Fleming thanked him. 'It may not get through; it may be ignored at the other end, and even if it isn't we don't know what they can do if they study it and accept the truth of it.
It would take a lot of swallowing.' He flexed his arms. 'So we're still really on our own. Which means we need the girl.
Go across to sick quarters, Abu, and tell the nurse to bring her over.'
'Now?' Abu asked doubtfully.
'Now,' Fleming repeated. 'Kaufman has her dragged out whenever they want a computing job done. The nurse has to obey, poor lass.'
'What do you propose to do with her?' Dawnay asked disapprovingly.
'Use her as an ally.'
'She won't play. Anyway, she's too weak.'
'She'll have to try, won't she? She's the only thing we've got. If the computer at Thorness made a bacterium there must be an anti-bacterium. I'm not expert in your line, Madeleine, but surely that's a basic fact of biology?'
'Do you happen to know of this bug which will conveniently act in the opposite direction ?' she asked.
'The computer must.' He waved away her sarcasm. 'I realise it's not the same computer, but it managed to reconstruct the formula for the original one, or at least we and Andre made it work. We can do it again, for an antidote.'
Before Dawnay could reply Abu returned. He held the door open while the nurse brought Andre inside in her wheelchair. Fleming was accustomed to see the girl a little weaker, a little more wraithlike, every time he saw her. But he had not got used to the way she now glared at him, her eyes smouldering with resentment.
'All right, nurse,' he said without looking at Andre, 'leave her. We'll call you when it's time to take her back.'
The girl stood her ground. 'She should not be here, sir; I had just got her to sleep.'
Abu interposed. 'Please be sure it's all right.'
The nurse patted the rug around Andre's legs and reluctantly left. When the door had closed Andre asked what they wanted her for; she did little more than whisper, even that was jerky and hard to understand.
'We need another formula from the computer,' Fleming explained. 'Another bacterium or perhaps a virus. It's got to kill the first one and then work the other way round. It would have to release nitrogen held in the water.'
'And it would have to breed faster than the first one,'
Dawnay added. 'It would be another tricky piece of biosynthesis, another life-creating process. For that I need a formula.'
Andre had listened with almost horrifying intensity, looking from one to the other, hanging on every word.
'But why?' she protested.
Fleming lost his temper. 'For God's sake!' he shouted.
Dawnay uttered a word of warning and with difficulty he calmed down. Then, crouching beside Andre, he slowly and patiently explained how the existing bacteria were changing the world's weather and making it impossible to breathe, the preliminary to complete destruction of all life. 'So we need just one small bug to start breeding on an even greater scale to counteract it,' he finished.
Once more she shook her head. 'It is not possible,' she whispered.
'Look,' he said urgently, 'if you can come up with one sort you can come up with another - and save us all.'
Her big eyes looked back into his. Imperceptibly they softened, the hostility lessening. 'Save you?' she managed to say aloud. 'What about me?' She tried to move her hands over her breasts and touch her face. The effort was too much and she lay back.
'If you had the strength - you'd try.' It was Dawnay who was begging her now.
'I don't know.' She shook her head weakly. 'It would take too long.'
Fleming looked over Andre's head at Dawnay. 'Would it?'
he muttered.
Involuntarily Dawnay glanced at the girl. 'I don't know,'
she said. 'She's... ' She got a grip on herself. 'If you mean would I take too long with the actual lab work, that's another matter. There are still twenty-four hours in however many days we've got left, and I don't like sleeping much.'
Both of them looked at Andre again. They were two people willing her to obey, to do the seemingly impossible.
The ghost of a smile flickered over her mouth, and she nodded.
Fleming turned to Abu. 'Get the nurse to take her back,'
he said. 'She's the only ally we've got, poor kid. Tell the nurse to have her ready for duty at the computer at 9 tomorrow morning. Try to explain that we're not sadists. Tell her how necessary it is. Frighten her a bit if you like by hinting how she'll also die if she fails us.'
Abu's persuasion - or intimidation - worked. The nurse obediently wheeled Andre into the computer block shortly after nine the next morning. The girl said her patient was too weak to move, and she would have to use the wheelchair to work while interpreting the screen.
Only Fleming was present. Dawnay felt too little hope to be able to bear to watch, and Abu remained in the main office so that he could report any approach by Kaufman or the mysteriously silent Gamboul. One of the things which would have been disquieting, if Fleming had not been so preoccupied with a greater problem, was the way Intel seemed to be leaving them to their own devices.
Andre put her hands unsteadily on the sensory controls.
The computer had hummed to activity as soon as she entered the building. But the screen brightened very slowly. Its imagery was blurred, and even when Fleming pulled the curtains over the windows across the hall the pattern was almost indistinguishable. He watched Andre raise her head to the screen; he saw how she seemed to be gripping the controls as if they yielded some supply of strength. Her effort to concentrate was pathetic. Presently she relaxed her hold. Her body slumped and her head bowed to her breast.
She began to talk thickly, sobs shaking her shoulders.
Fleming bent over her. 'I can't follow them,' he heard her say. 'Take me away from it.' And then she added, as if to herself, 'I don't want to die.'
The nurse came forward, pushing Fleming away. 'She has done enough; too much, you must not ask... ' Abruptly she grasped the chair and wheeled Andre away from the screen.
Fleming refused to move out of the way. 'Andre,' he said quietly, 'none of us wants to die, but we all will, unless some miracle starts sucking the air back out of the sea.'
She raised her head with an effort. 'You will die together.
I'll die alone.' He put out his hand to comfort her, touching hers. She moved her arm away. 'Don't touch me,' she whispered.
'I must seem horrible to you.'
'No!' he said urgently. 'You have always seemed beautiful to me. Ever since.., ever since we ran away from Thorness.
But try to think, please! Only you can help us now. I don't even know what this is doing. Is the power still with Gamboul?'
He indicated the mass of the computer ranged all around him and she nodded her head. 'Then why does she never come here?' he demanded.
Andre remained quiet, gathering her strength. 'There is no need. She has seen the message. The computer has set her on a path. She will not turn back. Nor will she come here.
She needs no more. I could not show her anything. I can hardly see it any more.' Her eyes looked askance towards the blank screen. 'I will come back when I have rested.'
Without asking permission, the nurse started to push the chair away. Fleming did not stop her this time. He watched them disappear through the exit doors and for a full minute he remained where he was, in the heavy silence of the deserted building.
