Programmed for Peril

Worse, he was being shoved toward the footlights where coming days would demand dangerous improvisation. In the audience sat a sinister man with whom his beloved was tangled in ways he couldn’t comprehend. His intuition cried that in her service he would meet him.
    And rue that day.
    He spun and rushed from Sweetest Sister’s presence. Even her most awl-like cry’s point driven against the membranes of his ears could not turn him back to her. Never before had he been able to resist her command. Surely she would understand how much between them had already changed.
    Back in his water-tower office the computer held a phone message. He listened—and gasped aloud. Her voice! He was so smitten that the meaning of her words slipped away from his attention like seaside minnows under a child’s greedy hands. His memory thrust forth her face, comely lips to the phone mouthpiece, gray eyes narrowed in concentration, their long lashes beating the air like harem feather fans. “By now you probably know I made my apologies to your sister.
    I decided to believe you two had nothing to do with what’s happening to me. Consider this call my official thanks for your help.”
    In his van he drove the same route as earlier that day. Late evening had come. Now the streets were shadowed and deserted. Fine for him. He had to stop often and take readings, scampering back and forth from the driver’s seat to the equipment racks, where screens glowed into the darkness like monsters’ eyes. Art Tatum’s sound, a mellow drift at low volume, last stop on the stride piano line, invaded his mind like syncopated fog. “Taking a Chance on Love.” He bustled.
    He was happy.
    He served his goddess.
    By nine-thirty he was on the way to her house. How often since that bright day he had met her had he cruised by her Victorian relic! So seldom, though, had he glimpsed her fetching form. He pulled to the curb and got out. His pulse sped. He began to sweat despite the cool June night. Dare even he, the most devoted priest, choose to worship at this latish hour?
    He climbed the creaking stair, opened the screened porch door, and rang the bell. Within, scampering young footsteps grew louder. The house door opened. A red-haired girl of seven wearing pajamas stood behind the screen staring up at him. Staring. “Your... mother,” he said in a voice somehow that of a frog.
    The child spun, pigtail swishing, and was gone. Melody.
    Lois had told him about her. Having issued from his goddess’s body, she was as dear to him as his good name. Despite hearing her badly managed cry: “Mom, Mom, there’s this tall, weird guy at the door! He doesn’t have any . hair! And he has these big eyes—”
    She was cut short by Mother’s shhhh! Trish could not know the child’s unintentional abuse could never begin to compare with that dished out to him by Sweetest Sister from his cradle days.
    And here she came again into his life! Jeaned and sweatered against the recent turn in the weather. She hesitated behind the screen door, face smudged by shadow.
    Yes, I am hard to behold, but not deformed, only strange to the eye. Surely you can welcome your supplicant, however briefly. “I... didn’t expect a visit, Nicholas,” she said.
    He played his trump. “I found out more.”
    “About what’s happening? About the bugs?”
    He nodded.
    White hand behind wire screen, the muted cry of ill-hung hinges. “Come in. Just for a minute. I have to put Melody to bed soon. Should have done it an hour ago.” She led him to a small sitting room scattered with coloring books. He so wished he could meet her glance, drink the gray waters of her eyes. If he could, he would be stricken mute. So he hatched glimpses of her face in timing as erratic as his conversation. She didn’t invite him to sit. “What did you find out?” she said.
    “All three transmissions are beamed in one direction. I measured the signal strength.” How easy to talk about the familiar! Hear my eloquence! “The receiver can’t be any farther away than a half mile from PC-Pros. The signals are tight. Equipment must be first rate. If you want, I could pull one of the bugs and take it apart.”
    “Whoever it is would know, though, wouldn’t he?”
    “If he listens all the time, or runs tape. Yeah. He’d know.” He sucked breath like an emerging pearl diver. “Who’s doing it?” he said.
    “I... thought I knew. Now I’m not sure. It’s somebody who doesn’t want me to get married. But