Fred Hoyle - A for Andromeda

“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.”

“They would make me do that?” She sipped the whisky and looked at him with burning, anxious eyes.

“You’ll need making?”

She almost laughed. “When I saw the computer all smashed I was so glad.”

“Glad?” he asked, pausing in his drink.

“I felt free. I felt—”

“Like the Greek Andromeda when Perseus broke her chains?”

She was not sure about this. She handed back her glass. “When the computer was working, I hated it.”

“Not you. It was us you hated.”

She shook her head. “I hated the machine and everything to do with it.”

“Then why—?”

“Why do people behave like they do? Because they feel compelled! Because they are tied by what they think are logical necessities, to their work or their families, or their country. You imagine ties are emotional? The logic you cannot contradict is the tightest bond. I know that.” Her voice wavered and became uncertain. “I did what I had to, and now the logic has gone and I do not know what... I do not know.”

Fleming sat down beside her. “You could have said this before.”

“I have said it now.” She looked him full in the face. “I have come to you.”

“It’s too late.” Fleming looked down at the lint and strapping on her hands, thinking of the marks she still carried of the machine’s will. “Nothing on earth’ll stop them rebuilding it.”

“But they cannot without the code of the design.”

“That still exists.”

“You didn’t—?” Even if he had doubted her protests before, there was no doubting the distress in her voice now, or in her eyes.

“I couldn’t break open the cabinet and Quadring has the only key.”

She fumbled in the pocket of her anorak. “I have one.”

“But I was told nobody had.”

She pulled the key out, wincing as her bandages caught on the flap of the pocket. “Nobody has, except me, and that was not known here.” She held it out to him. “You can go and finish.”

It was so easy, and so impossible; here was the one thing he needed above all else, and now he had no means of getting back into the computer block to use it.

“You’ll have to go,” he said.

She shrank back into the eiderdown but he threw it off and took her by the shoulders.

“If you really hate it—if you really want to stay free—all you have to do is walk in, unlock the wall cabinet and take out the original message—that’s on tape—and my calculations which are on paper, and the program, which is on punched cards. Make a bonfire of all the paper, and when it’s going well you can dump the magnetic reels on. That’ll wipe them. Then you get out quick.”

“I can’t.”

He shook her, and she groaned a little with pain. “You’ve got to.”

He was alight with excitement, not stopping to think about the consequences to himself or her, or of the fate of all of them now that she was alive, but only of the one essential, immediate thing.

“You can get past the sentries without question. You’ll need these to hide your bandages.” He took a pair of large driving gauntlets out of his drawer and began to pull them on over her hands.

“No, please!” She shuddered as the gloves touched her bandages, but he still drew them on, very slowly and carefully.

“You can make a bonfire on the floor. I’ll give you some matches.”

“Don’t send me. Don’t send me back, please.” Her eyes burned in fear and her face, in spite of the whisky, was still white with exhaustion. “I cannot do it.”

“You can.” He pushed the matches into her pocket and propelled her gently to the door. He opened it and there before them lay the white ground and the black night. Snow had stopped falling and the wind had dropped. The permanent lights of the camp shone down frostily and the outlines of buildings could just be seen, dark against the ground, with a powdering of white on their roofs. He said, “You can do it.”

She hesitated, and he took her arm. After a moment she walked out across the snow towards the computer block. Fleming went with her as far as he dare. When they were nearly in sight of the guards he gave her a little pat on the shoulders.

“Good luck,” he said, and went reluctantly back to his hut.

The temperature had dropped and it was icy cold. He found himself shivering, so he shut the door and went to the window and, drawing back the curtains, settled down to watch from there. Until now he had not felt the effort of the past few hours but as he stood there waiting it fell on him in a great wave of tiredness. He longed to lie on his bed and sleep and wake to find that everything was over: he tried to imagine what the girl was doing, to think out the alternatives of what might happen, of what the outcome would be, but his mind would not go beyond the events of the evening and the image of the small pale figure setting out across the snow.

And he could not get warm. He switched on the electric radiator and poured himself another tot of whisky. He wished he had not used it so freely in the past, so that it would have more effect on him now, and he made various resolutions about himself, and about Judy, if they ever came the right way up out of it all. Leaning against the window sill, he waited for what seemed an immense time, looking out into the unbroken stillness of the night.

About three o’clock it began to snow again, not in a gale now, but quietly and steadily, and the lamps that shone all night at odd points about the compound grew blurred behind the white descending flakes. For some time he could not be sure whether it was smoke he saw against the lamplight by the computer building, or merely a blur of snowfall; then he heard an alarm bell ringing, and excited shouts of sentries. Turning up his coat collar, he opened the window, and at once he could hear and see more clearly. It was quite definitely smoke.

His instinct was to run out and see for himself what had happened, to find the girl and hold back any interference with the fire, but he knew there was nothing he could do but rely on the confusion and the dark to give it and her time. With as much smoke as that, the computer-room must be an inferno by now and there was a good chance that nothing would survive, possibly not Andre herself.