Andromeda Breakthrough afa-2

by Fred Hoyle

  She'll pull the strings and he'll twitch. We'll all be her puppets soon.'

  Dawnay slowly drained the last of her coffee. 'John,' she said thoughtfully, 'it's very strange.'

  'Strange? What's strange about it? Gamboul's doing just what she's compelled to do. Part of the programme.'

  She shook her head impatiently. 'I don't mean the political thing. But the wind. Here it doesn't normally blow like this, not at this time of the year.'

  'Doesn't it?' he answered absent-mindedly. 'A nice reminder of Thorness. The weather was hell when Andre and I were hiding up on that island.'

  'Yes,' she agreed. 'Conditions were abnormal there as well.

  I think I'll do some work in the lab.' She looked already preoccupied, as if she were working. 'I wish I could get those sea samples I wanted.'

  'Lucky to have something to do,' Fleming said. 'I don't feel anxious to report as an obedient serf to that electronic dictator across the way.' He looked at Abu. 'But someone had better be there, Abu. Go over and hang around for instructions.

  I've no doubt Gamboul will be sending her Teutonic stooge with some orders.'

  Fleming wandered back to his own quarters. The wind still blew, sweeping momentarily stinging gusts of sand and then subsiding as quickly as it had come.

  He glanced at his watch. It was early, just after 6.30. He switched on his short-wave radio, tuned to the B.B.C. Middle East service. He wondered how long they'd be left with even this one-way link with anywhere else.

  The static was bad, the voice from London fading and distorted so that it was sometimes inaudible.

  ' . . . No further news has come in about the situation in Azaran. The frontiers remain closed, and during the night the government station at Baleb has merely continued to retransmit the President's announcement that a military junta has been set up... '

  The spluttering drowned the bulletin for a few minutes.

  When it eased the newsreader was saying ' . . . similar conditions are reported from all over Western Europe and from countries bordering the Mediterranean. Gales of unusual force are being recorded as far afield as the East coast of Africa, in the vicinity of Aden, and from weather stations in Iceland and Newfoundland.'

  Fleming switched off the set. He found it almost natural that the world's weather should have gone mad at a time when the world itself was moving irrevocably to a crisis.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FORECAST

  ON the following day Janine Gamboul summoned Kaufman to her office. Instead of one of her usual chic frocks she was wearing a plain tailored suit, but he noticed at once that there was something else different about her; she had a dedicated and, at the same time, unnaturally exalted air.

  She did not look up from her desk when Kaufman entered, and he stood stiffly at attention a little distance away from her.

  When she had finished writing, she glanced up at him coldly, not inviting him to sit down.

  'The situation is perfectly quiet,' she said in decisive tones.

  'I suggest you inform your department of this fact, together with a report of what happened. Explain that we are in control and will remain so.'

  'And Colonel Salim,' he asked diffidently, 'what shall I say about him? He was well regarded by the Vienna office.'

  She shrugged. 'Tell them the facts. That I - that he was shot because he was in the way. He was a petty nationalist and if he had got power he would have used the computer for his own stupid little ends. You can explain that?'

  She dismissed the matter and picked up the sheet of paper on which she had been writing. 'This morning the President is giving audience to his Council. Poor little man. He's very bewildered, and frightened. But he realises that he must cooperate.

  He is perfectly amenable, particularly since Salim was dealt with. He will ensure the loyalty of all these old men of the government. You will attend the meeting to represent Intel. I have outlined proposals so far as we are involved.'

  She handed him a document.

  Kaufman took it and read it slowly. Occasionally he nodded, as if pleased. 'I have always done my best,' he murmured. 'You may rely on me in the future.'

  'Good,' she said, with a gesture of dismissal. 'Now go to the palace and instruct the President's secretary.'

  The councillors were seated around the Presidential dais: a dozen proud, elderly Arabs in traditional dress. True to their race they concealed whatever emotions they felt as the President, with a kind of tired dignity, gave them a carefully doctored version of what had happened and told them that he himself was taking personal control. The traitor Salim, the way of his death unexplained, was to be buried without military honours; all officers who had taken part in the revolt were already suspended and would be court-martialled. The troops and all civil branches of the Government would be answerable only to the President's personal edict. In due course there would be elections, but in the meantime the existing Parliament would not be called into session.

  At a nod from the President these edicts were translated by his secretary into English, out of courtesy to Kaufman.

  One Councillor half rose to his feet. 'And who will the President be responsible to?' he demanded, deliberately speaking in English and glaring at Kaufman.

  'To himself,' Kaufman answered sharply.

  The President remained impassive, and the Councillor sat down, muttering into his beard.

  'Gentlemen,' said Kaufman, rising proudly to his feet. 'The President, and therefore the country, can rely on a continuance of help on an increasing scale by the mercantile consortium, Intel, which I represent. To further the welfare of Azaran without interference, it is the wish of my superiors that the country should not renew diplomatic relations with other nations.'

  The words were translated and caused a low hubbub of conversation.

  'You should say more about the kind of help you are to give,' said the President uneasily.

  Kaufman beamed. 'The Consortium is producing new instruments of defence and technical value. It will shortly be making available a new process, perfected in our laboratories here, to turn the desert into fertile agricultural land.'

  He waited while the secretary translated, and a wizened old Arab whispered urgently to the secretary.

  'The Sheik Azi ben Ardu wishes to know what the process consists of.'

  'It is a spray,' said Kaufman shortly. 'In a short while it will be demonstrated.'

  The Councillor who had asked the question about Presidential responsibility glowered at Kaufman. 'And the wind that has come out of season and blows our soil away, what can your laboratories do for that?'

  Kaufman had no prepared answer. He looked to the President for help.

  'What can they do?' the President replied mildly. 'The wind is the servant of Allah. We must not question it.'

  Fleming had never been under any illusion about his situation.

  He knew that he was virtually a prisoner, but only on this first morning of the new regime did he feel the reality of it. There was no work he wanted to do, or could be persuaded to do, knowing what it would be. There was no one to talk to; even Abu had disappeared into the executive building, in answer to a summons from Gamboul. Guards were patrolling everywhere. Before breakfast they had forbidden Fleming to approach the sick quarters where Andre lay. The best he had managed was to insist on seeing the nurse who had come out and reported that her patient was a little worse, but was sleeping.

  He sat a long time over a late breakfast, ignoring the coarse brown bread, fruit and olives they always served, and drinking cup after cup of sweet, thick coffee.

  Then he strolled across to Dawnay's laboratory. The guards eyed him suspiciously but did not prevent him from entering the building.

  Dawnay was busy at a laboratory bench. She greeted him absent-mindedly and did not react very much to his worried talk about Andre.

  'There's nothing we can do for her,' she muttered. She paused and then picked up one of a row of large test tubes.

  'I'd li
ke you to look at these, John,' she said.

  He glanced at the one in her hand. It was full of a semitransparent, greyish fluid which clung to the glass when she shook it. The other tubes seemed to be identical.

  'What are they?' he asked.

  'Sea water samples they got for me.' She gave a short laugh. 'I must admit that Intel are efficient. They wouldn't let me go and take my own specimens, but they did much more than I asked. Not only are these from the Persian Gulf, which I wanted, but they've had samples flown in from the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean and even the Western Atlantic. So that there should be samples from other areas for comparison, I suppose.'

  'And is there anything to compare?' he asked.

  She shook the tube vigorously. The fluid inside went completely opaque.

  'See?' she said. 'Now, normal sea water should be like this one. You'll see it's clear.' She handed him another test tube.

  Fleming picked up some of the other tubes. They all went opaque when he shook them. 'Sure Kaufman didn't fool you and get them all from the same place?' he grinned.

  She shook her head. 'Not he. He got his orders from Intel, not from me. You know what he's like. If they told him to fetch water from the Antarctic he'd get it. But I want you to watch what happens when this milky sea water mixes with the clear sample.'

  She took a clean test tube, poured in some of the clear water and then added two minute drops of the opaque fluid.

  The milky droplets dissolved and disappeared. Dawnay damped the tube in a holder with a light reflector behind it.

  'Now watch,' she said.

  Slowly the water clouded near the bottom of the tube; the cloudiness spread upwards until the water was as opaque as the others.

  'I wonder how the fish like it,' murmured Fleming. 'Any idea what it is?'

  'A bacterium,' she said. 'Come over here.'

  He followed her to the table where she switched on a light and focused a microscope. 'Look at this slide,' she told him.

  Fleming peered into the microscope, adjusted the focus, and gave a low whistle. A globular organism was palpitating; as he watched, it divided and swelled. Thirty seconds later the division was repeated. He straightened up from the microscope. 'Know where it comes from?'

  Dawnay made no reply. She picked up a slide from a small cabinet and slid it into a second microscope. 'This one's dead.

  It conforms to no bacterium group I've heard of. It's a very simple organism, as you'll see if you look at this one which I've stained. It doesn't appear to have more than one remarkable property - the ability to reproduce fantastically. If it wasn't shut in the test tubes - ' She hesitated. 'If it had the whole ocean in which to breed .... ' Again she stopped.

  Fleming walked back to the bench, thoughtfully looking at the neatly labelled test tubes. 'The areas marked on these specimens,' he said, 'rather coincide with those I keep hearing in the B.B.C. shipping forecasts and weather reports storms, gales, and so forth.'

  'Yes,' she agreed, 'and one of them we know quite well. A very rich mixture.'

  She lifted a test tube labelled 'Minch' gingerly, as if she were half afraid of it. 'The channel between Scotland and the Hebrides.'

  'With Thorness on the east side,' he finished for her. 'So what?'

  'It must have all started somewhere,' she said. 'In the originating area it would have a higher density of bacteria than the more newly infected zones.'

  He stared at her. 'You've no proof for saying that this one from the Minch .... '

  She shook her head. No. All these samples were populated to capacity when I got them. There's no telling the percentage of bacteria when they were drawn from the sea.

  To make a proper check I'd have to get accurate and localised storm centre reports and then make on-the-spot checks of sea water samples in the same zones. There just might emerge a correlation between these little beasts and the weather.'

  'Or again you might not,' he said with a rather badly-contrived heartiness. 'Look here, Madeleine, we don't want to get too imaginative or maudlin about all this. Collate the data, sift out the facts, draw the inferences - that's the routine. And incarcerated here we haven't got a chance of doing much, though I guess you can do a break-up on the bacterial structure.

  'But it's pretty obvious, the smart way they got you all this ocean, that Intel have some notions along your lines - that the weather is more than naturally upset. My guess is that you can put in a chit for samples from here to Timbuktu, or at least wherever there's a bit of sea, and the resourceful Kaufman will send off his minions with their little buckets and bottles to get them for you. All you can do to inject some sense and order into the sources you need is for us to glue our ears to the B.B.C. bulletins.'

  They agreed that one or other of them should try to listen in to every bulletin and weather report, making notes of the areas mentioned.

  There was no dearth of information. The midday bulletin gave priority to weather news. The first hurricanes ever recorded in Britain had caused death and destruction on a major scale from Penzance to Wick. The electric grid had broken down because of smashed pylons. Huge areas of Lancashire and East Anglia were flooded. The Air Ministry could hold out no hope of improvement. The barometric pressure remained the lowest ever known outside tropical areas.

  Fleming and Dawnay heard that bulletin together. Neither had any need to write down the details, and neither felt inclined to talk about it. But when a boisterous gust of wind abruptly surged in from the desert, whirling up little spirals of sand and making a clatter as open doors banged and windows crashed, they both felt the burden of something sinister with more force than the distant wavering voices from London had caused. The wind was hot and dry, but Dawnay shivered as it buffeted her.

  Fleming moved the tuning dial on the short-wave set, searching for more news. Words, music, and more words flicked in and faded - meaningless to occidental ears. Then he found what he was looking for: the Voice of America.

  A beat record clamoured abruptly to its close and the announcer came on with his station identification. The news which followed had no political significance. As in London, ideologies and flag-waving had been shelved. The news was solely of the weather.

  'The United States Weather Bureau,' said the newsreader, 'today gave warning of further gales approaching the Eastern seaboard of the United States. They are expected to be on a similar scale to those which swept across Western Europe during the night. American scientists are speaking of a shift of the world weather patterns comparable to those at the beginning of the Ice Age ...'

  Fleming snapped off the switch. Dawnay got up. 'I'll be in the lab if you have any ideas,' she said.

  More or less deliberately they avoided one another in the next couple of days. They both felt completely helpless, but they listened meticulously to every bulletin, noting down the areas where the storms were worst.

  The wind scale figures were the best guide. On the third morning, after the early morning bulletin had reported more havoc in Britain, the Netherlands, France, and Spain, Fleming went back to Dawnay's lab. He was impressed by what she had been doing. One end of the laboratory had been cleared. A huge map of the Northern hemisphere had been pinned up on the wall.' Coloured pins were dotted about it, thickest in a strip from Gibraltar to the Orkneys, with a big cluster east of the Hebrides.

  'Hello, John,' she greeted him. 'You see, a pattern's emerging all right. And that's not all.' She beckoned him across to a long bench against the wall on which several dozen test tubes stood in a long row.

  'Kaufman hasn't had time to get all the samples I asked for, of course, but ten more arrived late last night. From offshore spots in Britain. I told him that all samples were to be boiled as soon as possible after they were taken. This bug is killed at 100 degrees Fahrenheit; that way there wasn't any chance of a bacterial increase during transit.'

  She stubbed a finger on one test tube. 'That's the thickest.

  It comes from the coast of Obanshire. The evidence is circumstanti
al of course, but I think we must accept it. I've arranged for Andre to be brought here this morning.'

  Fleming started. 'But she's sick,' he protested. 'She can't help.'

  'She is sick, and getting sicker,' Dawnay answered. 'That's why we must see her quickly. Please, John, you know I'm not callous - but she must help if she can and I believe it's possible.'

  Fleming sighed. 'You're the boss. But I don't like it.'

  A nurse pushed Andre to the laboratory in a wheel chair.

  Fleming managed a welcoming smile as he clasped her hands. It was not easy; she looked desperately fragile and her eyes stared out of her drawn, pale face.

  He was appalled by how much she had deteriorated since he had last been allowed to see her.

  The nurse made her comfortable and then Dawnay explained the situation, showing her the test tubes and pointing out that the most opaque sample came from the Minch.

  'What is the Minch?' Andre asked.

  'The channel off Thorness, where all this started,' Dawnay said harshly.

  'It is impossible. It does not make sense. It has nothing to do with the message.' She looked from Dawnay to Fleming, bewildered and wary. 'The message has a different plan.'

  Dawnay snorted. 'There won't be any different plan if this engulfs us. Think, girl, think!'

  'There is nothing about it in the computer,' Andre insisted.

  Fleming took a step forward. 'Not now, maybe,' he said thoughtfully. 'But there's something vaguely familiar about this bug. I'm sure there is. How far have you got with your analysis, Madeleine?'

  Dawnay said nothing, but went to her desk and picked up a file. 'As far as I've got has been coded in binary. Is that of any help ?' she asked.

  He took the file, walked to the window, and sat on the sill while he studied the figures. He laid the file aside. 'It confirms my hunch, memory, or whatever it is. It reads terribly like something I already know.'

  'Then it's something you started,' Andre interrupted.

  He looked round in surprise. 'That I started?'