by Fred Hoyle
'You've no proof,' he protested lamely.
'I do know,' she said softly. 'I know you destroyed the only means of saving everything. At least that's what would have happened if your friend Bridger hadn't sold the design to Intel.'
He was delighted with that. 'Good old Denis,' he exclaimed.
'They ought to bury him in Westminster Abbey.'
He turned and put his hands on her shoulders. 'And you, what was your purpose? To establish it here in a position of absolute power?'
'No. My job was to find someone who would understand how to use it.' She fingered the button on his coat. 'You wouldn't trust me. And yet - you expected a breakthrough into new knowledge.'
Abruptly she stepped away.
'This is it, John. It's in your hands now.'
'And you?' he asked, keeping his distance.
'I'm in your hands too.'
'But what are you?'
She came back to him. 'Flesh and blood,' she said happily.
'Dawnay's mixture.'
He put his hands on either side of her face and tilted it so that the waning moon shone full on her. 'It's the nearest thing to a miracle I've ever seen,' he said.
They turned and walked down the mountain path, hand in hand. 'I remember the night the message first came through,' Fleming said thoughtfully. 'I started burbling about a New Renaissance. I was a bit tight. Old Bridger wasn't so cocky about it as I was. He said, 'When all the railings are down you have to have something to hang on to.'
His arm went round her waist, pulling her body close against his. 'I'd better get used to hanging on to you, hadn't I?'
She smiled up at him, but she was not quite content.
'And the message?' she asked.
They had reached level ground, and he quickened his pace, once again taking her hand and pulling her along as he took long strides towards the car.
'Where are we going now?' she asked.
He looked back to her and laughed out loud again.
'To save it!' He shouted so that the hillside rang with his voice. 'We've just about time to beat Yusel in to work. The new Renaissance begins in about an hour from now - if we get cracking.'
He bundled Andre into the car. After he had walked round to the driving seat he paused for a second, looking up to the sky, already paling with the false dawn. The stars were going out. Very dimly, between the Lady in the Chair and the Pole Star he could make out the hazy light of the great Andromeda galaxy across the immensity of space.
THE END