head to activate the impassable privacy field that protected the house. Carmichael watched, aghast, as the inexorable robotic fingers twisted and manipulated the field controls.

“I have now reversed the polarity of the house privacy field,” the robot announced. “Since you are obviously not to be trusted to keep to the diet I prescribe, I cannot allow you to leave the premises. You will remain within and continue to obey my beneficial advice.”

Calmly, he uprooted the telephone. Next the windows were opaqued and the stud broken off. Finally, the robot seized the instruction book from Joey’s numbed hands and shoved it into the disposal unit.

“Breakfast will be served at the usual time,” Bismarck said mildly. “For optimum purposes of health, you are all to be asleep by 2300 hours. I shall leave you now, until morning. Good night.”

Carmichael did not sleep well that night, nor did he eat well the next day. He awoke late, for one thing—well past nine. He discovered that someone, obviously Bismarck, had neatly canceled out the impulses from the housebrain that woke him at seven each morning.

The breakfast menu was toast and black coffee. Carmichael ate disgruntledly, not speaking, indicating by brusque scowls that he did not want to be spoken to. After the miserable meal had been cleared away, he surreptitiously tiptoed to the front door in his dressing gown, and darted a hand towards the handle.

The door refused to budge. He pushed until sweat dribbled down his face. He heard Ethel whisper warningly, “Sam—” and a moment later cool metallic fingers gently disengaged him from the door.

Bismarck said, “I beg your pardon, sir. The door will not open. I explained this last night.”

Carmichael gazed sourly at the gimmicked control box of the privacy field. The robot had them utterly hemmed in. The reversed privacy field made it impossible for them to leave the house; it cast a sphere of force around the entire detached dwelling. In theory, the field could be penetrated from outside, but nobody was likely to come calling without an invitation. Not here in Westley. It wasn’t one of those neighborly subdivisions where everybody knew everybody else. Carmichael had picked it for that reason.

“Damn you,” he growled, “you can’t hold us prisoners in here!”

“My intent is only to help you,” said the robot, in a mechanical yet dedicated voice. “My function is to supervise your diet. Since you will not obey willingly, obedience must be enforced—for your own good.”

Carmichael scowled and walked away. The worst part of it was that the roboservitor sounded so sincere!

Trapped. The phone connection was severed. The windows were darkened. Somehow, Joey’s attempt at repairs had resulted in a short circuit of the robot’s obedience filters, and had also exaggeratedly stimulated its sense of function. Now Bismarck was determined to make them lose weight if it had to kill them to do so.

And that seemed very likely.

Blockaded, the Carmichael family met in a huddled little group to whisper plans for a counterattack. Clyde stood watch, but the robutler seemed to be in a state of general shock since the demonstration of the servitor-robot’s independent capacity for action, and Carmichael now regarded him as undependable.

“He’s got the kitchen walled off with some kind of electronic-based force web,” Joey said. “He must have built it during the night. I tried to sneak in and scrounge some food, and got nothing but a flat nose for trying.”

“I know,” Carmichael said sadly. “He built the same sort of doohickey around the bar. Three hundred credits of good booze in there and I can’t even grab the handle!”

“This is no time to worry about drinking,” Ethel said morosely. “We’ll be skeletons any day.”

“It isn’t that bad, Mom!” Joey said.

“Yes, it is!” cried Myra. “I’ve lost five pounds in four days!”

“Is that so terrible?”

“I’m wasting away,” she sobbed. “My figure—it’s vanishing! And—”

“Quiet,” Carmichael whispered. “Bismarck’s coming!”

The robot emerged from the kitchen, passing through the force barrier as if it had been a cobweb. It seemed to have effect on humans only, Carmichael thought. “Lunch will be served in eight minutes,” it said obsequiously, and returned to its lair.

Carmichael glanced at his watch. The time was 1230 hours. “Probably down at the office they’re wondering where I am,” he said. “I haven’t missed a day’s work in years.”

“They won’t care,” Ethel said. “An executive isn’t required to account for every day off he takes, you know.”

“But they’ll worry after three or four days, won’t they?” Myra asked. “Maybe they’ll try to phone—or even send a rescue mission!”

From the kitchen, Bismarck said coldly, “There will be no danger of that. While you slept this morning, I notified your place of employment that you were resigning.”

Carmichael gasped. Then, recovering, he said: “You’re lying! The phone’s cut off—and you never would have risked leaving the house, even if we were asleep!”

“I communicated with them via a microwave generator I constructed with the aid of your son’s reference books last night,” Bismarck replied. “Clyde reluctantly supplied me with the number. I also phoned your bank and instructed them to handle for you all such matters as tax payments, investment decisions, etc. To forestall difficulties, let me add that a force web will prevent access on your part to the electronic equipment in the basement. I will be able to conduct such communication with the outside world as will be necessary for your welfare, Mr. Carmichael. You need have no worries on that score.”

“No,” Carmichael echoed hollowly. “No worries.”

He turned to Joey. “We’ve got to get out of here. Are you sure there’s no way of disconnecting the privacy field?”

“He’s got one of his force fields rigged around the control box. I can’t even get near the thing.”

“If only we had an iceman, or an oilman, the way the old-time houses did,” Ethel said bitterly. “He’d show up and come inside and probably he’d know how to shut the field off. But not here. Oh, no. We’ve got a shiny chrome-plated cryostat in the basement that dishes out lots of liquid helium to run the fancy cryotronic super-cooled power plant that gives us heat and light, and we have enough food in the freezer to last for at least a decade or two, and so we can live like this for years, a neat little self-contained island in the middle of civilization, with nobody bothering us, nobody wondering about us, with Sam Carmichael’s pet robot to feed us whenever and as little as it pleases—”

There was a cutting edge to her voice that was dangerously close to hysteria.

“Ethel, please,” said Carmichael.

“Please what? Please keep quiet? Please stay calm? Sam, we’re prisoners in here!”

“I know. You don’t have to raise your voice.”

“Maybe if I do, someone will hear us and come get us out,” she replied more coolly.

“It’s four hundred feet to the next home, dear. And in the seven years we’ve lived here, we’ve had about two visits from our neighbors. We paid a stiff price for seclusion and now we’re paying a stiffer one. But please keep under control, Ethel.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll figure a way out of this,” Joey said reassuringly.

In one corner of the living room, Myra was sobbing quietly to herself, blotching her makeup. Carmichael felt a faintly claustrophobic quiver. The house was big, three levels and twelve rooms, but even so he could get tired of it very quickly.

“Luncheon is served,” the roboservitor announced in booming tones.

And tired of lettuce-and-tomato lunches, too, Carmichael added silently; as he shepherded his family towards the dining room for their meager midday meal.

“You have to do something about this, Sam,” Ethel Carmichael said on the third day of their imprisonment.

He glared at her. “Have to, eh? And just what am I supposed to do?”

“Daddy, don’t get excited,” Myra said.

He whirled on her. “Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do!”

“She can’t help it, dear. We’re all a little overwrought. After all, cooped up here—”

“I know. Like lambs in a pen,” he finished acidly. “Except that we’re not being fattened for slaughter. We’re—being thinned, and for our own alleged good!”

Carmichael subsided gloomily. Toast-and-black-coffee, lettuce-and-tomato, rare-steak-and-peas. Bismarck’s channels seemed to have frozen permanently at that daily menu.

But what could he do?

Contact with the outside world was impossible. The robot had erected a bastion in the basement from which he conducted such little business with the world as the Carmichael family had. Generally, they were self-sufficient. And Bismarck’s force fields ensured the impossibility of any attempts to disconnect the outer sheath, break into the basement, or even get at the food supply or the liquor. It was all very neat, and the four of them were fast approaching a state of starvation.

“Sam?”

He lifted his head wearily. “What is it, Ethel?”

“Myra had an idea before. Tell him, Myra.”

“Oh, it would never work,” Myra said demurely.

“Tell him!”

“Well—Dad, you could try to turn Bismarck off.”

“Huh?” Carmichael grunted.

“I mean if you or Joey could distract him somehow, then Joey or you could open him up again and—”

“No,” Carmichael snapped. “That thing’s seven feet tall and weighs three hundred pounds. If you think I’m going to wrestle with it—”

“We could let Clyde try,” Ethel suggested.

Carmichael shook his head vehemently. “The carnage would be frightful.”

Joey said, “Dad, it may be our only hope.”

“You too?” Carmichael asked.

He took a deep breath. He felt himself speared by two deadly feminine glances, and he knew there was no hope but to try it. Resignedly, he pushed himself to his feet and said, “Okay. Clyde, go call Bismarck. Joey, I’ll try to hang on to his arms while you open up his chest. Yank anything you can.”

“Be careful,” Ethel warned. “If there’s an explosion—”

“If there’s an explosion, we’re all free,” Carmichael said testily. He turned to see the broad figure of the roboservitor standing at the entrance to the living room.

“May I be of service, sir?”

“You may,” Carmichael said. “We’re having a little debate here and we want your evidence. It’s a matter of defannizing the poozlestan and—Joey, open him up!”

Carmichael grabbed for the robot’s arms, trying to hold them without getting hurled across the room, while his son clawed frantically at the stud that opened the robot’s innards. Carmichael anticipated immediate destruction—but, to his surprise, he found himself slipping as he tried to grasp the thick arms.

“Dad, it’s no use. I—he—”

Carmichael found himself abruptly four feet off the ground. He heard Ethel and Myra scream and Clyde’s “Do be careful, sir.”

Bismarck was carrying them across the room, gently, cradling him in one giant arm and Joey in the other. It set them down on the couch and stood back.

“Such an attempt is highly dangerous,” Bismarck said reprovingly. “It puts me in danger of harming you physically. Please avoid any such acts in the future.”

Carmichael stared broodingly at his son. “Did you have the same trouble I did?”

Joey nodded. “I couldn’t get within an inch of his skin. It stands to reason, though. He’s built one of those damned force screens around himself, too!”

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 neutralizer 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.”