what I ought to be doing. What we ought to be doing. We need some help from it for you as well as us.'
He stood up. 'Put yourself in my hands,' he ordered. 'You did before. Tonight you will sleep. Tomorrow I shall come for you. I will take you to the computer. Yes, I know,' he exclaimed when he saw her attempt to protest. 'You're weak.
You collapsed this evening. But this time I'll be beside you, helping you.'
He had very little belief that he could really do anything, but he hoped that some fresh strength had passed from him to her. She moved a little, as if relaxing and getting more comfortable. Her eyelids fluttered and closed. Her face took on the serenity of natural sleep.
Fleming went to the door, beckoning the nurse to follow.
Outside he talked quietly to her, telling her that she was not to be frightened, and not to talk. 'We're all in danger,' he explained to her. 'Your patient is trying to save us. It's up to us to save her. Trust me and we shall do it.'
Half-heartedly the girl nodded that she understood. Fleming wished he could convince himself as easily.
He slept little that night, but lay trying to make a new plan of action for the little time they had left. With the light of morning he deliberately followed his usual routine of a shower, shave, and breakfast to give Andre every precious minute to recuperate from her collapse the night before.
Even then he was early. Sleepy guards, resigned to another couple of hours before the day releifs took over, eyed him warily when, accompanied by the nurse, he pushed Andre in her wheelchair to the computer building.
After the boisterous, still stormy, weather outside the air inside the building seemed heavy and lifeless. Despite the air conditioning the familiar aroma of Kaufman's cigarellos hung around. Fleming half expected the man to come bustling up, demanding to know what was happening. But the offices were empty. Presumably the German had hung around for hours, thinking. Fleming hoped that whatever conscience he might still have had been at work.
Andre had said nothing when he had fetched her. Beyond a smile in answer to his greeting she might have been in a trance. After he had dismissed the nurse and had Andre sitting in front of the screen he resigned himself to the fact that he would just have to hope to instil his ideas in her mind, without getting a sign of reaction.
And so it was. He talked of what Dawnay believed was wrong with her, how guilty they both felt because of it. He painted a picture unreally optimistic, of what her life could be if she could help Dawnay to help her. In the end he simulated something very near anger, challenging her to prove her power.
She sat with her head drooped, her hands folded listlessly in her lap. Only the occasional fluttering of her eyelids showed that she was awake and listening. He stopped talking after a while, not knowing what else to say. He saw her try to brace herself. One hand was lifted with agonising slowness to the sensory control. The machine began to hum. A pinpoint of light glowed in the centre of the screen; it dulled and expanded. Fleming stepped away, not taking his eyes off her, until he was against the wall. There he stood, tense, motionless, watching. The impossible was happening.
After a time he felt a pull on his sleeve. Abu was standing beside him looking puzzled and expectant. Fleming jerked his head towards the office and they walked quietly to it.
'What?' Abu began. 'Is she... ?'
'I think so,' Fleming replied, not really knowing what Abu was asking. He tugged his thoughts unwillingly away from Andre. 'What's the news from you?'
'I went home after midnight,' he said. 'I had to pass through the guard room. But the officer seemed to think it was okay for me to go unescorted. My cousin Yusel got home just before me. We've fixed up Professor Neilson where he'll be safe enough. A cave high above the temple, where that rock fault is. He'll be comfortable enough there as he hasn't to move around much. It was hard going for him; the air is thinning here just as Yusel says it is even at sea level in England.'
'He's got food and water?'
Aim nodded. 'Lemka will visit him regularly, or her mother.'
Fleming nodded, satisfied. 'It's good of you all,' he muttered.
'Young Doctor Neilson was kind to me,' Abu said. 'We liked him very much.'
Both men stopped abruptly. The output printer had started to work. Fleming's thoughts raced back to Andre.
'Get the nurse to take her back to bed,' he ordered. He walked across to her and put his arm around her shoulders.
'Good!' he said. 'Now rest - and hang on.'
He grabbed the paper coming from the printer, running down the short lines of figures. The details meant little to him, but the general purport was clear enough. It concerned the constituents in plasma. For ten minutes he stood watching the figures emerge. At last the motor died and the computer sank into silence.
Dawnay was working at her laboratory bench in her usual bewildering and seemingly haphazard array of apparatus.
Fleming thrust the sheets of paper before her.
'What are those?' she asked, continuing to watch some fluid drip through a filter. 'More bacterial formulae?'
'No,' said Fleming. 'Formulae for Andromeda.'
She stopped her work and looked at him wonderingly.
'Who programmed it?'
'She did. I more or less forced her. So far as I can judge it's a progression of figures that stands for the missing chemical constituents in her blood. Get it into chemical terms, and we can use it on her.'
She took the paper and slumped in a chair. 'It would take weeks of work,' she muttered, running her eye over the data.
'And I have this bigger job.' She waved her hand almost helplessly at the jumble of retorts and test tubes on the bench.
'Which Andre got for us,' he reminded her.
She was exasperated at the implied reproof. 'Let's get this straight, John,' she began in level tones. 'First you were against me creating her. Then you wanted me to kill her when she was first made. Next you demanded that she was kept away from the computer. Now-'
'I want her to live.'
'And the rest of us?' she asked him. 'Do you want us to live? How much can I take on, do you imagine? My energy's limited. There's only one of me and I'm dead tired. Sometimes I think my brain is softening.' She pulled herself together and smiled at him. 'Do you think I wouldn't try to save her if I could? But there are millions of us, John, and our lives are in the balance. I don't even know if this is going to work. Still less that, even if it does, I'll have it made in quantity in time.'
She leaned forward and held out the sheets of paper to him. He kept his hands deep in his trouser pockets, refusing to accept them. She let them fall to the floor.
He bent to pick them up and put them carefully on a clear corner of the bench. 'You'll have to talk to Gamboul,'
he said quietly. 'She won't see me and doesn't trust Abu Zeki any more. But she might listen to you. If you could persuade her to give us more freedom and more outside help .... '
Dawnay was lost in her own thoughts. 'I don't know, I just don't know,' she murmured.
Without warning there was a tremendous crack of thunder. It shook the building, making the apparatus on the bench shake and jangle. Immediately the noise died away there came the scream of wind.
'Even Gamboul must know that this weather thing isn't something she can handle, that it wasn't part of her damned programme,' Fleming said when the racket died down.
'All right,' Dawnay agreed; 'I'll try to explain to her.'
An interview was not granted until the following morning.
Gamboul sent an order for Dawnay to come to her private residence, the house which Salim had owned. From all accounts, Gamboul rarely visited the Presidential Palace any more, not even to go through the formalities of reporting the country's day-to-day activities. The President was kept a virtual prisoner. He did not seem greatly to mind; he was sick. The comparatively slight thinning of the atmosphere over Azaran was already affecting the
