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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 xnidnight,' 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 tip 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.
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'Good I' 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.'
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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.
tie 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 ontside
help .... '
Dawnay was lost in her own thoughts. 'I don't know, I just
don't know,' she mmTmlred.
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
pro?,'ramme,' Fleming said when the racket died down.
'All right,' Dawnay agreed; 'I'll try to explain to her.'
An intepziew was not granted until the following morning.
Gambonl 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 too through
the foTnalities 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 older people. The
President was suffering from bronchitis.
The Salim residence looked shabby and dilapidated. There
had been some minor stma'n damage. No one had troubled to
sweep up the rubble. The palm trees which had grown in the
courtyard for More than fifty years had been broken by the
wind.
An armed guard escorted Dawnay to Gamboul's office.
She could see at once how the other woman had changed.
The sensnality seemed to have drained out of GambouI. Her
face had become More beautiful in a haggard, almost
aesthetic way, and there was something fanatical about her
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bright dark eyes. Something terrifyingly self-possessed and
dedicated.
She was surprisingly friendly, asking what she could do,
'You have everything you need for our work?' she enquired.
'For yours; not for mine,' Dawnay corrected her. Then,
without preamble she gaYe a factual and restrained report on
the reasons for the state of the weather.
Gamboul listened quietly, without interrupting. She
walked to the window and looked out across the city to the
towering masses of cumulus beyond it over the desert.
She was quiet for a time after Dawnay had finished. 'How
shall we die?' she murmured, walking back to her desk and
sitting down. Dawnay explained.
Gamboul waved an expressive hand. 'That wasn't the
meaning in the message,' she protested. 'It wasn't meant to
happen. Everything was clear and logical. What I saw was
- desolation, but not like this. And there was power too.'
'What did you learn you had to do?' Dawnay prompted.
Gamboul's mind was far away, reviving that night in front
of the computer screen. 'Govern,' she muttered. 'Everyone
knows that it has to be, but nobody will make the real effort.
A few have tried .... '
'Hitler? Napoleon?' Dawnay suggested.
Gamboul was not insulted. 'Yes,' she agreed. CBut they
were not brilliant enough, or rather they did not have the
help of the brain from out there. It will be necessary to sacrifice
almost everything. But not like this! Not now! We're
not ready I'
'How much power have you ?' Dawnay asked.
'Enough here. But this was to be only a beginning.'
'It still could be,' said Dawnay. She could see now a way of
appealing to the other woman's greed and fear.
Gamboul turned sharply to her. 'What do you mean?' she
demanded.
'It's possible,' Dawnay explained, 'that we may be able to
find a way to save the atmosphere. Not probable, but just a
chance. We're getting some help from the computer with a
formula that looks like an anti-bacterium. We may be able to
synthesise it. But I shall need help and equipment. If we
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succeed we shall have to mass produce it and then pump it
into the sea all over the world.'
Gamboul gave her a look of suspicion. 'How can you
produce so much?'
Carefully Dawnay explained that with organisation the
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