Beyond Control Read online

  “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 selfcontained 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 Jo 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 comer 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 toward 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 defannising 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 one hundred ninety-two to one hundred eighty,” 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 quern.�
�

  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 one hundred eighty now. I’m lean, trim, fit as a fiddle. Next month I’ll wash one hundred seventy. Then one hundred sixty. Then finally about eighty-eight pounds or so. We’ll all shrivel up. Bismarck will starve us to death.”

  “Don’t worn; 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 quern!”

  “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, ruddycheeked 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.”

  The Box

  James Blish

  . . . New York cut off from the world! Its millions of inhabitants sealed within an impenetrable gray dome—condemned, perhaps, to a terrible death by starvation or oxygen starvation! Not a bad idea, you might say, if you belong to the immense legion of that vast city’s nonadmirers, but an unfortunate mishap for those locked inside. That’s the situation concocted by James Blish, award-winning author of such science-fiction favorites as A Case of Conscience and Cities in Flight.

  WHEN MESITER GOT of bed that Tuesday morning, he thought it was before dawn. He rarely needed an alarm clock these days—a little light in his eyes was enough to awaken him and sometimes his dreams brought him upright long before the sun came up.

  It had seemed a reasonably dreamless night, but probably he had just forgotten the dreams. Anyhow, here he was, awake early. He padded over to the window, shut it, pulled
up the blind and looked out.

  The street lights were not off yet, but the sky was already a smooth, dark gray. Meister had never before seen such a sky. Even the dullest overcast before a snowfall shows some variation in brightness. The sky here—what he could see of it between the apartment houses—was like the inside of a lead helmet.

  He shrugged and turned away, picking up the clock from the table to turn off the alarm. Some day, he promised himself, he would sleep long enough to hear it ring.

  That would be a good day; it would mean that the dreams were gone. In Concentration Camp Dora, one had awakened the moment the tunnel lights were put on; otherwise one might be beaten awake, or dead. Meister was deaf in the left ear on that account. For the first three days at Dopa he had had to be awakened.

  He became aware suddenly that he was staring fixedly at the face of the clock, his subconscious ringing alarm bells of its own. Nine o’clock! No, it was not possible. It was obviously close to sunrise. He shook the clock stupidly, although it was ticking and had been since he first noticed it. Tentatively he touched the keys at the back.

  The alarm had run down.

  This was obviously ridiculous. The clock was wrong. He put it back on the table and turned on the little radio. After a moment it responded with a terrible thrumming, as if a vacuum cleaner were imprisoned in its workings.

  “B-flat,” Meister thought automatically. He had only one good ear, but he still had perfect pitch—a necessity for a resonance engineer. He shifted the setting. The hum got louder. Hastily he reversed the dial. Around 830 kc, where WNYC came in, the hum was almost gone, but of course it was too early yet for the city station to be on the air—

  “. . . in your homes,” a voice struck in clearly above the humming. “We are awaiting a report from Army headquarters. In the meantime, any crowding at the boundaries of the barrier will interrupt the work of the mayor’s inquiry commission. Here’s a word just in from the Port Authority: all ferry service has been suspended until further notice. Subways and tubes are running outbound trains only; however, local service remains normal so far.”