Andromeda Breakthrough

by Fred Hoyle

  She walked majestically on to the balcony, her hair blowing back from her forehead, and paused at the balustrade, stretching her arms towards the sky. Kaufman caught the sound of her ecstatic laughter in the howling wind.

  On an impulse he crossed to the door and pulled it shut.

  The bedlam outside lessened as if it had moved away. Suddenly there was a crescendo of noise and the great old house shook. A piece of coping crashed on the balcony, smashing into a score of pieces.

  He saw Gamboul stare down at a lump of jagged marble just as a cascade of sand struck her. She bent quickly, rubbing her fists in her eyes. Blindly she stumbled to the door and began beating on it. The thick, decorative glass broke. Her fist ran with blood. He could see her mouth opening and shutting as she screamed at him.

  He backed into the gloom of the room, watching impassively.

  The bursts of wind were coming faster now, until one merged into another. The house groaned and trembled.

  At last it came: a roaring, crumbling mass of stone which crashed on to the balcony and, tearing it out by its concrete roots, hurled it down into the courtyard below. The dust of debris mixed with the sand like eddying smoke. Kaufman walked forward, pressing his face myopically against the glass to see what had happened.

  It was all very indistinct, but he thought he could see a twisted body among the rubble below. He kept on looking for a minute or so. He felt none of the disquiet that the sight of the old Arab woman had given him. Eventually he sought a chair well away from the crumbling walls. With a completely steady hand he lighted a cigarello.

  'When the storm is past,' he said aloud to the empty room, 'I shall make myself a call to London. There is the matter of relations with the English.'

  He frowned, hoping that this would not be too great a problem. Professor Dawnay might be amenable; but Fleming was a formidable adversary. There had, after all, been so many unfortunate incidents between them in the past. The English mentality when it got obstinate ideas was something he had never understood.

  The storm weakened, the clouds thinned and light returned though the wind blew nearly as hard as before. He went down to the courtyard. Yusel had been taken into the cellars, a guard reported. Kaufman heard himself giving orders for him to be kept under guard but decently treated, and then went and looked at Gamboul's body. It lay, twisted and broken, among the fallen stonework, and her dark eyes, rimmed with blood, stared lifelessly up at him.

  One of her cars was undamaged, and Kaufman ordered the driver to take him to the computer compound. Damage on the route through the town's outskirts was appalling. A scattering of Arabs were looting destroyed shops; they fled at the sight of the car with the Intel insignia. There were no troops or police anywhere.

  The squat, solid buildings inside the compound seemed reasonably intact; a few windows were blown in, and some of the garish, modernistic fripperies at the entrance to the executive building had toppled. Kaufman drove past them, straight to the laboratories.

  Dawnay was alone, injecting bacteria into rows of test tubes. The disorderly array of apparatus occupying every bench and table she had been able to commandeer was strangely reassuring after the desolation outside.

  'Ah, Professor Dawnay,' Kaufman beamed, 'you were not damaged by the storm, I trust?'

  'No,' she said shortly.

  'I have to inform you,' he went on, 'that Fraulein Gamboul is dead.' He enjoyed her look of amazement. 'She was killed by the tornado. I am now the senior representative of Intel in this country. I ask you to help me. Our measures against the bacteria causing the storms: they are successful, yes?'

  'It looks like it, now, and in the sea here,' she replied.

  'Wunderbar.' he said. 'Everywhere else things go from bad to worse - unless we give them your cure.'

  'And quickly.'

  Kaufman nodded. 'That is what I have thought.' He dropped his voice. 'You know, Professor, Fraulein Gamboul was prepared to let it go on until the world accepted her terms, outrageous terms. She was insane, of course. Did you know that she killed Salim, shot him dead herself? She was a woman possessed. She would have left everything too late.

  We should all have perished.'

  Dawnay looked at him coldly. 'We may still.'

  He licked his lips nervously and removed his glasses, polishing the lenses over and over again. 'There has been an appeal from London over the radio. I shall answer it when communications are restored. And I shall prove we can help by sending your own personal report on the anti-bacterium.

  Professor Neilson shall take it on the first available plane.'

  He saw her startled look.

  'Oh yes,' he said triumphantly, replacing his glasses and staring at her. 'I know all about Professor Neilson being here.

  He will not wish to trust me. He does not yet understand that I am just a business man, and a good business man sees through calamity to brighter things.'

  Dawnay could not disguise her relief. 'So Neilson will explain how you can give bulk supplies to the world?'

  He shook his head impatiently. 'Not at once,' he said.

  'People will be prepared to pay a great deal. I told you I am a business man.' He turned to the door. His smile had gone.

  'You will have a typed report ready for despatch in an hour.'

  For a while Dawnay went on with her work like an automaton. She had not counted on Kaufman haggling over the price of life.

  She crossed to the computer building in search of someone to talk to; there was superficial damage to the entrance bay and the cooling tower, but the computer appeared unharmed, No guards were left, but an electrician appeared from the staff rest room. He said he had no idea where Dr Fleming was. Abu Zeki, he believed, had left immediately after the first of the afternoon's storms to visit his family.

  Dawnay thanked him and made her way to the sick quarters.

  The nurse put up makeshift barricades of screens over the broken windows. The girl smiled with relief at seeing someone at last.

  'Miss Andre has slept through it all,' she whispered. 'I think she is a little stronger.'

  Dawnay sat down by the bed. The nurse was right. Bad as the light was, Dawnay could see a better colour in Andre's cheeks.

  'Is it - is it working?' Andre had not opened her eyes or moved when she whispered her question.

  Dawnay clasped the fragile hand. 'Yes, it's working,' she murmured. 'The barograph in the lab is still going up. How long it will last I don't know.'

  Andre struggled to sit up. 'It was not in the message that we must...' She stopped and lay back, exhausted. 'I tried to tell her. She would not listen. She came last night. I told her to listen to me, not to the computer. But - '

  'Gamboul, you mean?' said Dawnay gently. 'She's dead, Andre. Kaufman is now in charge.'

  Andre nodded slowly, as if she knew. Her fingers tried to find Dawnay's. 'Do you believe me?' she asked. She saw Dawnay nod. The fingers relaxed and she lay back with her eyes closed once more. 'Tell me all that has happened and I will tell you what to do.'

  As rapidly as she could, Dawnay gave a survey of the situation as far as she knew it. Before she had finished she thought Andre had fallen asleep or had lapsed into a coma, she was so utterly motionless. But after a full two minutes, the girl began speaking in a level monotone.

  Dawnay listened intently. The responsibility Andre was thrusting on her shoulders was tremendous. It was intimidating; yet it was inspiring too. The rational, reasoned motives were all that her scientific mind needed. When Andre finished Dawnay made just one brief answer.

  'I'll go right away,' she said.

  Half an hour later she was ordering a servant at the Presidential palace to take her immediately to his master.

  She had driven herself in a car she had found undamaged in the Intel parking lot. It was the first time she had been behind a car wheel since her young days as a student. Her erratic course did not matter. Flood water had destroyed the road in many places. Rubble from tottering houses had to be avoide
d or driven over. No guards stood outside the palace.

  The President saw her immediately. He was seated in his high-backed chair, looking years older than when she had last taken her leave of him.

  His ritualistic courtesy had not deserted him. He rose and bent over her hand, and indicated a chair. The faithful little negro boy was still there. The President told him to go and see if he could find someone to make coffee. Then he returned to his seat.

  'The country is dying, Professor Dawnay,' he said simply.

  'The whole world may be,' Dawnay replied. 'That is why I have come. It is in your power to help. You have been informed that Miss Gamboul is dead?' The President nodded.

  'So you are free.'

  'Free!' he said bitterly. 'It is a little late.'

  'It may not be,' she insisted. 'It partly depends on you, your Excellency. If the anti-bacteria I have made is handled by Intel, and if it works, then it will be Intel's world. Kaufman will fix their price for them.'

  'I have been told very little, but I can gather the trend of events. And what can I do to stop this man Kaufman? He is like the others - Salim, Mm'selle Gamboul....'

  'We will deal with Kaufman,' Dawnay promised. 'While you send out the bacteria as a gift from Azaran. It will be the first action of a free nation.'

  He gazed at her with his sad, intelligent eyes.' 'Or the last,'

  he suggested.

  'Not if every laboratory in the world receives a supply.

  Then we've got a chance. If we can do it in the right way, through the right people.' She thought back to their long battles with the authorities at Thorness. 'Ever since the message was first picked up and a computer built to handle it, a few people have been struggling to keep this power out of the wrong hands and put it into the right ones.'

  'And what are mine?' he asked mildly.

  'What we will make them for you!'

  The boy entered with a tray. The President poured out some coffee and handed Dawnay a cup. He slowly sipped his own before he spoke again.

  'So you are right?' he murmured, eyeing her keenly. 'And to whom will you be responsible? Hundreds of thousands of people have died because - you will forgive me - of these experiments of yours.'

  Dawnay felt blood flooding into her neck and cheeks: a visible sign of her feeling of enormous guilt. 'It was an accident,' she said inadequately. 'It could have happened with any experiment. I made a mistake.'

  Some of the fire of the revolutionary of years before flamed briefly in the President's face as he stood up and confronted her.

  'Hundreds of thousands more may have to die correcting your mistake,' he said. 'The errors of politicians are sometimes expensive, and business men sometimes do their best to profit from them. But you scientists, you kill half the world.

  And the other half cannot live without you.'

  His anger faded. He sighed and permitted himself a slight smile. 'I am in your hands, Professor Dawnay. You will forgive me if I add that I wish I were not.'

  Dawnay drove back to the compound determined to mould events the way she knew they had to be; but the responsibility appalled her. She badly needed the catharsis of Fleming's critical mind.

  She found him in the servicing bay behind the computer.

  He was working at the desk, which was a litter of papers.

  'Hello,' he said lazily. 'I holed up here - safe from the desert breezes and from interruption.' He glanced at his wrist watch. 'God, is that the time? I've been trying to work out this thing for Andre. I've done most of the chemical conversions. They don't make a hell of a lot of sense.'

  He threw across some calculations. She read them cursorily.

  'It would be lethal if it's wrong,' she said shortly.

  'She's dying anyway, isn't she? I've been trying all ways...'

  She interrupted him impatiently. 'John, there isn't time for that.'

  He looked up at her. 'Make 'em and break 'em, eh?'

  Dawnay flushed. 'There's something else that comes first.

  Or have you forgotten what's still raging over the greater part of the world?'

  'No, I haven't forgotten,' he said.

  'We've made a lot of mistakes,' she went on. 'Both of us.

  I'm trying to get things right because it's the only hope we have. What happens to the world depends on us, on whether we take over or whether Kaufman does.'

  His grin was sardonic. 'Have you been having the treatment, like Gamboul ?'

  'Gamboul is dead,' she said evenly.

  'Dead?' Fleming jumped to his feet. 'Then the machine misfired! It's had a go at us and it's failed.'

  Dawnay shook her head.

  'It hasn't done either. Gamboul was only supposed to protect us until we were in a position to use our own judgement.'

  He nodded towards the massive panels of the computer.

  'Or its...'

  'Our own judgement, John,' she repeated. 'We make the decisions now. Don't you see that this can be the beginning of a new life?'

  He gathered the papers on the desk into an untidy pile.

  'Except for Andre,' he said harshly.

  'She'll have to wait. There are other people dying besides her.'

  He had to accept the logic of the statement. It did not make him dislike it less. He admired and was fond of Madeleine Dawnay, and was all the more nauseated by the familiar, corrupting scent of power which he now sensed around her.

  'To hell with everything,' he said. 'I can't think any more tonight. We may as well try to get a little sleep before the wind decides to blow the roof off.'

  They walked from the building together. The residential area was a shambles of mud and rubble. But their quarters provided makeshift shelter. Fleming wished Dawnay goodnight and went to his own chalet. The windows had gone and he could look past the shattered palm trees to the building opposite where the sick quarters were. The nurse had found a hurricane lamp from somewhere. It was the only light in the pitch black darkness - a dull yellow blob which drew his eyes like a magnet, mesmerising his mind. He fell into a half sleep, thinking of the life that still flickered near that puny flame.

  He was roused by Abu Zeki.

  'Much has happened,' Abu said, struggling to control his emotions. 'The storm, yesterday, it was very bad in the mountains. My home has gone.'

  Your family?' Fleming sat up.

  'Lemka and Jan - they are alive. My mother-in-law. She is dead.' Abu's voice faltered. 'She had laid down with little Jan in her arms, beneath her. When I arrived - I, I thought they were both dead. Then Jan began crying. He was saturated in blood, his grandmother's blood.'

  'Where is Lemka?'

  'She was in a cave with Professor Neilson. She'd gone up with food. Neilson made her stay when the storm came.

  They came down just after I'd rescued Jan. I'm afraid Lemka is very bitter - about all that Professor Dawnay and you - all that we have been doing here.'

  'Not bitter, Abu; just right.' Fleming felt the familiar hopelessness closing down on him. 'It's no use saying I'm sorry. What about Yusel and Neilson?'

  'Yusel is safe, so far. He had gone to my house to talk to Neilson about taking out the bacteria on his next flight. But Kaufman followed him. Yusel was beaten up. Then they took him back to Baleb. I suppose he'd have been killed in the house if they hadn't. Then in the early hours, while we were getting my wife and the child settled in a neighbour's house, he arrived in an Intel car. Kaufman had sent him back, with a note for Neilson. Yusel gave us the news that Mm'selle Gamboul was dead.'

  'A note for Neilson!' Fleming exclaimed. 'What did it say?'

  'Kaufman wanted to see him. He promised there would be no danger. Yusel insisted it was a trap, but Mr Neilson said he wanted to go. I brought him down with me. He's waiting in the reception building now for Kaufman to come from town.'

  Fleming sprang off the bed. 'I'll get over there. You'd better come too, Abu. If it's one of Kaufman's usual pistol and dagger efforts I want to be around.'

  Both men hurried
to the executive building. In the keen light of dawn the damaged facade looked cheap and tawdry.

  There had also been considerable damage in the vast entrance hall, some of it the obvious results of looting by the demoralised guards.

  'Kaufman will be sitting in the seat of the mighty - in Gamboul's office. You'd better wait down here, Abu. Warn us if anyone arrives,' Fleming ordered.

  He ran lightly up the staircase. One of the double doors of the director's office was slightly ajar, and he sidled along the wall until he could listen.

  Kaufman's guttural voice was unctuous and polite. 'The plane is coming from Vienna, I hope, Herr Neilson,' he was saying. 'It should arrive very soon. It will be loaded immediately.

  You must expect an uncomfortable flight. Conditions are still bad everywhere.'

  'And some written proof of your proposals?' Neilson asked coldly.

  'I have obtained a letter from the President,' said Kaufman.

  'That makes this matter official, but of course, everything will be done by us.'

  It was the comment Fleming had expected; had been waiting for. He pushed open the door and walked in. Kaufman looked up, startled, and then went on talking as if he had seen no one.

  'We, that is to say Intel, will make the anti-bacteria and market it, though we will not hold our fellow human beings to ransom. That was Fraulein Gamboul's idea. I stopped it.'

  Fleming strode forward. 'You're not in a position to dispense charity, Kaufman.'

  'And you are not entitled to be in this office without permission,'

  retorted Kaufman.

  'There are no Azaran guards to protect you now,' Fleming said, 'not even a receptionist.' He moved closer to Neilson so that they both faced the German.

  Kaufman picked up his case and extracted a cigarello. He kept the match against the glowing end for longer than necessary. His hand was shaking a little.

  'It is no use bearing old grudges,' he said, removing the cigarello. 'One does what one has to do for the superiors one works for. One does as they order. But at the same time one tries to do good.' There was a whine in his voice as he uneasily watched his visitors.

  Neilson stood up, clenching the edge of the desk. His knuckles were white with the pressure he put into the grip.