'Madeleine,' he said gently, 'if we can't get away from this place without finishing up abruptly dead then surely I can at least warn - '
She looked at Andre, sitting quietly near them, dreaming in the comforting dappled shade from the palm trees. 'Who can you warn, John?' she asked. 'Who'll listen to you now that they know what you did back at Thorness?'
'So we just stay here and do the thing's filthy work?' he asked bitterly.
She frowned. 'My work isn't dirty. I'm trying to help ordinary, mortal people, a good many of them starving at this moment. Salim may be ruthless, but his motives are good. He wants to do something for his country.
Fleming reached for a cigarette box which an orderly had silently placed on a table at the side of his chair, along with some iced fruit. The service, as Gamboul had promised, was very good. He lit a cigarette and then thoughtfully watched the smoke spiralling from the glowing end. 'There's one possibility,' he said at last. 'I can probably get the circuitry right pretty easily. Neilson obviously did a fairly good job, and young Abu Zeki knows his stuff. The computer will work, but it'll depend partially on the information we feed into it. If I make it think I'm for it .... '
He paused to sip his drink. 'That was my mistake last time.
I attacked it, and I couldn't really win. But if I inform its memory circuits that they- Intel and Co. - are really against it, its logical processes will come up with something to defeat them.'
'Perhaps by destroying them - and the whole country?'
Dawnay suggested.
Fleming nodded. 'That would be better than the alternative.
Which would be that it would lay down the law wholesale through Gamboul, Salim and the rest of the crooks they're working for.'
Dawnay looked thoughtfully across at Andre, who had relaxed in a day-dreaming half sleep. She looked very lovely and feminine.
'And the girl?' she asked.
'I've stopped thinking of her as anyone from, well, outside this planet. She's a virtually normal piece of human chemistry. The danger is when the machine gets her and uses her. I want to stop that whatever else I do or don't do.
I've grown rather fond of her.'
'Don't sound so sad about it!' Dawnay laughed.
He glanced to make sure that Andre was not trying to listen. 'There's more to it than that. Her co-ordination's going. She spends too much time like she is now. And when she moves around it's jerky, like a mild spastic case. I thought at first it was shock or the after effects of her experience, physical after effects of her injuries. But it's getting worse. There's something wrong with the way she was made.'
'You mean I made a mistake .... '
'Not necessarily you,' he reassured her. 'Something wrong with the programming for the calculations.'
He stopped talking. Andre opened her eyes, stretched lazily, and sat up. 'What gorgeous sunshine,' she said smiling.
She walked, rather jerkily, out of the shade and began to look around. Fleming and Dawnay saw her move near the doors to the computer building. The sentry, lolling against the wall, stepped forward, thought better of it, and let her pass inside.
Fleming jumped up out of his chair. 'Why don't they stop her?'
He started to move away, but Dawnay put out a hand to stop him.
'She'll be all right.'
'With that?' Fleming asked her. 'You're mad.'
'I'm not mad. Leave her there.'
Reluctantly Fleming stayed. They waited tense and alert as the minutes ticked by.
Abruptly the vague vibrationary hum which came all the time from the building grew louder, and there was a rhythmic clicking.
'What the hell's that?' shouted Fleming, jumping to his feet.
Dawnay's exclamation, 'It's the computer, it's working,'
was needless. Both of them rushed across to the swing doors and down the corridor.
Abu Zeki came running towards them.
'What's happened?' Fleming asked.
'I can't say, Dr Fleming,' Abu replied. 'The young woman came in, stood looking around, and then sat down before the control panel in the sensory bay.'
Fleming pushed past him. The master screen was quivering with wavy bands of light; crazy geometrical patterns shifted across, faded, and changed their shapes.
Seated in the chair at the panel was Andre.
'Andre,' Fleming called, pausing in the face of some force which he did not understand but which seemed to paralyse his legs. She did not turn. 'Andromeda,' he yelled.
Very slowly she turned her head. Her pale face was glowing with joy.
'It speaks to me I' she cried. 'It speaks!'
'Oh my God,' Fleming groaned.
Abu coughed. 'I must go and inform Mam'selle Gamboul of what has happened,' he said.
CHAPTER SIX
CYCLONE
Fleming watched with misgiving the transformation which came over Andre. The lethargy and almost childlike innocence disappeared. She was alert and avid for activity; yet she seemed unexcited. Fleming knew that the change was due to the computer, yet this was a different Andre from the robot of Thorness - the changes were indefinable but nevertheless they were there.
He was a little comforted by the frankness and trust which she showed towards him. He thought about it all night, alternately lying on his narrow, comfortable bed and then pacing about the small, neat, air-conditioned room which had been allotted him. By the morning he had made a decision.
If he was to cancel out the evil which he felt in the machine he must somehow trick it into working in the way he wanted. This he had already decided to do - it was his only possible ally against his hosts. But he could not trick it if it was working through Andre; he could not trick her. He had to gamble on making an ally of her too. In the morning he told her all he felt about it.
When he had finished she laughed almost gaily. 'It is very easy,' she insisted. 'We must tell it what to do.'
He did not share her confidence. I can't see how it's a practical policy.'
She became thoughtful. 'I think the facts are these. All the real complexity is in the calculating and memory sections.
The memory is enormous. But when a calculation has been made it has to be presented for assessment in a very simple format.'
'You mean like a company's brief balance sheet summarises all the complex activities of a year's trading?'
She nodded. 'I expect so. But if the balance is weighted '
'I get it!' he interrupted. 'The decision circuits act like the shareholders reading that balance sheet. On the basis of what they read into it they decide future company policy.' He frowned. 'But I'm dead sure that our balance sheet, produced by the computer's memory section, is nicely tricked up via the programme formulated by the original message, the stuff from Andromeda. So the decision circuits will execute its orders, not ours.'
'Unless we change them.'
He got up and paced around the room. 'Our changes would just be deletions. The result would be a glorified adding machine. Neither enemy or ally. There'd be no sense of purpose.'
'But it could be given our purpose,' she said urgently. 'One that we communicated to it. Or at least, one I communicated.
I can do it, John.'
'I suspect you can. That's why I've tried to keep you away from it.'
'You can't,' she said quietly. 'It is the reason why - I'm here.' She stretched her hand and brushed it against his. 'If you want to use the computer you'll have to trust me.'
He turned to look at her, his eyes searching into hers. 'I think I'll go for a stroll around the compound,' he said abruptly. 'You get some rest. You aren't fit yet. And don't think too much about all this.'