Fred Hoyle - A for Andromeda

“Possibly some rudimentary attempt at a pair of legs, though you could hardly call them more than a division of tissue.”

Reinhart put down the plates and frowned.

“How does it feed?”

“Takes it in through the skin. It lives in nutrient fluid and absorbs straight into its body cells. Very simple, very efficient.”

“And the computer?”

Dawnay looked surprised.

“What about the computer?”

“Has it reacted at all?”

“How could it?”

“I don’t know.” Reinhart frowned at her anxiously. “Has it?”

“No. It’s been entirely quiet.”

The Professor walked into the computer control room and back again, his head down, his gaze on his neat shoecaps as they twinkled before him. It was as yet early morning and very quiet. He clasped his hands behind him and spoke without looking up at Dawnay.

“I want Fleming back on this.”

Dawnay did not answer for a moment, then she said: “It’s perfectly under control.”

“Whose control?”

“Mine.”

He looked up at her with an effort.

“We’re on borrowed time, Madeleine. The people here want us out.”

“In the middle of this?”

“No. The Ministry have fought for that, but we’ve got to work as a team and show results.”

“Good grief! Aren’t those results?” Dawnay pointed a short, bony finger at the tank. “We’re in the middle of the biggest thing of the century—we’re making life!”

“I know,” Reinhart said, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. “But where is it taking us?”

“We’ve a lot to find out.”

“And we can’t afford any more accidents.”

“I can manage.”

“You’re not on your own, Madeleine.” Reinhart spoke with a kind of soft tenseness. “We’re all involved in this.”

“I can manage,” she repeated.

“You can’t divorce it from its origin—from the computer.”

“Of course I can’t. But Christine understands the computer, and I have her.”

“She understands the basic arithmetic, but there’s a higher logic, or so I think. Only Fleming understands that.”

“I’m not having John Fleming reeling in here, breaking up my work and my equipment.” Dawnay’s voice rose.

Reinhart regarded her quietly. He was still tense, but with a determination which had carried him a long way.

“We can’t all do what we want entirely.” He spoke so brusquely that Dawnay looked at him again in surprise. “I’m still in charge of this programme—just. And I will be so long as we work as a team and make sense. That means having Fleming here.”

“Drunk or sober?”

“Good God, Madeleine, if we can’t trust each other, who can we trust?”

Dawnay was about to protest, and then stopped.

“All right. So long as he behaves himself and sticks to his own side of the job.”

“Thank you, my dear.” Reinhart smiled.

When he left the laboratory he went straight to Geers.

“But Fleming has notified me that he’s leaving,” Geers said. “I’ve just sent Miss Adamson over to the computer to make sure he doesn’t deliver a parting shot.”

Fleming, however, was not at the computer. Judy stood in the control room, hesitating, when Dawnay came out to her.

“Hallo. Want to see Cyclops?”

“Why do you call it Cyclops?”

“Because of his physical characteristics.” Dawnay seemed completely relaxed. “Don’t they educate girls nowadays? Come along, he’s in here.”

“Must I?”

“Not interested?”

“Yes, but—”

Judy felt dazed. She had not taken in the progress of the experiment. For the past two days she had thought of almost nothing but Fleming and Bridger and her own hopeless position, and so far as she had any image at all of Dawnay’s creation, it was microscopic and unrelated to her own life. She followed the older woman through into the laboratory without thinking and without expecting anything.

The tank confused her slightly. It was something she had not reckoned with.

“Look inside,” said Dawnay.

Judy looked down in through the open top of the big tank, quite unprepared for what she was going to see. The creature was not unlike an elongated jellyfish, without limbs or tentacles but with a vague sort of bifurcation at one end and an enlargement that might be a head at the other. It floated in liquid, a twitching, quivering mass of protoplasm, its surface greeny-yellow, slimy and glistening. And in the middle of what might be its head was set—huge, lidless and colourless—an eye.

Judy felt violently sick and then panic-stricken. She turned away retching and stared at Dawnay as if she too were something in a nightmare, then she clamped her hand over her mouth and ran out of the room.

She ran straight across the compound to Fleming’s hut, flung the door open and went inside.

Fleming was pushing some last things into a hold-all, his cases packed and standing on the floor. He looked across coldly at her as she stood panting and heaving in the doorway.

“Not again,” he said.

“John!” She could hardly speak at first. Her head was turning and singing and her throat felt full of phlegm. “John, you must come.”

“Come where?” He looked at her with blank hostility. The toll of the past week still showed in his pale skin and the dark pouches under his eyes, but he was calm and kempt and clearly again in full charge of himself.

Judy tried to steady her voice.

“To the lab.”

“For you?” It was a quiet sneer.

“Not for me. They’ve made something terrible. A sort of creature.”

“Why don’t you tell M.I.5?”

“Please.” Judy went up to him; she felt completely defenceless but she did not care what he said or did to her. He turned away to go on with his packing. “Please, John! Something horrible’s happening. You’ve got to stop it.”

“Don’t tell me what to do and what not to do,” he said.

“They’ve got this thing. This monstrous-looking thing with an eye. An eye!”

“That’s their problem.” He pushed an old sweater into the top of the bag and pulled the strings together to close it.

“John—you’re the only one...”

He pulled the bag off his bed and brushed past her with it to stack it with his cases. “Who’s fault’s that?”

Judy took a deep breath.

“I didn’t kill Bridger.”

“Didn’t you? Didn’t you put your gang on him?”

“I tried to warn you.”

“You tried to fool me! You made love to me—”

“I didn’t! Only once. I’m only human. I had a job—”

“You had a filthy job, and you did it marvellously.”

“I never spied on you. Bridger was different.”

“Dennis Bridger was my oldest friend and my best helper.”

“He was betraying you.”

“Betraying!” He looked at her briefly and then moved away and started sorting a collection of old bottles and glasses from a cupboard. “Take your official clichés somewhere else. Half this thing was Dennis’s. It was the work of his mind, and mine; it didn’t belong to you, or your bosses. If Dennis wanted to sell his own property, good luck to him. What business was it of yours?”

“I told you I didn’t like what I had to do. I told you not to trust me. Do you think I haven’t...”

Judy’s voice shook in spite of her.

“Oh, stop snivelling,” said Fleming. “And get out.”

“I’ll get out if you’ll go and see Professor Dawnay.”

“I’m leaving.”

“You can’t! They’ve got this horrible thing.” Judy put out a hand and held desperately on to his sleeve, but he shook her off and walked across to the door.

“Good-bye.” He turned the handle and opened it.

“You can’t walk out now.”