Fred Hoyle - A for Andromeda

She felt safer when she got through the main gates, but terribly lonely. Quadring’s office was closed. There was no-one else she could talk to, and she did not want to meet Bridger in the mess. Dusk was falling as she walked between the chalets in the living-quarters, and suddenly she found herself at Fleming’s. She could not bear to be outside a moment longer. She knocked once at the door and walked straight in.

Fleming was lying on his bed listening to a recording of Webern on a high-fidelity set he had rigged for himself. Looking up, he saw Judy standing in the doorway, panting, her face flushed, her hair blown about.

“Very spectacular. What’s it in aid of?” He was half way through a bottle of Scotch.

Judy shut the door behind her. “John—”

“Well, what?”

“I’ve been shot at.”

“Phui.” He put down his glass and swung his feet to the floor.

“I have! Just now, up on the moors.”

“You mean whistled at.”

“I was standing at the top of the cliff when suddenly a bullet went close past me and smacked into the rock. I jumped back and another one—”

“Some of the brown jobs at target practice. They’re all rotten shots.” Fleming walked over to the record-player and switched it off. He was quite steady, quite sober in spite of the whisky.

“There was no-one,” said Judy. “No-one at all.”

“Then they weren’t bullets. Here, have a drink and calm yourself down.” He foraged for a glass for her.

“They were bullets,” Judy insisted, sitting on the bed. “Someone with a telescopic sight.”

“You’re really in a state, aren’t you?” He found a glass, half-filled it and handed it to her. “Why should anyone want to take pot shots at you?”

“There could be reasons.”

“Such as?”

Judy looked down into her glass.

“Nothing that makes any sense.”

“What were you doing on the cliffs?”

“Just looking at the sea.”

“What was on the sea?”

“Doctor Bridger’s boat. Nothing else.”

“Why were you so interested in Dennis’s boat?”

“I wasn’t.”

“Are you suggesting that he shot at you?”

“No. It wasn’t him.” She held the footboard of the bed to stop her hand from trembling. “Can I stay here a bit? Till I get over the shakes.”

“Do what you like. And drink that up.”

She took a mouthful of the undiluted whisky and felt it stinging her mouth and throat. From the quietness outside came a long low howl, and a piece of guttering on the but shook.

“What was that?”

“The wind,” said Fleming as he stood watching her.

She could feel the spirit moving down, glowing, into her stomach. “I don’t like this place.”

“Nor do I,” he said.

They drank in the silence broken only by the wind moaning round the camp buildings. The sky outside the window was almost dark, with blacker clouds blowing raggedly in from over the sea. She lowered her glass and looked Fleming in the eyes.

“Why does Doctor Bridger go to the island?” She never felt inclined to call Bridger by his first name.

“He goes bird-watching. You know jolly well he goes bird-watching.”

“Every evening?”

“Look, when I’m flaked out at the end of the day I go sailing.” This was true. Navigating a fourteen-footer was Fleming’s one outside activity. Not that he did it very often; and he did it alone, not with the camp sailing club. “Except when I’m really flaked, like now.”

He picked up the bottle by its neck and stood frowning, thinking of Dennis Bridger. “He goes snooping on sea-birds.”

“Always on the island?”

“That’s where they are,” he said impatiently. “There’s masses of stuff out there—gannets, guillemots, fulmars... Have some more of this.”

She let him pour some more into her glass. Her head was humming a little.

“I’m sorry I burst in.”

“Don’t mind me.” He rumpled her already tangled hair in his affectionate, unpredatory way. “I can do with a bit of company in this dump. Specially when it’s a sweet, sweet girl.”

“I’m not in the least sweet.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t like what I am.” Judy looked away from him, down at her glass again. “I don’t like what I do.”

“That makes two of us.” Fleming looked over her head towards the window. “I don’t like what I do either.”

“I thought you were completely taken up in it?”

“I was, but now it’s finished I don’t know. I’ve been trying to get myself sloshed on this, but I can’t.” He looked down at her in a confused way, not at all as he had done in the computer. “Perhaps you’re what I need.”

“John—”

“What?”

“Don’t trust me too much.”

Fleming grinned. “You up to something shady?”

“Not as far as you’re concerned.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, pushing up her chin with his hand. “You’ve an honest face.”

He kissed her forehead lightly, not very seriously.

“No.” She turned her head aside. He dropped his hand and turned away from her, as if his attention had moved to something else. The wind howled again.

“What are you going to do about this shooting?” he asked after a pause.

She shivered in spite of the warmth inside her, and he put a hand on her shoulder.

“Sometimes at night,” he said, “I lie and listen to the wind and think about that chap over there.”

“What chap?”

He nodded in the direction of the computer, the new computer which he had made.

“He hasn’t a body, not an organic body that can breathe and feel like ours. But he’s a better brain.”

“It’s not a person.” She pulled Fleming down on to the bed so that they were sitting side by side. She felt, for once, much older than him.

“We don’t know what it is, do we?” said Fleming. “Whoever sent ye olde message didn’t distribute a design like this for fun. They want us to start something right out of our depth.”

“Do you think they know about us?”

“They know there are bound to be other intelligences in the universe. It just happens to be us.”

Judy took hold of one of his hands.

“You needn’t go further with it than you want.”

“I hope not.”

“All you’re doing is building a computer.”

“With a mental capacity way beyond ours.”

“Is that really true?”

“A man is a very inefficient thinking machine.”

“You’re not.”

“We all are. All computers based on a biological system are inefficient.”

“The biological system suits me,” she said. Her speech and vision were beginning to blur.

Fleming gave her a short, bear-like hug.

“You’re just a sexy piece.”

He got up, yawned and stretched and switched on the light. Feeling a sudden loosening of tension, she lolled back on the bed.

“You need a holiday,” she told him, slurrily.

“Maybe.”

“You’ve been at it for months now without a break. That thing.” She pointed towards the window.

“It had to be ready for his Ministership.”

“If it did get out of control, you could always stop it.”

“Could we? It was operational over a month ago. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“We’ve been feeding in the order code so that the data can all be in by the time the gentry arrive.”

“Did anything happen?”

“Nothing at first, but there was a small part of the order code I ignored. It arranged things so that when you switch on the current the first surge of electricity automatically sets the program working: at its own selected starting point. I deliberately left that out of the design because I didn’t want him to have it all his own way, and he was furious.”