Robert Silverberg: 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 swivelled 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.”