“One I’d understand?”
“Look how beautifully he’s ticking over—how sleek and rhythmical he is.” The computer was working steadily, with a gentle hum and a regular flashing of lights. “Purring away with us inside him. Suppose I pulled out the plug now?”
“They wouldn’t let you.”
“Or got a crowbar and smashed him up.”
“You wouldn’t get far with the guards. Anyhow, they’d rebuild it.”
He took out a pad and some papers from a drawer in the control desk. “Then we’ll have to shake it intellectually, won’t we? I’ve shaken the young lady a bit. Now we’d better start on him.” He saw that she was looking at him doubtfully. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to blow your whistle. Are they coming back this way?”
“No. They’ll go out through the lab entrance.”
“Good.” He started copying numbers from the sheets on to the pad. “What is that?”
“A shortened formula for the creature.”
“Andromeda?”
“Call her whatever amuses you.” He scribbled on. “This is what the machine calls her. Not a formula, really—a naming tag.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Re-arrange it slightly.”
“You’re not going to do any damage?”
He laughed at her. “You’d better go on with your conducted tour; this’ll take time.”
“I shall warn the guards.”
“Warn whom you like.”
She hesitated, then gave it up and went to rejoin the party. When she had gone he checked the figures and walked over with the pad to the input unit.
“I’ll give you something to think about!” he said aloud to the machine, and sat down and started tapping the message in.
He had hardly finished when Andromeda came back.
“I thought you were going to see the rocketry.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It is not interesting.”
The lamps on the display panel started to flash faster, and suddenly there was a fantastic clatter from the output unit as the printer began to work furiously.
Andromeda looked up in surprise. “What is happening?”
Fleming went quickly to the printer and read the figures as they were banged out on to the paper.
He smiled. “Your friend seems to have lost his temper.”
She crossed the room and looked over his shoulder.
“This is nonsense.”
“Exactly.”
The printer stopped as suddenly as it had begun, leaving them in silence.
“What have you been doing?” the girl asked. She read the figures through uncomprehendingly. “This doesn’t mean anything.”
Fleming grinned at her. “No. He’s flipped for a moment. I think he’s psychologically disturbed.”
“What have you done to it?” She started towards the terminals, but he stopped her.
“Come away from there.”
She halted uncertainly. “What have you done?”
“Only given him a little information.”
Looking around, she saw the pad on top of the input keys. She went slowly over to it and read it.
“That’s my name-tag—reversed!”
“Negatived,” said Fleming.
“It’ll think I’m dead!”
“That’s what I meant him to think.”
She looked up at him, puzzled. “Why?”
“I thought I’d let him know he couldn’t have it all his own way.”
“That was very foolish.”
“He seems to value you highly,” he said scornfully.
She turned away towards the terminals. “I must tell it I’m alive.”
“No!” He seized hold of her by the arms.
“I must. It thinks I’m dead, and I must tell it I’m not.”
“Then I shall tell it you are. I can play this game until it doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going.”
He let go one arm and picked up the pad from the keyboard.
“Give me that.” She pulled her other arm free. “You can’t win, you know.” She turned away again, and as Fleming moved to stop her she suddenly shouted at him. “Leave me alone! Go away! Go out of here!”
They stood facing each other, both trembling, as if neither could move. Then Fleming took hold of her firmly with both hands and drew her towards him.
He sniffed at her in surprise. “You’re wearing scent!”
“Let go of me. I shall call the guards.”
Fleming started to laugh. “Open your mouth, then.”
She parted her lips and he put a kiss on them. Then he held her at arms’ length and examined her.
“Nice or nasty?”
“Leave me alone, please.” Her voice was uncertain. She looked at him in a confused way, and then down, but he still held her.
“Who do you belong to?”
“I belong where my brain tells me.”
“Then tell it this—” He kissed her again, sensuously but dispassionately, for a long time.
“Don’t,” she begged, pulling her lips away. He held her close to him and spoke gently.
“Don’t you like the taste of lips? Or the taste of food, or the smell and feel of the fresh air outside, or the hills beyond the wire with sunshine and shadows on them and larks singing? And the company of human beings?”
She shook her head slowly. “They’re not important.”
“Aren’t they?” He spoke with his mouth close to her. “They weren’t allowed for by whatever disembodied intelligence up there you owe allegiance to, but they’re important to organic life, as you’ll find out.”
“Anything can be allowed for,” she said.
“But they weren’t in the calculations.”
“They can be put in.” She looked up at him. “You can’t beat us, Dr. Fleming. Stop trying before you get hurt.”
He let go of her. “Am I likely to get hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Why should you warn me?”
“Because I like you,” she said, and he half smiled at her.
“You’re talking like a human being.”
“Then it’s time I stopped. Please go now.”
He stood obstinately, but there was a note of pleading in her voice that had never been there before, and an expression of unhappiness on her face. “Please... Do you want me to be punished?”
“By whom?”
“Who do you think?” She glanced at the computer control racks.
Fleming was taken off-guard: this was something he had never thought of.
“Punished? That’s a new one.” He put the pad of figures in his pocket and went to the door. In the doorway he turned back to deliver a last shot. “Who do you belong to?”
She watched him go and then turned reluctantly towards the display panel, and walked slowly, compulsively, up to it. She raised her hands to communicate with the terminals, then hesitated. Her face was strained, but she raised them again and touched the plates. For a moment all that happened was that the lights blinked faster, as the machine digested the information she gave it. Then the voltage meter below the panel suddenly peaked.
Andromeda gave a cry of pain and tried to pull her hands away from the plates, but the current held her fast. The voltage needle dropped, only to swing up again, and she cried out again... And then a third time and a fourth and over and over and over...
Once more it was Judy who found her. She came in a few minutes later, looking for Fleming, and saw to her horror the girl lying crumpled on the floor, where Christine had been.
“Oh no!” The words jerked out of her, and she ran forward and turned the body over. Andromeda was still alive. She moaned as Judy touched her, and curled away, whimpering quietly and nursing her hands together. Judy raised the blonde head and rested it in her lap and then took the hands and opened them. They were black with burning, except where the red flesh lay bare down to the bone.
Judy let them go gently. “How did it happen?”