“Andre?”
“No. Not her. Whatever you do, don’t take her into your confidence.”
Dawnay remembered the operator. She took the pad, and Fleming showed her the section to be fed in.
“I’m out of my depth, I’ll admit that,” she said. Then she put down her glass and went out.
As she walked across the compound, she could hear the beginning of some post-Schoenbergian piece of music from Fleming’s chalet; then she was in the computer building and heard nothing but the hum of equipment. Andre was in the control room, and a young operator. Andre kept herself even more to herself since the affair of her hands. She haunted the computer block like a pale shadow and seldom left it. She made no attempt to communicate with anyone, and although she was never hostile she was completely withdrawn. She looked with slight interest at Dawnay coming in.
“How’s it getting on?” Dawnay asked.
“We have put in all the data,” Andre said. “You should have the formula soon.”
Dawnay moved away and joined the operator at the input unit. He was a young man, a very fresh post-graduate, who asked no questions, but did as he was told.
“Input that too, will you?” Dawnay gave him the pad. He rested it above the keyboard and started tapping.
“What is that?” Andre asked, hearing the sound.
“Something I want calculated.” Dawnay kept her away from it, until the display panel suddenly broke out into wild flashing.
“What are you putting in?” Andre snatched at the pad and read from it. “Where did you get it?”
“That’s my business,” said Dawnay.
“Why don’t you keep out of this?”
“You’d better leave us,” Dawnay told the operator.
He rose obediently and wandered out of the room.
Andre waited until he had gone.
“I do not wish you any harm,” she said then and there was not passion but great strength in her voice. “Why don’t you keep out?”
“How dare you talk to me like that?” Dawnay heard herself sounding weak and ridiculous, but she could only answer as it took her. “I created you—I made you.”
“You made me?” Andre looked at her with contempt, then crossed to the control panel and put her hands on the terminals. Immediately the display lamps became less agitated, but they continued to flicker so long as the girl stood there, strong and positive like a young goddess. After a minute she moved away and stood looking at Dawnay.
“We are getting rather tired of this—this little joke,” she said calmly, as if delivering a message. “Neither you, nor Dr. Fleming, nor anyone else can come between us.”
“If you’re trying to frighten me—”
“I don’t know what you’ve begun now. I cannot be responsible.” Andromeda appeared to be looking through her into a space beyond. The output printer went noisily into action, and Dawnay started at the sound. She followed Andre over to it, and by the time she got there the message finished. Andre examined the paper, and then tore it off and gave it to her.
“Your enzyme formula.”
“Is that all?” Dawnay felt a sense of relief.
“Isn’t that enough for you?” asked Andre, and watched her go with a set, hostile face.
Dawnay had three assistants working for her at the time: a senior research chemist, a man, and two post-graduate helpers, a boy and a girl. Between them they made a chemical synthesis based on the new formula. It involved a good deal of handling in the laboratory, but none of them worried about it because it had no irritant effect. By the end of a day or two, however, they were all beginning to feel signs of lassitude and wasting. There seemed to be no reason, and they worked on, but by the end of the third day the girl collapsed, and by the following morning Dawnay and the man had keeled over as well.
Hunter packed them off to the sick-bay, where they were soon joined by the boy. Whatever the disease was, it accelerated fast; there was no fever or inflammation, its victims simply degenerated. Cells died, the basic processes of metabolism slowed or stopped, and one after another the four weakened and slid into a state of coma. Hunter was desperate and appealed to Geers, who put a screen of silence round the whole business.
Fleming did not hear details until the fourth day, when Judy broke security to tell him. He immediately phoned Reinhart and asked him to come from Bouldershaw, and he persuaded Judy to find a paper for him. When she gave it to him, he locked himself up in his room with it all night, emerging in the morning grim but satisfied. But by that time the girl assistant was dead.
Eleven
Antidote
They were covering her face when Fleming arrived at the sick bay. The other three lay silent and still in their beds, their faces drawn and as pale as the pillows. Dawnay, in the next cubicle to the girl, was being kept barely alive by blood transfusion. She lay marble-still, like an effigy of some old warrior on a tomb. He stayed looking at her until Hunter joined him.
“What do you want?” Hunter was run ragged, and all rough edges. He gave up the effort to be so much as polite to Fleming.
“It’s my fault,” said Fleming, looking down at the drained face on the pillow.
Hunter half-laughed. “Humility’s a new line for you.”
“All right then—it wasn’t!” Fleming spun round on him, flaming, and fished a clip of papers out of his pocket. “But I came to give you this.”
Hunter took the papers suspiciously. “What is it?”
“The enzyme formula.”
“How the devil did you get hold of it?”
Fleming sighed. “Illegally. Like I have to do everything.”
“I’ll keep it, if you don’t mind,” said Hunter. He looked at it again. “Why is it crossed through?”
“Because it’s wrong.” Fleming flicked over the top sheet to show the one underneath. “That’s the right formula. You’d better get it made up quickly.”
“The right formula?” Hunter looked slightly lost.
“What the computer gave Dawnay had an inversion of what she wanted. It switched negative for positive, as it were, to pay her back for a little game I’d put her up to.”
“What game?”
“It gave the anti-enzyme, instead of the enzyme. Instead of a cell regenerative, a cell destructor. Presumably it acts through the skin and they absorbed it while they were working on it.” He picked up one of Dawnay’s hands that lay limp on the sheet. “There’s nothing you can do unless you can make the proper enzyme in time. That’s why I’ve brought you the corrected formula.”
“Do you really think... ?” Hunter frowned sceptically at the clip of papers, and Fleming, looking up from Dawnay’s hand, which he was still holding, regarded him with distaste.
“Don’t you want to make your reputation?”
“I want to save lives,” said Hunter.
“Then make up the proper formula. It should work as an antidote to the one Dawnay got, in which case it ought to reverse what’s happening now. At least you can try it. If not—” He shrugged and laid Dawnay’s emaciated hand back on the sheet. “That machine will do anyone’s dirty work, so long as it suits it.”
Hunter sniffed. “If it’s so damn clever, why did it make a mistake like this?”
“It didn’t. The only mistake it made was it got the wrong person—the wrong people. It was after me, and it didn’t care how many people it wrote off in the process. One of your trade agreements with Intel, and it could have been half the world.”
He left Hunter scowling at the formula, but obviously obliged to try it.
That afternoon the man died; but the new enzyme had been made up and was administered to the two survivors. Nothing dramatic happened at first but by the evening it was clear that deterioration was slowing. Judy visited the sick-bay after supper, and then began making her way to the main gate to meet Reinhart, who was due on the late train. As she passed the computer block she felt an impulse to go in. There was no operator on duty, and she found Andre sitting alone at the control desk, gazing in front of her. The accumulated hatred of months, the frustrations of years, suddenly boiled up in Judy.