A for Andromeda

Eleven Antidote

They were covering her face when Fleming arrived at the sick bay. The other three lay silent and still in their beds, their faces drawn and as pale as the pillows. Dawnay, in the next cubicle to the girl, was being kept barely alive by blood transfusion. She lay marble-still, like an effigy of some old warrior on a tomb. He stayed looking at her until Hunter joined him.

“What do you want?” Hunter was run ragged, and all rough edges. He gave up the effort to be so much as polite to Fleming.

“It’s my fault,” said Fleming, looking down at the drained face on the pillow.

Hunter half-laughed. “Humility’s a new line for you.”

“All right then—it wasn’t!” Fleming spun round on him, flaming, and fished a clip of papers out of his pocket. “But I came to give you this.”

Hunter took the papers suspiciously. “What is it?”

“The enzyme formula.”

“How the devil did you get hold of it?”

Fleming sighed. “Illegally. Like I have to do everything.”

“I’ll keep it, if you don’t mind,” said Hunter. He looked at it again. “Why is it crossed through?”

“Because it’s wrong.” Fleming flicked over the top sheet to show the one underneath. “That’s the right formula. You’d better get it made up quickly.”

“The right formula?” Hunter looked slightly lost.

“What the computer gave Dawnay had an inversion of what she wanted. It switched negative for positive, as it were, to pay her back for a little game I’d put her up to.”

“What game?”

“It gave the anti-enzyme, instead of the enzyme. Instead of a cell regenerative, a cell destructor. Presumably it acts through the skin and they absorbed it while they were working on it.” He picked up one of Dawnay’s hands that lay limp on the sheet. “There’s nothing you can do unless you can make the proper enzyme in time. That’s why I’ve brought you the corrected formula.”

“Do you really think... ?” Hunter frowned sceptically at the clip of papers, and Fleming, looking up from Dawnay’s hand, which he was still holding, regarded him with distaste.

“Don’t you want to make your reputation?”

“I want to save lives,” said Hunter.

“Then make up the proper formula. It should work as an antidote to the one Dawnay got, in which case it ought to reverse what’s happening now. At least you can try it. If not—” He shrugged and laid Dawnay’s emaciated hand back on the sheet. “That machine will do anyone’s dirty work, so long as it suits it.”

Hunter sniffed. “If it’s so damn clever, why did it make a mistake like this?”

“It didn’t. The only mistake it made was it got the wrong person—the wrong people. It was after me, and it didn’t care how many people it wrote off in the process. One of your trade agreements with Intel, and it could have been half the world.”

He left Hunter scowling at the formula, but obviously obliged to try it.

That afternoon the man died; but the new enzyme had been made up and was administered to the two survivors. Nothing dramatic happened at first but by the evening it was clear that deterioration was slowing. Judy visited the sick-bay after supper, and then began making her way to the main gate to meet Reinhart, who was due on the late train. As she passed the computer block she felt an impulse to go in. There was no operator on duty, and she found Andre sitting alone at the control desk, gazing in front of her. The accumulated hatred of months, the frustrations of years, suddenly boiled up in Judy.

“Another one has died,” she said savagely. Andre shrugged and Judy felt a terrible urge to hit her. “Professor Dawnay’s fighting for her life. And the boy.”

“Then they have a chance,” the girl said, tonelessly.

“Thanks to Dr. Fleming. Not thanks to you.”

“It is not my business.”

“You gave Professor Dawnay the formula.”

“The machine gave it.”

“You gave it together!”

Andre shrugged her shoulders again. “Dr. Fleming has the antidote. He is intelligent—he can save them.”

“You don’t care, do you?” Judy’s eyes felt hot and dry as she looked at her.

“Why should I care?” asked the girl.

“I hate you.” Judy’s throat felt dry, too, so that she could hardly speak. She wanted to pick up something heavy and break the girl’s skull; but then the telephone rang and she had to go to the main gate to meet Reinhart.

The girl sat quite still for a long time after Judy had gone, gazing at the control panel, and several tears—actual human tears—welled in her eyes and trickled slowly down her cheeks.

Judy took Reinhart straight to Fleming’s hut, where they brought him up to date.

“And Madeleine?” the old man asked. He looked tired and uncertain.

“Still alive, thank God,” said Fleming. “We may save two of them.”

Reinhart seemed to relax a little, and looked less tired. They took his coat, sat him in a chair by the radiator and gave him a drink. He seemed to Judy much older than she had ever known him, and rather pathetic. He was now Sir Ernest, and it was as if the act of knighthood had finally aged him. She could imagine how far in the past his youthful friendship with Dawnay must seem, and could feel him clinging on to her life as though his own were in some way tied to it. He took his drink and tried to think of the next thing to say.

“Have you told Geers yet?”

“What would Geers do?” asked Fleming. “Just be sorry it wasn’t me. He’d have me thrown out of the compound, out of the country, if he could. I’ve been saying since I was in short pants that this thing’s malicious but they all love it so. How much more do I have to prove before I convince anyone?”

“You don’t have to prove any more to me, John,” said Reinhart wearily.

“Well, that’s something.”

“Or me,” Judy said.

“Oh fine, fine. That makes three of us against the entire set-up.”

“What did you think I could do?” Reinhart asked.

“I dunno. You’ve been running half the science in this country for a generation—the good half. Surely someone would listen to you.”

“Osborne, perhaps?”

“So long as he didn’t get his cuffs dirty.” Fleming thought for a moment. “Could he get me back in to the computer?”

“Use your head, John. He’s answerable to the Establishment.”

“Could you get him down here?”

“I could try. What have you in mind?”

“We can fill that in later,” said Fleming.

Reinhart pulled a rail-air timetable out of his pocket.

“If I go up to London to-morrow—”

“Can’t you go to-night?”

“Sir Ernest’s tired,” said Judy.

Reinhart smiled at her. “You can keep Sir Ernest for garden parties. I shall get a night flight.”

“Why can’t it wait a few hours?” Judy asked.

“I’m not a young man, Miss Adamson, but I’m not moribund.” He pulled himself to his feet. “Give my love to Madeleine, if she’s...”

“Sure,” said Fleming, finding the old man’s coat and helping him on with it.

Reinhart moved to the door, buttoning himself as he went. Then he remembered something. “By the way, the message has stopped.”

Judy looked from him to Fleming. “The message?”

“From up there.” Reinhart pointed a finger to the sky. “It’s stopped repeating, several weeks ago. Maybe we shall never pick it up again.”

“We may have caught the tail end of a long transmission,” Fleming said quietly, weighing the implications. “If it wasn’t for that fluke at Bouldershaw, we might never have heard it, and none of this would have happened.”

“That had crossed my mind,” said Reinhart, and gave them another tired smile and went.

Fleming mooched round the room, thinking about what had been said, while Judy waited. They heard Reinhart’s car start and drive away, and at the sound of it Fleming came to rest beside Judy and put an arm round her shoulders.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” she told him. “They can court-martial me if they like.”

“O.K., O.K.” He took his arm away.

“You can trust me, John.”

He looked her full in the face, and she tried with her eyes to make him believe her.

“Yes, well—” he seemed more or less convinced. “I’ll tell you what. Get on the blower to London, privately, first thing in the morning. Try to catch Osborne when the Prof’s with him and tell him he’s bringing an extra visitor.”

“Who?”

“I don’t care who. Garter King at Arms—the President of the Royal Academy—some stuffed shirt from the Ministry. He doesn’t have to bring the gent, only his clothes.”

“An unstuffed shirt?”

He grinned. “Hat, brief case and rolled umbrella will do. Oh, and an overcoat. Meanwhile you get an extra pass for him. O.K.?”

“I’ll try.”

“Good girl.” He put his arm round her again and kissed her.

She enjoyed it and then leant back to ask him, “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet.” He kissed her once more, then pushed himself away from her. “I’m going to turn in, it’s been a hell of a day. You’d better get out of here—I need some sleep.”

He grinned again and she squeezed his hand and went out, light-footed, singing inside herself.

Fleming undressed dreamily, working out plans and fantasies in his mind. He fell into bed, and almost as soon as he turned the light out he was asleep.

After Reinhart’s and Judy’s departure, the camp was quiet. It was a dark night; clouds were blowing in from the north-east, bringing with them a current of cold air and a prospect of snow, and covering the full moon. But the moon shone through for a few moments at a time, and by its light a slim, pale figure let itself out of a window at the back of the computer block and began to move, ghost-like, across the camp. None of the sentries saw it, let alone recognised it as the girl Andre, and she made her way stealthily between the huts to Fleming’s chalet, her face set and a double-strand coil of insulated wire in her hand.

A little light fell from the window into Fleming’s room, for he had drawn back the curtain before he went to bed. He did not stir when the door opened very quietly and Andre inched in. She was barefoot and very careful, and her hands were sheathed in a pair of thick rubber gloves. After making sure that Fleming slept, she knelt down by the wall beside his bed and inserted the two wires at one end of her coil into a power-point on the skirting, wedged them tight and switched on the current. She held the other end of the coil out from her, the two wires grasped separately between thumb and finger an inch or so down the insulation and the bare live ends extended, and stood up and advanced slowly towards Fleming. The chances of his surviving a full charge were slight, for he was asleep and she could count on being able to keep the contacts on him for long enough to stop his heart.

She made no sound as she moved the ends of the wires towards his eyes. There was no reason why he should wake; but suddenly, for some unknown reason, he did. All he could see was a silhouetted figure standing over him, and more from instinct than reason, he flexed one leg under the bedclothes and kicked out with all his might through his sheet and blanket.

He caught her in the midriff, and she fell back across the room with a sort of sick grunt. He fumbled for his bedlight and switched it on. For a moment it dazzled him; he sat up confused and panting while the girl struggled to her knees, still holding the ends of wire; then, as he took in what was happening, he leapt out of bed, pulled the ends of flex out of the wall-socket and turned to her. But by this time she was on her feet and half-way out of the room.

“No you don’t!” He threw himself at the door.

She side-stepped and, with her hands behind her, backed across to the table where he had had his supper. For a moment it looked as if she was going to give in; then without warning she lunged out at him with her right hand, and there was a breadknife in it.

“You bitch!” He caught her wrist, twisted the knife out of it and threw her down.

She gasped and lay writhing, holding her wrenched wrist with the other hand and staring up at him, not so much in fury as in desperation.

He stooped and picked up the knife keeping his eye on her all the time.

“All right—kill me.” There was fear in her face now, and in her voice. “It won’t do you any good.”

“No?” His own voice was shaking and he was panting hard.

“It’ll delay things a little, that’s all.” She watched intently as he opened a drawer and slid the knife into it. This seemed to encourage her, and she sat up.

“Why do you want me out of the way?” he asked.

“It was the next thing to be done. I warned you.”

“Thanks.” He shuffled round, buttoning up his pyjamas, pushing his feet into a pair of slippers, calming down.

“Everything you do is predictable.” She seemed collected again already. “There’s nothing you can think of that won’t be countered.”

“What’s the next thing now?”

“If you go away, go right away and don’t interfere—”

He cut across her. “Get up.” She looked at him in surprise.

“Get up.” He waited while she got to her feet and then pointed to a chair. “Sit down there.”

She gave him another puzzled look, and then sat. He went and stood over her.

“Why do you only do what the machine wants?”

“You’re such children,” she told him. “You think we’re slave and master, the machine and me, but we’re both slaves. We’re containers which you’ve made, for something you don’t understand.”

“Do you?” asked Fleming.

“I can see the difference between our intelligence and yours. I can see that ours is going to take over and yours is going to die. You think you’re the height and crown of things, the last word—” She broke off and massaged her wrist where he had twisted it.

“I don’t think that,” he said. “Did I hurt you?”

“Not badly. You’re more intelligent than most; but not enough—you’ll go down with the dinosaurs. They ruled the earth once.”

“And you?”

She smiled, and it was the first time he had seen her do so. “I’m the missing link.”

“And if we break you?”

“They make another one.”

“And if we break the machine?”

“The same.”

“And if we destroy you both, and the message and all our work on it, so that there’s nothing left? The message has ended—did you know?” She shook her head. Her confirmation of all he feared came flooding in on him, and also the realisation of how to stop it. “Your friends up there have got tired of talking to us. You’re on your own now, you and the computer. Suppose we break the pair of you?”

“You’ll keep a higher intelligence off the earth, for a while.”

“Then that’s what we have to do.”

She looked up at him steadily. “You can’t.”

“We can try.”

She shook her head again, slowly and as if regretfully. “Go away. Live the sort of life you want to, while you can. You can’t do anything else.”

“Unless you help me.” He returned her look and held it, as he had done before in the computer building. “You’re not just a thinking machine, you’re made in our likeness.”

“No!”

“You have senses—feelings. You’re three parts human being, tied by compulsion to something that’s set to destroy us. All you have to do, to save us and free yourself, is change the setting.” He took her by the shoulders, as if to shake her, but she shrugged his hands off.

“Why should I?”

“Because you want to, three-quarters of you—”

She stood up and moved away from him.

“Three-quarters of me is an accident. Don’t you think I suffer enough as it is? Don’t you think I get punished for even listening to you?”

“Will you be punished for to-night?”

“Not if you go away.” She moved towards the door hesitantly, as if expecting him to stop her, but he let her go. “I was sent to kill you.”

She was very pale and beautiful, standing in the dark doorway, and she spoke without passion or satisfaction. He looked at her grimly.

“Well, the chips are down,” he said.

There was a small lean-to café by Thorness station, and Judy left Fleming there while she met the train from Aberdeen. It was only the following evening: Reinhart had been quick. Fleming went into the little back room which had been reserved for them, and waited. It was a sad and cheerless little room dominated by an old farmhouse table and a set of chairs and walled with dilapidated and badly-painted weatherboards which carried discoloured cola and mineral-water ads. He helped himself to a swig from his pocket-flask. He could hear the rising wind moaning outside, and then the diesel thrumming up from the south. It stopped, palpitating noisily, in the station, and after a minute or two there was a whistle and a hoot on its siren and it drew away, leaving a silence out of which came the sound of the wind again, and of footsteps on the gravel outside the café.

Judy led Reinhart and Osborne into the room. They were all heavily muffled in winter clothes, and Osborne carried a sizeable suitcase.

“It’s blowing up for a blizzard, I think,” he said, putting the case down. He looked unhappy and thoroughly out of his element. “Can we talk in here?”

“It’s all ours,” Judy said. “I fixed the man.”

“And the duty operator?” asked Reinhart.

“I fixed him too. He knows what to do and he’ll keep his mouth shut for us.”

Reinhart turned to Fleming. “How is Madeleine Dawnay?”

“She’ll pull through. So will the boy. The enzyme works all right.”

“Well, thank God for that.” Reinhart unbuttoned his coat. He looked no worse for his journey; in fact, the activity seemed to have refreshed him.

Osborne appeared to be the most dispirited of them. “What do you want to do with the computer?” he asked Fleming.

“Try to uncork it, or else—”

“Or else what?”

“That’s what we want to find out. It’s either deliberately malevolent, or it’s snarled up. Either it was programmed to work the way it does, or something’s gone wrong with it. I think the first; I always have done.”

“You’ve never been able to prove it.”

“What about Dawnay?”

“We need something more tangible than that.”

“Osborne will go to the Minister,” put in Reinhart. “He’ll go to the Prime Minister if necessary. Won’t you?”

“If I have evidence,” said Osborne.

“I’ll give you evidence! It had another go at killing me last night.”

“How?”

Fleming told them. “In the end I forced the truth out of her. You ought to try it sometime—you’d believe it then.”

“We need something more scientific.”

“Then give me a few hours with it.” He looked at Judy. “Have you brought me a pass?”

Judy produced three passes from her handbag and handed one to each of them. Fleming read the one she had given him, and grinned. “So I’m an official of the Ministry? That’ll be the day.”

“I’ve forsworn my good name for that,” said Osborne unhappily. “It’s only for an examination. No direct action.”

Fleming stopped grinning. “You want to tie both my hands behind my back?”

“You realise the risk I’m running?” Osborne said.

“Risk! You should have been in my hut last night.”

“I wish I had been, then I might be more certain where I stood. This country, young man, depends on that machine—”

“Which I made.”

“It means more to us, potentially, than the steam engine, or atomic power, or anything.”

“Then it’s all the more important—” Fleming began.

“I know! Don’t preach at me. Do you think I’d be here at all if I didn’t believe it was important and if I didn’t value your opinion very highly? But there are ways and ways.”

“You know of a better way?”

“Of checking—no. But that’s as far as it must go. A man in my position—”

“What is your position?” asked Fleming. “The noblest Roman of them all?”

Osborne sighed. “You have your pass.”

“You’ve got what you asked for, John,” said Reinhart.

Fleming picked up the suitcase and put it on the table. He opened it and, taking out a dark smooth-cloth overcoat, a black homberg and a briefcase, dressed himself for the part. They were all right for a dark night, but they hardly went with his face.

“You look more like a scarecrow than a civil servant,” said Reinhart, smiling.

Judy tried not to giggle. “They won’t examine you too closely if you’re with me.”

“You realise you’ll be shot for this?” said Fleming affectionately.

“Not unless we’re found out.”

Osborne did not enjoy the pleasantries; if they were hiding strain in the others, he did not realise it, he had more than enough strain himself.

“Let’s get it over, shall we?” He pushed back the cuff of his overcoat to look at his watch.

“We have to wait till it’s dark and the day shift have gone off,” said Judy.

Fleming burrowed under his coat and brought out the flask. “How about one for the raid?”

It was snowing hard by the time they reached the camp, not a soft fall, but a fury of stinging, frozen particles thrown by a wind from the north. The two sentries outside the computer block had turned up the collars of their greatcoats, although they stood in a little haven of shelter under the porch of the doorway. They peered out, through the white that turned into blackness, at the four approaching figures.

Judy went forward and presented the passes, while the three men hung back.

“Good evening. This is the Ministry party.”

“M’am.” One of the sentries, with a lance-corporal’s stripe on his greatcoat sleeve, saluted and examined the passes.

“Okeydoke,” he said, and handed them back.

“Anyone inside?” Judy asked him.

“Only the duty operator.”

“We shall only be a few minutes,” Reinhart said, coming forward.

The sentries opened the door and stood aside while Judy went in, followed by Reinhart and Osborne with Fleming between them.

“What about the girl?” asked Reinhart, when they were well down the corridor.

“She’s not due in to-night,” said Judy. “We took care of that.”

It was a long corridor, with two right-angle corners in it, and the doors to the computer-room were at the end, well out of sight and sound of the main entrance. When Judy opened one of the doors and led them in, they found the control-room full of light, but empty except for a young man who sat reading at the desk. He stood up as they came in.

“Hallo,” he said to Judy. “It went all right?”

It was the very young assistant. He seemed to be enjoying the situation.

“You’d better have your passes.” Judy returned Reinhart’s and Osborne’s to them, and handed Fleming’s to the operator. Fleming took off his homberg and stuck it on the boy’s head.

“What the top people are wearing.”

“You needn’t make a pantomime of it,” said Osborne, and kept an uneasy eye on the door while the operator was rigged out with Fleming’s overcoat and brief case. Even with the collar turned up he was clearly different from the man who came in, but, as Judy said, it was not a night for seeing clearly, and with her to reassure them the sentries would probably do no more than count heads.

As soon as the boy was ready, Osborne opened the door.

“We depend on you to do the right thing,” he said to Fleming. “You have a test check?”

Fleming pulled a familiar pad from his pocket and waited for them all to go.

“I’ll be back,” said Judy. “As soon as I’ve seen them past the sentries.”

Fleming seemed surprised. “You won’t, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” Osborne told him. “It’s one of the conditions.”

“I don’t want anyone—”

“Don’t be a fool, John,” said Reinhart, and they left him.

He went over to the control unit and glared at it, half laughing at himself out of sheer strain, then got down to work at the input unit, tapping in figures from the pad he had brought with him. He had nearly finished it when Judy came back.

“What are you doing?” she asked. She was strung too, in spite of the relief of having got the decoy past the sentries.

“Trying to cook it.” He tapped out the last group. “Same old naming-tag lark’ll do for a start.”

It took the computer a few moments to react, then the display lamps started flashing violently. They waited, listening for the clatter of the printer, but what they heard was footsteps approaching down the corridor. Judy stood rooted and paralysed until Fleming took her arm and pulled her into the darkness of the lab bay from where they could see through the half-open doorway without being seen. The footsteps came to a stop beyond the far entrance of the control-room. They could see the handle of one of the double doors turn, then the door opened and Andre stepped in from the corridor.

Judy gave a tiny gasp, which was drowned by the hum of the computer, and Fleming’s grip tightened warningly on her arm. From where they stood they could see Andre close the door and walk slowly forward towards the control racks. The flashing and humming of the machine seemed to puzzle her, and a few feet short of the display panel she stood stock still. She was wearing an old grey anorak with the hood down, and she looked particularly beautiful and uncompromising under the stark lamps; but her face was strained and after a few moments the muscles round her mouth and temples began to work under the mounting tension of her nerves. She moved forward, slowly and reluctantly, towards the panel, and then stopped again, as if she could feel from there a premonition of some violent reaction—as though she knew the signs and yet was magnetised by the machine.

Her face now was glistening with sweat. She took another step forward and raised her hands slowly towards the terminals. Judy, for all her hatred, felt herself aching to go to her, but Fleming held her back. Before their eyes, the girl reached up slowly and fearfully and touched the contact plates.

Her first scream and Judy’s rang out together. Fleming clapped his hand over Judy’s mouth, but Andre’s screaming went on and on, falling to a whimper as the voltage needle dipped, then rising again when it peaked.

“For God’s sake,” Judy mouthed into Fleming’s hand. She struggled to break away, but he held her until Andre’s cries stopped and the machine, sensing possibly that she no longer responded, let go its grip and she slithered to the floor. Judy tore herself free and ran over to her, but this time there was no groaning, no breathing, no sign of life. The eyes she looked into were glazed and the mouth hung senselessly open.

“I think she’s dead,” Judy said inadequately.

“What did you expect?” Fleming came up behind her. “You saw the voltage. That was because she hadn’t got rid of me—because I was cancelling her out. Poor little devil.”

He looked down at the crumpled body in its grey, soiled covering, and his own eyes hardened. “It’ll do better next time. It’ll produce something we can’t get at at all.”

“Unless you find what’s wrong with it.” She turned away and picked up Fleming’s pad from the top of the input unit, and offered it him.

He pulled it out of her hand and threw it across the room.

“It’s too late for that! There’s nothing wrong with it.” He pointed to the girl’s huddled figure. “That’s the only answer I need. Tomorrow it will ask for another experiment, and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...”

He walked briskly across to the alarm and fuse terminals by the double doors, took the wiring in both hands and pulled. They gave but did not break, so he put a foot against the wall and heaved against it.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to finish it. This is the moment, probably the only moment.” He tugged again at the wires, and then gave up and reached for a fireman’s axe that hung on the wall beside them. Judy ran across to him.

“No!” She seized his arm but he swung her off and with the return movement slashed the axe across the wiring and severed it, then wheeled and looked around the room. The display panel was still blinking fast, and he went across and smashed it with the axe.

“Have you gone mad?” Judy ran after him again and, gripping the axe by the haft, tried to wrest it from him.

He twisted it away from her. “Let go! I told you to stay out of it.”

She stared at him and found she hardly knew him: his face was covered in sweat, as the girl’s had been, and suffused with anger and determination. She realised now what had been in his mind all the time.

“You always meant to do this.”

“If it came to it.”

He stood with the axe in his hands, looking speculatively around, and she knew that she had to get to the doors before him; but he beat her to it, and leant with his back against them with the same set expression and the mirthless hint of a grin at the corners of his mouth. She really did think he was mad now. She held out a hand for the axe and spoke as if to a child.

“Please give it to me, John.” She winced as he laughed. “You promised.”

“I promised nothing.” He held on to the haft tightly with one hand, and with the other locked the door behind him.

“I’ll scream,” she said.

“Try.” He slipped the key into his pocket. “They’ll never hear you.”

Pushing her aside, he strode through to the memory bay, opened the front of the nearest unit and struck at it. There was a small explosion as the vacuum collapsed.

“John!” She tried to stop him as he made for the next unit.

“I know what I’m doing,” he said, opening the front and swinging the axe in. Another small splintering explosion came from the equipment. “Do you think there’ll ever be another chance like this? Do you want to go and squeal? If you think I’m doing the wrong thing, go.

He looked straight at her, calmly and sensibly, and dug a hand into his pocket for the key. “Fetch the riot squad if you want to: that’s been your favourite occupation. Or has it struck you I might be doing the right thing? That’s what Osborne wanted, wasn’t it? ‘The right thing.’”

He held out the key to her, but for some reason impossible to express she could not take it. He gave her a long chance and then put the key back in his pocket and turned and started on the other units.

“The sentries will hear.” Knowing he was not mad after all made her feel committed to him. She stood by the doors and kept watch while he worked his way round the equipment, hacking and smashing and reducing the intricate engineering complex and the millions of cells of electronics to a tangled and shattered waste on the floor, on metal racks and behind the broken facias of cabinets. She could hardly bear to look, but she listened through the splintering and tearing for any sound in the corridor.

Nothing came to interrupt them. The storm of snow outside, unseen and unheard in the buried centre of the building, made its own commotion and hid theirs. Fleming worked methodically at first, but it was an enormous job and he began to go faster and faster as he felt himself tiring, until he was swinging desperately and pulling on his lungs for more breath, almost blinded by the perspiration that ran down from his forehead. He worked all round until he came back to the centre of the control unit, and then he smashed that.

“Take that, you bastard,” he half shouted at it. “And that, and that.”

He let the axe-head swing down to the floor and leant on the end of the haft to get his breath.

“What’ll happen now?” asked Judy.

“They’ll try to rebuild it, but they won’t know how to.”

“They’ll have the message.”

“It’s stopped.”

“They’ll have the original.”

“They won’t. They won’t have that or the broken code or any of it—because it’s in here.” He indicated a solid metal door in the wall behind the control desk, then he swung the axe again and went for the hinges. Blow after blow he battered at them, but made no impression. Judy stood by in a trauma of suspense as the ring of metal on metal seemed to shout through the whole building, but no-one heard. After a long time Fleming gave up and leant once more, panting, over his axe. The room was utterly silent now that the computer had stopped, and its stillness went with the motionless body of the girl in the middle of the floor.

“We’ll have to get a key,” Fleming said. “Where is one?”

“In Major Quadring’s duty room.”

“But that’s—”

She confirmed his fear. “It’s always manned,” she said. “And the key’s kept in a safe.”

“There must be another.”

“No. That’s the only one.”

She tried to think of some other possibility but there was none. No-one, so far as she knew, not even Geers, had a duplicate. Fleming at first would not believe her, and when he did he went momentarily berserk. He swung up the axe and lashed in fury at the door, over and over again until he could hardly stand, and when at last he gave up and slumped into what had been the control desk chair, he sat for a long while thinking and brooding and trying to find a plan.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” he said at last.

“You didn’t ask.” Judy was trembling from the violence and sense of disaster and only kept control of herself with an effort. “You never asked me. Why didn’t you ask me?”

“You’d have stopped me if I had.”

She tried to talk sensibly and stop herself shaking. “We’ll get it some way. I’ll think of some way, perhaps first thing in the morning.”

“It’ll be too late.” He shook his head and stared down past his feet to the body lying on the floor. “‘Everything you do is predictable’—that’s what she said. ‘There’s nothing you can think of that won’t be countered.’ We can’t win.”

“We’ll get it through Osborne or something,” Judy said. “But we must get out of here now.”

She found the young operator’s coat and muffler and put those on him and led him out of the building.