Smart House Read Online Free Page B

demanded.
    “Squirt guns, poison darts, poison capsules, poison gas balloons, things like that. Key in Weapons on your computer. It’ll show you what’s available. They all are down in the showroom in a case with a computer lock. After you use a weapon you can’t use it again, even if you don’t make a killing with it the first time. You have to turn it in and get a different one. And you can’t tell anyone anything, not who your victim is, or what weapon you have, or if you’ve been killed yet. Nothing!”
    Maddie was shaking her head. She stood up. “No, Gary. I won’t have anything to do with this.”
    “Then your vote can go to Laura. She’s the only one with nothing to lose.” He looked at his watch. “The game starts now and will end Sunday night at ten. You all know already that no one can enter your rooms except you. Those are safe places, the only perfectly safe places unless you invite your killer in. Remember, you need one witness—anyone, dead or alive, playing the game can witness, but no more than one. And as soon as you make a killing, you and the victim and the witness have to report in to the computer. It will instruct you further.”
    He stood up and looked them over. No one voiced an objection. Abruptly he laughed his insane laughter, too unexpected, too loud, then cut off so totally that it was as if it were controlled by an on/off toggle, not an emotion. He walked from the room.
    “He’s really crazy,” Bruce said in an intense, low voice. “I mean certifiable!”
    Milton Sweetwater turned to Alexander Randall. “Is this what he’s been up to? Programming a damn game?”
    Alexander fidgeted. “I didn’t know anything about it until right now. He was afraid that no one would really give Smart House a chance. I guess it’s like he said; if you play the game, you’ll know what it can do.”
    “You already know, you little jerk,” Harry Westerman snapped. He glared at Alexander, then at Rich Schoen. “And you. What do you know about all this?”
    Rich Schoen was the architect. He and Alexander and Gary had lived in the house for months, had worked on it together from the beginning. Beth had met Rich only one other time, and he had been distant, abstracted then. He seemed just as distant and abstracted now. He was a heavily built man, thick through the chest, with large hands, big wrist bones, an especially large head that was nearly bald. His wife and daughter had been killed in an accident a few years before he went to work for Gary on the house. Very calmly he regarded Harry and said, “I never heard of this game before tonight. You don’t like it, don’t play.”
    Watching him, Beth thought, that was what he would do if he didn’t want to play. He would say no. He had nothing more to lose. What she had regarded as abstraction and distance had been the veneer over emptiness. Gary had told her that for Rich there was nothing on earth except work, and God help anyone who got between him and his work. She watched silently as he stood up and left the room without a backward glance.
    “He’s going to look up weapons and get one,” Laura said, and stood up. “And so am I.” She left the room also.
    With some embarrassment, some hesitation, the others began to get up, to mill about, and gradually to leave the spacious room.
    In her pink and yellow room again, Beth paced for a long time. Was Gary really crazy? At length she had to conclude that she did not believe that. She suspected that he had told the exact truth: He had not had time to play as a child, then as a teenager, and he wanted to catch up. What did he mean experience Smart House? She glanced at the computer monitor and was not at all surprised to see a menu displayed. Rules, Weapons, Victims, To register a point, Layout of Smart House, Kitchen. She sat down and selected the first item on the menu and read through the rules of the game. Gary had stated them succinctly, without any obvious omissions or additions, as far