Accidental intelligence? Something inside Kendal rebelled at the idea... and yet, why not? And hardly useless, even if it had been sorely lacking in purpose until now.
Because there was one intriguing corollary to the theory. The Houses certainly had the necessary bulk to store great quantities of brain cells. If they were steadily fed, would their intelligence increase? And if so, was there any upper limit?
Kendal didn't know, and of course didn't have the necessary equipment or know-how to perform rigorous tests. But there were more informal ways... and he was determined to learn whatever he could in the time remaining.
The equipment was ready now. Looking up, Kendal nodded. "Okay, go ahead."
The reply was immediate; the House knew this part well. "Pawn to king four," it said.
Time Bomb
I
The bus station was stiflingly hot, despite the light evening breeze drifting in through the open door and windows. In a way the heat was almost comforting to Garwood as he stood at the ticket window; it proved the air conditioning had broken down much earlier in the day, long before he'd come anywhere near the place.
Puffing on a particularly pungent cigar—the smoke of which made Garwood's eyes water—the clerk looked down at the bills in front of him and shook his head. "Costs forty-one sixty to Champaign now," he said around his cigar.
Garwood frowned. "The schedule says thirty-eight," he pointed out.
"You gotta old one, prob'ly." The clerk ran a stubby finger down a list in front of him. "Prices went up 'bout a week ago. Yep—forty-one sixty."
A fresh trickle of sweat ran down the side of Garwood's face. "May I see that?" he asked.
The clerk's cigar shifted to the other side of his mouth and his eyes flicked to Garwood's slightly threadbare sport coat and the considerably classier leather suitcase at his side. "If you got proper identification I can take a check or card," he offered.
"May I see the schedule, please?" Garwood repeated.
The cigar shifted again, and Garwood could almost see the wheels spinning behind the other's eyes as he swiveled the card and pushed it slowly under the old-fashioned grille. Getting suspicious; but there wasn't anything Garwood could do about it. Even if he'd been willing to risk using one, all his credit cards had fallen apart in his wallet nearly a month ago. With the rising interest rates of the past two years and the record number of bankruptcies it had triggered, there were more people than ever roundly damning the American credit system and its excesses. And on top of that, the cards were made of plastic, based on a resource the world was rapidly running out of and still desperately needed. A double whammy. "Okay," he said, scanning the rate listing. "I'll go to Mahomet instead—what's that, about ten miles this side of Champaign?"
"Closer t' seven." The clerk took the card back, eying Garwood through a freshly replenished cloud of smoke. "Be thirty-six seventy-five."
Garwood handed over thirty-seven of his forty dollars, silently cursing his out-of-date schedule. He'd cut things a little too fine, and now he was going to look exactly like what he was: a man on the run. For a moment he debated simply turning around and leaving, trying it again tomorrow on someone else's shift.
But that would mean spending another night in Springfield. And with all the Lincoln memorabilia so close at hand...
"Bus's boarding now," the clerk told him, choosing one of the preprinted tickets and pushing it under the grille. "Out that door; be leavin' 'bout five minutes."
Gritting his teeth, Garwood picked up the ticket... and as he withdrew his hand, there was a sudden crack, as if someone had fired a cap pistol.
"Damn kids," the clerk growled, craning his neck to peer out his side window.
Garwood looked down, his eyes searching the ledge inside the ticket window grille. He'd heard that particular sound before... and just inside the grille, near where his hand had twice reached, he saw it.
The clerk's ashtray. An ashtray once made of clear glass... now shot through by a thousand hairline fractures.
The clerk was still looking through his window for the kid with the cap pistol as Garwood left, forcing himself to walk.
—
He half expected the police to show up before the bus could leave, but to his mild surprise the vehicle wheezed leisurely out of the lot on time and headed a few minutes later onto the eastbound interstate. For the first few miles Garwood gave his full attention to his ears, straining tensely for the first faint sound of pursuing sirens. But as the minutes crawled by and no one showed up to pull them over, he was forced to the conclusion that the clerk had decided it wasn't any of his business.
The thought was strangely depressing. To realize that the latest upswing in the "not-me" noninvolvement philosophy had spread its rot from the polarized coasts into America's heartland bothered Garwood far more than it should have. Perhaps it was all the learned opinions he'd read weighing upon him; all the doomsayings about how such a national malaise could foreshadow the end of democracy.
Or perhaps it was simply the realization that even a nation full of selfish people didn't make a shred of difference to the cloud of destruction surrounding him.
Stop it! he ordered himself silently. Self-pity... Taking a deep breath, he looked around him.
He'd chosen his third-row seat carefully—as far from the bus's rear-mounted engine as he could reasonably get without sitting in the driver's lap, and well within the non-smoking section. His seatmate... He threw the kid a surreptitious look, confirmed that his first-glance analysis had been correct. Faded denim jeans and an old cotton shirt. That was good; natural fibers held up much better than synthetic ones, for the same reason that plastic had a tendency to disintegrate in his presence. Reaching a hand under his jacket, Garwood checked his own sweat-soaked polyester shirt for new tears. A rip at his right shoulder lengthened as he did so, and he muttered a curse.
"Don't make 'em like they use'ta, do they?"
Startled, Garwood turned to see his seatmate's smile. "What?" he asked.
"Your shirt," the kid explained. "I heard it rip. Guys who make 'em just get away with crapzi, don't they?"
"Um," Garwood grunted, turning away again.
"You headed for Champaign?" the kid persisted.
Garwood sighed. "Mahomet."
"No kidding!—I grew up there. You, too, or are you just visiting?"
"Just visiting."
"You'll like it. Small place, but friendly. Speaking of which—" he stuck out his hand. "Name's Tom Arnold. Tom Benedict Arnold, actually."
Automatically, Garwood shook the proffered hand. Somewhere in the back of his head the alarm bells were going off.... "Not, uh, any relation to...?"
"Benedict Arnold?" The kid grinned widely. "Sure am. Direct descendant, in fact."
An icy shiver ran up Garwood's back, a shiver having nothing to do with the bus's air conditioning. "You mean... really direct?" he asked, dropping the other's hand. "Not from a cousin or anything?"
"Straight shot line," Arnold nodded, the grin still in place. He was watching Garwood's face closely, and Garwood got the distinct impression the kid liked shocking people this way. "It's nothin' to be 'shamed of, you know—he did America a lot more good than he did bad. Whipped the Brits at Saratoga 'fore goin' over on their side—"
"Yes, I know," Garwood said, interrupting the impromptu history lesson. "Excuse me a second—washroom."
Stepping into the aisle, he went to the small cubicle at the rear of the bus. He waited a few minutes, then emerged and found an empty seat four rows behind the kid. He hoped Arnold wouldn't take it too personally, though he rather thought the other would. But he couldn't afford to take the chance. Benedict Arnold's victory at Saratoga had been a pivotal factor in persuading France to enter the war on the rebels' side, and Garwood had no desire to see if he had the same effect on living beings that he had on history's more inanimate descendants.