Programmed for Peril

getting worse in a hurry.”
    They talked about how she could make her escape. The answers didn’t come easily. Sitting beside him, the bowl of her adoration filling and overflowing, she sank her fingers into his unkempt brown mane. “Who does your hair?” she laughed. “Briggs and Stratton Grasseater?”
    “I do—if I think about it.”
    “Get the scissors,” she said.
    She did a great job—at least he thought so. Her reward was a copy of the tape of “An Exercise” and frantic lovemaking that continued to nearly Carsonian lengths. Sentimental slob, she scooped a pinch of hair from the floor and slipped it into a compartment of her change purse.
    A month later she realized she was pregnant. Her recent behavior allowed no certainty about which man was responsible. Her initial thought was an abortion. She twisted away from that destructive act. What at first seemed a problem could in fact prove to be an opportunity. A child would weigh favorably on the scale of her struggle against Carson. She badly needed an ally in her battle for the survival of, if not her soul, at least her personality. So what if that champion was unborn? She knew enough of Carson, the egomaniac mystic, to presume he would exult at the chance to pass along his genes. After the child was born she might somehow find a way to use it as a lever to pry herself away from him. She pressed palms to flat belly and spoke a silent prayer for a full-term, healthy baby. Let that be first, she prayed. Then let the infant somehow grow to set her free. For three days she worked at steeling her nerve and perfecting her chosen role: the delighted mother-to-be. Then she went to Carson and told him he was going to be a father.
    “You’ll bear my child,” he ordered. “I’ll teach him to be Master of the Universe!”
    There followed two weeks of intense work during which she could not leave Carson’s side. She wanted to share her news with Ron. Sometimes Carson worked with a TY on, turned always to the news channel. “Talking heads telling us lies,” he mumbled, and who dared disagree? The local news sometimes touched on the familiar. One afternoon it touched a great deal more.
    A news face announced that the previous night Ron Verner was killed in a one-car accident.
    While she dreamed beside Carson, Ron had fallen asleep at the wheel. His Toyota hit a concrete bridge support. Dead at the scene. She could not completely swallow her cry of anguish. It emerged as a harsh cough. Her eyes glued themselves to the screen, where the car in which she had once sat was shown squashed as though with a junkyard pneumatic press. The TV station had found Ron’s publicity photograph. His young, handsome face bloomed before her for the last time. She set her teeth, muscles marching across her jaw.
    “What’s he to you?” Carson asked sharply.
    “I saw him playing trumpet for kids in a park one day. The nice guys always buy it.” Inwardly she begged to be believed.
    “So he’ll be playing a harp from now on.”
    “Guess so.” She turned back to her work. She was too frightened to grieve!
    Nor could she free herself from Carson the rest of the day. Ironically his desire for her seemed to have been stimulated by news of her condition. He led her to the largest sleeping platform at eight that evening. Fourteen hours later he finally tumbled into sleep. Run away! she thought. Run away now! But his demands—and her abhorred but no less enthusiastic response—had left her utterly drained. She had strength only for weeping. Weep she did, until a comalike sleep powerful as death overcame her.
    In days to come she understood Carson’s unparalleled orgy. He had no intention of touching her again until his child was born. She was now sanctified by pregnancy. Oh, she was still his slave, fetching and obeying, but as her time came closer his demands dwindled, then finally disappeared altogether. Nights he ordered her to bare her abdomen. He rubbed oil into her humped belly with surprisingly gentle fingers.
    More than her bondage was on hold during that time. She sensed that his descent into derangement had somehow been checked, too. The tranquillity of the first weeks of their relationship returned like an Indian summer before the bleak winter that she imagined would follow her child’s birth.
    In her private, brooding moments she prayed that Ron was the child’s father. To give birth to a spawn of Carsonworsened by tons the weight of the advantage he had