“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.