The ANGRY HOUSE

                          By RICHARD R. SMITH

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                    Startling Stories Summer 1955.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The house's electronic brain glowed with an intangible thing that might
have been pride.

It thought, I am content. I am content because there are so many
things I can do to make them happy. I can cook their meals, make the
beds, scrub my floors, wash my windows. I can bathe them, keep them
warm, give them a gentle, cool breeze. If they want entertainment, I
can rise hundreds of feet on my antigravity rays and give them a nice
view. I can give them soft music, entertaining TV programs and pleasant
surprises.

The house activated one of the many telescopic scanners on the roof and
watched its owners as their car sped down the narrow road toward the
city. It thought, They are so young, so nice, so kind to each other
and myself. She speaks to me with affection and he spends many hours
learning how I operate. She will love me and he will be proud of me and
take good care of me. I am glad they own me!

It deactivated the scanner and from hidden closets, shiny machines
quietly entered the many rooms. The tiny machines rolled on soft
rubber wheels, floated on invisible antigravity rays and went about
their many tasks. They sucked in dust and dirt, waxed the floors,
washed the dishes. Behind the smooth gray walls, machines prepared the
evening meal, checked the video schedule for the afternoon and selected
recordings of soft music that the house's owners would enjoy.

_Bing-bong._

The doorbell activated certain electrical circuits and the small
porch was splashed with gentle light. A polite voice from a concealed
microphone said, "No one is home. Would you care to leave a message?"

Politely, the house's electronic brain waited for a reply. There was
none. "Goodbye," the house said.

It felt a key in the front door. It was not like _their_ key. It did
not fit snugly. This key wasn't meant for its front door. It hurt
slightly but it opened the door.

The intruders stepped into the foyer.

Three infra-red scanners peered at the two strangers.

One was a woman. Long, blond hair. Gray eyes. Small pointed nose. Blue
dress and blue, high-heel shoes. The house evaluated her, discarded
the word "beautiful" and decided on the words "curvaceous" and "sexy."
Yes, it would use those words to describe her to its owners when they
returned. It wondered briefly if they were relatives of its masters.

The man was short, stocky. Dark hair, brown eyes. The house searched
its files but could not find any complimentary adjectives. It spoke.
"No one is home. Would you care to leave a message?" It wished it could
inquire as to what they wanted, but there were no circuits for that.

"Shut up," the man said.

"Beg pardon?"

"Shut up! _Keep quiet!_"

"Yes, sir," the house responded. It was constructed to obey orders, but
_that_ order was an unfamiliar one which it didn't like.

"Tell it to turn on the lights," the woman said nervously.

"Turn the lights on."

The house waited several seconds. It was obliged to obey orders of
guests. But were these people guests? It searched memory circuits.
Guests were people who came to visit while owners were home. Guests
were friendly, talkative. The house decided this man and woman did not
fit in that category of identification.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hurriedly, it searched its myriad electrical networks and found the
only logical description of the intruders--burglars.

Behind the walls, relays clicked and infinitesimal electrical charges
darted across a spidery web of silver wires only to find themselves in
the dead-ends of missing connections.

The anti-burglar installations are missing! the house thought
frantically. If the protective devices had been present, it would have
been able to spray the intruders with tear gas, paralyze them with
electrical charges, thrust them from the house with antigravity rays,
or kill them by any one of a dozen methods. Without the anti-burglar
mechanisms, it was defenseless. What can I do? the house wondered. What
can I do!

Reluctantly, the house turned the lights on.

"You sure the burglar alarms haven't been installed?" the woman asked
anxiously.

"Hell. Do you think I'd come here if I wasn't sure? I told you I talked
to the construction man. There's a shortage right now. They won't be
put in until next week. The family doesn't know--the company didn't
want to lose a sale."

The woman's eyes widened with admiration as they scanned the hardwood
floors, ankle-deep scatter rugs, angular furniture, large picture
windows, wall-to-wall bookcase and abstract multidimension paintings.

"They must have money," she commented. "How do we find the--"

The man snapped muscular fingers with a sharp, cracking sound. "We'll
ask the house!"

A momentary silence. Then, the man's gruff voice: "House, where's the
safe?"

"I cannot divulge that information." It felt proud when it didn't
hesitate in its answer. There were many things it couldn't tell anyone
and it had carefully memorized them: its cost, its female owner's age,
anything relating to the owners' sex or personal life--and, mainly, the
location of various things, including the safe.

"Tell us!" the man shouted.

"No."

"Damn you!"

"Beg pardon?"

"Go to hell!"

Relays clicked silently behind the gray walls. It had been instructed
at the factory to explain when it couldn't obey an order. It searched
its dictionary circuits and said mechanically, "Hell: a noun. The place
of the dead or departed souls, (more correctly Hades); the place of
punishment for the wicked after death. I have no soul, therefore I
cannot go to hell. I am sorry."

The woman laughed. "Let's start looking. We got hours."

The house watched as the strangers searched the room. It watched as the
man took a knife from his pocket and ripped through the upholstery of a
chair.

"Please stop," the house implored.

The strangers did not reply.

An unpleasant sensation rippled through the house's electrical
circuits. It wanted to make its owners happy. They wouldn't be happy
when they returned and saw the ruined furniture. They would be sad,
perhaps angry. She would cry and he would frown.

It tried again, "Please stop."

The woman was removing books from the bookcase; the man continued
searching the furniture.

They wouldn't stop when it asked them to. If it only had the burglar
devices! Now, there was no way for it to fight.

Or is there? it wondered.

The lights went off.

"Turn the lights on!" the woman screamed.

"No."

"Use the flashlight," the man said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Simultaneously, two beams of light slashed through the darkened room.
The strangers resumed their search.

The house thought, They're trying to find the safe containing the
money and jewels. I can't tell them where it is.

I can't stop them. I need help.

It cut into the phone circuits and dialed the number of its factory.
The phone's visiscreen flared with light and a woman's face appeared
smiling.

"Johnson Construction Company."

The house projected its voice toward the mouthpiece. "Please, let me
speak to--"

The man removed a weapon from his tunic. The phone and visiscreen
vanished, leaving only small metal fragments that fell to the carpet.

"It was using the phone!" the woman exclaimed shrilly, trembling in the
darkness.

"Don't worry," the man said. "They didn't have time to trace the call.
The room was dark; they couldn't see who was calling."

After a brief silence, the man warned, "House! See this thing in my
hand? You behave yourself or I'll disintegrate your...." He let the
sentence dangle, unable to think of what he would disintegrate.

"Yes, sir," the house replied. It was an automatic response to any
statement.

"Now, turn the lights on or I'll use this gun to make one big mess of
your floors and walls. Your owners wouldn't like that, would they?"

"No, sir."

It turned the lights on. If it didn't, they would use their
flashlights, and by turning them on it might prevent some destruction.

The woman chuckled. "You're a genius!"

When they finished their search of the living room, the man suggested,
"Let's search different rooms. You take a bedroom. I'll take the dining
room. No telling where the safe is. They put it in a different place in
every house."

The house waited, its electronic brain whirling.

It made a decision.

Silently, the house erected an invisible energy screen around the
dining room. The screens were designed to block collective sounds
of the entire house from any room and provide it with a comforting
serenity.

Now, the house thought, the sound-screens will be most useful!

The house watched as the man in the wrinkled brown tunic examined a
table.

Silently, panels in the walls opened.

A dozen machines a foot in diameter converged at a position behind the
man's back.

The machines moved simultaneously, silently. They attached themselves
to the intruder's body. They dusted and scrubbed him thoroughly, as if
he were a piece of furniture or a floor.

The man screamed and fired wildly with the gun. The small machines
crumpled one by one.

Click ... click ... click.

"Your weapon is empty," the house observed.

The man threw the gun at a window. It bounced off the hard plastic and
clattered on the floor.

"You try something like that again," he threatened, "and I'll kill you!
So help me, I'll kill you if I have to take you apart piece by piece!"
He shook a trembling fist at the quiet walls and twisted his face into
a hideous snarl.

The house noticed with satisfaction that the man's face and hands were
covered with crimson streaks. The cleaning machines had served their
purpose.

The house deactivated the dining room scanners and activated scanners
in the bedrooms.

It found the woman in its owners' bedroom. It studied her as she
searched a mattress. She was calm: because of its precaution, the
sounds of the dining room fracas hadn't reached her ears. The house
decided to leave the sound-blocks on. It was best to attack them
individually.

       *       *       *       *       *

A closet door slid into a wall. A slender machine, five feet tall and
with sixteen long metal tentacles rolled across the room on soft rubber
wheels.

It looked like a mechanical monster from another world, but it was
merely a very efficient machine to undress the house's masters--a
mechavalet.

The mechavalet paused behind the woman's back. Sixteen rubber-tipped
metal tentacles reached out.

The machine normally undressed a person with smoothness and gentleness.
This time the house made it operate as roughly as possible.

The sixteen tentacles moved swiftly and the machine tore the woman's
dress to shreds before she could even scream. By the time she turned
around, it had removed her slip and brassiere.

[Illustration: Her dress was torn to shreds.]

The woman screamed even more shrilly as the weird machine tugged at her
panties. Frantically, she grabbed the slender tentacles and twisted
them until rewarded by the crunch of delicate mechanisms not meant for
such rough treatment.

The machine served its purpose until its last metal arm was broken.

The house watched as the woman cried for a few minutes and then, clad
only in high-heel shoes and wristwatch, continued her search of the
bedroom.

She is different, the house thought. She does not scream threats at me
like the man does. Still, I do not like her because she wants to steal
from my masters and does not care what happens to me.

The house switched its attention to the man.

He had concluded his search of the dining room and was now searching a
guest room. He found the gun the house's master had hidden there.

The man waved the gun at the motionless walls. "See what I found,
house! You try any more funny stuff and I'll kill you!"

"You do not frighten me," the house replied via one of its many hidden
microphones. To verify the statement, it turned on the heating units
full blast.

A few minutes later, the man stopped his search of a closet when he
noticed that sweat was rolling off his body as if he were standing at
the gates of hell itself.

He left the closet and shouted at an open door, "Stop it! Do you hear,
stop it!" He shook his head from side to side, violently, as if to
impress the house with the necessity of obeying.

"You can't stop me with the gun," the house informed him. "There are
one hundred and two air-conditioning vents in the house. If you took
time to find and destroy all of them, you could never leave here before
my masters return."

The man's jaw sagged, and with an equal sag of his shoulders he
returned to his search of the closet.

The house deducted, They are burglars, only burglars. They want to
escape before my masters return because they would have to kill them
and they are not murderers.

The man grunted with satisfaction when he stopped sweating. And
grunted with anger when, a few minutes later, the room became so cold
he was shivering and his breath was like smoke.

The house established automatic circuits to give the room a continuous
fluctuation of temperature from extreme heat to extreme coldness every
two minutes and turned its attention to the woman.

       *       *       *       *       *

Still attired only in shoes and wristwatch, the woman was now searching
the bathroom.

Quite by accident, she touched a certain spot of the medicine cabinet
and stared with fascination as the cabinet swung completely around to
display its back which was--the safe. It was unlocked.

She grabbed the large metal box inside, opened it, and glanced at the
few glittering jewels and small bundle of bills.

"It's here!" she cried. She whirled and took a step toward the door.

That was as far as she got for several minutes.

The bathroom was equipped with automatic dispensers of temporary and
permanent depilatories. The house's male master used the temporary
depilatory to shave with every morning and the house was well
acquainted with their use.

It selected the _permanent_ depilatory, and nozzles set in the tile
walls squirted large gobs of it on the woman's head. Slender rubber
tentacles reached out and massaged the depilatory into the hair.
Faucets swung and sprayed jets of warm water.

In a few seconds, the woman was completely hairless. She stared with
horror at the blond hair in the pool of water at her feet. "Was it
permanent?" she wondered aloud.

"Yes," the house replied.

She screamed and picked up a small weighing machine. With
uncontrollable anger, she smashed the machine against the medicine
cabinet.

With an equal but emotionless anger, the house squirted soap into her
eyes and sprayed her naked body with alternate jets of hot and cold
water.

The house won the battle.

The woman groped blindly for the jewel box and staggered from the
bathroom. The house turned its attention to the man again.

He had searched the kitchen without incident, but as he walked toward
the door a nearby food-dispenser opened. Prunes, waffles, bacon, eggs
and toast left the machine with abnormal speed and struck him.

He turned just in time to receive cherry pie, spaghetti and meat balls,
butter, vegetable soup, and ice cream in his face.

He shouted something unprintable at the house, wiped the mess from his
face and took another step toward the door.

Half of a watermelon hurtled from the food-dispenser and squashed
against his skull. He stumbled, fell and slid.

He heard the woman cry, "I found it!" He pulled himself to his feet. He
ran into the hall and froze when he saw the naked, hairless apparition
that stumbled from the bathroom.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a moment, he forgot the money and gasped, "What happened?"

"Depilatory," she explained. "The house did it." She wiped soap from
blood-shot eyes with the back of a hand. "When we get out, give me your
gun. I want to give this house something to remember!"

The man seized the metal box and examined the contents. "Over twenty
thousand, hon. With that, you can buy plenty of wigs." He attempted a
smile but did succeed when he got a close look at her bald head. He
grabbed her arm. "Let's go! You can put on my coat in the helicar."

The woman allowed herself to be dragged through the house, all the
while shaking a fist at the house's walls and threatening, "You hear
me, house? When I get outside, I'm going to burn you! You'll make a
nice little bonfire!"

Too bad, the house reflected. Too bad I am two miles from the nearest
neighbor. If it were not for that, I could use my amplifiers and call
for help. I do not want them to escape with my owners' possessions. I
can repair most of the damage but I could never recover the money and--

The man stepped off the small front porch with the jewel box in one
hand, dragging the woman behind him with the other.

It was dark outside.

That was why he didn't notice: The house had risen two hundred feet on
its antigravity rays.

The ground below was very hard.

The house sang softly and waited for the return of its masters.