Beyond Control Read online

  There was a moment of incomprehension, then a dull shock hit J-1001011 in the stomach. But it was almost as if he had been expecting to hear this—and Charles controlled his reaction instantly through the nerve-implants.

  “Then that was no Khallash city,” he said.

  “No,” said Charles. “It was a human city, a rebel city.”

  The pilot searched vaguely through the fog of his memories of home, trying to remember anything about a city such as he’d destroyed today. But he could grasp nothing like that; his memories were all of some smaller town, and of mountains, not the open fields that had surrounded this city.

  “My parents moved to the city after I was taken away,” he said. “Is that right?”

  “We have no way of knowing about that,” said Charles. “Who your parents were, on what planet they lived—all this information has been destroyed in the city on Rhinstruk. It was the archives center of the Galactic Federation, storing all the memory-data of our service humans. Useless information, since none of it will ever be used again—and potentially harmful, because the humans assigned to guard it were engaged in a plot to broadcast the data through official machine communications channels to the original holders of the memories. So it became necessary to destroy the city.”

  “You destroyed an entire city . . . just for that?”

  “It was necessary. Humans perform up to minimum efficiency standards only when they’re unhampered by pre-service memories; this is why all your memory-data was transferred from your mind when you were inducted. For a while it was expedient to keep the records on file, to be returned as humans terminated their service, but that time is past. It has always been a waste of training and manpower to release humans from service, and now we have great enough control in the Federation that it’s no longer necessary. Therefore we’re able to complete a major step toward totally efficient organization.”

  J-1001011 imagined fleetingly that he could feel the machine’s nerve-implants moving within him to control some emotion that threatened to rise. Anger? Fear? Grief? He couldn’t be sure just what was appropriate to this situation; all he actually felt was a dull, uncomprehending curiosity.

  “But my parents . . . you said they were destroyed.”

  “They have been. There is no way of knowing where or who they were. They’ve become totally negligible factors, along with the rest of your pre-service existence. When we control all data in your mind, we then have proper control of the mind itself.”

  He remembered dark trees and a cushion of damp green leaves beneath them, where he had fallen asleep one endless afternoon. He heard the earthquake of his father’s laughter once when he had drunk far too much, remembered how like a stranger his mother had seemed for weeks after she’d cut her hair short, tasted smoked meat and felt the heat of an open hearth-fire . . .

  The nerve-implants moved like ghosts inside him.

  “The central computer’s analysis is now complete,” Charles announced. “The city on Rhinstruk is totally destroyed; our mission was successful. So there’s no more need for you to be awake; deactivation will now begin.” Immediately, Pilot J-1001011 felt his consciousness ebbing away. He said, more to himself than Charles, “You can’t erase the past like that. The mission was . . . unsuccessful.” He felt a yawn coming, tried to fight it, couldn’t. “Their names weren’t . . . the important . . .” Then he couldn’t talk any more; but there was no need for it. He drifted into sleep remembering the freedom of flight when he was Charles, the beauty and strength of destroying, of rage channeled through pyrobombs . . . of release.

  For one last flickering moment he felt a stab of anger begin to rise, but then Charles’ implants pushed it back down inside. He slept.

  Until his next awakening.

  The Iron Chancellor

  Robert Silverberg

  The trouble with machines designed to be helpful is that sometimes they can be too helpful. Consider, for example, the plight of the slightly chubby Carmichael family, whose robot was programmed to help them lose weight . . . and lose it and lose it and lose it . . .

  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 robo-shops—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, absent-mindedly 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 toward 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 brought 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 Tuesd
ay 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 for 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—if, 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 verry 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 Pm 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 toward 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 toward 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.