The Sex Sphere by Rudy Rucker

He’s always been the Anarchist Archimedes.”
    “It’s not his fault, Mother. Really.”
    “Cortland’s getting a good German lawyer for him. We’ll try to have the trial in Heidelberg.” Violent, prolonged shouting. “I have to hang up, dear. The pillows. Don’t wait up.”
    “Of course I’ll wait up. How could I sleep!”
    “How are the little ones taking it?”
    Tom and Ida were in the bathroom, refilling the tub. Sybil could hear their voices, earnest as two co-workers in a research lab. SPLOOSH! Something big hitting the water. Not the electric fan!
    “What was that?” screamed Sybil.
    “I’m sorry, Mama!”
    “WHAT WAS IT?”
    “Sybil? Is something wrong?”
    “We got your little bag all wet.”
    “My toiletries?”
    “Toilet!” Squeals of laughter.
    “Sybil! What’s going on?”
    “Oh, it’s all right. The children just dropped my little travel-kit in the bathtub. I thought it was the fan.”
    “I must hang up. Your father is frantic.” Hoarse, angry yelling. “He’s worried we’ll miss the plane, which is ridiculous. There is no traffic on Good Friday. Did you find time to go to church today?”
    “I didn’t have a moment. I wish I had.”
    “In Rome there are many churches. I was at the cathedral today. The chants, Sybil. It was indescribable.”
    “I may still make it. It’s only eight o’clock.”
    “ Eight? We’ll miss our plane!”
    “Good-bye, Mother.”
    “Good-bye.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Sex and Death

    Friday afternoon, after we finished talking, Peter showed me around the workroom where the fuel assemblies were waiting. We spent a couple of hours prying the ends off the concrete casings. Now it would be just a matter of pulling out the fuel rods and extracting the pellets of plutonium oxide.
    Just? Airborne plutonium particles are among the most toxic substances known to man. We’d need glove boxes and breathing suits, if not remote manipulators. Back in the office I tried to explain this to Beatrice, but she flew into a rage and called me a coward.
    She made it clear that I’d be shot if I didn’t get a bomb together in time for Easter, a bomb for St. Peter’s Square. If we all got poisoned in the process of assembling the bomb, it didn’t matter; there were others to take our places in the front lines of revolutionary justice. Crazy bitch.
    There was another problem, the business about St. Peter’s Square. Presumably Sybil and Tom and Ida would be there. No way I was going to let the bomb go off. I’d show Beatrice who was a coward. For all practical purposes I was already dead. Or nearly so. I only hoped I could still get lucky.
    That evening we watched TV in their little apartment. My passport photo flashed on the screen, then Lafcadio’s. Beatrice translated for me. Lafcadio had been running proton-decay experiments in a lab off the Mont Blanc tunnel. There’d been an accident and Zsuzsi Szabo, Lafcadio’s beloved co-worker, had been killed. Lafcadio had flipped out and disappeared, stealing a sample of some kind of degenerate hypermatter from the lab. The police were just as glad to have him dead, but the hypermatter was still missing.
    The hypermatter thing didn’t seem to interest my Green Death captors. They were focused on the factional politics, and on the nuclear explosion we were cooking up.
    The TV news described me as a radical atomic physicist with close ties to the US Embassy. Picture of the Embassy, picture of our hotel. Old news photo of me at a demonstration. Then someone began translating the note Virgilio had gotten me to write.
    Now I realized I’d been framed. Il Archimedes Anarchisti . The TV showed the gun that had my fingerprints on it. According to the news, I’d met Lafcadio to buy the degenerate hypermatter, possibly for CIA use, possibly for the terrorists. I could be a double or even a triple agent. In any case, I had murdered Lafcadio Caron.
    Suddenly Sybil was on the TV screen. Her eyes were desperate and she bit her lips. It