A for Andromeda

by Fred Hoyle

  “I think she’s dead,” Judy said inadequately.

  “What did you expect?” Fleming came up behind her. “You saw the voltage. That was because she hadn’t got rid of me — because I was cancelling her out. Poor little devil.”

  He looked down at the crumpled body in its grey, soiled covering, and his own eyes hardened. “It’ll do better next time. It’ll produce something we can’t get at at all.”

  “Unless you find what’s wrong with it.” She turned away and picked up Fleming’s pad from the top of the input unit, and offered it him.

  He pulled it out of her hand and threw it across the room.

  “It’s too late for that! There’s nothing wrong with it.” He pointed to the girl’s huddled figure. “That’s the only answer I need. Tomorrow it will ask for another experiment, and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...”

  He walked briskly across to the alarm and fuse terminals by the double doors, took the wiring in both hands and pulled. They gave but did not break, so he put a foot against the wall and heaved against it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to finish it. This is the moment, probably the only moment.” He tugged again at the wires, and then gave up and reached for a fireman’s axe that hung on the wall beside them. Judy ran across to him.

  “No!” She seized his arm but he swung her off and with the return movement slashed the axe across the wiring and severed it, then wheeled and looked around the room. The display panel was still blinking fast, and he went across and smashed it with the axe.

  “Have you gone mad?” Judy ran after him again and, gripping the axe by the haft, tried to wrest it from him.

  He twisted it away from her. “Let go! I told you to stay out of it.”

  She stared at him and found she hardly knew him: his face was covered in sweat, as the girl’s had been, and suffused with anger and determination. She realised now what had been in his mind all the time.

  “You always meant to do this.”

  “If it came to it.”

  He stood with the axe in his hands, looking speculatively around, and she knew that she had to get to the doors before him; but he beat her to it, and leant with his back against them with the same set expression and the mirthless hint of a grin at the corners of his mouth. She really did think he was mad now. She held out a hand for the axe and spoke as if to a child.

  “Please give it to me, John.” She winced as he laughed. “You promised.”

  “I promised nothing.” He held on to the haft tightly with one hand, and with the other locked the door behind him.

  “I’ll scream,” she said.

  “Try.” He slipped the key into his pocket. “They’ll never hear you.”

  Pushing her aside, he strode through to the memory bay, opened the front of the nearest unit and struck at it. There was a small explosion as the vacuum collapsed.

  “John!” She tried to stop him as he made for the next unit.

  “I know what I’m doing,” he said, opening the front and swinging the axe in. Another small splintering explosion came from the equipment. “Do you think there’ll ever be another chance like this? Do you want to go and squeal? If you think I’m doing the wrong thing, go.

  He looked straight at her, calmly and sensibly, and dug a hand into his pocket for the key. “Fetch the riot squad if you want to: that’s been your favourite occupation. Or has it struck you I might be doing the right thing? That’s what Osborne wanted, wasn’t it? ‘The right thing.’”

  He held out the key to her, but for some reason impossible to express she could not take it. He gave her a long chance and then put the key back in his pocket and turned and started on the other units.

  “The sentries will hear.” Knowing he was not mad after all made her feel committed to him. She stood by the doors and kept watch while he worked his way round the equipment, hacking and smashing and reducing the intricate engineering complex and the millions of cells of electronics to a tangled and shattered waste on the floor, on metal racks and behind the broken facias of cabinets. She could hardly bear to look, but she listened through the splintering and tearing for any sound in the corridor.

  Nothing came to interrupt them. The storm of snow outside, unseen and unheard in the buried centre of the building, made its own commotion and hid theirs. Fleming worked methodically at first, but it was an enormous job and he began to go faster and faster as he felt himself tiring, until he was swinging desperately and pulling on his lungs for more breath, almost blinded by the perspiration that ran down from his forehead. He worked all round until he came back to the centre of the control unit, and then he smashed that.

  “Take that, you bastard,” he half shouted at it. “And that, and that.”

  He let the axe-head swing down to the floor and leant on the end of the haft to get his breath.

  “What’ll happen now?” asked Judy.

  “They’ll try to rebuild it, but they won’t know how to.”

  “They’ll have the message.”

  “It’s stopped.”

  “They’ll have the original.”

  “They won’t. They won’t have that or the broken code or any of it — because it’s in here.” He indicated a solid metal door in the wall behind the control desk, then he swung the axe again and went for the hinges. Blow after blow he battered at them, but made no impression. Judy stood by in a trauma of suspense as the ring of metal on metal seemed to shout through the whole building, but no-one heard. After a long time Fleming gave up and leant once more, panting, over his axe. The room was utterly silent now that the computer had stopped, and its stillness went with the motionless body of the girl in the middle of the floor.

  “We’ll have to get a key,” Fleming said. “Where is one?”

  “In Major Quadring’s duty room.”

  “But that’s —”

  She confirmed his fear. “It’s always manned,” she said. “And the key’s kept in a safe.”

  “There must be another.”

  “No. That’s the only one.”

  She tried to think of some other possibility but there was none. No-one, so far as she knew, not even Geers, had a duplicate. Fleming at first would not believe her, and when he did he went momentarily berserk. He swung up the axe and lashed in fury at the door, over and over again until he could hardly stand, and when at last he gave up and slumped into what had been the control desk chair, he sat for a long while thinking and brooding and trying to find a plan.

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” he said at last.

  “You didn’t ask.” Judy was trembling from the violence and sense of disaster and only kept control of herself with an effort. “You never asked me. Why didn’t you ask me?”

  “You’d have stopped me if I had.”

  She tried to talk sensibly and stop herself shaking. “We’ll get it some way. I’ll think of some way, perhaps first thing in the morning.”

  “It’ll be too late.” He shook his head and stared down past his feet to the body lying on the floor. “‘Everything you do is predictable’ — that’s what she said. ‘There’s nothing you can think of that won’t be countered.’ We can’t win.”

  “We’ll get it through Osborne or something,” Judy said. “But we must get out of here now.”

  She found the young operator’s coat and muffler and put those on him and led him out of the building.

  Twelve

  ANNIHILATION

  IT was very late when they got back to the café. The snow was blowing a blizzard and piling up against the north wall; inside the small back room Reinhart and Osborne, huddled in their coats, were playing a miserable and inattentive game with a portable chess set.

  Fleming felt too dazed to make a case for himself. He left Judy to explain and sat hunched on one of the hard farm chairs while Reinhart asked questions and Osborne whinnied at him a long tirade of utter hopelessness and contempt.

  “How dare you trick me into this?” The last
shreds of his usual urbanity disappeared. For all his Corps Diplomatique training and breeding, he was unbearably distressed. “I only agreed to be party to this in the hope that we might furnish the Minister with a case. But it’ll be the end of his career, and of mine.”

  “And of mine,” sighed Reinhart. “Though I think I’d be willing to sacrifice that if the machine’s destroyed.”

  “It isn’t destroyed,” Osborne objected. “He couldn’t even make a job of that. If the original message is intact they can build it again.”

  “It’s my mess,” said Fleming. “You can blame me. I’ll carry the can.”

  Osborne neighed scornfully. “That won’t keep us out of prison.”

  “Is that what’s worrying you? How about the rebuilt machine and the next creature, and the grip we’ll never be able to shake off?”

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?” asked Judy.

  They all looked, with only the faintest of hope, at Reinhart. He went over it with them move by move, like the checking of a calculation, and in the end drew an entire blank. They had no hope of getting a key until morning, and by then Geers would know about it and the whole business would be put in motion again. There was no doubt in their minds now that Fleming’s theories were right; what mattered was that he had failed them in action.

  “The only thing,” said Reinhart, “is for Osborne to go back to London on the first train and when the news breaks look surprised.”

  “Where am I supposed to have been?” Osborne inquired.

  “You came, did a brief inspection, and left. The rest happened after you’d gone, and that’s the truth. You wouldn’t know anything about it.”

  “And the ‘official’ I took in?”

  “He came out with you.”

  “And who was ‘he’?”

  “Whoever you can trust. Browbeat or bribe someone to say they came up from London and went back with you. You must clear yourself and keep your influence. We must all clear ourselves if we can. They’ll build it again, as John says, and there must be at least one of us whose advice may be taken.”

  “And who’s supposed to have bust the computer?” asked Fleming.

  The Professor gave a small smile of satisfaction. “The girl. It can be assumed that she went off the rails and turned against it, and either she was electrocuted in the process or she died of the delayed shock of her punishment, aggravated by the frenzy it drove her into. Or whatever they like to decide. She’s dead either way, so she can’t deny it.”

  “You’re sure she is?” Osborne asked Fleming.

  “Want to inspect the body?”

  “Ask me,” said Judy, with a bitter sort of sickness. “I see them all die.”

  “O.K.” Fleming roused himself and turned to Reinhart. “What are Judy and I supposed to have been doing?”

  The Professor answered him pat. “You weren’t there. So far as anyone knows we left the operator in there with Miss Adamson. They left together, and it happened afterwards.”

  “It won’t hold,” said Osborne. “There’ll be a hell of an enquiry.”

  “It’s the best we can do.” Reinhart shivered slightly. “Whatever way you look at it, it’s a mess.”

  They sat in their overcoats around the table, like four figures at a ghostly dinner, waiting for the night to pass and the snow to stop.

  “Do you think it’ll hold up the trains?” asked Osborne after a while.

  Reinhart cocked his head on one side, listening to the beating on the roof. “I shouldn’t think so. It sounds as though it’s easing off a little.” He turned his attention to Fleming. “How about you, John?”

  “Judy and I’ll go back to the camp in the car. The road was passable when we came up just now.”

  “Then you’d better go at once,” Reinhart said. “Pretend you’ve been for a joyride and go straight to your rooms. You haven’t seen anything or anyone.”

  “What a night for a joyride!” Fleming stood up wearily and looked from one to the other of them. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  He drove back gropingly through the scudding snow, with Judy wiping the windscreen clear every minute or so, but already the storm was slacking. He left Judy at her chalet and drove round to his own. He was so tired that he did not want to get out of the car. It was an hour or so after midnight and the camp was asleep and deadened by the pall of white. As he opened the door, the inside of his hut looked darker than ever, by contrast with the snow-covered ground outside. He fumbled on the wall for his light switch, and as he touched it another, bandaged, hand fell on his own.

  He had a moment of wild panic, then he pushed it off and switched the light on.

  Andre stood there holding one of her bandaged hands in the other and moaning, looking deadly pale and ravaged; but not dead. He stared at her incredulously for a moment, then shut the door and crossed to the window to pull the curtains.

  “Sit down and hold out your hands.” He took dressings and a tube of ointment from a cupboard and started gently and methodically replacing her rough bandages.

  “I thought you couldn’t possibly be alive,” he said as he worked. “I saw the voltage.”

  “You saw?” She sat on the bed, holding her hands out to him.

  “Yes, I saw.”

  “Then it was you.”

  “Me — and an axe.” He looked at her pale, burnt-out face. “If I’d thought you’d had any life left in you —”

  “You would have finished me too.” She said it for him without malice, simply stating a fact. Then she closed her eyes momentarily against a twinge of pain. “I have a stronger heart than — than people. It takes a lot to put me out of action.”

  “Who did up your hands?”

  “I did.”

  “Who have you told?”

  “No-one.”

  “Doesn’t anyone know about the computer?”

  “I do not think so.”

  “Why haven’t you told them?” He grew more and more puzzled. “Why did you come here?”

  “I did not know what would happen — what had happened. When I came round, I could not think of anything at first except the pain in my hands. Then I looked round and saw it all in ruins.”

  “You could have called the guards.”

  “I did not know what to do: I had no sort of direction. I felt lost without the computer. You know it is completely out of action?”

  “I know.”

  Her eyes seemed to burn in her pale face. “All I could think of was finding you. And my hands. I bandaged my hands and came here. I said nothing to the guards. And when you were not here, I waited. What is going to happen?”

  “They’ll rebuild it.”

  “No!”

  “Don’t you want that?” he asked in surprise. “How about your ‘Higher Purpose’ — your higher form of life?”

  She did not answer. As he finished tying down the dressing her eyes closed again with pain, and he saw that she was shivering.

  “You’re ice cold, aren’t you?” he said, feeling her forehead. He pulled his eiderdown across the bed and heaped it around her shoulders. “Keep that round you.”

  “You think they will build it again?”

  “Sure to.” He found a bottle of whisky and poured two glasses. “Now get that down. They won’t have me to help them but they’ll have you.”

  “They would make me do that?” She sipped the whisky and looked at him with burning, anxious eyes.

  “You’ll need making?”

  She almost laughed. “When I saw the computer all smashed I was so glad.”

  “Glad?” he asked, pausing in his drink.

  “I felt free. I felt —”

  “Like the Greek Andromeda when Perseus broke her chains?”

  She was not sure about this. She handed back her glass. “When the computer was working, I hated it.”

  “Not you. It was us you hated.”

  She shook her head. “I hated the machine and everything to do with it.”

&nbs
p; “Then why —?”

  “Why do people behave like they do? Because they feel compelled! Because they are tied by what they think are logical necessities, to their work or their families, or their country. You imagine ties are emotional? The logic you cannot contradict is the tightest bond. I know that.” Her voice wavered and became uncertain. “I did what I had to, and now the logic has gone and I do not know what... I do not know.”

  Fleming sat down beside her. “You could have said this before.”

  “I have said it now.” She looked him full in the face. “I have come to you.”

  “It’s too late.” Fleming looked down at the lint and strapping on her hands, thinking of the marks she still carried of the machine’s will. “Nothing on earth’ll stop them rebuilding it.”

  “But they cannot without the code of the design.”

  “That still exists.”

  “You didn’t —?” Even if he had doubted her protests before, there was no doubting the distress in her voice now, or in her eyes.

  “I couldn’t break open the cabinet and Quadring has the only key.”

  She fumbled in the pocket of her anorak. “I have one.”

  “But I was told nobody had.”

  She pulled the key out, wincing as her bandages caught on the flap of the pocket. “Nobody has, except me, and that was not known here.” She held it out to him. “You can go and finish.”

  It was so easy, and so impossible; here was the one thing he needed above all else, and now he had no means of getting back into the computer block to use it.

  “You’ll have to go,” he said.

  She shrank back into the eiderdown but he threw it off and took her by the shoulders.

  “If you really hate it — if you really want to stay free — all you have to do is walk in, unlock the wall cabinet and take out the original message — that’s on tape — and my calculations which are on paper, and the program, which is on punched cards. Make a bonfire of all the paper, and when it’s going well you can dump the magnetic reels on. That’ll wipe them. Then you get out quick.”