The Sex Sphere by Rudy Rucker Read Free Book Online

fine. Can I see the note?”
    “Certainly….”
    Sybil waited awhile for the rest of the sentence, then plugged in another token.
    “Can I see the note?”
    Membrane was draped over his little bar, measuring out the Cokes and the V–8.
    “Would you kids like a Milky Way ® ?”
    “Yay!!”
    “Can I see the note?”
    “It’s partly…”
    “…in Italian,” Sybil interrupted, rising to her feet. “Show me the fucking note!”
    “Your Mommy is…under stress.”
    “BAAAAAAOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!”
    “Poo an’ pee, poo an’ pee!”
    “We’re all under stress, Mr. Membrane. And you aren’t helping much. My husband has been kidnapped, and you won’t even begin to discuss it. The facts! I need to know what’s going on!”
    Membrane gave the children their Cokes, gave Sybil her thick red juice, then walked behind his desk, where he briefly rummaged.
    “Here.”
    Sybil took the piece of pink-brown paper. Butcher’s paper. There was a hole in the middle. She scanned down the page. It was written in English, and this is what it said:
    “We have taken your tool. Alwin Bitter has been conscripted into the People’s Army, Division of Nuclear Weapons. Ransom him before it is too late. Your reply must be multiplied on papers drifting from the Embassy window. We await.        — Brigate Rosse ”
    “Who’s that?” asked Sybil. “ Brigate Rosse? ”
    “That’s the Italian part. It means Red Brigade . But they aren’t.” Membrane’s unformed face held something sly.
    “They aren’t the Red Brigade?”
    “No. Everything’s wrong. The technique, the language, the…reply method. It’s not the Red Brigade at all. These days every kidnapper says he’s the Red Brigade just to…cause alarm. I’d be willing to bet that…”
    “That?”
    “ …these fellows are just after some money. But…”
    “But?”
    “What is your husband’s occupation? To the best of your knowledge.”
    “He’s a theoretical physicist. Unemployed. Not really unemployed. On a grant. He has a Humboldt grant to do research in Heidelberg this year. Next year we don’t know what we’ll do.” Sybil shot a glance over at the children, not really liking them to be in on all this. But they were absorbed in their comics, flipping the bright pages.
    Membrane gazed meditatively at the ceiling. It was clear that he was already in possession of the few poor facts Sybil knew.
    “Could your husband assemble a…nuclear device? An atomic bomb?”
    “I don’t know. Probably. In grad school he used to talk about how easy it would be. He’s good at making things. But you said you don’t think he’s really in the hands of bombers.”
    “Not…yet.”
    “What do you mean?”
    A long, thoughtful pause. “How much can you pay? To get your husband back.”
    “Nothing. A few thousand dollars. Nothing, really.”
    “That’s good.”
    “Why?”
    Membrane leaned across the desk, his Adam’s apple jutting out over his button-down Oxford-cloth collar and regimental-stripe tie. “I am going to tell you something in strictest confidence. Someone out there has enough nuclear fuel to build a hundred-kiloton bomb. Two months ago an LWR fuel-assembly truck was hijacked near Mestre. We have got to find that fuel.”
    “What does that have to do with my husband?”
    “We will use your husband for…bait. To flush out the real terrorists, the ones with the reactor fuel. In return…” He held a silencing hand up to the spluttering Sybil. “In return I give you my solemn word that your husband will be…freed unharmed. Look at this.”
    He handed her a freshly mimeographed sheet of paper. A message in Italian. It was, Sybil realized with horror, the same as the papers she’d seen blowing up and down the sidewalk in front of the Embassy.
    “You’ve already replied? What did you say? What does this say?”
    Membrane picked up another copy of the message, cleared his throat and began sonorously to sight-translate.
    “‘In the affair of