Programmed for Peril

sense of fair play and honesty refreshing. In turn she responded frankly. She told him about Carson’s visit, the threats, and the gas. He said she should have called headquarters right away. He wanted to go upstairs and have her run through the whole thing again. “It’s no use,” she said. “The man doesn’t make mistakes.”
    “He killed that guy on the side of the road. That was a mistake. He’s getting careless.”
    Suddenly Trish was both tired and bored. “It’s late, Jerry. And I’m exhausted. Being gassed and frightened nearly to death doesn’t agree with me.”
    Before he left he asked her if she’d be willing to go out with him. She had trouble getting past her vexation with reluctant Dino. “Sometime, sure. Don’t ask me when right now, Jerry. Okay? Sometime. After I survive all this. If I do.”
     

25
     
    “TRISH MY WISH!” NICHOLAS REPEATED SOFTLY TO himself while bent over improved van equipment. That her home and business had been re-bugged had astonished him. His monitors’ weekly scans had disclosed no signals. He had despaired because he thought he could be of no further service to her. That situation had flung him into an unfamiliar emotional land—depression. Neither Monk nor Miles nor Mose could lift his spirits. Their inspired riffs fell upon his ears with all the impact of elevator music.
    Nor did chess seize his mind in its old snapping-turtle jaws. His ego had been wounded by his defeat at anonymous Gruntman’s hands. His mind had wandered, so he had blundered. The much more significant truth was that his life was in disarray. Its simplicity had been overturned. B.T.— before Trish—he had his occasional consulting projects, his jazz, and his chess. He took direction from Sweetest Sister. Now the sluice gates of his dammed emotions had swung open. He was inundated, swept away.
    The situation had gone even further topsy-turvy. Sweetest Sister had commanded him to appear, tuxed and cummerbunded, last week at a formal dinner. He was astonished to find her again on Foster Palmer’s suntanned arm. The purpose of the dinner fell out as the evening wound its way. She was announcing to the world the reclamation of her lost love. Lois Smith-Patton and Foster Palmer were a social item again! Behind the gay phrases falling like petals from the flowers of her upturned lips lay her fangs, sunk again into the man. Sunk far deeper, Nicholas was sure, than when the two had first been an item. He sensed that soon there would be another betrothal for Foster, with a speedy wedding to follow. Sweetest Sister wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
    Of course, the matter of the electronic dissolution of Foster’s wealth remained very much an open issue. Sweetest Sister had begun to explain Carson’s keyboard and network wizardry to Nicholas. His imagination and technical knowledge at once blew away the fog of vagueness clinging to her words. Yes! It could be done—by a man of genius. Recover those losses? Who could say? He said to her, “I never realized you were a gambler.”
    “I’m not!”
    “Foster may end up only well-off, instead of rich.”
    “Never!” Lois paled slightly under her makeup. “Anyway, I want him, and I’ll get him.”
    Nicholas pointed at thick-chinned Branch, who hovered as close to Foster as his own shadow. Foster and the brute exchanged frequent glances. Nicholas read fear in the thinner man’s eyes, reassurance in the other’s. “I hope you three have a pleasant honeymoon,” he said. He was astonished by his own boldness.
    “Three?”
    “You, Foster, and Mr. America there.”
    Sweetest Sister’s glare was touched with disbelief at his forwardness. “What are you talking about?”
    “You think Foster is the same person he was?”
    “Of course he is!”
    Nicholas had heard hints of what had happened to Foster while in Carson’s hands. “Foster is a diminished man, Sweetest Sister.”
    “No!” She whirled, white, and stalked off. She failed to punish him for his insolence. Oh, how he and his world were changing!
    The moment he grasped that the dinner was the first milestone on the road to the altar for Foster his spirits soared. Trish was available! His will-o’-the-wisp hope had taken form and shape like a released genie. He had dared to hope. Could it be that he might one day feel the gentle touch of her hand? See them together! Gangling he towering over lovely she in her white jumpsuit. Emotionally those sizes were reversed. She loomed