'I liked him, you know. Very much. I came to see what I could do,' he pleaded.
She was fighting back her tears. 'You've done enough.
You've saved the world - from your own muddle. So now you think it is all right. How can you - all of you - be so arrogant? You don't believe in God. You don't accept life as His gift. You want to change it because you think you're greater than God.'
'I tried to stop... ' His voice trailed away.
'You tried, and we suffer. The girl - your girl - was right when she said you condemn us. Why don't you go back and listen to her?'
'She is dying.'
'You kill her too?' She looked at him more with pity than with hatred. He could not answer. He laid the little parcel of Abu's possessions at the foot of the child's cot and walked away.
Back at the compound, he stole like an interloper by a roundabout route to his own quarters. He took out the computer print-out and his own calculations from a drawer and began studying them.
He had put them away when Dawnay had refused to help him, because he felt that he could not possibly do them himself.
He simply did not know enough bio-chemistry. For what seemed a lifetime he had avoided Andre's room, because he could no longer face the fact of her dying, and by now he had given up all hope of Dawnay having the time, energy, or will to be able to help him.
Dawnay now was installed in the executive block, at the centre of a quickly-spun web of radio and cable communications, directing and advising struggling scientists all round the world. He did not know how she managed it, or whether she ever slept; he didn't even see her.
He sat in his little room and stared glumly at the mass of figures. Then he opened a fresh bottle of whisky and started to try to make head or tail of them. It was close on midnight when he walked a little unsteadily across the deserted clearing to the laboratory.
With the experimental work over, the master breeding tanks had been transferred to the executive building where there was room for the regiments of assistants Dawnay could now direct. The laboratory where it had all begun was neat and lifeless. He groped for a switch. The light came on.
Most of the circuits had been restored during the previous day.
Hardly knowing from what recesses of memory of his student days they came, or how much was inspired by the neat Scotch, he began to find the facts he needed arranging themselves in his mind. Slowly and laboriously, and a little drunkenly, he started to make a chemical synthesis out of the mass of calculation he had written down.
His own training kept him roughly on the right path, but he ruefully had to face the fact that the ordinary, plebeian routine of practical chemistry was really beyond him. He lacked patience and accuracy; but obstinacy, and the memory of Lemka's pitying eyes, drove him on. He did not notice that morning sunlight was outshining the bare electric bulbs, nor did he hear the door open.
'What a hell of a mess!' said Dawnay's voice. 'Look at my laboratory. What do you think you're doing?'
He dropped off the high stool at the bench and stretched.
'Hello, Madeleine,' he said. 'I've been trying to synthesise this thing for Andre. Most of the main chain seems to have jelled. But the side chains are all to hell.'
Dawnay ran an expert eye over his work amid the litter spread across bench and desks. 'I'm not surprised,' she exclaimed. 'You've achieved a glorious mess. Better leave it to me.'
'I thought you hadn't time. I thought you were too busy setting the world to rights.'
She ignored what he was saying and went on looking at the equations he had written down.
'Admittedly,' she said slowly, 'if there's a chemical deficiency in her blood or endocrine glands there must be a chemical answer, but we can't know whether this is it.'
'It has to be, doesn't it?' he suggested. 'Our electronic boss says so.'
She considered for a time. 'Why do you want to do this, John?' she enquired. 'You've always been afraid of her.
Always wanted her out of the way.'
'Now I want her to live!'
She eyed him speculatively, a smile hovering around her mouth. 'Because you're a scientist and you want to know what the message is really all about? You can't bear to think that Gamboul knew and you don't? That's really the reason, isn't it?'
'You've some funny old ideas,' he smiled.
'Maybe,' she answered, 'maybe.' She reached for an overall on the wall hook. 'Go and get some breakfast, John.
Then come back here. I'll have some work for you to do.'
The two of them worked in perfect, almost instinctive co-operation, carefully avoiding any kind of moral or emotional argument. They were like enemies who were forced to live in the same cell. They talked of nothing but the enormous complication of the job, and for ten solid days, and most of the nights, they carried on. Messages about the world-wide improvements in barometric pressure, news bulletins reporting a noticeable lessening of wind violence, were just noted and then forgotten.
Because of her own forebodings or failure, Dawnay did not even tell Fleming that even before the checking was complete she had started injections on Andre. The ethics did not bother her. Andre's life was hovering near its end in any case.
Fleming still avoided the girl's sick room. He told himself that he would not see her until he could give her hope. He knew Dawnay was visiting her regularly, but he deliberately refrained from asking how she was.
And Dawnay, noting the slow improvement in her patient, hardly dared to believe that she had succeeded. Only when the doctor came and made prolonged and successful tests of muscular reflexes did she admit even to herself that the near-impossible had happened.
It was Andre herself who settled the matter. 'I am getting well,' she said one morning as she waited for another injection.
'You have saved my life.'
'You have saved yourself,' Dawnay said gently. You and John and the computer calculations.'
'What will he do now - now that I'm to go on?' Andre asked.
'I don't know.' Dawnay had wondered so much herself that she had been awaiting and dreading this question. 'He's divided. One part wants to go on. The other is frightened.
We're all like that. But fear doesn't entirely stop us going forward.'
'And I stand for going forward?' Andre asked.
'For much more. Down here on our cosy little earth we used to think we were protected from the outside by sheer distance. Now we see that intelligence - pure, raw intelligence - can cross great gulfs of space and threaten us.'
'You still think of me as a threat from outside?'
'No,' Dawnay answered. 'No, I don't.'
Andre smiled. 'Thank you for that. Can't I see him soon?'
'You're strong enough to get-up,' Dawnay agreed. 'He should see you. Yes,' she went on after a pause. 'We'll go together when you can walk.'
One evening the following week Fleming went back to the computer block. Partly to ease his conscience, and partly because he needed some fairly unskilled help, he had invited Yusel to work on the computer. The salary was good, which would help Lamka and the child.
When Dawnay found them there, the Arab excused himself and she was left alone with Fleming.
'John,' she said, 'Andre's here.'
'Where ?'
'Outside.' She smiled a little grimly at Fleming's amazement.
'She's cured, John. We've done it. She'll be all right now.'
At first she thought he was not going to say anything at all. Then he asked, in a hurt voice. 'Why couldn't you have told me?'
'I wasn't sure which way it was going.'
He stared at her with amazement. 'So you've repaired her, and the first thing you do is to bring her here -
