Programmed for Peril

door. He had needed to use some mop handles and cord. It had been worth it. He toppled out almost into Dr. Charlotte’s arms.
    It had been a grand touch to leave the wire protruding from his eye.
    Oh, see her face! The mouth burst wide, the staring eyes standing every mascared spike to attention. She reeled back—right into his grasp. He cut off what had promised to be a most convincing scream with his spread palm. Keeping the pressure on, he slid his hand up, bending her nostrils closed. Her nose’s flesh bulged, then compressed as she tried to suck breath through unyielding tissue.
    Complicated tools were overrated....
    He turned all his attention to her eyes. How wide they grew! She understood her fatal predicament. All the waving and clawing of her hooked fingers couldn’t lessen it one bit. Blue, blue eyes, broad as fields, their illuminating light sprung forth from the sun of terror. Her lids, their fine blue veins behind the picket fence of lashes, descended like dusk over the day of her life. Further blue suffused her face’s soft skin as racing blood arrived without its precious oxygen cargo.
    She was dying in silence, like the other two. Dying at Carson’s orders. There were to be no clues to future recruitments or about his tastes.
    From beyond the girl’s bedroom door he heard the faint, routed mumble of her TV. Glancing at the motionless Mr. Shoulders, he thought: They sit passive while men of action work their wills.
    Dr. Charlotte hung in his arms now, limp as a plucked daisy after a day on dirt. He kept his hand in place for three roore minutes. There must not be any miraculous returns from the brink of the grave. He lowered her to the floor, unbuttoned her blouse, and pressed his ear to her chest between the small golden crucifix and the curving satined jut of her left breast. No pulse of life pounded the pressed porches of his ears.
    He raised his head a few inches. The bound breasts thrust up beside his cheeks. He felt the tears start up, bitter as acid in his eyes. He had held that nippled flesh in hands hot with love.
    But Carson had said she would not do.
    Nor would the little girl.
    He dared not weep long.
    He rose from the still form, dashed tears from cheeks with the backs of his hands. He moved on magically quiet sandals to Suzi’s bedroom door. No reason she should see her mother. He looked at his watch. The girl’s time was running out, too. Luck provided a button lock on the outside of the door, evidence of some twisted theory of child discipline or a familial quirk of the former owners. He shoved the button home.
    From the moment he had pressed his palm to Dr. Charlotte’s soft face he had been increasingly conscious of the weight in his right-hand jacket pocket. It was demanding as a blister, as coins in a child’s pocket. He could resist the lure no longer. He reached into white linen and removed the pruning shears....
    When he finished he looked around for possible sources of later embarrassment, found none. He descended to the basement, left as he had entered. He was getting into his ’vette when his expectant ear caught the faint concussion, no more noticeable than a slammed door.
    Carson didn’t think that complicated weapons were overrated.
    During the drive home he stopped for a Dairy Queen chocolate malted.
    An envelope had been taped to his apartment door. From Carson? Oh, yes, of course. Or so it seemed. Sometimes he wondered if... Didn’t he well know the man’s precise hand? He tore it open, trembling. Within, a clipping and a note.
    He read the clipping. Turning his face skyward, he howled his delight at the stars.
    His prayers for salvation had been answered!
    He read his instructions, nodding his assent. Yes, yes! He was being sent on an odyssey of which he had only dreamed. What had been lost could be found. Secret dreams could come true!
     

3
     
    JUNE FIRST. HALLELUJAH! AN ANNIVERSARY OF SORTS, Trish Morley thought. It had been three years to the day since she had set sail on the sea of capitalist commerce in the small-business boat of PC-Pros. (“Personal computer hardware problems? Don’t go over board. Call PC-Pros!”) In those first days she was the only PC pro, and a self-styled« one at that. Of course, she was armed with a serious aptitude for electronics and a determination to succeed. Possibly her greatest asset, though, she had at first undervalued. That was how much she had learned during her eight years of informal instruction and