Smart House by Kate Wilhelm Page A

asked to be notified on your arrival.” Her voice was very pleasant, musical even; she had no trace of an accent.
    Beth said, “If I see Milton, I’ll tell him. See you later.” She waved and went around them, through the spacious foyer.
    “Would you like to take the elevator up?” Mrs. Ramos asked.
    “Yes indeed,” Charlie said, and she led them into the wide corridor with the glass wall of the atrium. Charlie whistled.
    “We can go that way,” Mrs. Ramos said. “Most people do. It’s the shortest way through the house.”
    They examined the garden, the pool, the arrangements of chairs, tables, the bar, the way the room was built up to resemble a rocky hill covered with jungle greenery. The air was heavy.
    “You know why we’re here?” Charlie asked, pausing to study the rock wall where the water plunged down into the pool.
    “They told me.”
    “I feel like I’m in some damn pasha’s palace,” he said, and started to walk again. “Will you be here all weekend? We’ll want to talk to you at some point. You and your husband.”
    “Of course,” she said. “We are in a cottage on the property. Whenever it’s convenient.”
    The unflusterable, perfect housekeeper, Charlie thought, and wondered what lay behind the serenity of her expression, the wise black eyes. She stopped again almost immediately on leaving the atrium.
    “The elevator,” she said.
    The elevator was at the end of the corridor, with a narrower hallway leading directly away from the pool area. The doors to the elevator were bifold, open. They stepped inside. On the wall next to the doors the control panel was a music staff with notes, the controls flush with the wall. Gold metal strips divided the walls into random sections, each a different pastel—blue, green, yellow…. Rich burgundy carpeting underfoot seemed almost too deep. The ceiling was ivory colored, luminescent, the light source. The cage was eleven feet deep, five feet wide, with a ceiling eight feet high, Charlie knew from the reports he had read.
    “Where’s the automatic vacuum?” he asked Mrs. Ramos.
    “The center panel on the rear wall,” she said, nodding toward it. “I can’t show you on this floor. It only operates on the basement level. These are the floor indicators,” she said then and touched one of the notes. “The first one shuts the doors,” she said. The doors closed soundlessly. “The next one opens them, and of course the rising notes are for the floors. We’re on one, and your room is on two.” She touched another note. There was no sensation of motion. “When the computer is operating, there’s no need to remember to press any buttons, you just tell it what you want. It’s automatic.”
    She led them into the hallway on the second floor, the glass wall on one side, the bedroom doors on the other between long expanses of wall with very nice art, each picture illuminated with its own light above it. They passed several closed doors before she stopped and opened one. She did not enter, but held the door for them. “I hope you will be comfortable. Number six on the phone rings in the kitchen, if you want anything. And I’ll make certain that Mr. Sweetwater knows you have arrived.”
    Throughout the minitour and minilectures Constance had remained silent and watchful. Now she asked, “Did you work for Gary Elringer?”
    “No. I work for the company. Sometimes he was here, sometimes not; I work in the house for the company.”
    “Do you like it, Mrs. Ramos? Smart House, I mean, the computer controlling things?”
    For an instant there was something other than the pleasant well-trained-housekeeper face, an expression stony and cold; it was so fleeting it might not have been noticeable if Constance had not been watching closely.
    “The computer is turned off; it isn’t running anything anymore.” She glanced inside the room in a professional way, then turned and left them.
    While Constance crossed the room to open the drapes, Charlie