Programmed for Peril

dim melancholy chimes in the cathedral of her mind. The sensuous side of their relationship hadn’t gone that well. She was entirely to blame. Having surrendered so totally to Carson, she found she couldn’t let herself go at all with Foster. It was as though some vital gear in her erotic clockwork had lost teeth from rough use.
    Foster’s reaction to her hesitancy was confusing. The couplings that she considered inadequate seemed to satisfy him. So she worried about the breadth of his experience. The problem was that Carson had conditioned her to certain physical expectations—though she wanted with all her heart to dislodge them. Yet she wondered now and then if Foster could satisfy her that way. Did she really want him to? When she tried haltingly to communicate her anxieties he seemed to comprehend too readily, making her think that he was failing completely to understand. She had perhaps naively hoped that these matters of intimacy would work themselves out before September fifteenth. Now she wasn’t so sure.
    The moon rose higher. The Emerald Lady stirred against her moorings like a restless cat. She brought him up to date on her mother and wedding plans.
    He laughed, a nice deep chuckle that always delighted her. “If she had more to do, she wouldn’t be so busy with your life,” he said. Trish knew he was fond of Marylou. In gloomier moments she thought the man understood her mother better than she.
    Their conversation wound around, then he said, “Lois called again, ears sharp for sounds of divisiveness between us.”
    “Do you have to talk to her?” Trish said.
    “She’s a hard person to discourage.”
    “Sometimes I think you could try harder.”
    “We kept company formally for four years. Casually for maybe a dozen before that. We go back. Just the same, she knows it’s all over between us.”
    “Lois Smith-Patton isn’t the kind to give up,” Trish said. Lois was a predatory divorcée who reminded Trish of a ferret—danger jammed into a small package. She had stalked Foster hard and determinedly. Then, poised to pounce, she found Trish had stolen away her prey. Far from swallowing her disappointment, she prowled about on the periphery of Foster’s life. She saw to it that she ran into him “accidentally” now and then, called him on neutral business, then did personal prying. She had on the occasion of her broken engagement come to speak personally to Trish. Trish took a deep breath and wrenched her mind away from the memory. When reviewing that scene it was best to be in a strong-minded mood.
    This evening Trish felt far from strong-minded. As Foster pressed kisses on her yielding but unresponsive lips a flash of insight illuminated her present life. She had spent the past three years building not a career and a relationship to last the rest of her days, but a house of cards that rising winds were gathering to destroy.
     
    Three days later Michelle Amritz stopped Trish as she entered the PC-Pros’ offices. “Got an angry customer for you, chief. Lester O’Day, Pristine Cleaners. I forwarded him into your phone mail. You better put on your asbestos earpiece.”
    “What’s his problem?”
    “He lost files. A lot of files. And he’s in a real hurry to talk to you.”
    In her office Trish pulled up the file on Pristine. PC-Pros had set up a network among Pristine’s six stores scattered across the city. Last week PC-Pros had installed a loaner at one of the locations and brought a sick machine back, and... let’s see, she thought... Tran had replaced a blown motherboard. Yesterday he had returned the original Machine. Trish frowned. How had any of that led to files being lost? Why was Lester O’Day angry?
    The moment Trish heard his voice she realized she was talking to a new Luddite. Overnight he had turned against all computers. Back to pencils and order pads, back to the abacus! Tactful Trish heard him out. Deal with the emotions first, she remembered being told. Then go ahead to handle the real problem. She imagined Lester at the other end of the line, bald and red-faced, wearing one of his incredibly loud! neckties. When he seemed to have run down for the moment, she said, “I don’t see how your file losses are connected to our work.”
    “You don’t? Well, my nephew knows something about I computers. He says the machine you brought back camel I with a virus. You know what that is, Ms. Morley?”
    “Yes, I do.” A virus was renegade software that went; I about