Andromeda Breakthrough

CHAPTER EIGHT FORECAST

ON the following day Janine Gamboul summoned Kaufman to her office. Instead of one of her usual chic frocks she was wearing a plain tailored suit, but he noticed at once that there was something else different about her; she had a dedicated and, at the same time, unnaturally exalted air.

She did not look up from her desk when Kaufman entered, and he stood stiffly at attention a little distance away from her.

When she had finished writing, she glanced up at him coldly, not inviting him to sit down.

'The situation is perfectly quiet,' she said in decisive tones.

'I suggest you inform your department of this fact, together with a report of what happened. Explain that we are in control and will remain so.'

'And Colonel Salim,' he asked diffidently, 'what shall I say about him? He was well regarded by the Vienna office.'

She shrugged. 'Tell them the facts. That I - that he was shot because he was in the way. He was a petty nationalist and if he had got power he would have used the computer for his own stupid little ends. You can explain that?'

She dismissed the matter and picked up the sheet of paper on which she had been writing. 'This morning the President is giving audience to his Council. Poor little man. He's very bewildered, and frightened. But he realises that he must cooperate.

He is perfectly amenable, particularly since Salim was dealt with. He will ensure the loyalty of all these old men of the government. You will attend the meeting to represent Intel. I have outlined proposals so far as we are involved.'

She handed him a document.

Kaufman took it and read it slowly. Occasionally he nodded, as if pleased. 'I have always done my best,' he murmured. 'You may rely on me in the future.'

'Good,' she said, with a gesture of dismissal. 'Now go to the palace and instruct the President's secretary.'

The councillors were seated around the Presidential dais: a dozen proud, elderly Arabs in traditional dress. True to their race they concealed whatever emotions they felt as the President, with a kind of tired dignity, gave them a carefully doctored version of what had happened and told them that he himself was taking personal control. The traitor Salim, the way of his death unexplained, was to be buried without military honours; all officers who had taken part in the revolt were already suspended and would be court-martialled. The troops and all civil branches of the Government would be answerable only to the President's personal edict. In due course there would be elections, but in the meantime the existing Parliament would not be called into session.

At a nod from the President these edicts were translated by his secretary into English, out of courtesy to Kaufman.

One Councillor half rose to his feet. 'And who will the President be responsible to?' he demanded, deliberately speaking in English and glaring at Kaufman.

'To himself,' Kaufman answered sharply.

The President remained impassive, and the Councillor sat down, muttering into his beard.

'Gentlemen,' said Kaufman, rising proudly to his feet. 'The President, and therefore the country, can rely on a continuance of help on an increasing scale by the mercantile consortium, Intel, which I represent. To further the welfare of Azaran without interference, it is the wish of my superiors that the country should not renew diplomatic relations with other nations.'

The words were translated and caused a low hubbub of conversation.

'You should say more about the kind of help you are to give,' said the President uneasily.

Kaufman beamed. 'The Consortium is producing new instruments of defence and technical value. It will shortly be making available a new process, perfected in our laboratories here, to turn the desert into fertile agricultural land.'

He waited while the secretary translated, and a wizened old Arab whispered urgently to the secretary.

'The Sheik Azi ben Ardu wishes to know what the process consists of.'

'It is a spray,' said Kaufman shortly. 'In a short while it will be demonstrated.'

The Councillor who had asked the question about Presidential responsibility glowered at Kaufman. 'And the wind that has come out of season and blows our soil away, what can your laboratories do for that?'

Kaufman had no prepared answer. He looked to the President for help.

'What can they do?' the President replied mildly. 'The wind is the servant of Allah. We must not question it.'

Fleming had never been under any illusion about his situation.

He knew that he was virtually a prisoner, but only on this first morning of the new regime did he feel the reality of it. There was no work he wanted to do, or could be persuaded to do, knowing what it would be. There was no one to talk to; even Abu had disappeared into the executive building, in answer to a summons from Gamboul. Guards were patrolling everywhere. Before breakfast they had forbidden Fleming to approach the sick quarters where Andre lay. The best he had managed was to insist on seeing the nurse who had come out and reported that her patient was a little worse, but was sleeping.

He sat a long time over a late breakfast, ignoring the coarse brown bread, fruit and olives they always served, and drinking cup after cup of sweet, thick coffee.

Then he strolled across to Dawnay's laboratory. The guards eyed him suspiciously but did not prevent him from entering the building.

Dawnay was busy at a laboratory bench. She greeted him absent-mindedly and did not react very much to his worried talk about Andre.

'There's nothing we can do for her,' she muttered. She paused and then picked up one of a row of large test tubes.

'I'd like you to look at these, John,' she said.

He glanced at the one in her hand. It was full of a semitransparent, greyish fluid which clung to the glass when she shook it. The other tubes seemed to be identical.

'What are they?' he asked.

'Sea water samples they got for me.' She gave a short laugh. 'I must admit that Intel are efficient. They wouldn't let me go and take my own specimens, but they did much more than I asked. Not only are these from the Persian Gulf, which I wanted, but they've had samples flown in from the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean and even the Western Atlantic. So that there should be samples from other areas for comparison, I suppose.'

'And is there anything to compare?' he asked.

She shook the tube vigorously. The fluid inside went completely opaque.

'See?' she said. 'Now, normal sea water should be like this one. You'll see it's clear.' She handed him another test tube.

Fleming picked up some of the other tubes. They all went opaque when he shook them. 'Sure Kaufman didn't fool you and get them all from the same place?' he grinned.

She shook her head. 'Not he. He got his orders from Intel, not from me. You know what he's like. If they told him to fetch water from the Antarctic he'd get it. But I want you to watch what happens when this milky sea water mixes with the clear sample.'

She took a clean test tube, poured in some of the clear water and then added two minute drops of the opaque fluid.

The milky droplets dissolved and disappeared. Dawnay damped the tube in a holder with a light reflector behind it.

'Now watch,' she said.

Slowly the water clouded near the bottom of the tube; the cloudiness spread upwards until the water was as opaque as the others.

'I wonder how the fish like it,' murmured Fleming. 'Any idea what it is?'

'A bacterium,' she said. 'Come over here.'

He followed her to the table where she switched on a light and focused a microscope. 'Look at this slide,' she told him.

Fleming peered into the microscope, adjusted the focus, and gave a low whistle. A globular organism was palpitating; as he watched, it divided and swelled. Thirty seconds later the division was repeated. He straightened up from the microscope. 'Know where it comes from?'

Dawnay made no reply. She picked up a slide from a small cabinet and slid it into a second microscope. 'This one's dead.

It conforms to no bacterium group I've heard of. It's a very simple organism, as you'll see if you look at this one which I've stained. It doesn't appear to have more than one remarkable property - the ability to reproduce fantastically. If it wasn't shut in the test tubes - ' She hesitated. 'If it had the whole ocean in which to breed .... ' Again she stopped.

Fleming walked back to the bench, thoughtfully looking at the neatly labelled test tubes. 'The areas marked on these specimens,' he said, 'rather coincide with those I keep hearing in the B.B.C. shipping forecasts and weather reports storms, gales, and so forth.'

'Yes,' she agreed, 'and one of them we know quite well. A very rich mixture.'

She lifted a test tube labelled 'Minch' gingerly, as if she were half afraid of it. 'The channel between Scotland and the Hebrides.'

'With Thorness on the east side,' he finished for her. 'So what?'

'It must have all started somewhere,' she said. 'In the originating area it would have a higher density of bacteria than the more newly infected zones.'

He stared at her. 'You've no proof for saying that this one from the Minch .... '

She shook her head. No. All these samples were populated to capacity when I got them. There's no telling the percentage of bacteria when they were drawn from the sea.

To make a proper check I'd have to get accurate and localised storm centre reports and then make on-the-spot checks of sea water samples in the same zones. There just might emerge a correlation between these little beasts and the weather.'

'Or again you might not,' he said with a rather badly-contrived heartiness. 'Look here, Madeleine, we don't want to get too imaginative or maudlin about all this. Collate the data, sift out the facts, draw the inferences - that's the routine. And incarcerated here we haven't got a chance of doing much, though I guess you can do a break-up on the bacterial structure.

'But it's pretty obvious, the smart way they got you all this ocean, that Intel have some notions along your lines - that the weather is more than naturally upset. My guess is that you can put in a chit for samples from here to Timbuktu, or at least wherever there's a bit of sea, and the resourceful Kaufman will send off his minions with their little buckets and bottles to get them for you. All you can do to inject some sense and order into the sources you need is for us to glue our ears to the B.B.C. bulletins.'

They agreed that one or other of them should try to listen in to every bulletin and weather report, making notes of the areas mentioned.

There was no dearth of information. The midday bulletin gave priority to weather news. The first hurricanes ever recorded in Britain had caused death and destruction on a major scale from Penzance to Wick. The electric grid had broken down because of smashed pylons. Huge areas of Lancashire and East Anglia were flooded. The Air Ministry could hold out no hope of improvement. The barometric pressure remained the lowest ever known outside tropical areas.

Fleming and Dawnay heard that bulletin together. Neither had any need to write down the details, and neither felt inclined to talk about it. But when a boisterous gust of wind abruptly surged in from the desert, whirling up little spirals of sand and making a clatter as open doors banged and windows crashed, they both felt the burden of something sinister with more force than the distant wavering voices from London had caused. The wind was hot and dry, but Dawnay shivered as it buffeted her.

Fleming moved the tuning dial on the short-wave set, searching for more news. Words, music, and more words flicked in and faded - meaningless to occidental ears. Then he found what he was looking for: the Voice of America.

A beat record clamoured abruptly to its close and the announcer came on with his station identification. The news which followed had no political significance. As in London, ideologies and flag-waving had been shelved. The news was solely of the weather.

'The United States Weather Bureau,' said the newsreader, 'today gave warning of further gales approaching the Eastern seaboard of the United States. They are expected to be on a similar scale to those which swept across Western Europe during the night. American scientists are speaking of a shift of the world weather patterns comparable to those at the beginning of the Ice Age ...'

Fleming snapped off the switch. Dawnay got up. 'I'll be in the lab if you have any ideas,' she said.

More or less deliberately they avoided one another in the next couple of days. They both felt completely helpless, but they listened meticulously to every bulletin, noting down the areas where the storms were worst.

The wind scale figures were the best guide. On the third morning, after the early morning bulletin had reported more havoc in Britain, the Netherlands, France, and Spain, Fleming went back to Dawnay's lab. He was impressed by what she had been doing. One end of the laboratory had been cleared. A huge map of the Northern hemisphere had been pinned up on the wall.' Coloured pins were dotted about it, thickest in a strip from Gibraltar to the Orkneys, with a big cluster east of the Hebrides.

'Hello, John,' she greeted him. 'You see, a pattern's emerging all right. And that's not all.' She beckoned him across to a long bench against the wall on which several dozen test tubes stood in a long row.

'Kaufman hasn't had time to get all the samples I asked for, of course, but ten more arrived late last night. From offshore spots in Britain. I told him that all samples were to be boiled as soon as possible after they were taken. This bug is killed at 100 degrees Fahrenheit; that way there wasn't any chance of a bacterial increase during transit.'

She stubbed a finger on one test tube. 'That's the thickest.

It comes from the coast of Obanshire. The evidence is circumstantial of course, but I think we must accept it. I've arranged for Andre to be brought here this morning.'

Fleming started. 'But she's sick,' he protested. 'She can't help.'

'She is sick, and getting sicker,' Dawnay answered. 'That's why we must see her quickly. Please, John, you know I'm not callous - but she must help if she can and I believe it's possible.'

Fleming sighed. 'You're the boss. But I don't like it.'

A nurse pushed Andre to the laboratory in a wheel chair.

Fleming managed a welcoming smile as he clasped her hands. It was not easy; she looked desperately fragile and her eyes stared out of her drawn, pale face.

He was appalled by how much she had deteriorated since he had last been allowed to see her.

The nurse made her comfortable and then Dawnay explained the situation, showing her the test tubes and pointing out that the most opaque sample came from the Minch.

'What is the Minch?' Andre asked.

'The channel off Thorness, where all this started,' Dawnay said harshly.

'It is impossible. It does not make sense. It has nothing to do with the message.' She looked from Dawnay to Fleming, bewildered and wary. 'The message has a different plan.'

Dawnay snorted. 'There won't be any different plan if this engulfs us. Think, girl, think!'

'There is nothing about it in the computer,' Andre insisted.

Fleming took a step forward. 'Not now, maybe,' he said thoughtfully. 'But there's something vaguely familiar about this bug. I'm sure there is. How far have you got with your analysis, Madeleine?'

Dawnay said nothing, but went to her desk and picked up a file. 'As far as I've got has been coded in binary. Is that of any help ?' she asked.

He took the file, walked to the window, and sat on the sill while he studied the figures. He laid the file aside. 'It confirms my hunch, memory, or whatever it is. It reads terribly like something I already know.'

'Then it's something you started,' Andre interrupted.

He looked round in surprise. 'That I started?'

'At Thorness. That's why this machine has no memory of it.' She paused and lay back, as if trying to summon up some strength. 'How many times did you try to destroy the other computer before you succeeded?' she asked.

'Several.'

'After one of those times the computer decided to hit back.

With this bacterium.' Her eyes became cold and hostile, giving Fleming an empty feeling of despair. 'You have a great force sent to help you and you turn it against you. You won't listen to me. You won't listen to anyone. You condemn your whole race because you won't accept. There is nothing you can do now. It will engulf you!'

There was a sort of inhuman resignation in her tone.

Fleming turned away, making for the door. He felt sick to his soul.

For a day or so afterwards he avoided everyone. Intel had provided its internees with a first class library and subscriptions had been taken out for the world's technical journals.

He read in a desultory sort of way, his brain hardly registering the information. The journals were all back numbers; interference with communications since the storm cycle had increased had cut off all but essential supplies, although some Intel transports still plied between Azaran and Europe.

He heard the hum from the computer and guessed that the thing had drawn Andre to it, no doubt on orders from Gamboul. He could imagine what the machine was working on - rocket interceptors of the kind that had been its first official triumph at Thorness. There was a ghastly this-is-where-I-came-in flavour about the whole thing. He wondered a little how the formulae were being handled once the output printer had produced the equations. Without proper interpretation they were just gibberish even for skilled electronic engineers. But, of course, there was Abu Zeki.

Fleming readily accepted that the young man was as good as any highly-paid boffin in his particular line of country; it wasn't surprising really. The Arabs had invented the whole basis of mathematics as modern civilisation knew it.

Fleming pondered a lot on Abu, not just Abu the first-rate product of a technological age, but Abu the man. He was innately decent, kindly and blessed with imagination.

His patriotism was fiery and nationalistic, but he did not let his emotions completely stifle his reasoning.

Fleming swung off the bed where he had been sprawling, his mind made up, and picked up his room telephone. In a losing battle one ally was better than none at all. He would ask Abu to fix some time when they could talk without interruption.

The operator told him Dr Abu Zeki was in the computer block. Fleming had no wish to go there and see Andre slowly dying as the machine sucked the last use out of her. He asked to be put through, not caring that the call would probably be monitored.

'Hello, Abu. Fleming. I wondered, with the weekend coming up, whether we could have a chat? Maybe I could meet your family? I'm afraid my tame guard would probably have to come too.'

'Why yes, Dr Fleming, I'd be honoured to be your host.'

Abu sounded guarded. 'It will be good for you to meet the ordinary people of Azaran. My home is very simple, I'm afraid, but you will be welcome. Please stay overnight.'

They fixed a time to leave on Saturday at midday, when Abu was off duty till Monday morning. Deliberately Fleming phoned through to Kaufman's office to request permission for a social visit. The German was out but a secretary took the details. The pass was brought to Fleming's quarters that evening. No one queried the reason.

Abu was the proud possessor of a little Italian car, and his home was only twenty-five miles from the Intel station. But, as he explained while they sped along the highway past the airport, his contract demanded that he live on the site except at weekends.

'My wife doesn't like that, but she has her mother with her,' Abu went on. 'With the baby to look after, Saturday soon comes round.'

It was as though he were talking about Surbiton, Surrey, or White Plains, New York. But the similarity soon ended.

The road petered out into a wide track of rolled stones and then to a little more than a sandy track. Abu dropped his speed when the little car laboured with its unaccustomed load of three men. The guard, sitting in the occasional seat at the back, cursed in Arabic about the bumps, but he seemed glad to be away from the compound, even though the wind sent sand whirling grittily into the car.

The track began to wind with a gradual gradient. The terrain became more stony. Ahead the low range of mountains, rocky hills really, grew more defined despite the sporadic sandstorm. Fleming had often looked at them because of their fascinating, ever-changing colours at different times of the day. In early morning they were pink, changing to white when the sun climbed higher. By midday they were always blurred by heat haze; in the evening they towered black and vast.

Abu pointed to a small collection of rectangular, flat-roofed dwellings lying on a tiny plateau immediately below a fault in the range.

'That is my village,' he said, 'or at least the one where I have made my home. People have lived here since long before your Christ. Look!'

Fleming followed the direction of Abu's glance. The rock face bore traces of enormous bas-reliefs - formalised animals and serried ranks of bearded warriors. None was perfect, rock falls jagging into the sculpture.

'Persian,' Abu explained. 'English archaeologists were here many years ago; more recently the Americans. All have gone now, of course. What they were really interested in was the temple. You'll see it round the next bend.'

Dwarfed by the rock face, the temple was just a ruin, a few pillars still standing amid a mass of rubble. Abu said that the pillars were Roman, but the site had yielded remains of several civilisations and religions - Assyrian, Persian, and a few tablets of Egyptian origin. 'As you know, Azaran has been a vassal of many empires,' Abu said. 'Now of none!'

He bumped off the track and down what was little more than a donkey path. His wife was standing outside the tiny house, a pretty woman, little more than a girl. Although, she wore Arab costume she was unveiled.

She lowered her eyes when Abu introduced Fleming, but her welcome was warm, and in perfect English. 'Lemka was at Cairo University, among the first girl students under Colonel Nasser's new scheme,' Abu said proudly.

'You are hot,' Lemka said to Fleming. 'Please come inside out of the terrible wind. It is cooler. Perhaps you will have some of our wine.' She glanced towards the car and saw the soldier leaning against the shady side of the vehicle.

'What is the man doing?' she asked, clutching her husband's arm. 'You are now under guard?'

'He is an escort for Dr Fleming,' Abu told her, but she was not completely satisfied.

'There is much trouble in the city?' she asked. 'On the radio they say so little. Just that the coup is over and all is peace again. Is it so?'

'Yes,' Abu said. 'Everything is normal. Now get us something to drink and then see about a meal. I have told my friend he will have to take what the English call pot luck.'

Lemka passed through the curtained opening to the tiny kitchen at the rear.

'My wife is Christian,' Abu said; 'that is why she is not so effacing as most Arab wives.'

'But you are Moslem?' Fleming asked. 'Yours is a Moslem name.'

'I'm a scientist,' he retorted. 'And I am also for my country.'

Fleming eased himself down on the low backless settee.

'And I'm for the whole human race - more or less. Look, Abu, you didn't believe me about the computer, did you? Well, now believe me about the girl.'

Lemka returned with a jug of wine and some glasses. She poured some out and handed a glass to Fleming. The wine was sweet and thin, but refreshing.

'It's a pretty simple set-up,' Fleming began, not caring that Lemka was listening. 'Intel built the computer and employed you to help operate it. As you know, after Neilson got away it wouldn't work, so they hi-jacked me and I brought the girl. Intel's aim was to get a technical edge on all their competitors and a well-protected base from which to operate. Hence the missile designs you've been working on. Your President was agreeable to the arrangements. This suited the intelligence behind the computer. But it didn't suit Salim. He was an intelligent and ambitious man. He wanted to have absolute control of the whole setup.'

'He was a patriot,' said Abu defiantly.

Fleming shrugged. 'He certainly wasn't a man to play second fiddle to another influence. Andromeda knew it, or at least she learned it from the computer which could calculate such an eventuality. So Andre made the decision: to put the power into the hands of Intel, in fact. Our handsome boss was shown the message, or part of it, and had the meaning of it explained to her by Andre the night they were together in the computer.'

'And that could influence her?' Abu was doubtful.

'Influence her?' Fleming retorted. 'Obsess her completely.

She had Salim killed or probably shot him herself. She's a convert who suddenly saw a vision. It made her fanatical.'

'Like St Paul?'

Both men started. They had forgotten Lemka. 'But how could a vision be put into words?' she asked.

'St Paul managed it,' Fleming suggested.

'He only described it in your Bible,' Abu said. 'He couldn't pass it on as he really knew it.'

'You're right,' Fleming agreed. 'You can't pass such things on, but you can impose them. That was the intention of the computer, then of Andromeda, and now of Gamboul.

You can also describe the inferences. I myself have had a glimpse of that description.'

Abu thoughtfully examined his empty glass. 'You believe what you say? How would you describe this vision?'

'It says that mankind goes round by a long road, and it may be too long. We may destroy ourselves before we take the next step.'

'But if we can have the help of a higher intelligence and avoid that mistake? Abu protested.

'It's the handshake of death. The friend who knows better than you what's good for you.' Fleming pointed towards the tiny window, at the vista of desert they had crossed in the car.

'You've heard of the Pax Romana,' he said, 'the calm of desolation the Roman legions left after they had forced their idea of right on the barbarians. That's the sort of peace you're working for, Abu my friend. Personally I'd rather we muddled our way along.'

'And destroy ourselves?'

'No!' Fleming shouted. 'If anything destroys us it will be something sent from outside. Via the computer.'

'You have no proof,' said Abu obstinately.

Lemka looked from one man to the other. 'You should know when a man is right,' she told her husband. 'And help him.'

Abu glared at her but she held his gaze, and slowly he smiled. Awkwardly he slid his hand into hers. 'I will try,' he said quietly. He turned to Fleming. 'On Monday, Doctor, I will seek an interview with M'mselle Gamboul.'

Fleming thanked him, doubting whether this futile little manoeuvre would make any difference. With an effort he stirred himself. 'Fine,' he said. 'We'll work out the sort of thing to say, to appeal to her conscience, if any. But all this is unfair on your wife. It's the weekend.'

The friendship between the two men grew warmer in the few hours away from the strain of the Intel establishment.

Abu took Fleming exploring among the temple ruins on the Sunday morning. They had to cut the visit short because the wind was much stronger than on the previous day, bringing small but dangerous cascades of stones and rocks from the precipitous heights behind the temple. Fleming explained Dawnay's and his theory about the origin of the abnormal weather. Abu could accept this because he had seen some of the results of the computer's calculations on the sea water bacteria. He promised to try to explain it to Gamboul.

The two men and the guard drove back to the station at dawn on Monday, choosing an early start because they had already learned that sunrise and sunset brought a short period of calm. As they zig-zagged down the mountainside towards the plain they heard a roaring in the distance and saw a sudden rush of flame up into the sky.

Abu applied for an interview with Gamboul as soon as he went on duty. He was told to report to the executive suite at 11.

She greeted him almost effusively. 'Well, Dr Zeki,' she said. 'You'll be the first here to know that this morning we tested the missile prototype. It was a complete success. We are now as good as Britain in that field.' She smiled expectantly.

'And you have other good things on the way for us?'

'Yes, Mm'selle,' he said. 'But I wish to ask your permission to speak on another matter.'

'What is it you want?' she asked, her friendliness vanished, quickly replaced by suspicion.

'I come on behalf of Dr Fleming. He thinks that the weather conditions in Europe and America, and even here, arise in some way from the computer. From the message.' He stopped, momentarily intimidated by her look of implacable hostility. 'Dr Fleming would like permission for Professor Dawnay to contact the International Weather Bureau.'

'No!' she banged her fist on the desk like a man. 'What he says is nonsense.'

'But if the message - '

'I know the message! What it tells us to do is perfectly clear. And the weather is not part of the mission the message has given to us.'

Abu shifted a little. 'If you would just see Dr Fleming -' he began.

She half shouted her answer at him. 'He doesn't interest me. He has nothing to say which interests me. Do you understand?'

Abu backed to the door. 'Thank you, Mm'selle,' he muttered.

When the door closed Gamboul bent over the intercom microphone on her desk. The red switch was already depressed.

"Herr Kaufman,' she called quietly. 'You heard what Doctor Abu Zeki had to say? Good! You will have him watched now, all the time.'