Andromeda Breakthrough

by Fred Hoyle

  Kaufman tried to meet her look and failed. 'You know you are not supposed to be without an escort,' he blustered.

  Fleming stepped forward, his fists clenched. 'Now look here, you Teutonic gauleiter....' he began, but Abu Zeki stepped in front of him. 'They sent for you because it was urgent. The girl collapsed while she was working in the sensory bay.'

  'Andre?' Fleming was already at the door. 'I'll go to her,'

  he called over his shoulder.

  'How bad is she?' Dawnay asked Abu.

  'She is very weak,' he replied. 'But there was a little more data from the printer before she collapsed.' He picked up a sheaf of record sheets from the desk and gave them to Dawnay.

  Kaufman cleared his throat. 'You will be more carefully watched in future,' he warned, but he seemed uncertain and worried. 'How important is the girl to us?'

  'About as important as your survival. You won't go on living for long if she doesn't finish this.' Dawnay could hardly bear to speak to him, but when she saw the fear come into his eyes she realised for the first time that he was not invulnerable; that he might be able to be worked upon. 'So for God's sake - and your own - try not to interfere more than you have to.'

  He looked at her doubtfully and went away without speaking.

  Andre's corner of the sick bay was in darkness. The nurse, sitting beside a screened light, stood up when Fleming tiptoed in. She protested at the intrusion.

  'It's all right,' he told her. 'I just want to see her. I shan't wake her.'

  The girl gave an annoyed sigh and walked across to the bed with him. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he could make out the shape of Andre's emaciated body underneath the thin coverlet. Her head and hair were a vague shape in the centre of the white pillow. He bent down closer and saw that her eyes were open, watching him.

  'I should have been here,' he whispered, gently touching her hair. His fingers brushed her forehead. It was damp and cold.

  Very faintly her voice came to him, slow and hesitant. I have done what you wanted. Professor Dawnay has all she will need now.'

  His mind hardly registered what she had said. 'I ought to have been with you,' he said again.

  He found her hand. It lay lifeless and unnaturally flexed on the coverlet. His thumb and forefinger felt for the pulse in her wrist. He could detect nothing.

  'I am finished,' she whispered, guessing what he was doing.

  He withdrew his hand. 'No, you're not,' he said loudly.

  'We've a trick or two left. Neilson is here. The father of the man who built this computer. He made me realise what I ought to be doing. What we ought to be doing. We need some help from it for you as well as us.'

  He stood up. 'Put yourself in my hands,' he ordered. 'You did before. Tonight you will sleep. Tomorrow I shall come for you. I will take you to the computer. Yes, I know,' he exclaimed when he saw her attempt to protest. 'You're weak.

  You collapsed this evening. But this time I'll be beside you, helping you.'

  He had very little belief that he could really do anything, but he hoped that some fresh strength had passed from him to her. She moved a little, as if relaxing and getting more comfortable. Her eyelids fluttered and closed. Her face took on the serenity of natural sleep.

  Fleming went to the door, beckoning the nurse to follow.

  Outside he talked quietly to her, telling her that she was not to be frightened, and not to talk. 'We're all in danger,' he explained to her. 'Your patient is trying to save us. It's up to us to save her. Trust me and we shall do it.'

  Half-heartedly the girl nodded that she understood. Fleming wished he could convince himself as easily.

  He slept little that night, but lay trying to make a new plan of action for the little time they had left. With the light of morning he deliberately followed his usual routine of a shower, shave, and breakfast to give Andre every precious minute to recuperate from her collapse the night before.

  Even then he was early. Sleepy guards, resigned to another couple of hours before the day releifs took over, eyed him warily when, accompanied by the nurse, he pushed Andre in her wheelchair to the computer building.

  After the boisterous, still stormy, weather outside the air inside the building seemed heavy and lifeless. Despite the air conditioning the familiar aroma of Kaufman's cigarellos hung around. Fleming half expected the man to come bustling up, demanding to know what was happening. But the offices were empty. Presumably the German had hung around for hours, thinking. Fleming hoped that whatever conscience he might still have had been at work.

  Andre had said nothing when he had fetched her. Beyond a smile in answer to his greeting she might have been in a trance. After he had dismissed the nurse and had Andre sitting in front of the screen he resigned himself to the fact that he would just have to hope to instil his ideas in her mind, without getting a sign of reaction.

  And so it was. He talked of what Dawnay believed was wrong with her, how guilty they both felt because of it. He painted a picture unreally optimistic, of what her life could be if she could help Dawnay to help her. In the end he simulated something very near anger, challenging her to prove her power.

  She sat with her head drooped, her hands folded listlessly in her lap. Only the occasional fluttering of her eyelids showed that she was awake and listening. He stopped talking after a while, not knowing what else to say. He saw her try to brace herself. One hand was lifted with agonising slowness to the sensory control. The machine began to hum. A pinpoint of light glowed in the centre of the screen; it dulled and expanded. Fleming stepped away, not taking his eyes off her, until he was against the wall. There he stood, tense, motionless, watching. The impossible was happening.

  After a time he felt a pull on his sleeve. Abu was standing beside him looking puzzled and expectant. Fleming jerked his head towards the office and they walked quietly to it.

  'What?' Abu began. 'Is she... ?'

  'I think so,' Fleming replied, not really knowing what Abu was asking. He tugged his thoughts unwillingly away from Andre. 'What's the news from you?'

  'I went home after midnight,' he said. 'I had to pass through the guard room. But the officer seemed to think it was okay for me to go unescorted. My cousin Yusel got home just before me. We've fixed up Professor Neilson where he'll be safe enough. A cave high above the temple, where that rock fault is. He'll be comfortable enough there as he hasn't to move around much. It was hard going for him; the air is thinning here just as Yusel says it is even at sea level in England.'

  'He's got food and water?'

  Aim nodded. 'Lemka will visit him regularly, or her mother.'

  Fleming nodded, satisfied. 'It's good of you all,' he muttered.

  'Young Doctor Neilson was kind to me,' Abu said. 'We liked him very much.'

  Both men stopped abruptly. The output printer had started to work. Fleming's thoughts raced back to Andre.

  'Get the nurse to take her back to bed,' he ordered. He walked across to her and put his arm around her shoulders.

  'Good!' he said. 'Now rest - and hang on.'

  He grabbed the paper coming from the printer, running down the short lines of figures. The details meant little to him, but the general purport was clear enough. It concerned the constituents in plasma. For ten minutes he stood watching the figures emerge. At last the motor died and the computer sank into silence.

  Dawnay was working at her laboratory bench in her usual bewildering and seemingly haphazard array of apparatus.

  Fleming thrust the sheets of paper before her.

  'What are those?' she asked, continuing to watch some fluid drip through a filter. 'More bacterial formulae?'

  'No,' said Fleming. 'Formulae for Andromeda.'

  She stopped her work and looked at him wonderingly.

  'Who programmed it?'

  'She did. I more or less forced her. So far as I can judge it's a progression of figures that stands for the missing chemical constituents in her blood. Get it into chemical terms, and we can use it on her.
'

  She took the paper and slumped in a chair. 'It would take weeks of work,' she muttered, running her eye over the data.

  'And I have this bigger job.' She waved her hand almost helplessly at the jumble of retorts and test tubes on the bench.

  'Which Andre got for us,' he reminded her.

  She was exasperated at the implied reproof. 'Let's get this straight, John,' she began in level tones. 'First you were against me creating her. Then you wanted me to kill her when she was first made. Next you demanded that she was kept away from the computer. Now-'

  'I want her to live.'

  'And the rest of us?' she asked him. 'Do you want us to live? How much can I take on, do you imagine? My energy's limited. There's only one of me and I'm dead tired. Sometimes I think my brain is softening.' She pulled herself together and smiled at him. 'Do you think I wouldn't try to save her if I could? But there are millions of us, John, and our lives are in the balance. I don't even know if this is going to work. Still less that, even if it does, I'll have it made in quantity in time.'

  She leaned forward and held out the sheets of paper to him. He kept his hands deep in his trouser pockets, refusing to accept them. She let them fall to the floor.

  He bent to pick them up and put them carefully on a clear corner of the bench. 'You'll have to talk to Gamboul,'

  he said quietly. 'She won't see me and doesn't trust Abu Zeki any more. But she might listen to you. If you could persuade her to give us more freedom and more outside help .... '

  Dawnay was lost in her own thoughts. 'I don't know, I just don't know,' she murmured.

  Without warning there was a tremendous crack of thunder. It shook the building, making the apparatus on the bench shake and jangle. Immediately the noise died away there came the scream of wind.

  'Even Gamboul must know that this weather thing isn't something she can handle, that it wasn't part of her damned programme,' Fleming said when the racket died down.

  'All right,' Dawnay agreed; 'I'll try to explain to her.'

  An interview was not granted until the following morning.

  Gamboul sent an order for Dawnay to come to her private residence, the house which Salim had owned. From all accounts, Gamboul rarely visited the Presidential Palace any more, not even to go through the formalities of reporting the country's day-to-day activities. The President was kept a virtual prisoner. He did not seem greatly to mind; he was sick. The comparatively slight thinning of the atmosphere over Azaran was already affecting the older people. The President was suffering from bronchitis.

  The Salim residence looked shabby and dilapidated. There had been some minor storm damage. No one had troubled to sweep up the rubble. The palm trees which had grown in the courtyard for more than fifty years had been broken by the wind.

  An armed guard escorted Dawnay to Gamboul's office.

  She could see at once how the other woman had changed.

  The sensuality seemed to have drained out of Gamboul. Her face had become more beautiful in a haggard, almost aesthetic way, and there was something fanatical about her bright dark eyes. Something terrifyingly self-possessed and dedicated.

  She was surprisingly friendly, asking what she could do, 'You have everything you need for our work?' she enquired.

  'For yours; not for mine,' Dawnay corrected her. Then, without preamble she gave a factual and restrained report on the reasons for the state of the weather.

  Gamboul listened quietly, without interrupting. She walked to the window and looked out across the city to the towering masses of cumulus beyond it over the desert.

  She was quiet for a time after Dawnay had finished. 'How shall we die?' she murmured, walking back to her desk and sitting down. Dawnay explained.

  Gamboul waved an expressive hand. 'That wasn't the meaning in the message,' she protested. 'It wasn't meant to happen. Everything was clear and logical. What I saw was - desolation, but not like this. And there was power too.'

  'What did you learn you had to do?' Dawnay prompted.

  Gamboul's mind was far away, reliving that night in front of the computer screen. 'Govern,' she muttered. 'Everyone knows that it has to be, but nobody will make the real effort.

  A few have tried .... '

  'Hitler? Napoleon?' Dawnay suggested.

  Gamboul was not insulted. 'Yes,' she agreed. But they were not brilliant enough, or rather they did not have the help of the brain from out there. It will be necessary to sacrifice almost everything. But not like this! Not now! We're not ready!'

  'How much power have you ?' Dawnay asked.

  'Enough here. But this was to be only a beginning.'

  'It still could be,' said Dawnay. She could see now a way of appealing to the other woman's greed and fear.

  Gamboul turned sharply to her. 'What do you mean?' she demanded.

  'It's possible,' Dawnay explained, 'that we may be able to find a way to save the atmosphere. Not probable, but just a chance. We're getting some help from the computer with a formula that looks like an anti-bacterium. We may be able to synthesise it. But I shall need help and equipment. If we succeed we shall have to mass produce it and then pump it into the sea all over the world.'

  Gamboul gave her a look of suspicion. 'How can you produce so much?'

  Carefully Dawnay explained that with organisation the serum, once made, would increase naturally, possibly at a rate faster than the bacteria already in the sea. 'Once we've bred bulk supplies we should have to send batches to all countries, where their own installations could all handle it simultaneously.'

  Gamboul began laughing. It was not a pleasant sound for there was no joy in it, only overweening exultation. 'We will do it,' she said, 'but we shall not allow other governments to co-operate. Intel will build all the plant you need. Intel will offer the serum at its own price. This will give us the power I was told about. It is part of the message after all. I didn't understand. Now the world will be ours, held to ransom.'

  Dawnay rose, staring at her. 'It's not for you!' she found herself shouting, too deeply shocked to care what risk she ran. 'You're mad! It isn't part of the plan!'

  But Gamboul seemed not to notice; only stared back at her with glazed eyes and spoke as if to a minion receiving orders.

  'Indent for all the equipment you need, Professor. I assure you that there will be no restrictions about that.'

  A portable projector had been rigged up in the Cabinet Room at 10, Downing Street. The Prime Minister, a few of his senior colleagues including the Minister of Science, and Osborne were sitting at one end of the table watching the screen.

  The Prime Minister raised his hand. 'That's enough,' he said wearily. 'Put the lights on, will you?' The scene of a waste of water over what had once been Holland's most fertile farmland faded.

  'The point is, sir, do we release it to the T.V. nets?' The Home Secretary enquired.

  'Why not?' asked the Premier. 'People who can do so, might as well see. Perhaps there'll be some sort of wry comfort in knowing that Europe's even worse off than we are.

  Anyway, not many will see them. I doubt whether a tenth of the country now has any electricity.'

  He fingered his pipe, then laid it down; smoking was almost impossible with breathing so difficult. 'Any news from Neilson?' he enquired.

  'Not yet, sir,' Osborne replied. 'Another report from Professor Dawnay brought on an Intel transport. It's a technical message the Director of Research is studying. But briefly, she claims that the bacterium is a bio-chemical thing put out by the Thorness computer.'

  'Is she doing anything?'

  'She says she's working on it, sir. We're hoping she will give Neilson a lead and he can help her.'

  'Couldn't this Arab aviator or whatever he is smuggle Neilson back once there are some facts to work on?'

  Osborne coughed deferentially. 'I'm afraid the calculations would have to be done there, sir; they have the computer.'

  The Prime Minister gave Osborne a keen glance. 'Thank you for reminding me of that,'
he snapped with uncharacteristic sharpness. 'And what about the computer's minions, the fellow Fleming, and the girl?'

  'They're both there,' the Minister of Science told him.

  'They're under guard.'

  The Prime Minister got up and walked to the head of the great table. 'Perhaps it's time we moved in,' he said quietly.

  'This isn't a Suez. We would have support from other quarters.'

  The Minister of Science shifted uneasily. 'My experts have made an appreciation of the eventuality, sir. They advise against it. You will understand, sir, that the computer...'

  '... Has built them the sort of defence set-up it built us,'

  the Prime Minister finished for him. 'So we'll have to try appealing to their better nature, won't we?'

  'Yes, sir,' muttered the Minister of Science.

  'Not a very profitable policy, I suspect,' said the Premier.

  'But I doubt whether we or the Opposition can think up any other. I'll get the C.O.I. to draft something for the B.B.C. I suppose there's still some transmitter or other which can pump it out?'

  'Daventry is still on the air, sir,' the Minister of Science said. 'The army's there with a group of mobile power units.

  We can reach Azaran on short-wave all right.'

  The special bulletin was broadcast in English and Arabic at hourly intervals throughout the night. Most of the first transmission got through to Azaran. After that, on Gamboul's personal orders, it was jammed.

  She summoned Kaufman to her office to hear a tape transcription. The German sat impassively while the tape was played.

  'This is London calling the government and people of Azaran,' came the far-off, static-distorted voice. 'We need your help. The continent of Europe has been devastated. The whole world is threatened by a series of climatic disturbances which have already begun to reach your own country. The air we breathe is being sucked into the sea. Within the next few weeks millions will die unless by some enormous effort it can be arrested. Tens of thousands are dying now. This country has been badly hit. Three quarters of Holland are inundated. Venice has been largely destroyed by a tidal wave. The cities of Rouen, Hamburg, and Dusseldorf no longer exist.'