Andromeda Breakthrough

CHAPTER FIVE SUNNY AND WARM

DAYLIGHT came long before the aircraft slowly lost height and crossed the Azaran frontier. Fleming, gloomily looking through the aircraft window, found nothing to arouse his interest. The brown-grey land, flat and interminably dreary, stretched towards the horizon where low hills drew an uneven contour. Now and then he saw a blur of dust where a camel train moved along the dark threads which marked the age-old desert tracks. Apart from a few ragged shaped blobs of lighter contours, the pattern of a few miserable houses round a water hole, the place seemed lifeless.

The jet's whine sunk to a hum and the port wing dipped.

Below, Fleming saw the discs of the top of oil tanks, and not far from them the tracery of derricks. The ground slid closer and a town came into focus, its white buildings brilliant in the morning sun. The aircraft swung the other way, and the horizon dropped past Fleming's window. When the machine levelled off he just had time to note a long grey building, flat roofed and modern. It stood isolated some five miles from the town.

The jet engines picked up power, eased, and faded. They were landing.

A soft heat struck their faces like a muffled blow when they emerged from the cabin. Arab soldiers, in battledress and American-style steel helmets, lounged around with sten guns at the ready. An ancient British limousine, the camouflage paint peeling from its body, drew up beside the aircraft.

Kaufman, sweating profusely, hustled Fleming and Andre into the rear seat. He himself sat beside the army driver.

A good concrete road led straight into the town. As soon as they reached the slummy outskirts, where huts roofed with battered corrugated iron clashed obscenely with decrepit but still lovely houses of traditional Arabic architecture the road widened into a badly maintained highway, packed with people. Women, veiled and graceful, led donkeys half hidden under huge panniers. Some men were in Arab costume, but most wore cheap, shabby Western clothes.

The Azaran flag hung from every building. Here and there loud speakers blared Oriental music, the discord heightened by distortion. The driver went full tilt into the mob, his hand continually on the horn ring. Past the huge market place, where hundreds were standing around, aimless yet animated, the car swung through the narrow entrance to a large house.

Two sentries looked poker faced at the car's passengers as the driver carefully steered the car into the cool, shady courtyard round which the house was built.

Kaufman alighted and spoke some words to an Arab in a neat Western-style suit. Then he disappeared through a doorless entrance. The Arab came across to the car and in careful English ordered Andre and Fleming to follow him.

He took them across the courtyard, up some stone steps and through a beautifully ornamented door.

'Wait here, please,' he said. He closed the door behind him.

Fleming strolled round the room. It was small but high ceilinged. A series of narrow slits, fitted with modern glass, allowed panels of sunlight to pattern the stone floor. Persian carpets hung on the walls. There were comfortable modern chairs as well as fragile little oriental tables. On one of the latter stood a brass tray with a silver jug and tiny cups. Fleming picked up the jug. It was hot; the aroma of coffee smelt good. He poured some of the thick, syrupy liquid into the cups and handed one to Andre.

'What is this place?' she asked as she sipped the coffee.

Fleming took off his sports jacket and unbuttoned his shirt. 'A very hot country,' he grinned. 'A place called Azaran which seems to be small but likely to be notorious.

This is doubtless some pasha's desirable residence. Unless it's Kaufman's.'

'He is not a bad man,' said Andre.

Fleming glanced at her with surprise. 'You sense that? Basically you're right, I'm sure. The trouble is the hard veneer stuck on that lovely, harmless soul of his.'

But Andre's attention had drifted away again.

There was a rustle of the hangings in the far corner of the room. Janine Gamboul came towards them. She was wearing a silk sheath dress and managed to look both cool and eye-catching.

'Doctor Fleming?' she murmured, pausing in front of him, unsmiling.

'Who are you?' Fleming asked ruddy.

'My name is Gamboul,' she answered, turning from him and studying Andre.

'The lady of the house?' he asked.

She did not take her eyes off Andre. 'This is the home of Colonel Salim, a member of the Azaran Government. He could not come himself. He is extremely busy. Today is the anniversary of Azaran's independence, and this year the celebrations have a special meaning because the Government has terminated the oil agreements. In case of interference the frontier has been closed.'

'A great day, as you say,' Fleming said. 'And this Salim had us brought here?'

She turned then and looked him over slowly. 'I - that is to say, we - had you brought.'

'I see. And you - singular or plural - are the flowers-by-wire service, the great Intel?'

'I represent Intel,' she said coldly. She looked once more at Andre. 'And you are - ?'

'A colleague,' Fleming said quickly.

Janine Gamboul let the ghost of a smile play round her sensuous lips. 'You are - ?' She asked Andre again.

'We are what is popularly known as "just friends", in the rather old fashioned and more exact sense of the term Fleming said. 'Her name is Andre. Just Andre.'

'Please sit down, ma petite,' she said pleasantly to Andre.

'I hope you're not too tired from your journey; that you were well treated.'

'Not particularly,' Fleming answered for her.

'I'm sorry,' she said formally. 'We brought you here because we think we can help each other. You're on the run from the British Government. They won't get you here, this is a closed country. No extradition.'

'That's your version of helping us. Now suppose you explain how we're to be forced to help you?'

She was saved from losing her temper by the arrival of Salim.

The late ex-Ambassador was in a perfectly tailored uniform, with two rows of medals on his breast. He clearly found life very good indeed.

'Ah, Dr Fleming,' he exclaimed, flashing his white teeth and extending his hand. Fleming turned his back on him. Not put out at all, Salim went to Andre. 'And you are Miss - '

'Andre,' Janine said.

'Just- ?'

Gamboul shrugged. 'Si. So the loquacious Dr Fleming says.'

Salim took Andre's hand in both of his. 'I'm charmed,' he murmured admiringly.

Andre smiled a little. 'How do you do,' she said politely.

Salim released her hands and threw himself in a chair, stretching his long legs in their immaculately polished boots.

'Well, to explanations. Dr Fleming, we are now a new country. Except for our oil we are under-developed. Not since two thousand years ago, when we were a province with our own rights under the old Persian Empire of Xerxes, have we been anything but a slave state of other people. We need help now we are independent.'

'You go about hiring help in a curious way,' said Fleming.

Salim waved his hand expressively. 'How else could we have got you? The Intel organisation has sunk a great deal of capital here, in the form of industrial and research developments. As the host government we shall benefit. We have engaged a great many progressive and brilliant people - scientists.'

'Collected in the same way?' Fleming enquired.

'In different ways. Once they are here they find it worth while. We treat them well. They don't usually wish to give it up.'

'Do they have any option?'

'Let us have a drink,' Janine Gamboul interrupted. Salim nodded and pulled a bell cord.

'You're a physicist,' Dr Fleming, and a mathematician specialising in cryogenics,' she went on.

'Sometimes,' Fleming agreed.

Salim motioned to the manservant who brought a bottle-laden tray to put it down. 'What will you have, Janine?' he asked. 'We had another young scientist working here - Neilson .... What would the young lady and you like to drink? Whisky, or something soft?'

'This is very un-Moslem of you,' said Fleming with a small smile.

Salim turned to him slowly and seriously. 'I am a modern man,' he said without affectation and turned away.

'In that case,' said Fleming, 'Andre would like some fruit juice if it isn't laced. I'll have a Scotch, neat.' Fleming regarded his impassive back. 'So Jan Neilson was here? I suppose your intelligence service knows that Jan, Denis Bridger, and I were at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a spell? It all begins to fit .... '

Salim handed Andre and Fleming their drinks. He busied himself with two glasses for Gamboul and himself. 'We thought a lot of Neilson; he was very brilliant.' His voice was detached, as if he were quoting a handout.

'But dead?' Fleming asked.

Salim turned again and stared calmly at him. 'Neilson did all the real organisation of our main research project. But he failed to complete it. Even if he had stayed I think he was in a blind alley.' He looked thoughtfully at the ice bobbing about in his glass. 'So, of course, we had to find a better man.'

'To do what?' Fleming found his hand was shaking with anger and fear.

Salim came close to him. 'You worked on the Thorness computer. We have one.'

'What sort?' Fleming asked, dreading the answer.

Gamboul gave a short laugh. 'You ought to know, Dr Fleming. Your late colleague Neilson built it.'

Fleming fought to keep calm. 'I suppose you don't really know what you've got hold of,' he said at last. 'I'll give you the best advice I can: blow it up.'

'As you blew up the other?' Gamboul's eyes were dancing with amused triumph. 'I'm afraid you won't have the same chances here.'

'How do you know that we, that I - '

She waited before she answered, savouring the pleasure of the impact to come. 'Professor Dawnay told us.'

'Dawnay!' Fleming could only stare at her.

'She came here of her own free will,' Salim interposed.

'With you and the lady professor we feel we have the needful set-up. The computer Neilson built is to be the basis of all the technology Mam'selle Gamboul's organisation has placed here.'

He crossed to the window slit and peered out. The noise of the crowd was an incoherent accompaniment to the still booming public address system. 'Those people out there are emerging from a long sleep,' he said with sincerity. 'You're a liberal-minded man, Fleming. You will help them to awake and take their place in the modern world.'

'Where is Madeleine Dawnay?' Fleming demanded.

'At the Intel research station,' Salim explained, 'where you will be taken. It is very comfortable, up to the best oil company standards. We may be poor, but we are not barbarians.'

He drew himself up proudly. 'But I must nevertheless point out that you are in no position to refuse to co-operate.' He looked thoughtfully at Andre, sitting quietly, complete puzzlement on her face, as she glanced from Salim to Fleming and back again. 'We will keep the young lady here to ensure your cooperation.'

Fleming sprang to his feet. 'No!'

Salim hesitated. He looked towards Gamboul, who nodded. 'All right,' he said. 'We'll leave the young lady with you .'

Janine Gamboul put down her empty glass. 'We have talked long enough. I'll take them to the research station,'

she told Salim. 'My car is waiting.'

When Fleming, his hand on Andre's elbow, passed through the swing doors of the computer building which Gamboul held open, he stopped almost as if he had been hit in the stomach.

The hall was uncannily like that at Thorness, except that the khaki-clad armed guard inside had a swarthy face instead of the cheerful ruddiness of the sentries he had got to know so well in Scotland.

The air was the same - the cool lifelessness of air-conditioning.

Through the grey painted door to the computer section the similarity was accentuated. Here was the heavy, indefinable smell of electricity, the pervading hum of a myriad active circuits, the inhuman personality of a room built entirely of control panels.

And there, down two steps it stood - the familiar rectangular mass of steel panelling with its control desk and cathode ray screens.

He moved forward slowly, still holding Andre's elbow.

Several young Arabs were working on the machine. In an odd, outlandish way they reminded him of the British technicians he had supervised two years back at Thorness. They were even talking to one another in English - as if it were the natural language for science.

Gamboul called one of them.

'This is Abu Zeki,' she said. 'Dr Fleming.'

Abu Zeki's eyes gleamed with pleasure. He seemed a sensitive and likeable young man, with delicate Arab features and crew-cut which gave him a curiously beat-generation look.

He too was obviously a 'modern man'. 'How do you do sir?'

he said. 'I've heard much about you, of course. I am to be your senior assistant. I hope I shall be of use; anyway I can pass on your instructions to the staff.' He looked proudly along the control panel of the computer. 'We are going to do great things with this.'

'You believe that, do you?' Fleming said quietly.

'I'll show you around,' Gamboul interrupted, and led them along the endless bays of wiring.

She knew her way remarkably well. She accurately identified every section of the huge machine, though Fleming noted that it was the second-hand knowledge of the layman who was concerned with what things did rather than how they did them. The layout was slightly different from what he had built at Thorness, but the input, the output and the huge memory circuits were basically the same.

They returned to the wide gangway in front of the control unit. 'Construction was completed some time back. It was fully programmed. But nothing happened. That is why we need you. It presents no problems to you so far as operation is concerned?'

'Probably not,' Fleming admitted. 'The layout is superficially different. But in essence it is identical.' He gave a mirthless laugh. 'It should be. It has been built from instructions in the same message. You know what happened to the Thorness job?'

Gamboul shrugged her shoulders. 'We're not interested in what went wrong there. We want this one to go right. We want to build up a centre of production unsurpassed in the world and free from interference, political or otherwise. This machine is to be Intel's brain.'

Fleming felt mesmerised by the baleful quietness. He dreaded to see once again the ominous section which made this computer unlike any other man-made brain - the heavy brass terminals nestling in their plastic insulation guards.

He turned to Abu, standing deferentially nearby. 'Where is your high voltage output?'

Janine Gamboul looked at him suspiciously. 'Why do you ask? What is its purpose?'

'There are two high tension leads extraneous to your control panel. Or there should be.'

Abu nodded. 'There were, yes,' he agreed. 'We led them into the end compartment. We did not understand their purpose.'

He led them down the passageway and slid the grey panel on its smooth runners. Fleming stared at the harmless looking metal shapes. Hateful memories crowded into his brain. He turned to Andre, but to his relief she seemed quiet and unstirred by interest.

'Dr Neilson considered they were for sensory communication with the memory circuits,' Abu said. 'So that the operator could have direct contact with the computer's positive calculator relays. He worked out that it should be done visually through this display.' He nodded towards a battery of aluminium-sprayed cathode ray screens which were ranged above the terminals.

'I remember!'

Fleming turned at the sound of Andre's voice.

Her eyes were alight with excitement. Fleming felt suddenly sick. Things seemed to be moving remorselessly and inevitably beyond control.

He moved close to her. 'You know what this is?' he whispered.

'It's what we were running away from.'

She did not turn to him. She seemed transported and her eyes remained on the control panel. 'Don't be afraid,' she murmured. Fleming could not decide to whom she was talking.

He whipped round on Gamboul. 'Just blow the whole thing up. Now.'

She looked at Andre, and then at Fleming. She began to smile, not concealing her contempt. 'Destroy it?' she exclaimed.

'We shall control it.' Her tone changed. 'Now I will show you to your quarters. They are very comfortable. Your old colleague is most anxious to meet you once more - Professor Dawnay.'

She led them from the computer building into the cruel heat outside. A soldier immediately came forward and in obedience to a few words in Arabic from Gamboul, escorted Fleming and Andre to a row of bungalows shaded by a few palm trees. Andre was still dazed and walked without speaking.

Madeleine Dawnay was sitting in a deck chair on a tiny, browned patch of grass. Her face was already tanned though she looked gaunt and thin in her tropical clothes. She greeted them both with unaffected joy.

'My dear,' she said taking both of Andre's hands in hers, 'I'm so happy to see you. Your maidservant has been told exactly how to look after you.' She turned to John. 'So you're here.'

He did not offer any greeting. 'I'm here because I was hijacked,' he said quietly. 'I shan't try to get out yet awhile because of what I've just been shown. But as for you, Madelelne, I'm damned if I can see how you can voluntarily work for this lot.'

Dawnay refused to be offended. 'It's no use sticking labels on them, my dear. The circumstances are so different. I must say I was alarmed at first. I suspect Salim drugged me in London. I don't know why.'

'To find out where I was. You were the only person I told, and they turned up immediately.' .

She was deeply upset. 'I'm sorry,' she said miserably, 'I'd no idea.'

'How did they get you?' Fleming asked.

'By asking me nicely. They've got a most interesting agricultural problem. They want to be self-supporting with food. They've tried all the usual ways of fertilising barren land. But they realise they need a really new, wholly scientific conception. I hope- I think- I can help.'

Her unquestioning faith in the goodness of science had always worried him. Their easy comradeship had been strained when she had seen no risks in the first success with her life-synthesis experiments. She was caught in the same unbalanced enthusiasm now.

'Madeleine,' he said gently, 'if we can't get away from this place without finishing up abruptly dead then surely I can at least warn - '

She looked at Andre, sitting quietly near them, dreaming in the comforting dappled shade from the palm trees. 'Who can you warn, John?' she asked. 'Who'll listen to you now that they know what you did back at Thorness?'

'So we just stay here and do the thing's filthy work?' he asked bitterly.

She frowned. 'My work isn't dirty. I'm trying to help ordinary, mortal people, a good many of them starving at this moment. Salim may be ruthless, but his motives are good. He wants to do something for his country.

Fleming reached for a cigarette box which an orderly had silently placed on a table at the side of his chair, along with some iced fruit. The service, as Gamboul had promised, was very good. He lit a cigarette and then thoughtfully watched the smoke spiralling from the glowing end. 'There's one possibility,' he said at last. 'I can probably get the circuitry right pretty easily. Neilson obviously did a fairly good job, and young Abu Zeki knows his stuff. The computer will work, but it'll depend partially on the information we feed into it. If I make it think I'm for it .... '

He paused to sip his drink. 'That was my mistake last time.

I attacked it, and I couldn't really win. But if I inform its memory circuits that they- Intel and Co. - are really against it, its logical processes will come up with something to defeat them.'

'Perhaps by destroying them - and the whole country?'

Dawnay suggested.

Fleming nodded. 'That would be better than the alternative.

Which would be that it would lay down the law wholesale through Gamboul, Salim and the rest of the crooks they're working for.'

Dawnay looked thoughtfully across at Andre, who had relaxed in a day-dreaming half sleep. She looked very lovely and feminine.

'And the girl?' she asked.

'I've stopped thinking of her as anyone from, well, outside this planet. She's a virtually normal piece of human chemistry. The danger is when the machine gets her and uses her. I want to stop that whatever else I do or don't do.

I've grown rather fond of her.'

'Don't sound so sad about it!' Dawnay laughed.

He glanced to make sure that Andre was not trying to listen. 'There's more to it than that. Her co-ordination's going. She spends too much time like she is now. And when she moves around it's jerky, like a mild spastic case. I thought at first it was shock or the after effects of her experience, physical after effects of her injuries. But it's getting worse. There's something wrong with the way she was made.'

'You mean I made a mistake .... '

'Not necessarily you,' he reassured her. 'Something wrong with the programming for the calculations.'

He stopped talking. Andre opened her eyes, stretched lazily, and sat up. 'What gorgeous sunshine,' she said smiling.

She walked, rather jerkily, out of the shade and began to look around. Fleming and Dawnay saw her move near the doors to the computer building. The sentry, lolling against the wall, stepped forward, thought better of it, and let her pass inside.

Fleming jumped up out of his chair. 'Why don't they stop her?'

He started to move away, but Dawnay put out a hand to stop him.

'She'll be all right.'

'With that?' Fleming asked her. 'You're mad.'

'I'm not mad. Leave her there.'

Reluctantly Fleming stayed. They waited tense and alert as the minutes ticked by.

Abruptly the vague vibrationary hum which came all the time from the building grew louder, and there was a rhythmic clicking.

'What the hell's that?' shouted Fleming, jumping to his feet.

Dawnay's exclamation, 'It's the computer, it's working,'

was needless. Both of them rushed across to the swing doors and down the corridor.

Abu Zeki came running towards them.

'What's happened?' Fleming asked.

'I can't say, Dr Fleming,' Abu replied. 'The young woman came in, stood looking around, and then sat down before the control panel in the sensory bay.'

Fleming pushed past him. The master screen was quivering with wavy bands of light; crazy geometrical patterns shifted across, faded, and changed their shapes.

Seated in the chair at the panel was Andre.

'Andre,' Fleming called, pausing in the face of some force which he did not understand but which seemed to paralyse his legs. She did not turn. 'Andromeda,' he yelled.

Very slowly she turned her head. Her pale face was glowing with joy.

'It speaks to me I' she cried. 'It speaks!'

'Oh my God,' Fleming groaned.

Abu coughed. 'I must go and inform Mam'selle Gamboul of what has happened,' he said.