Programmed for Peril

shared—them all with her. She couldn’t guess which! She bit hard on finger ends. She felt herself in a vast swamp from which a single unmarked narrow trail led to her daughter’s safety.
    She had less than a minute left. Not enough time!
    Possibly clever Carson had assumed she would think first of the past—and sink there. Within the riddle stood another hurdle that she had to get over. What about the recent past, then?
    What about that time Carson as Dino had come to her house? She cast her mind back to that evening. Melody had played! He had sung in French!
    France’s national anthem. The Marseillaise!
    She opened her mouth and began to sing loudly. She didn’t know the words, but she belted out the first bars of the tune.
    Nothing happened. She closed her mouth, stood bewildered in the close, stinking air. She thought she had caught the straw, against all odds. Instead she had caught only air.
    There were only seconds left, by any watch. She froze. She couldn’t do any more. Her glance swung toward her child, as though to hold her to this life with the intensity of her love.
    Melody’s eyes met hers. “You didn’t sing that right. It was off.”
    Trish stifled her gasp. “Maybe... you could play it, sweet. On your recorder.”
    “Are all the bad men dead?”
    “Just about. Everything’s okay. Could you please play that tune right?”
    “You said Carson wasn’t my daddy.”
    “No. It was another, much nicer man.”
    “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
    Trish thought she would burst with desperate impatience. “I—didn’t want to confuse you. I’ve learned my lesson about that.”
    “Good.” Melody nodded as though she thoroughly understood her mother’s metamorphosis.
    “Will you play, sweet?”
    “Sure.” Melody reached for her recorder with what seemed maddening slowness. She put the instrument to her lips, drew breath. She began to play—and made an error!
    Trish was astonished. Melody never made errors. Then she realized what the child had seen in the last hours. “Try again, sweet. Please.” She held her breath, long past daring to look at her watch. Only a few seconds stood between the child’s life and five o’clock.
    Melody began again. She played four perfect bars.
    A beeping!
    Trish whirled, trying to home in at once on the direction.
    There. On the floor. No, in the floor!
    She dropped to her knees. The beeping came from beneath a floorboard. Close, she saw one of the shorter boards had a tiny fingernail-shaped slot at one end. She used her index finger to angle up the board. With the other she lifted it out.
    There was the timer!
    She snatched up the caseless circuit board. She glimpsed whirling LED digits in search of the deactivate switch. Twenty seconds remained. She saw two switches of different sizes. Neither was labeled. She knew one would turn off the unit—and Melody would die. The other would stop the countdown and save her life.
    Which one was which?
    She couldn’t tell from the circuits. Not at a glance. And that was all she had time for.
    She had to pick the right one.
    Melody continued to play. She was improvising now, caught up in the music. At least for a few moments she was distanced from recent shocks.
    How many devices had Trish helped Carson design? Sixty? Seventy? In design he was absolutely consistent. Despite herself, she found her eyes turning to the decreasing digits on the counter readout. Ten seconds. Don’t panic. There was still enough time to think.
    She felt fresh anger and resentment that Carson was still able to add one more twist to her long, long torment. The sounding beeper kept the timer vibrating on her palm like a rattlesnake. She shoved her memory years into the past, to the circuit diagrams she had drawn to record the parade of Carson’s creative successes. Switch sizes? What were they? She remembered his inserting components into circuit boards, each like a miniature city with high-rises of RAM chips and towers of transistors.
    The on-off switch was always the largest.
    Up to now.
    She couldn’t bear to look at Melody, who sped toward certain death even as her swift fingers summoned fetching variations on the French anthem. Trish felt tension so great that it seemed current was being applied to every nerve in her body. What if Carson had reversed the switches as the final, demonic torture? She dared not change her mind. She drew a breath, gritted teeth till the enamel whined.
    She shoved her chosen switch to off.
    No