'We will deal with Kaufman,' Dawnay promised. 'While you send out the bacteria as a gift from Azaran. It will be the first action of a free nation.'
He gazed at her with his sad, intelligent eyes.' 'Or the last,'
he suggested.
'Not if every laboratory in the world receives a supply.
Then we've got a chance. If we can do it in the right way, through the right people.' She thought back to their long battles with the authorities at Thorness. 'Ever since the message was first picked up and a computer built to handle it, a few people have been struggling to keep this power out of the wrong hands and put it into the right ones.'
'And what are mine?' he asked mildly.
'What we will make them for you!'
The boy entered with a tray. The President poured out some coffee and handed Dawnay a cup. He slowly sipped his own before he spoke again.
'So you are right?' he murmured, eyeing her keenly. 'And to whom will you be responsible? Hundreds of thousands of people have died because - you will forgive me - of these experiments of yours.'
Dawnay felt blood flooding into her neck and cheeks: a visible sign of her feeling of enormous guilt. 'It was an accident,' she said inadequately. 'It could have happened with any experiment. I made a mistake.'
Some of the fire of the revolutionary of years before flamed briefly in the President's face as he stood up and confronted her.
'Hundreds of thousands more may have to die correcting your mistake,' he said. 'The errors of politicians are sometimes expensive, and business men sometimes do their best to profit from them. But you scientists, you kill half the world.
And the other half cannot live without you.'
His anger faded. He sighed and permitted himself a slight smile. 'I am in your hands, Professor Dawnay. You will forgive me if I add that I wish I were not.'
Dawnay drove back to the compound determined to mould events the way she knew they had to be; but the responsibility appalled her. She badly needed the catharsis of Fleming's critical mind.
She found him in the servicing bay behind the computer.
He was working at the desk, which was a litter of papers.
'Hello,' he said lazily. 'I holed up here - safe from the desert breezes and from interruption.' He glanced at his wrist watch. 'God, is that the time? I've been trying to work out this thing for Andre. I've done most of the chemical conversions. They don't make a hell of a lot of sense.'
He threw across some calculations. She read them cursorily.
'It would be lethal if it's wrong,' she said shortly.
'She's dying anyway, isn't she? I've been trying all ways...'
She interrupted him impatiently. 'John, there isn't time for that.'
He looked up at her. 'Make 'em and break 'em, eh?'
Dawnay flushed. 'There's something else that comes first.
Or have you forgotten what's still raging over the greater part of the world?'
'No, I haven't forgotten,' he said.
'We've made a lot of mistakes,' she went on. 'Both of us.
I'm trying to get things right because it's the only hope we have. What happens to the world depends on us, on whether we take over or whether Kaufman does.'
His grin was sardonic. 'Have you been having the treatment, like Gamboul ?'
'Gamboul is dead,' she said evenly.
'Dead?' Fleming jumped to his feet. 'Then the machine misfired! It's had a go at us and it's failed.'
Dawnay shook her head.
'It hasn't done either. Gamboul was only supposed to protect us until we were in a position to use our own judgement.'
He nodded towards the massive panels of the computer.
'Or its...'
'Our own judgement, John,' she repeated. 'We make the decisions now. Don't you see that this can be the beginning of a new life?'
He gathered the papers on the desk into an untidy pile.
'Except for Andre,' he said harshly.
'She'll have to wait. There are other people dying besides her.'
He had to accept the logic of the statement. It did not make him dislike it less. He admired and was fond of Madeleine Dawnay, and was all the more nauseated by the familiar, corrupting scent of power which he now sensed around her.
'To hell with everything,' he said. 'I can't think any more tonight. We may as well try to get a little sleep before the wind decides to blow the roof off.'
They walked from the building together. The residential area was a shambles of mud and rubble. But their quarters provided makeshift shelter. Fleming wished Dawnay goodnight and went to his own chalet. The windows had gone and he could look past the shattered palm trees to the building opposite where the sick quarters were. The nurse had found a hurricane lamp from somewhere. It was the only light in the pitch black darkness - a dull yellow blob which drew his eyes like a magnet, mesmerising his mind. He fell into a half sleep, thinking of the life that still flickered near that puny flame.
He was roused by Abu Zeki.
'Much has happened,' Abu said, struggling to control his emotions. 'The storm, yesterday, it was very bad in the mountains. My home has gone.'
Your family?' Fleming sat up.
'Lemka and Jan - they are alive. My mother-in-law. She is dead.' Abu's voice faltered. 'She had laid down with little Jan in her arms, beneath her. When I arrived - I, I thought they were both dead. Then Jan began crying. He was saturated in blood, his grandmother's blood.'
'Where is Lemka?'
'She was in a cave with Professor Neilson. She'd gone up with food. Neilson made her stay when the storm came.
They came down just after I'd rescued Jan. I'm afraid Lemka is very bitter - about all that Professor Dawnay and you - all that we have been doing here.'
'Not bitter, Abu; just right.' Fleming felt the familiar hopelessness closing down on him. 'It's no use saying I'm sorry. What about Yusel and Neilson?'
'Yusel is safe, so far. He had gone to my house to talk to Neilson about taking out the bacteria on his next flight. But Kaufman followed him. Yusel was beaten up. Then they took him back to Baleb. I suppose he'd have been killed in the house if they hadn't. Then in the early hours, while we were getting my wife and the child settled in a neighbour's house, he arrived in an Intel car. Kaufman had sent him back, with a note for Neilson. Yusel gave us the news that Mm'selle Gamboul was dead.'
'A note for Neilson!' Fleming exclaimed. 'What did it say?'
'Kaufman wanted to see him. He promised there would be no danger. Yusel insisted it was a trap, but Mr Neilson said he wanted to go. I brought him down with me. He's waiting in the reception building now for Kaufman to come from town.'
Fleming sprang off the bed. 'I'll get over there. You'd better come too, Abu. If it's one of Kaufman's usual pistol and dagger efforts I want to be around.'
Both men hurried to the executive building. In the keen light of dawn the damaged facade looked cheap and tawdry.
There had also been considerable damage in the vast entrance hall, some of it the obvious results of looting by the demoralised guards.
'Kaufman will be sitting in the seat of the mighty - in Gamboul's office. You'd better wait down here, Abu. Warn us if anyone arrives,' Fleming ordered.
He ran lightly up the staircase. One of the double doors of the director's office was slightly ajar, and he sidled along the wall until he could listen.
Kaufman's guttural voice was unctuous and polite. 'The plane is coming from Vienna, I hope, Herr Neilson,' he was saying. 'It should arrive very soon. It will be loaded immediately.
You must expect an uncomfortable flight. Conditions are still bad everywhere.'
'And some written proof of your proposals?' Neilson asked coldly.
'I have obtained a letter from the President,' said Kaufman.