Twelve
Annihilation
It was very late when they got back to the café. The snow was blowing a blizzard and piling up against the north wall; inside the small back room Reinhart and Osborne, huddled in their coats, were playing a miserable and inattentive game with a portable chess set.
Fleming felt too dazed to make a case for himself. He left Judy to explain and sat hunched on one of the hard farm chairs while Reinhart asked questions and Osborne whinnied at him a long tirade of utter hopelessness and contempt.
“How dare you trick me into this?” The last shreds of his usual urbanity disappeared. For all his Corps Diplomatique training and breeding, he was unbearably distressed. “I only agreed to be party to this in the hope that we might furnish the Minister with a case. But it’ll be the end of his career, and of mine.”
“And of mine,” sighed Reinhart. “Though I think I’d be willing to sacrifice that if the machine’s destroyed.”
“It isn’t destroyed,” Osborne objected. “He couldn’t even make a job of that. If the original message is intact they can build it again.”
“It’s my mess,” said Fleming. “You can blame me. I’ll carry the can.”
Osborne neighed scornfully. “That won’t keep us out of prison.”
“Is that what’s worrying you? How about the rebuilt machine and the next creature, and the grip we’ll never be able to shake off?”
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” asked Judy.
They all looked, with only the faintest of hope, at Reinhart. He went over it with them move by move, like the checking of a calculation, and in the end drew an entire blank. They had no hope of getting a key until morning, and by then Geers would know about it and the whole business would be put in motion again. There was no doubt in their minds now that Fleming’s theories were right; what mattered was that he had failed them in action.
“The only thing,” said Reinhart, “is for Osborne to go back to London on the first train and when the news breaks look surprised.”
“Where am I supposed to have been?” Osborne inquired.
“You came, did a brief inspection, and left. The rest happened after you’d gone, and that’s the truth. You wouldn’t know anything about it.”
“And the ‘official’ I took in?”
“He came out with you.”
“And who was ‘he’?”
“Whoever you can trust. Browbeat or bribe someone to say they came up from London and went back with you. You must clear yourself and keep your influence. We must all clear ourselves if we can. They’ll build it again, as John says, and there must be at least one of us whose advice may be taken.”
“And who’s supposed to have bust the computer?” asked Fleming.
The Professor gave a small smile of satisfaction. “The girl. It can be assumed that she went off the rails and turned against it, and either she was electrocuted in the process or she died of the delayed shock of her punishment, aggravated by the frenzy it drove her into. Or whatever they like to decide. She’s dead either way, so she can’t deny it.”
“You’re sure she is?” Osborne asked Fleming.
“Want to inspect the body?”
“Ask me,” said Judy, with a bitter sort of sickness. “I see them all die.”
“O.K.” Fleming roused himself and turned to Reinhart. “What are Judy and I supposed to have been doing?”
The Professor answered him pat. “You weren’t there. So far as anyone knows we left the operator in there with Miss Adamson. They left together, and it happened afterwards.”
“It won’t hold,” said Osborne. “There’ll be a hell of an enquiry.”
“It’s the best we can do.” Reinhart shivered slightly. “Whatever way you look at it, it’s a mess.”
They sat in their overcoats around the table, like four figures at a ghostly dinner, waiting for the night to pass and the snow to stop.
“Do you think it’ll hold up the trains?” asked Osborne after a while.
Reinhart cocked his head on one side, listening to the beating on the roof. “I shouldn’t think so. It sounds as though it’s easing off a little.” He turned his attention to Fleming. “How about you, John?”
“Judy and I’ll go back to the camp in the car. The road was passable when we came up just now.”
“Then you’d better go at once,” Reinhart said. “Pretend you’ve been for a joyride and go straight to your rooms. You haven’t seen anything or anyone.”
“What a night for a joyride!” Fleming stood up wearily and looked from one to the other of them. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
He drove back gropingly through the scudding snow, with Judy wiping the windscreen clear every minute or so, but already the storm was slacking. He left Judy at her chalet and drove round to his own. He was so tired that he did not want to get out of the car. It was an hour or so after midnight and the camp was asleep and deadened by the pall of white. As he opened the door, the inside of his hut looked darker than ever, by contrast with the snow-covered ground outside. He fumbled on the wall for his light switch, and as he touched it another, bandaged, hand fell on his own.
He had a moment of wild panic, then he pushed it off and switched the light on.
Andre stood there holding one of her bandaged hands in the other and moaning, looking deadly pale and ravaged; but not dead. He stared at her incredulously for a moment, then shut the door and crossed to the window to pull the curtains.
“Sit down and hold out your hands.” He took dressings and a tube of ointment from a cupboard and started gently and methodically replacing her rough bandages.
“I thought you couldn’t possibly be alive,” he said as he worked. “I saw the voltage.”
“You saw?” She sat on the bed, holding her hands out to him.
“Yes, I saw.”
“Then it was you.”
“Me—and an axe.” He looked at her pale, burnt-out face. “If I’d thought you’d had any life left in you—”
“You would have finished me too.” She said it for him without malice, simply stating a fact. Then she closed her eyes momentarily against a twinge of pain. “I have a stronger heart than—than people. It takes a lot to put me out of action.”
“Who did up your hands?”
“I did.”
“Who have you told?”
“No-one.”
“Doesn’t anyone know about the computer?”
“I do not think so.”
“Why haven’t you told them?” He grew more and more puzzled. “Why did you come here?”
“I did not know what would happen—what had happened. When I came round, I could not think of anything at first except the pain in my hands. Then I looked round and saw it all in ruins.”
“You could have called the guards.”
“I did not know what to do: I had no sort of direction. I felt lost without the computer. You know it is completely out of action?”
“I know.”
Her eyes seemed to burn in her pale face. “All I could think of was finding you. And my hands. I bandaged my hands and came here. I said nothing to the guards. And when you were not here, I waited. What is going to happen?”
“They’ll rebuild it.”
“No!”
“Don’t you want that?” he asked in surprise. “How about your ‘Higher Purpose’—your higher form of life?”
She did not answer. As he finished tying down the dressing her eyes closed again with pain, and he saw that she was shivering.
“You’re ice cold, aren’t you?” he said, feeling her forehead. He pulled his eiderdown across the bed and heaped it around her shoulders. “Keep that round you.”
“You think they will build it again?”
“Sure to.” He found a bottle of whisky and poured two glasses. “Now get that down. They won’t have me to help them but they’ll have you.”