She made no sound as she moved the ends of the wires towards his eyes. There was no reason why he should wake; but suddenly, for some unknown reason, he did. All he could see was a silhouetted figure standing over him, and more from instinct than reason, he flexed one leg under the bedclothes and kicked out with all his might through his sheet and blanket.
He caught her in the midriff, and she fell back across the room with a sort of sick grunt. He fumbled for his bedlight and switched it on. For a moment it dazzled him; he sat up confused and panting while the girl struggled to her knees, still holding the ends of wire; then, as he took in what was happening, he leapt out of bed, pulled the ends of flex out of the wall-socket and turned to her. But by this time she was on her feet and half-way out of the room.
“No you don’t!” He threw himself at the door.
She side-stepped and, with her hands behind her, backed across to the table where he had had his supper. For a moment it looked as if she was going to give in; then without warning she lunged out at him with her right hand, and there was a breadknife in it.
“You bitch!” He caught her wrist, twisted the knife out of it and threw her down.
She gasped and lay writhing, holding her wrenched wrist with the other hand and staring up at him, not so much in fury as in desperation.
He stooped and picked up the knife keeping his eye on her all the time.
“All right—kill me.” There was fear in her face now, and in her voice. “It won’t do you any good.”
“No?” His own voice was shaking and he was panting hard.
“It’ll delay things a little, that’s all.” She watched intently as he opened a drawer and slid the knife into it. This seemed to encourage her, and she sat up.
“Why do you want me out of the way?” he asked.
“It was the next thing to be done. I warned you.”
“Thanks.” He shuffled round, buttoning up his pyjamas, pushing his feet into a pair of slippers, calming down.
“Everything you do is predictable.” She seemed collected again already. “There’s nothing you can think of that won’t be countered.”
“What’s the next thing now?”
“If you go away, go right away and don’t interfere—”
He cut across her. “Get up.” She looked at him in surprise.
“Get up.” He waited while she got to her feet and then pointed to a chair. “Sit down there.”
She gave him another puzzled look, and then sat. He went and stood over her.
“Why do you only do what the machine wants?”
“You’re such children,” she told him. “You think we’re slave and master, the machine and me, but we’re both slaves. We’re containers which you’ve made, for something you don’t understand.”
“Do you?” asked Fleming.
“I can see the difference between our intelligence and yours. I can see that ours is going to take over and yours is going to die. You think you’re the height and crown of things, the last word—” She broke off and massaged her wrist where he had twisted it.
“I don’t think that,” he said. “Did I hurt you?”
“Not badly. You’re more intelligent than most; but not enough—you’ll go down with the dinosaurs. They ruled the earth once.”
“And you?”
She smiled, and it was the first time he had seen her do so. “I’m the missing link.”
“And if we break you?”
“They make another one.”
“And if we break the machine?”
“The same.”
“And if we destroy you both, and the message and all our work on it, so that there’s nothing left? The message has ended—did you know?” She shook her head. Her confirmation of all he feared came flooding in on him, and also the realisation of how to stop it. “Your friends up there have got tired of talking to us. You’re on your own now, you and the computer. Suppose we break the pair of you?”
“You’ll keep a higher intelligence off the earth, for a while.”
“Then that’s what we have to do.”
She looked up at him steadily. “You can’t.”
“We can try.”
She shook her head again, slowly and as if regretfully. “Go away. Live the sort of life you want to, while you can. You can’t do anything else.”
“Unless you help me.” He returned her look and held it, as he had done before in the computer building. “You’re not just a thinking machine, you’re made in our likeness.”
“No!”
“You have senses—feelings. You’re three parts human being, tied by compulsion to something that’s set to destroy us. All you have to do, to save us and free yourself, is change the setting.” He took her by the shoulders, as if to shake her, but she shrugged his hands off.
“Why should I?”
“Because you want to, three-quarters of you—”
She stood up and moved away from him.
“Three-quarters of me is an accident. Don’t you think I suffer enough as it is? Don’t you think I get punished for even listening to you?”
“Will you be punished for to-night?”
“Not if you go away.” She moved towards the door hesitantly, as if expecting him to stop her, but he let her go. “I was sent to kill you.”
She was very pale and beautiful, standing in the dark doorway, and she spoke without passion or satisfaction. He looked at her grimly.
“Well, the chips are down,” he said.
There was a small lean-to café by Thorness station, and Judy left Fleming there while she met the train from Aberdeen. It was only the following evening: Reinhart had been quick. Fleming went into the little back room which had been reserved for them, and waited. It was a sad and cheerless little room dominated by an old farmhouse table and a set of chairs and walled with dilapidated and badly-painted weatherboards which carried discoloured cola and mineral-water ads. He helped himself to a swig from his pocket-flask. He could hear the rising wind moaning outside, and then the diesel thrumming up from the south. It stopped, palpitating noisily, in the station, and after a minute or two there was a whistle and a hoot on its siren and it drew away, leaving a silence out of which came the sound of the wind again, and of footsteps on the gravel outside the café.
Judy led Reinhart and Osborne into the room. They were all heavily muffled in winter clothes, and Osborne carried a sizeable suitcase.
“It’s blowing up for a blizzard, I think,” he said, putting the case down. He looked unhappy and thoroughly out of his element. “Can we talk in here?”
“It’s all ours,” Judy said. “I fixed the man.”
“And the duty operator?” asked Reinhart.
“I fixed him too. He knows what to do and he’ll keep his mouth shut for us.”
Reinhart turned to Fleming. “How is Madeleine Dawnay?”
“She’ll pull through. So will the boy. The enzyme works all right.”
“Well, thank God for that.” Reinhart unbuttoned his coat. He looked no worse for his journey; in fact, the activity seemed to have refreshed him.
Osborne appeared to be the most dispirited of them. “What do you want to do with the computer?” he asked Fleming.
“Try to uncork it, or else—”
“Or else what?”
“That’s what we want to find out. It’s either deliberately malevolent, or it’s snarled up. Either it was programmed to work the way it does, or something’s gone wrong with it. I think the first; I always have done.”
“You’ve never been able to prove it.”
“What about Dawnay?”
“We need something more tangible than that.”
“Osborne will go to the Minister,” put in Reinhart. “He’ll go to the Prime Minister if necessary. Won’t you?”
“If I have evidence,” said Osborne.
“I’ll give you evidence! It had another go at killing me last night.”