Programmed for Peril

nobody but Lois should care....” Her voice trailed off. She turned sharp eyes on him. “If I tell you anything I do know, Nicholas, does it go right back to Lois?”
    He stood silent, blinking, tom by the terriers of crossloyalties.
    “Foster told me your sister is the biggest influence in your life.”
    He sensed her slipping away, the strand of their connection stretching out to the breaking point. The threat loomed large as Godzilla: defrocked Nicholas driven from the temple by a distrustful goddess. He had to speak! “I’ll help you,” he blurted. “And keep quiet.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
    “I think you need the kind of help I can give. Those bugs are so slick they make me nervous. I want to home in on the receiver. See who’s sitting there by it.”
    She paced. When she turned a cautious smile blessed her face. “Maybe you’re the good in the family. I know Lois is the bad.” She angled her glance up at him. “I suppose I shouldn’t say that, considering your—”
    “Lois commands,” he said.
    She nodded. “Nonetheless... I don’t want her to be part of any help you might give me,” Trish said.
    “She... won’t be.”
    “And you won’t talk to her about me?”
    Gray eyes sought his, caught like hooks. The full power of her sorcery flowed into his heart. He knew what lovers who said they melted meant. “I—I’ll be discreet.”
    From the distance daughter demanded attention. “In a minute, Melody!” Trish paced again while Nicholas stood at adoring attention. “Beside trying to get a fix on the receiver, could you do one other thing for me?”
    Why did she even ask? Command me!
    “Check this house for bugs, too.”
    His van could have sprouted wings, so high did he soar on the road to his water-tower cot. There he thrashed through the night, beaming into the mildewed dark. Trishes in jeans and jumpsuits jammed his dreams, bid him bound bare through hoops woven of drum-sized resistors, their wires braided like a maiden’s hair.
    So this was love!
     

10
     
    WEDNESDAY MORNING TRISH ASKED LEFTOVER LEWIS to move all her furniture to an unused cubicle around the comer from the reception area. The bug in what had been her office would end up overhearing nothing more than an occasional staff conference or the rustling of lunch bags. She was pleased at even this small victory over... she didn’t know who.
    Her phone rang at eight-twenty. The caller identified himself as Lieutenant Stanley. “Bomb squad,” he added. He wondered if he could come over and talk to her. This morning. Trish sensed she shouldn’t say no. Awaiting his arrival, she found her anxiety rising steadily. What did bombs have to do with PC-Pros?
    Stanley was short and heavy. About fifty, he had lost hair-Baldness ill suited his round face. He wore a checkered handkerchief in his suit jacket pocket. He wrapped stubby, dark fingers around his leather badge holder. Trish nodded before the gleaming shield. “I’d love a cup of coffee,” he said in a wheezing voice.
    While Michelle ran his errand he pulled a folder and notebook out of a slender leather briefcase.
    “I’m a little nervous about why you’re here,” Trish said. “Could you tell me?”
    “Sure will.” He glanced at folder sheets, then looked up. “Kandinsky Klein and Corman.”
    “They’re one of our customers. A law firm. What about them?”
    “Before I answer that, could you tell me just what you’ve done for them recently?”
    Trish turned to her terminal. She brought up the data base. “We maintain all the PCs in their office. Repair, service, some software installations. Says here they had trouble with a Northgate 386. We brought it in for service June sixteenth. My technician Puck O’Brien cleaned and recalibrated the read-write heads. We returned it yesterday, the twenty-first.” She looked at Stanley. “We pride ourselves on never keeping a machine longer than a week.”
    “You should be in charge of our PD machines, then. They’re taken care of by the lowest bidder—and the service proves that.” Stanley had a moist smile that Trish found unattractive. He made her nervous, too. “This machine you serviced... where in the law office did your road man put it?” he asked.
    She summoned Leftover Lewis. He said that he had returned the machine to its original location—in the law firm’s library. Stanley thanked him, asked him not to leave the building. “While I’m at it, could you ask, umh—Puck O’Brien—to