Andromeda Breakthrough afa-2

by Fred Hoyle

  He had put them away when Dawnay had refused to help him, because he felt that he could not possibly do them himself.

  He simply did not know enough bio-chemistry. For what seemed a lifetime he had avoided Andre's room, because he could no longer face the fact of her dying, and by now he had given up all hope of Dawnay having the time, energy, or will to be able to help him.

  Dawnay now was installed in the executive block, at the centre of a quickly-spun web of radio and cable communications, directing and advising struggling scientists all round the world. He did not know how she managed it, or whether she ever slept; he didn't even see her.

  He sat in his little room and stared glumly at the mass of figures. Then he opened a fresh bottle of whisky and started to try to make head or tail of them. It was close on midnight when he walked a little unsteadily across the deserted clearing to the laboratory.

  With the experimental work over, the master breeding tanks had been transferred to the executive building where there was room for the regiments of assistants Dawnay could now direct. The laboratory where it had all begun was neat and lifeless. He groped for a switch. The light came on.

  Most of the circuits had been restored during the previous day.

  Hardly knowing from what recesses of memory of his student days they came, or how much was inspired by the neat Scotch, he began to find the facts he needed arranging themselves in his mind. Slowly and laboriously, and a little drunkenly, he started to make a chemical synthesis out of the mass of calculation he had written down.

  His own training kept him roughly on the right path, but he ruefully had to face the fact that the ordinary, plebeian routine of practical chemistry was really beyond him. He lacked patience and accuracy; but obstinacy, and the memory of Lemka's pitying eyes, drove him on. He did not notice that morning sunlight was outshining the bare electric bulbs, nor did he hear the door open.

  'What a hell of a mess!' said Dawnay's voice. 'Look at my laboratory. What do you think you're doing?'

  He dropped off the high stool at the bench and stretched.

  'Hello, Madeleine,' he said. 'I've been trying to synthesise this thing for Andre. Most of the main chain seems to have jelled. But the side chains are all to hell.'

  Dawnay ran an expert eye over his work amid the litter spread across bench and desks. 'I'm not surprised,' she exclaimed. 'You've achieved a glorious mess. Better leave it to me.'

  'I thought you hadn't time. I thought you were too busy setting the world to rights.'

  She ignored what he was saying and went on looking at the equations he had written down.

  'Admittedly,' she said slowly, 'if there's a chemical deficiency in her blood or endocrine glands there must be a chemical answer, but we can't know whether this is it.'

  'It has to be, doesn't it?' he suggested. 'Our electronic boss says so.'

  She considered for a time. 'Why do you want to do this, John?' she enquired. 'You've always been afraid of her.

  Always wanted her out of the way.'

  'Now I want her to live!'

  She eyed him speculatively, a smile hovering around her mouth. 'Because you're a scientist and you want to know what the message is really all about? You can't bear to think that Gamboul knew and you don't? That's really the reason, isn't it?'

  'You've some funny old ideas,' he smiled.

  'Maybe,' she answered, 'maybe.' She reached for an overall on the wall hook. 'Go and get some breakfast, John.

  Then come back here. I'll have some work for you to do.'

  The two of them worked in perfect, almost instinctive co-operation, carefully avoiding any kind of moral or emotional argument. They were like enemies who were forced to live in the same cell. They talked of nothing but the enormous complication of the job, and for ten solid days, and most of the nights, they carried on. Messages about the world-wide improvements in barometric pressure, news bulletins reporting a noticeable lessening of wind violence, were just noted and then forgotten.

  Because of her own forebodings or failure, Dawnay did not even tell Fleming that even before the checking was complete she had started injections on Andre. The ethics did not bother her. Andre's life was hovering near its end in any case.

  Fleming still avoided the girl's sick room. He told himself that he would not see her until he could give her hope. He knew Dawnay was visiting her regularly, but he deliberately refrained from asking how she was.

  And Dawnay, noting the slow improvement in her patient, hardly dared to believe that she had succeeded. Only when the doctor came and made prolonged and successful tests of muscular reflexes did she admit even to herself that the near-impossible had happened.

  It was Andre herself who settled the matter. 'I am getting well,' she said one morning as she waited for another injection.

  'You have saved my life.'

  'You have saved yourself,' Dawnay said gently. You and John and the computer calculations.'

  'What will he do now - now that I'm to go on?' Andre asked.

  'I don't know.' Dawnay had wondered so much herself that she had been awaiting and dreading this question. 'He's divided. One part wants to go on. The other is frightened.

  We're all like that. But fear doesn't entirely stop us going forward.'

  'And I stand for going forward?' Andre asked.

  'For much more. Down here on our cosy little earth we used to think we were protected from the outside by sheer distance. Now we see that intelligence - pure, raw intelligence - can cross great gulfs of space and threaten us.'

  'You still think of me as a threat from outside?'

  'No,' Dawnay answered. 'No, I don't.'

  Andre smiled. 'Thank you for that. Can't I see him soon?'

  'You're strong enough to get-up,' Dawnay agreed. 'He should see you. Yes,' she went on after a pause. 'We'll go together when you can walk.'

  One evening the following week Fleming went back to the computer block. Partly to ease his conscience, and partly because he needed some fairly unskilled help, he had invited Yusel to work on the computer. The salary was good, which would help Lamka and the child.

  When Dawnay found them there, the Arab excused himself and she was left alone with Fleming.

  'John,' she said, 'Andre's here.'

  'Where ?'

  'Outside.' She smiled a little grimly at Fleming's amazement.

  'She's cured, John. We've done it. She'll be all right now.'

  At first she thought he was not going to say anything at all. Then he asked, in a hurt voice. 'Why couldn't you have told me?'

  'I wasn't sure which way it was going.'

  He stared at her with amazement. 'So you've repaired her, and the first thing you do is to bring her here - back to the machine! It's all so easy, so planned, just as if we're being used.' He turned away with a frown. 'How can we go on competing with her, with this ?'

  'That depends on you,' Dawnay replied. 'I can't help you.

  My job here is finished. I'm flying home tomorrow.'

  'You can't!' he exclaimed.

  'You wanted her well,' she reminded him, but he looked at her and through at a ghost.

  'You can't leave me like this,' he implored. 'Not with her here.'

  She had never before seen him plead for help. 'Look, John,' she said kindly. 'You're not a child that hides behind its mother's skirts. You're supposed to be a scientist. Andre didn't use you or me. It was we who turned the world upside down. It was Andre who saved it.' She moved to the door, beckoning to the waiting girl. 'I'll see you before I go.'

  Andre walked quickly towards Fleming, stopping before him and smiling like a happy schoolgirl. She was still thin and pale, and her eyes looked very big above her high, sharp cheek-bones; but she no longer looked ill. She was alive and vibrant, with a kind of fined-down beauty which touched him in spite of himself.

  'I can hardly believe that you're like this,' he said.

  'You're not glad?'

  'Of course I'm glad.'

  'Are you afraid of
me?'

  'So long as you're a puppet, a mechanical doll.'

  Colour suffused her cheeks and she tossed her hair away from her face. 'And you're not? You still think of yourself as a divine, unique creation. Three thousand millions of you on this earth alone. They - we - are all puppets, dancing on strings.'

  'Let's dance then.' He kept his hands in his pockets, his body motionless.

  'I will do whatever you wish,' she told him. 'All I know is one certain thing. We cannot go separate ways.'

  He put out his hand and brushed it against hers. 'Then let's leave here,' he said. He turned and looked at the grey bulk of the computer. 'After we've destroyed this. We'll make a real job of it this time. Then we'll find somewhere with peace, like that island we were on with old what's-his-name - Preen.'

  'All right,' she said. 'We will do as you want. I have often told you that. But have you thought? Have you really thought? Do you think we'd be allowed to live in peace any more than Preen was? The only safe place for us is here. If we accept this and its protection we accept what is planned.'

  'Planned! That damned word. And what is planned?'

  'What you want. It will be done here and in the rest of the world.'

  'I'm afraid I'm not cut out to be a dictator.'

  'The only possible sort of dictator is someone who is not cut out for it,' she said. 'Someone who knows.'

  'Knows what?' he asked.

  She took hold of his arm and began to lead him across to the observation bay of the computer.

  'I'll show you what I showed Mm'selle Gamboul,' she said.

  'Stand close beside me.'

  Obediently he stood by the panel and brought in the phase switches as she called the numbers. She sat down, alert and expectant, with a hand on his.

  The computer began to purr. Relays snicked into operation, the screen glowed. Like a film coming into focus the shadows grew smaller and sharper as they took form and perspective.

  'It looks like the moon,' Fleming murmured. 'Dead mountains, dust-filled valleys.'

  'It isn't,' Andre whispered, without looking away from the screen. 'It isn't the moon. It's the planet from which the message came.'

  'You mean they're showing us themselves?' Fleming stared at the bizarre shadows and reflections. 'The lighting's completely weird.'

  'Because of the source,' she explained, 'the light from their sun is blue.'

  She concentrated on the tube and the picture began to shift. The scenery moved horizontally at increasing speed until the screen became a blur of dazzling light. Again the scene slowed down and became stationary. There was a terrible stillness about it this time, the absolute rigidity of timeless age.

  An enormous plain stretched into the background where it merged with the dark sky. In the foreground stood monstrous elongated shapes, placed haphazardly and apparently half buried in the level, soft-looking surface.

  Fleming felt the skin on the back of his neck prickling.

  'My God,' he whispered, 'what are they?'

  'They are the ones,' said Andre. 'The ones who sent it.

  The ones I'm suppose to be like.'

  'But they're lifeless.' He corrected himself. 'They're immobile.'

  She nodded, her eyes wide and fixed on the screen. 'Of course,' she said. 'Really big brains cannot move around any more than this computer. There's no need.'

  'The surface of them seems solid. How do they see?'

  'Eyes would be useless. The blue light would destroy all tissue and nerve fibre as you know them. They see by other means, just as their other senses are different from those people' - she hesitated - 'people like us - have developed.'

  The picture began to crumble. Sections detached themselves and spun off the screen. Quickly everything faded.

  'Is that all there is?' Fleming felt deprived of something.

  Andre turned her face to him. It glistened with perspiration; her eyes were enormous, the pupils distended. 'Yes,'

  she smiled. 'That's all. They are the ones. They wanted us to see their planet. They believed it would be enough. Perhaps as a warning. Perhaps to show what time brings and how to survive. How we could do the same.'

  Fleming glanced back at the dark screen. To him those shapes still stood clear and definite in their piteous immobility against the glass. 'No,' he said.

  'Is it so much worse than the human race?' she asked him.

  'Which lives and reproduces the works and struggles by animal instinct. That's all human beings are - animals who spend their time competing for existence, keeping their bodies alive. And when the earth gets too crowded there is a holocaust and the survivors begin the cycle over again, and the brain never develops.'

  'Oh no?'

  'Not really. Not fast enough. By the time the earth becomes no longer fit to live on, the human race will still be little struggling animals who die out.'

  'Unless we change?'

  She nodded. 'The brain from out there can guide us, and we can guide others. So long as we keep hold of the authority it gives us.'

  'And impose what it wants us to on the rest of the world?'

  'We can only start to point a possible way,' Andre answered. 'It will be millions of years before the earth -'

  'We haven't the right,' he said.

  'To use knowledge of what could be?' They argued for a long while, but in the end she said, 'All right, then you're quite clear in your mind? You want to destroy all this?' She waved an expressive hand along the machine.

  'Yes,' he said firmly. 'That's what I want.'

  She got up and crossed to the record cabinets. From the rear of a drawer she took a small roll of film and held it out to him.

  What's that?' he demanded, refusing to touch it.

  'It's a roll of input negative. It writes zeros throughout the whole of the memory section. The computer has no will to stop it now. Feed this film in and in a few minutes it will be nothing but a mass of metal and glass.'

  He followed her to the programming console. He watched her slip the film on the spool holder and snap the flange shut.

  His eyes travelled upwards to the red button on the control panel. He was moving his hand to press it when Andre gently but firmly clasped his fingers.

  'I'd rather that it wasn't you who did that,' she said. 'You see, I know it's a mistake. And I'd rather it wasn't yours.'

  He let his arm drop and stepped away from the panel.

  Andre bent over the operating desk and began writing on the memo pad clamped to one side.

  'We'll leave a note,' she explained. 'But who for?'

  He grinned happily. 'For Yusel.'

  'Yes,' she agreed. 'Yusel. He'll start the input motor quite innocently when he sees this.' In big capitals she wrote Yusel's name. 'Now take me away please,' she whispered, 'if that's what you really want.'

  He did not move as she came close to him. Then very lightly he bent his head and kissed her, full on the mouth.

  As he felt her lips warm and full against his, he sensed suddenly her full humanity. All the fear and strain of the past months fell away from him and he was simply alone at last with the woman he wanted.

  He withdrew his mouth gently from hers and held her away from him at arms' length, and smiled at her. When she smiled back the grey panels of the computer cabinets became dim, unimportant shadows. He laughed out loud and took one of her hands in his.

  'Now, let's go. I can get Kaufman's car. There's a place I'd like you to see.'

  She followed him unquestioningly. Outside it was dark and cool. The wind was just the night breeze of the desert.

  No clouds marred the serenity of the pale, peaceful light from an almost full moon.

  In the car she snuggled against him. He drove steadily along the route which held such memories for him. When he neared the mountains he drove off the road, anxious to avoid arousing the sleeping people in Lemka's village. He stopped the car in the shadow of a great boulder.

  Hand in hand they clambered up a goat track, making for the white
mass of the temple ruins. The air became colder.

  Both of them panted with effort, and the blood tingled in their faces and hands.

  In silence Fleming stopped when his feet were on the great flight of steps which led up to the ruined portico. He kept his grip firmly on Andre's hand, making her stop too.

  'Why have we come here?' she whispered.

  'To breathe,' he said, tilting his head back and inhaling deeply.

  She looked upwards, too - into the vault of the sky, darkening at the edge of the mountain crest where the moonshine weakened. The Pole Star hung there like a brilliant lamp. Not far from it another star twinkled.

  'Beta Cassiopeiae, it's called,' said Fleming, knowing that their minds were so attuned that there was no need to doubt that she was looking just where he was. 'A nicer name is the Lady in the Chair. Can you make out the shape?'

  She laughed. 'No, I can't.' She continued looking upwards.

  'But now I know why you brought me here. That glimmer between the Pole Star and your Chair Lady.'

  'Yes,' he said, putting his arm protectively around her.

  'Andromeda,' she whispered, 'my namesake.'

  'The place where they are, the creatures without movement, without eyes; just with brains.' He deliberately turned his head away from the stars. 'It doesn't make sense. Think of the machine they made us build at Thorness. Remember what it did to you? Your hands?'

  She nodded. 'I remember. But if it had been very reasonable, very wise, would you have opposed it?' She saw him shake his head. 'Then you'd have really fallen under its spell.

  You and everybody else. Just like Mademoiselle Gamboul.'

  'I suppose so.'

  'Therefore what are you afraid of? By making it brutal and savage they forced you to take the control yourself.

  That's why we changed the decision circuits in this Azaran model. And that was intended too. It was all predictable.'

  'The nitrogen bug too?'

  'Of course. That was to make absolutely sure that the control would be changed. That the decisions would not be the machine's.'

  Fleming was almost convinced. 'But why run so close? It nearly did for us.'