over the price of life.
She crossed to the computer building in search of someone to talk to; there was superficial damage to the entrance bay and the cooling tower, but the computer appeared unharmed, No guards were left, but an electrician appeared from the staff rest room. He said he had no idea where Dr Fleming was. Abu Zeki, he believed, had left immediately after the first of the afternoon's storms to visit his family.
Dawnay thanked him and made her way to the sick quarters.
The nurse put up makeshift barricades of screens over the broken windows. The girl smiled with relief at seeing someone at last.
'Miss Andre has slept through it all,' she whispered. 'I think she is a little stronger.'
Dawnay sat down by the bed. The nurse was right. Bad as the light was, Dawnay could see a better colour in Andre's cheeks.
'Is it - is it working?' Andre had not opened her eyes or moved when she whispered her question.
Dawnay clasped the fragile hand. 'Yes, it's working,' she murmured. 'The barograph in the lab is still going up. How long it will last I don't know.'
Andre struggled to sit up. 'It was not in the message that we must...' She stopped and lay back, exhausted. 'I tried to tell her. She would not listen. She came last night. I told her to listen to me, not to the computer. But - '
'Gamboul, you mean?' said Dawnay gently. 'She's dead, Andre. Kaufman is now in charge.'
Andre nodded slowly, as if she knew. Her fingers tried to find Dawnay's. 'Do you believe me?' she asked. She saw Dawnay nod. The fingers relaxed and she lay back with her eyes closed once more. 'Tell me all that has happened and I will tell you what to do.'
As rapidly as she could, Dawnay gave a survey of the situation as far as she knew it. Before she had finished she thought Andre had fallen asleep or had lapsed into a coma, she was so utterly motionless. But after a full two minutes, the girl began speaking in a level monotone.
Dawnay listened intently. The responsibility Andre was thrusting on her shoulders was tremendous. It was intimidating; yet it was inspiring too. The rational, reasoned motives were all that her scientific mind needed. When Andre finished Dawnay made just one brief answer.
'I'll go right away,' she said.
Half an hour later she was ordering a servant at the Presidential palace to take her immediately to his master.
She had driven herself in a car she had found undamaged in the Intel parking lot. It was the first time she had been behind a car wheel since her young days as a student. Her erratic course did not matter. Flood water had destroyed the road in many places. Rubble from tottering houses had to be avoided or driven over. No guards stood outside the palace.
The President saw her immediately. He was seated in his high-backed chair, looking years older than when she had last taken her leave of him.
His ritualistic courtesy had not deserted him. He rose and bent over her hand, and indicated a chair. The faithful little negro boy was still there. The President told him to go and see if he could find someone to make coffee. Then he returned to his seat.
'The country is dying, Professor Dawnay,' he said simply.
'The whole world may be,' Dawnay replied. 'That is why I have come. It is in your power to help. You have been informed that Miss Gamboul is dead?' The President nodded.
'So you are free.'
'Free!' he said bitterly. 'It is a little late.'
'It may not be,' she insisted. 'It partly depends on you, your Excellency. If the anti-bacteria I have made is handled by Intel, and if it works, then it will be Intel's world. Kaufman will fix their price for them.'
'I have been told very little, but I can gather the trend of events. And what can I do to stop this man Kaufman? He is like the others - Salim, Mm'selle Gamboul....'
'We will deal with Kaufman,' Dawnay promised. 'While you send out the bacteria as a gift from Azaran. It will be the first action of a free nation.'
He gazed at her with his sad, intelligent eyes.' 'Or the last,'
he suggested.
'Not if every laboratory in the world receives a supply.
Then we've got a chance. If we can do it in the right way, through the right people.' She thought back to their long battles with the authorities at Thorness. 'Ever since the message was first picked up and a computer built to handle it, a few people have been struggling to keep this power out of the wrong hands and put it into the right ones.'
'And what are mine?' he asked mildly.
'What we will make them for you!'
The boy entered with a tray. The President poured out some coffee and handed Dawnay a cup. He slowly sipped his own before he spoke again.
'So you are right?' he murmured, eyeing her keenly. 'And to whom will you be responsible? Hundreds of thousands of people have died because - you will forgive me - of these experiments of yours.'
Dawnay felt blood flooding into her neck and cheeks: a visible sign of her feeling of enormous guilt. 'It was an accident,' she said inadequately. 'It could have happened with any experiment. I made a mistake.'
Some of the fire of the revolutionary of years before flamed briefly in the President's face as he stood up and confronted her.
'Hundreds of thousands more may have to die correcting your mistake,' he said. 'The errors of politicians are sometimes expensive, and business men sometimes do their best to profit from them. But you scientists, you kill half the world.
And the other half cannot live without you.'
His anger faded. He sighed and permitted himself a slight smile. 'I am in your hands, Professor Dawnay. You will forgive me if I add that I wish I were not.'
Dawnay drove back to the compound determined to mould events the way she knew they had to be; but the responsibility appalled her. She badly needed the catharsis of Fleming's critical mind.
She found him in the servicing bay behind the computer.
He was working at the desk, which was a litter of papers.
'Hello,' he said lazily. 'I holed up here - safe from the desert breezes and from interruption.' He glanced at his wrist watch. 'God, is that the time? I've been trying to work out this thing for Andre. I've done most of the chemical conversions. They don't make a hell of a lot of sense.'
He threw across some calculations. She read them cursorily.
'It would be lethal if it's wrong,' she said shortly.
'She's dying anyway, isn't she? I've been trying all ways...'
She interrupted him impatiently. 'John, there isn't time for that.'
He looked up at her. 'Make 'em and break 'em, eh?'
Dawnay flushed. 'There's something else that comes first.
Or have you forgotten what's still raging over the greater part of the world?'
'No, I haven't forgotten,' he said.
'We've made a lot of mistakes,' she went on. 'Both of us.
I'm trying to get things right because it's the only hope we have. What happens to the world depends on us, on whether we take over or whether Kaufman does.'
His grin was sardonic. 'Have you been having the treatment, like Gamboul ?'
'Gamboul is dead,' she said evenly.
'Dead?' Fleming jumped to his feet. 'Then the machine misfired! It's had a go at us and it's failed.'
Dawnay shook her head.
'It hasn't done either. Gamboul was only supposed to protect us until we were in a position to use our own judgement.'
He nodded towards the massive panels of the computer.
'Or its...'
