Andromeda Breakthrough

CHAPTER TEN VORTEX

THE four-engined aircraft cruised to the apron, slewed round and stopped. Electric trolleys moved forward to unload the cargo. The crew, tired from a non-stop flight from London during which they had never topped 6,000 feet and had been buffeted for seven hours without respite, clambered down the ladder and made their way to the flight office. A uniformed Arab and a bullet-headed European greeted them perfunctorily as the Captain handed over the aircraft papers.

The European flicked through them and passed them to the Arab, and then extended his pudgy hand for the crew's personal documents. He let the Captain go through immediately, but when he looked up at the next two men standing before him he referred again to the papers in his hand.

'Who is this?' he asked in German. The two air crew members looked blankly at him. He repeated his question in halting Arabic.

Yusel, Lemka's cousin, the younger of the two, smiled ingratiatingly. 'My second navigator. He not understand Arabic or the language you use first.'

The Intel man scowled. 'I've not been notified of any change in crew plans. Why are you carrying a second navigator?'

Yusel explained. 'For route familiarisation. We have to fly so low; no air pressure up top.'

Not really satisfied, the Intel man re-read the documents.

When he could find no fault in them, he threw them across the desk. Yusel picked them up and led his companion into the crew room where they got out of their flying kit. His companion was Neilson.

'That's the worst over,' Yusel told him. 'Now I'll take you to my cousin's house. It'll be quite safe. Her husband, Doctor Abu Zeki, will contact you as soon as he can.'

Neilson nodded. 'The sooner the better.'

Yusel drove him to Abu's home and then returned to Baleb. It was late afternoon when he got to the cafe, and he had to wait an hour before his cousin arrived. When he did come Abu Zeki had the furtive air of a man who knows he is watched. Quietly, over two bottles of locally-made Azarani Cola, Yusel told him about Neilson's arrival.

'He wants to see Doctor Fleming and Professor Dawnay,'

he finished.

Abu Zeki glanced anxiously around the bare little cafe.

'I don't know if they can both get away,' he said. 'But I will tell him.'

As soon as he heard that Neilson senior was safely in the country, Fleming decided to throw caution to the winds and go and see him. He told Dawnay to be ready to leave as soon as it was dark, if she was willing to take the risk.

The weather helped them. A violent storm broke with nightfall, sheet lightning illuminating the sky and short bursts of rain lashing the buildings and swirling sand. The guards crept, frightened and shivering, into any shelter they could find. Fleming and Dawnay plodded through the cascades of rain without once being challenged.

The drive was appalling, Abu's little car slithering in the thick scum of mud on the desert sand. But the rain had been local. After forty minutes they were driving on dry terrain, the storm providing an accompaniment of reverberating thunder and almost continuous flashes of lightning.

Fleming felt a sense of quite unreasonable relief when Lemka opened the door and he saw Neilson standing behind her. The American's wordless greeting, the way he gripped his hand, was absurdly reassuring.

To Dawnay, Neilson was someone who signified a gleam of hope that she had refused to admit existed, but she was still not sure why he had come. They both sat quietly, suppressing their excitement, while the big calm man ate his way methodically through a bunch of grapes and told them what had been happening in London. They learnt for the first time how Osborne had survived the shooting at their country-house prison, how Neilson had been called in to 'head a probe into this weather thing', as he put it, and how they also had put two and two together and traced the source to Thorness. And how they had then come to a dead stop until they had received the message from Dawnay.

'Is there really any hope?' he asked her.

'About as much as a grain of sand in a desert.'

She pushed aside the little tray on which Lemka had set Neilson's supper and spread out the bundle of papers she had crammed into the waistband of her skirt.

She impatiently flattened out the creases. 'These are most of the figures for the D.N.A. helix,' she began. 'The computer has worked out what I think you'll agree is a feasible analysis. So far as I can judge, it's a potential bacterium. But the molecular structure is one thing. Getting the components and synthesising them another, but it might, possibly, produce the anti-bacterium we need.'

Neilson studied the figures. 'And this is the work of the machine Jan built?'

She nodded.

'I can't help wondering...' A tremor made his words tail off.

Fleming was sitting beside the cot, absent-mindedly revolving a toy suspended for the child's amusement. 'What would have happened if your son had stayed,' he finished.

Neilson turned to him. 'They shot him in cold blood,' he said. 'In front of our eyes. If I could find the man....'

'I can't tell you who pulled the trigger,' Fleming said. 'But I know who told him to. A man named Kaufman, who is "looking after" us here.'

'I should like to meet him,' said Neilson.

'Maybe you will.'

Dawnay began gathering the papers together. 'At least your son's death was quick,' she said with compassion.

'Which is more than ours will be. Unless these work.' She stuffed the papers back in her skirt band. 'There's a lot more to come if only the girl can get it for us.'

'How is she?' Neilson asked.

Dawnay looked down at the baby; the child was wide awake, smiling at the sight of so many faces around him.

'She was an artificial sort of life,' she muttered. 'Not like... '

She turned abruptly away from the baby. 'There's some constituent lacking in her blood; something I didn't know about and something the computer didn't allow for.'

'Can't she get some help from the machine for herself?'

Neilson asked.

'No time,' Fleming replied. 'She might have done, I suppose, but there was this anti-bacterium job. She elected to work on it .... '

Neilson eyed Fleming speculatively. 'That was a hard decision,'

he said.

Fleming paused to light a cigarette. He inhaled deeply.

'Yes,' he said at last. 'It was a hard thing, as you say.'

Fleming rose and turned away from the others. He crossed to the window and stared out into the night. Hastily, to ease the tension, Dawnay began asking if Neilson wanted copies of the computer data. Neilson shook his head. He explained that the only practical thing would be a test tube of the anti-bacterium.

'If the girl can complete the analysis,' he started, but Fleming interrupted.

'Shush!' They stared at him. 'Lemka's coming.'

Lemka, who had been keeping watch on the road, came running across the courtyard to the house. They could hear her sandals on the rough paving.

'We're watched all the time,' Dawnay said. 'We thought we'd given them the slip tonight.'

Lemka burst into the room, her eyes large and round with excitement. 'They're coming,' she exclaimed. 'Soldiers. A whole truck load!'

All of them stood motionless for a few seconds. Then Dawnay took the papers she had put in her waistband. 'Hide these,' she said, thrusting them into Lemka's hand. 'Your husband can pick them up later and give them back.'

Lemka took them and turned to Neilson. 'My mother's room,' she said firmly. 'They won't go in there.'

'I hope you're right,' he smiled as he followed her.

There was a knock on the door, not violent or very loud.

Lemka emerged from the rear room and opened the door. A corporal saluted and spoke in Arabic; two soldiers stood beside him. Their guns were still slung on their shoulders.

'He says they have come to fetch you and Dr Fleming,'

Lemka interpreted, addressing Dawnay.

'Tell them we'll come right away,' Dawnay said, with what she hoped was a bright but casual smile. 'We'll be all right, so don't worry. But you'll have to find a safer place for Dr Neilson. We'll keep in touch somehow.'

Lemka extended her hand and clasped Dawnay's affectionately.

'My cousin will think of something. We had better not talk more, or the soldiers will suspect us.'

One soldier insisted on coming in the car, and the corporal made signs to Fleming to drive close behind the army truck.

The weather had cleared a little, the wind blowing strongly but steadily.

Back in the compound the computer block was a blaze of light. Two soldiers took over from the escort and led Fleming and Dawnay into the building. Kaufman was sitting at a desk in the office, his face a mask of suppressed anger. Abu was standing uneasily to one side.

'Now what's all this about?' the German barked at them as they entered. 'Why were you outside without permission?'

'Permission from whom?' Dawnay demanded. 'And why permission to visit friends; the family of a colleague?'

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.'

'Dusseldorf.' Kaufman repeated the one word and the muscles of his face tightened.

Gamboul ignored him, listening to the tape. 'At this moment great storms are raging over the Atlantic, sweeping towards Europe. We need your help to check the course of events.'

The voice was drowned in a welter of noise. Gamboul switched off the recorder. 'That's where we began jamming,'

she explained.

'What I want to hear from you, Kaufman, is how they know that we are concerned with it.'

Kaufman looked blankly at her. 'Dusseldorf,' he repeated.

'It was my home. My old father...'

'We are supposed to have a good security service,' snapped Gamboul. 'And you are in charge of security, Herr Kaufman.'

He roused himself as if from a dream. 'We have done our best,' he said stubbornly.

Gamboul shrugged. 'It's no matter now. As soon as Dawnay has the new strain of bacteria we will make ourselves safe here. After that we will make it available to others - on our own terms.'

'And meanwhile,' said the German slowly, 'the rest of the world wait and die? You do not care? You think other people are not caring?'

She failed to notice the hatred in his eyes. 'The world must wait,' she agreed. 'I know what has to be done. Others don't.'

Kaufman was still looking fixedly at her. At long last she felt a little uneasy under his gaze.

'Remember, Herr Kaufman,' she said. 'You and I are not other people.'