Robert Silverberg - Neighbor

“Let me remind you,” Holt said coldly, “that you have called me. The normal rules of etiquette require that I have the privilege of deciding on the manner of transmission. And I prefer not to be seen. I also prefer not to be speaking to you. You have thirty seconds to state your complaint. Important business awaits me.”

There was silence. Holt gripped the arms of his chair and signaled for a more intense massage. He became aware, in great irritation, that his hands were trembling. He glared at the screen as though he could burn his enemy’s brain out simply by sending angry thoughts over the communicator.

McDermott said finally, “I have no complaint, Holt. Only an invitation.”

“To tea?”

“Call it that. I want you to come here, Holt.”

“You’ve lost your mind!”

“Not yet. Come to me. Let’s have a truce,” McDermott rasped. “We’re both old, sick, stupid men. It’s time to stop the hatred.”

Holt laughed. “We’re both old, yes. But I’m not sick and you’re the only stupid one. Isn’t it a little late for the olive branch?”

“Never too late.”

“You know there can’t be peace between us,” Holt said. “Not so long as that eyesore of yours sticks up over the trees. It’s a cinder in my eye, McDermott. I can’t ever forgive you for building it.”

“Will you listen to me?” McDermott said. “When I’m gone, you can blast the place apart, if it pleases you. All I want is for you to come here. I—I need you, Holt. I want you to pay me a visit.”

“Why don’t you come here, then?” Holt jeered. “I’ll throw my door wide for you. We’ll sit by the fire and reminisce about all the years we hated each other.”

“If I could come to you,” McDermott said, “there would be no need for us to meet at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Turn your visual on, and you’ll see.”

Michael Holt frowned. He knew he had become hideous with age, and he was not eager to show himself to his enemy. But he could not see McDermott without revealing himself at the same time. With an abrupt, impulsive gesture, Holt jabbed the control button in his chair. The mists on the screen faded, and an image appeared.

All Holt could see was a face, shrunken, wizened, wasted. McDermott was past two hundred, Holt knew, and he looked it. There no flesh left on his face. The skin lay like parchment over bone. The left side of his face was distorted, the nostril flared, the mouth corner dragged down to reveal the teeth, the eyelid drooping. Below the chin, McDermott was invisible, swathed in machinery, his body cocooned in what was probably a nutrient bath. He was obviously in bad shape.

He said, “I’ve had a stroke, Holt. I’m paralyzed from the neck down. I can’t hurt you.”

“When did this happen?”

“A year ago.”

“You’ve kept very quiet about it,” Holt said.

“I didn’t think you’d care to know. But now I do. I’m dying, Holt, and I want to see you once face to face before I die. I know, you’re suspicious. You think I’m crazy to ask you to come here. Well, maybe I am crazy. I’ll turn my screens off. I’ll send all my robots across the river. I’ll be absolutely alone here, helpless, and you can come with an army if you like. There. Doesn’t that sound like a trap, Holt? I know I’d think so if I were in your place and you were in mine. But it isn’t a trap. Can you believe that? I’ll open my door to you. You can come and laugh in my face as I lie here. But come. There’s something I have to tell you, something of vital importance to you. And you’ve got to be here in person when I tell you. You won’t regret coming. Believe that, Holt.”

Holt stared at the wizened creature on the screen, and trembled with doubt and confusion. The man must be a lunatic! It was years since Holt had last stepped beyond the protection of his own screens. Now McDermott was asking him not only to go into the open field, where he might be gunned down with ease, but to enter into McDermott’s house itself, to put his head right between the jaws of the lion.

Absurd!

McDermott said, “Let me show you my sincerity. My screens are off. Take a shot at the house. Hit it anywhere. Go ahead. Do your worst!”

Deeply troubled, chilled with mystification, Holt elbowed out of his chair, went beyond the range of the visual pickup, over to the control console of the guns. How many times in dreams he had fondled these studs and knobs, never firing them once, except in test shots directed at his own property! It was unreal to be actually training the sights on the gleaming tower of McDermott’s house at last. Excitement surged in him. Could this all be some subtle way, he wondered, of causing him to have a fatal heart attack through overstimulation?

He gripped the controls. He pondered, considered tossing a thousand-megawatt beam at McDermott, then decided to use something a little milder. If the screens really were down all the way, even his feeblest shot would score.

He sighted—not on the house itself, but on a tree just within McDermott’s inner circle of defense. He fired, still half convinced he was dreaming. The tree became a yard-high stump.

“That’s it,” McDermott called. “Go on. Aim at the house, too. Knock a turret off. The screens are down.”

Senile dementia, Holt thought. Baffled, he lifted the sight a bit and let the beam play against one of McDermott’s outbuildings. The shielded wall glowed a moment, then gave as the beam smashed its way through. Ten square feet of McDermott’s castle now was a soup of protons, fleeing into the cold.

Holt realized in stunned disbelief that there was nothing at all preventing him from destroying McDermott and his odious house entirely. There was no risk of a counterattack. He would not even need to use the heavy artillery that he had been so jealously hoarding against this day. A light beam would do it easily enough.

If would be too easy this way, though.

There could be no pleasure in a wanton attack. McDermott had not provoked him. Rather, he sat there in his cocoon, sniveling and begging to be visited.

Holt returned to the visual field. “I must be as crazy as you are,” he said. “Turn your robots loose and leave your screens down. I’ll come to visit you. I wish I understood this, but I’ll come anyway.”

Michael Holt called his family together. Three wives, the eldest near his own age, the youngest only seventy. Seven sons, ranging in age from sixty to a hundred thirteen. The wives of his sons. His grandchildren. His top echelon of robots.

He assembled them in the grand hall of Holt Keep, and took his place at the head of the table, and stared down the rows at their faces, so like his own, and said quietly, “I am going to pay a call on Lord McDermott.”

He could see the shock on their faces. They were too well disciplined to speak their minds, of course. He was Lord Holt; and his word was law, and he could, if he so pleased, order them all put to death on the spot. Once, many years before, he had been forced to assert his parental authority in just such a way, and no one would ever forget it.

He smiled. “You think I’ve gone soft in my old age, and perhaps I have. But McDermott has had a stroke. He’s completely paralyzed from the neck down. He wants to tell me something, and I’m going to go. His screens are down and he’s sending all his robots out of the house. I could have blasted the place apart if I wanted to.”

He could see the muscles working in the jaws of his sons. They wanted to cry out, but they did not dare.

Holt went on, “I’m going alone except for a few robots. If there’s been no word from me for half an hour after I’m seen entering the house, you’re authorized to come after me. If there’s any interference with the rescue party, it will mean war. But I don’t think there’ll be trouble. Anyone who comes after me in less than half an hour will be put to death.”