At first the house had appeared almost grotesque, then it had looked like a curious hotel, a resort perhaps, and now close up it loomed monstrously, like a madman’s vision. A red-tiled verandah curved out of sight as she and Maddie left the car and approached the front entrance.
“Good afternoon,” a pleasant female voice greeted them when they walked across the verandah. “Please identify yourselves.”
Beth looked for cameras, but they were hidden too well. Maddie stopped before the high entrance door, intricately carved and polished, and said in a meek voice, “Good afternoon. I’m Madelaine Elringer, and this is Beth Elringer. We’re expected.”
“Yes. Please come in. If you’ll leave your bags, we’ll have someone collect them.” The door swung open.
Maddie glanced at Beth, as if to say, see?
The foyer was thirty feet by thirty feet, with a curving staircase to the left, and a wall full of museum-quality art on the right. The floor was a continuation of the red tile. There were several black pedestals with statuary. Beth kept thinking that at any moment a uniformed guide would appear and start a spiel.
“I can’t actually show you around,” Maddie said in her new, subdued voice, with a nervous glance over her shoulder. “I’m supposed to show you your room, that’s all. Or you’d never find it.” Her voice became shriller, and she caught her breath sharply and clutched Beth’s arm. “Up these stairs.”
Beth held back a bitter comment. Maddie was acting as if Gary had become Attila the Hun. They went up the stairs. “Do you know what he’s planning for the weekend?” she asked.
Maddie shook her head. “No one seems to know yet. He’ll tell us after dinner. Drinks in the garden at six, dinner at seven.”
They reached the top of the stairs and Beth gasped. Across the corridor was another glass wall, and this one looked onto a jungle. She moved closer and saw that the interior of the house contained a mammoth atrium enclosed in a circular glass wall that was as high as the house. Beyond the glass there were trees, and a swimming pool at the end. The space appeared to be a grotto, with entrances at the second level, stairs that looked like natural rock formations leading down, other entrances at the ground floor; there was a cliff-like wall of various rocks behind the pool, with a path, and a waterfall that appeared, vanished, then plummeted down to the swimming pool.
“For God’s sake,” Beth muttered finally.
“It’s… just grotesque,” Maddie said, and tugged her arm. She seemed in a hurry now. “Your room’s all the way around on the other side.”
There were closed doors on one side of the corridor, the glass wall on the other, and as they moved Beth had always-changing glimpses of the scene below. There were rattan tables and chairs, a bar, and half a dozen people standing, sitting, drinking, talking. That must be the garden, she decided. How like Gary to order no tours, to force them to explore the house without a clue. Okay, she thought grimly, she would go along with that; she would not show any more surprise than she had already shown, just accept whatever the damn house had to offer and find a chance to talk alone with her husband. They stopped before one of the closed doors.
“This is your room,” Maddie said. “I can tell you this much: No one but you and the staff can open the door. Watch.” She put one hand on a panel with the number two on it, and tried to turn the doorknob with the other hand. The door remained closed. “You try. Don’t worry, it already knows who you are and what room you’ve been assigned. And where you are, and what you’re doing…” She bit her lip and moved aside, her hands twisting together as if with a life of their own now.
Beth put her hand on the panel and turned the knob; the door opened.
“I’ll leave you alone to freshen up. We’ll all be in the garden. Come down when you get ready.” She fled back through the hallway, apparently toward her own room. Beth watched her only a moment, called out her thanks, and entered the room.
She realized that she was moving as quietly as possible, almost holding her breath, and she knew that no one would want to talk in this house, not really. Was it listening, recording everything? She closed the door hard, but it was virtually soundless anyway, and now she saw that her suitcase had been brought up already, just as the house had said it would be.
She spent several minutes exploring her room and bath. The colors were dusty rose and a pale yellow. Twin beds, a good desk with a computer that was on with no visible way to turn it off, some magazines, books obviously from a used-book store—well read, some pages even dog-eared. She picked up a beautiful rose quartz statuette of a mermaid, carefully replaced it on the table; there were two lamps with bases of the same rose quartz, and a massive, matching ashtray. In spite of herself, she was feeling overwhelmed. Angrily she marched into the bathroom, to see an assortment of soaps and shampoos, a blow dryer, many nozzles in the tub/shower, and a panel of push buttons for water temperature, perfume, and bubble bath mixes, all expensive, selected by someone who had known what to buy. And she had to count pennies every day, she thought with fury.
Her room faced south; the outside wall was glass, with a sliding door to the balcony, ceiling-to-floor drapes. She stood gazing at the ocean for a long time. The sun had come out and was low in the western sky at the edge of the vista her room provided. She was startled by the sound of four soft, melodious, clear bell tones, the audible logo of the Bellringer Company. She turned to see the notes displayed on the computer monitor.
“It’s six o’clock, Beth,” the pleasant female voice said. “Would you like to bathe before dinner? If you will tell me the temperature you prefer, I’ll be happy to draw your bath.”
“Can I turn off the audio signal of the computer?” Beth asked in a strained voice.
“Yes, Beth. I’ll signal if there is a message for you.” A message appeared on the monitor:
The audio signal is now off. Please indicate if you wish any service.
Without moving, Beth said, “Close the drapes.” Soundlessly the heavy drapes drew together, shutting out the ocean view. Beth nodded. Her lips were tight as she began to unpack her suitcase, shook out a long skirt and sweater, and yanked off her jeans. No wonder Maddie looked like that. Actually, Maddie had been showing considerable restraint. Beth showered and dressed and left her room to find her way to the garden.
Laura Westerman waved when Beth drew near the small group clustered by the bar in the garden. Laura was in her thirties and very beautiful. She wore a pale green silk dress that showed her perfect figure at its perfect best. She had chestnut hair, tumbled model fashion, and wore makeup so adroitly applied that few people suspected it was even there.
At Laura’s elbow was Jake Kluge, over six feet tall, gangly, with limp, straight brown hair. He was the most powerful man in the company, next to Gary, of course. She wondered if Gary had consulted him about Smart House, if he had approved. It used to be that he was the only person Gary even pretended to listen to. This passed through her mind swiftly as she tried to understand what it was that was so different about Jake. Then it came to her. He used to wear oversized glasses that magnified his pale blue eyes eerily, but now he seemed to have gone to contacts and looked younger than when she had last seen him. She knew he was five or six years older than Gary. He came to meet her with his hands outstretched.
“How are you?” He gripped her hands firmly and examined her face, then kissed her on the forehead.
“I’m fine,” she said, wishing he were not quite so earnest all the time, wishing he would not show concern for her, for Gary, for everyone he came across. She pulled loose and looked beyond him at Milton Sweetwater, the handsome lawyer who groomed himself to look like a lawyer, or like Gregory Peck playing the role of a lawyer. She had always felt a great reserve concerning him, never certain what he thought of her, if he actually disapproved. He was too well mannered to let anything except civility show. But then, she thought, he would never mention it if Gary had a limp either. Suddenly she felt as if she were Gary’s limp that Milton Sweetwater was too polite to notice. She nodded to him and went to the bar, then hesitated. Automated, damn it, she thought in disgust.
“Let me,” Milton said, joining her. “I take it that you feel as uncomfortable as I do talking to a machine.”
“You take it just right,” she admitted. “Is there wine? If I drink anything harder than that, I might pass out. It’s been a long time since breakfast.” She glanced around as he opened a refrigerator and brought out a bottle of white wine. “Where’s… everyone else?”
“Inspecting the marvels of the new age of electronics, I think. In the basement.”
He handed her the wine. “It’s all something else, isn’t it?”
She nodded. The wine was excellent. “Forty-eight degrees, I bet,” she said, holding the glass up. “Bet?”
He laughed. “It’s good to see you. How long has it been? Four, five years? You look exactly the same. Wonderful.”
“You too,” she said, and she felt as if something had clicked off, or perhaps on. When she first met him, ten years ago, he had awed her with his impeccable manners, his expensive clothes, an obviously superior education—his elegance, she summed it up now. She had been timid, almost tongue-tied, in his presence because she could not see past the highly civilized facade he presented; she never once had glimpsed the person behind the smile. For the first time she felt at ease with him. Not that she would be able to talk to him, even now, but it no longer mattered. Back in San Francisco he had an elegant wife and two superior teenage children going to superior schools and making superior grades. She wondered what people like that talked about. Laura sauntered to the bar.
“Are there ice cubes, Milton, darling?” Her voice was the caress that Beth remembered. Laura turned to her and smiled. “I heard what he said, and it’s true, dear. You do look very nice. I always did like that skirt.”
Beth gripped her glass harder and nodded, then looked past Laura at the garden and did not speak. At first glance she had assumed that they had brought in loads of dirt and dumped it to make a hill, but she saw now that all the greenery was in planters arranged in a semicircle on wide stairs that rose to the second floor, where there was a balcony. The illusion of being at the bottom of a hill was magical, and although she had been able to see into the garden, she could not see out. The illusion was that it went on and on. There were banana plants and palm trees and climbing philodendrons with leaves three feet long. There were orchids hanging from trees, growing in baskets, growing on trunks of trees. There were blooming orange trees and lemon trees scenting the air, but overriding all the other fragrances was the smell of the swimming pool, a tinge of chlorine; the air was heavy and humid, jungle like, and always there was the sound of the waterfall splashing into the pool.
Then at the far end of the atrium Gary and Bruce Elringer appeared. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, she thought distantly. The brothers were arguing, their voices loud and carrying, neither listening to the other, neither intelligible because of the other. They both had dark curly hair and blue eyes; Bruce was an inch or so taller than Gary. Both were chubby with legs a little too short for their torsos.
“What a lovely sight,” Laura Westerman drawled.
“Shut up,” Harry Westerman said.
Beth looked around in surprise; she had not seen Harry enter, but suddenly he was at Laura’s side. More startling to Beth was the expression that crossed Laura’s face; she became rigid, and even looked afraid for a moment before her customary mask reappeared. Beth looked from her to her husband. Harry Westerman was hard all over, wiry gray hair, wiry hard body, hard black eyes. He was not a large man—both Jake Kluge and Milton were taller and broader—but Harry gave the impression of great strength. He looked like a pole vaulter in the instant before a leap; he had that kind of tension about him, a furious energy that was being consciously suppressed. It was said of him that he never saw a mountain he didn’t covet and eventually climb. If he saw Beth, he did not acknowledge her in any way, but kept his gaze on the approaching brothers, watching them with a remote, unreadable look.
Beth turned to watch them also; their voices were still raised in argument. She could make out some of the words, but before they made sense—going over budget, going broke, going for broke, whatever—Gary spotted her and abruptly cut off what he had been saying. He hurried to her and seized her arms, shook her.
“It’s about time you came back,” he said. “You know I want your input. My wife belongs at home.”
Chapter 2
If it had not been for
Laura Westerman, Beth might have hit him, but she knew it would vastly amuse Laura. She gritted her teeth and yanked away, spilling her wine on him in the process. He wiped at it halfheartedly and turned to Laura.
“Come up with any ideas about the campaign yet?”
“Gary, darling, you put it in my lap two hours ago! Come on!”
“Okay, okay. But, listen: Alice in Wonderland, how about that? A ballet dancer exploring Wonderland, Smart House.” He took Laura’s hand and pulled her toward a table, at the same time drawing a notebook from his pocket. “Greatest character in English lit exploring the greatest house ever built…”
Beth realized that Milton was taking her wineglass from her hand, and she breathed deeply. She was shaking. The others drifted in, chatting or talking with intense concentration, or maintaining a sullen silence, and she paid hardly any attention. She sipped wine, grateful to Milton, and decided to leave the next day. It had been stupid to come in the first place, to have expected any changes in Gary. She would get a lawyer to handle the entire matter, including a divorce, she thought with surprise. Actually she had not come around to that decision until just now, but having arrived at it, she knew it was part of her reason for being here this weekend.
At dinner she was seated with Alexander Randall on one side and Jake Kluge on the other. Alexander was twenty-seven, painfully shy, painfully thin, so adolescent in every way that it was an ordeal to have to spend any time at all with him. His fingernails were bitten off, his fingers red and sore. He was terrified of women. When the talk wound back to computers, as it did repeatedly, he became statue-still listening, then withdrew again when any other subject was raised. He ate with furious energy, barely glancing away from the food before him. Jake Kluge appeared to be preoccupied, either in deep thought or else totally absorbed in the conversation at the far end of the table, where Gary was going on about his plans for advertising Smart House. TV, of course, national magazines, tours. Jake’s gaze was on Gary, but Beth didn’t really believe he was listening any more than she was. She felt almost a malicious satisfaction seeing Laura squirm as Gary demolished her one reason for being in the company at all. If he took on advertising, along with every other phase of company business that he had already assumed, Laura would be as valuable an asset to the company as Maddie was. And that was zilch.
Beth paid no attention to the food, or the two middle-aged people who served it—husband and wife presumably, Mexicans maybe. She was vaguely aware that the food was good, the service excellent. She was thinking: They would finish dinner by nine; she would follow Gary and speak to him about her share of stock, if he would listen. If he would not listen, she would still follow him out, wish him a happy birthday, and tell him she was leaving first thing in the morning. He would have a tantrum, and Maddie would cry again, but she no longer cared. Coming here had been a mistake, staying would be a bigger mistake; she knew with certainty that if he manhandled her ever again, she would hit him. Clobber him, she amended.
Across the table from her Bruce suddenly threw down his spoon. “What the fuck makes you think you’ll have another million or two for advertising, you asshole?” he yelled at Gary.
Maddie cried, “Bruce, behave yourself!”
Milton said coldly, “This is hardly the time or place for a scene.”
Others said other things, but at the end of the table Gary laughed. His laughter always had been too loud, a braying, animal-like noise. Beth flinched at the familiar sound. “We can pour our own coffee,” he said to the man servant. “Take it and cups and stuff to the living room and then you and Juanita beat it as soon as you clean up here.” He stood up and walked out.
The rest of them began pushing chairs back, and in an awkward silence they trailed out after Gary.
The room they entered was as big as a hotel lobby; and like every other room so far, beautifully decorated. In here the colors were a deep rich maroon and pale blue with gold accents. There were several groupings of couches and comfortable chairs and low tables. Gary was already in an armchair before the window wall. The woman servant was arranging a tray with coffee and cups and the man was busy with another tray with pastries. They finished and left soundlessly before the shareholders were all settled. Maddie stationed herself at the coffee service and started to pour, a nervous, if very proper, hostess.
“By Monday, I’ll have the votes,” Bruce said. He sounded less angry now, more in control, but his eyes were cold and fierce. He accepted coffee and sat down with it.
Gary smiled. One by one they all were served by Maddie, and seated themselves on the twin couches, the various chairs that made up a semicircle before the window wall. The sun had set, the sky was now deep violet; the sea a leaden gray with white-capped waves rolling in. Crashing, Beth thought, but the house admitted no sound from outside.
“By Monday,” Gary said as soon as they were all seated, “you’ll have seen Smart House in operation. It won’t matter who has how many votes by then. And, in fact,” he went on, regarding them all with the smile that seemed too amused, too superior, as if he were looking at idiots at play, “to show you how sure I am of your confidence on Monday, I have planned a little entertainment for this weekend.” No one moved. “A game,” he said, “called Assassin.”
Maddie clattered a spoon on the table; it was the only sound. Gary laughed and put his cup down. “The rules are very simple. I’ll state them briefly, and if you want to study them, they’re on the computer in your room. The idea of the game is to kill off a designated victim in front of a single witness, record your kill with the computer, and get a new victim. Each player starts with one vote that his killer will gain. If a victim already has collected other votes, his killer gets them too.”
“You’re crazy,” Bruce said harshly.
“It’s just a game,” Gary said with a shrug. “A way to force everyone to experience Smart House. As I said before, by Monday I don’t think it will make any difference who does or doesn’t have the votes. You’ll all see Smart House my way by then, but someone could pick up a few extra votes and swing things his way on Monday. Of course, if you don’t dare risk anything, you don’t have to play.”
But he did have to play, Beth thought, chilled through and through. They all had to play. When Gary said eat, they ate; when he said walk, they walked. Now he had said play, and they would all play.
“Gary, this is ridiculous,” Maddie said nervously. “Grown-up people don’t play such childish games. This is a game for children. I read about it. Teenagers play it.”
He looked sullen. “Kids play a lot of things that work for grown-ups. I never had a chance to try most of their games, remember. I want to catch up. One vote each. The weapons will be in the showroom downstairs. You can only have one weapon at a time, and you have to register it with the computer or your kill won’t count. The computer will keep score, and its decisions are final.”
“What weapons?” Milton Sweetwater 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 as she could tell. Next she examined the weapons, each one displayed on the screen, with a brief text about its use.
Water gun. Range of four feet. Will not fire through glass or through any solid material such as a door or wall.
There was a section of plastic rope. She read:
Electrical line, assumed to be plugged into a power source. May be used any way that a real electrical line could be used.
There was a self-sticking dagger made out of soft plastic. Three “poison” capsules, quarter-sized discs the color of chocolate. A ribbon with Velcro on both ends—a garrote. It had to be secured to the victim’s neck, the Velcro fastened, to count. An open-weave net bag to be used as if it were plastic film. She went down the entire assortment of weapons, and then selected the house layout. When the basement level was displayed, she asked if there was a printout. She typed the question.
In the top desk drawer there is a printout
, the computer responded on screen.
What else was it programmed to serve up? she wondered, but did not pursue the question. She took the printout and spread it on the desk to study. Beautifully executed house plans. Rich’s work? Probably. There was an elevator, and two flights of stairs, front and back, to all levels, and there was a terrace surrounding the dome on the roof; it could be reached by elevator or stairs.
After looking over the house plans, she reluctantly returned to the menu and selected
Victims
. The computer displayed:
Your first victim is Rich Schoen. Good luck.
The message vanished and she was back in the menu again. She bit her lip. One of the others had just done that, she thought, and her name had come up. One of them would be selecting a weapon, making plans. She blinked when the computer flashed a new message.
Would you like to see the weapons displayed again?
“No,” she snapped. “Do you know where Gary is?”
Yes, Beth.
“Where?”
I’m sorry. I am not allowed to give out that information.
“Fuck you,” she muttered, and turned toward the door, belatedly realizing that she had been talking with the damn machine, not going through the keyboard. Okay, she thought, so Gary had a genius computer on the job, one that understood spoken language that had not been programmed in. She realized this was one of the things he wanted them to experience for themselves. What else?
She opened her door and started to leave her room, just in time to see someone on the far side of the curving corridor duck back inside a room. She had not been able to identify the person. Unexpectedly she felt a jolt in her stomach—fear, anxiety, nerves, something. “For God’s sake,” she muttered, “it’s just a game!” But in that moment she knew that others might be playing the game seriously, with every intention of winning, of garnering points in order to sway decisions at the business meeting on Monday. For the first time since the founding of the company, her one vote was important to someone, important enough to “kill” for. For the first time she was perceived as a menace to someone else. She felt a giggle start to rise, and drew in a deep breath. Damn Gary, she thought again, as she had so many times over the years. Damn him.