Polymath Read online

  “That means you, Dockle,” the captain rumbled.

  “I’m not going,” the boy said. “I’m not crazy.”

  There was a sudden icy hush across the heat of the day. All eyes—Gomes’s, his companions’, the watchers’—turned to Dockle.

  “I’m not going!” he repeated more loudly, and his voice was ragged at the edge of barely-suppressed tears. “I don’t want to go back to that hell of yours! You’ll never fix the ship! We’ve slaved over it for months, and all we’ve done is lift it up and show how badly the belly’s smashed. If we work the rest of the summer we’ll never get it ready, and if we don’t prepare for the winter we’ll all die of cold. I’m not going back!”

  A wave of anger could be felt passing through the crowd. Lex knew it was directed at him. How could he stop a suicidal attack on Gomes’s party after what Dockle bad said? Even now he was sure no one else had followed his reasoning. Yet what he had in mind felt right. It didn’t feel as though it would lead to the horror of eight hundred people without weapons being massacred by eleven with energy guns.

  And then, when he had begun to doubt his talent for being right within an hour or two of discovering it, Gomes provided him with the missing answer.

  “Pick up that pack, Dockle,” he said in a low, threatening voice. “Because life down here isn’t going to be so pleasant after today. Sure it’s tough to get a ship fixed without proper facilities. But a polymath is claimed to be a substitute for just about everything.”

  He whipped around, and his gun was once more leveled at Lex.

  “You! Get down here! You’re a valuable property, and we don’t intend to leave you behind!”

  The wave that passed through the crowd this time was of indrawn breaths, a collective gasp of dismay. Lex let it die. He wanted everyone who was watching—except Gomes and his men—to see with clear eyes the precise manner of his obedience.

  He said, “Very well. If that’s what you really want. But I won’t answer for the consequences.”

  “Then I won’t answer for your survival!” Gomes snapped. “There’ll be two men watching you all the time with guns, so you’ll do as you’re told. There aren’t any more like Hosper on the plateau. We cleaned house.” He cast a glance at Dockle and jerked his head. Reluctantly, but now unable to keep his defiance up, the boy gathered his pack and strapped it on.

  Probian had a rope. While the others held back the crowd with their guns he fixed it around Lex’s wrists, lashing them securely behind his back and taking the slack as a kind of leash.

  “Move,” Gomes said curtly, and added with raised voice, “Anything you do to try to stop us, your boy Lex is the first to suffer. Keep your distance, all of you!”

  XXII

  Helpless, the crowd followed to the edge of town, hoping for some sign or clue from Lex which they would have obeyed in spite of the threatening guns. But Lex walked steadily among his captors, not looking back.

  Clenching his fists in impotent fury as he watched the thieves dwindle along the riverbank, Fritch burst out, “What came over him? We’ll never get him away from them now! He must be out of his mind!”

  “He knows what he’s doing!” Delvia flared, rounding on him.

  “How can you be so sure?” Fritch snapped.

  “He’s a polymath, isn’t he?”

  “Polymath or not, he’s only young. And he’s only had part of the training.”

  “Right,” Rothers said from a few yards away. “What’s more, he turned out to be too fond of life to stand up against a gun.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” Cheffy countered. Now they were gathering into tight groups as the argument broke into a dozen angry shifting fragments. “He’s seen for himself what conditions are like on the plateau. You’ve heard Hosper, Jesset, the others—you know it would be better to die than fall into Gomes’s hands, and so does he. He must have something figured out!”

  From somewhere at the back of the crowd, Nanseltine shouldered his way toward them. Not much had been heard of him since his deflation at the assembly where Lex assumed command, but from his manner now it was clear he’d seen a chance to revert to his old blustering.

  “Sure, he may well have figured something out!” he exclaimed. “Nothing that will help us, though! What if Gomes does manage to refit his ship with Lex’s help? Next thing you know, we’ll see it taking off with him and Gomes on board—”

  The words exploded into a cry, and Nanseltine drew back, his hand to his reddening cheek. Panting, Delvia stood before him, arm raised for a second blow.

  “Just because that’s exactly what you’d like to do, don’t accuse Lex of it, damn you! And the rest of you!” She whirled on the committee members surrounding her. “You’re practically as bad, laying all the responsibility on Lex and then panicking when he does something cleverer than you could have thought of!”

  There was a momentary silence. Aldric appealed to Jerode. “Doc, you think she could be right?”

  “I don’t know.” Jerode passed his hand over his bald scalp. “I must say I find it very hard to believe Lex would give in meekly without some purpose behind it But it seems like a desperate gamble in any case, and frankly I haven’t the least notion what he has in mind.”

  “I can see one good reason for him to act as he did,” Delvia said. “Suppose we’d tried to overpower Gomes’s men. They’d have killed fifty of us easily and some of them would probably have got away. They’d have smashed our equipment, set fire to the buildings—we’d be in a hell of a mess! Lex cares about what happens to us; don’t you know that? And he cares just as much about the others on the plateau! You don’t believe that? Just because he kept turning down harebrained schemes that wouldn’t have freed them?”

  She had the whole attention of the crowd now. Eyes blazing, voice ringing, she stormed on.

  “Gomes said he’d cleaned house up there, got rid of traitors! But you heard what Dockle said, didn’t you, right to Gomes’s face? If his people hate Gomes that much, what’s going to happen when he gets back with his loot? Is he going to share it around among everybody? Hm? They’re going to hate him worse than ever. And with Lex right there among them—well!”

  “But just one man against so many,” Fritch worried.

  “Lex isn’t an ordinary man,” Delvia insisted. “Baffin, didn’t he lead you back, eight people and one of you injured, in the dark with Gomes’s men after you?”

  “That’s so,” Baffin agreed. “He said he can see in the dark.”

  “He told me that too,” Jerode said. “It’s one of his polymath modifications.”

  “Well, then!” Delvia appealed to the crowd. “Gomes hasn’t got you or me to cope with. He’s got a ticking bomb! My guess is that Lex will be running things on the plateau his own way inside the week.”

  “You make out a good case for your wonder-boy, Delvia,” Fritch grunted. “But like Gomes said, he’s a valuable property. We can’t just leave him to manage by himself.”

  “I say we can and should,” Delvia snapped.

  Jerode pondered for a moment. Finally he drew himself up. “I’m afraid Fritch is right,” he said. “We’ll have to send a party after him. What they can do without weapons, I don’t know, but—oh, perhaps they could ambush Gomes’s men while they’re asleep. At the very least we must know what’s happening. Baffin, you’ve done the trip more often than the rest. Pick your men.”

  Hosper, his face discolored with angry bruises, strode forward at once, and Jesset came with him, clinging to his arm. Fritch stepped up also; then Aykin, Cheffy, Aldric, and others.

  “Baffin, whatever you do, don’t interfere!” Delvia pleaded. He shrugged and didn’t answer.

  It took some time to organize handlights, hatchets, rations, and other necessities, and it was late in the afternoon before the party was ready to move off. Baffin set a rapid pace. They passed the watchposts, then the site of Lex’s ingenious trap which had caused Gomes’s men to reveal themselves.

  A short distan
ce past that point, Baffin gave a cry and pointed ahead.

  “What is it?” Fritch demanded.

  “I saw a gun-beam,” Baffin muttered. “Quicker! Come on!”

  Mouths dry with apprehension, hearts pounding and lungs straining as they strove to keep up, they followed him through the whipping undergrowth. They had gone another mile and a half when they found the body.

  Two thin legs protruded from a bush heavy with mid-summer foliage; the feet were bare. Inseotoids were coming to explore the flesh, crawling out of the bush and up from the ground.

  Horrified, they halted. Baffin tugged aside the concealing stems and they recognized the corpse.

  “It’s the youngster,” Fritch said, swallowing hard.

  A bolt had seared Dockle from throat to waist. He had been stripped of everything he possessed except the charred shirt clinging to his ruined flesh. Out of his scream-open mouth the native carrion-takers were already running.

  “Don’t stand around!” Hosper said with violence. “Let’s get after them—it’ll be Lex next!”

  But Baffin was staring down at the body, his face set in a meditative frown. “I… wonder,” he said at last. “You blow, somehow I don’t think so. I’m beginning to see what Delvia meant.”

  The trouble started sooner than Lex had dared to hope. As soon as they were out of sight of the town, Gomes’s party split into two clearly-defined groups. Gomes, with Probian and most of the others, went at the front, keeping Lex himself in the center with Probian holding his rope-leash. But Dockle and two others, the youngest of the party, kept a short distance behind, talking together in low voices.

  More than once Gomes snarled at them to keep up. Yet Dockle in particular lagged, and at a point where the vegetation was exceptionally thick, he fell far enough back to be out of sight.

  Twenty more paces, and Gomes caught on. He glanced back, discovered that Dockle had vanished, and gave an oath as he thrust past Lex, raising his gun. His heavy pack caught overhanging branches and made them whine in the air like whiplashes.

  They did not see what happened, but they heard: Gomes called Dockle a foul name and told him to come back; there was a hysterical answer, and then came the flash of the gun.

  Gomes returned a moment later. “Get down there and pick up his stuff,” he said gruffly to the youngsters who had been walking with Dockle. “Load it on Lex’s back. And take a good look at Dockle while you’re about it, because that’s what will happen to you if you try the same trick.”

  The two looked as though they were going to vomit, but they obeyed.

  One down, ten to go. Another before dark would be advisable, Lex calculated coldly. He would have preferred that Dockle should live, because he had had the guts to defy Gomes not once but twice, but he knew enough about the situation on the plateau to imagine what Dockle must have done or connived at for Gomes to choose him as a companion. He wasn’t thinking of justice or retribution, though. What counted was the future of humanity on this planet.

  No one said anything for a long time after that; they just plodded onward. The going was better than it had been on his last trip. On the way down Gomes had had a lot of foliage burned back, and it had not grown over the path yet, though it was so luxuriant it would restore itself in another week.

  An hour from town they passed the dead remains of one of the black-bag monsters, presumably the one which had killed a man on the party’s coastward journey. They were astonishingly numerous. Something would eventually have to be done to protect humans from them, though they could not be eliminated—their ecological function, obviously, was to prevent herbivores overgrazing the plants. The next patch of them was only a half-mile farther on. Lex’s ultra-keen hearing identified a bubbling noise in the river well before anyone else did, and he watched closely to see if his captors knew what such a sound signified. Apparently they didn’t. Nor did they recognize the blue-green shoots on the unbrowsed trees nearby. On the way down they must have contrived to avoid this particular carnivore, despite its being concealed by the pseudomoss which here spread densely on ground. Perhaps at that time it had just fed and wasn’t interested in further prey. But now…?

  Not Gomes. Not Probian. Without seeming to change his direction Lex stepped adroitly among the bag-mouths, and because they were in a line with him Gomes and Probian also escaped. But the man next behind was walking alightly to one side, and his left leg suddenly plunged downward.

  At once there were screams, and guns flared. It was altogether convincing that Lex should leap aside in terror like everyone else, and jerk Probian with the rope so that his beam burned not into the ghastly black maw but into the legs and belly of the captive.

  By the time darkness overtook them, Gomes’s party was in a very bad state. They cleared a large patch with their guns, then built a big fire, not for warmth but for comfort, since the night was hot.

  Probian, glowering, hobbled Lex with the rest of the rope and left his arms bound behind him. He was given no food, though a grudging mouthful of water was accorded him. The others ate, not talking, but looking about them fearfully at intervals. They avoided meeting Gomes’s eyes.

  Good.

  Gomes set up a rota to keep watch on Lex. Two wakeful men with guns were to be facing him continuously until dawn. He did not include himself in the rota. He made sure that the two young men who had been walking with Dockle were not going to watch together. They knew why, and so did everyone else. Also good. The more hints about deserting Gomes that crossed their minds, the better.

  He noted carefully which of his guards-to-be went into the undergrowth before turning in, to relieve themselves. One didn’t, but drank greedily from his canteen before throwing himself, exhausted, on his bedroll.

  Perfect That was the man Gomes had assigned to watch with Probian after midnight. Lex leaned back and dozed.

  As he had figured, the first pair of guards were too eager to lie down to permit the man he was counting on to relieve himself before assuming his duty. They made him turn out and take his place at once. Growing more uncomfortable by the minute, he sat with gun in hand until the others were snoring. Lex feigned deep sleep.

  At last the man’s bladder could endure it no longer. He spoke to Probian, handed over his gun, and disappeared out of the circle of light from the low-burning fire.

  Under cover of the darkness Lex had been quietly fraying his bonds. Now he snapped them at wrists and feet and hurled himself at Probian. The man did not even have time to cry out before his head jolted back. After that he was unconscious.

  Moral, thought Lex as he stole after the second guard to catch him from behind: an ordinary rope could not hold a polymath for long.

  Though it served admirably as a garrote.

  He had made no more sound than a passing breeze, and the others were too exhausted to be easily woken. They remained slumped on their bedrolls as he stole from one to the next collecting all their guns except Gomes’s and stringing them together on his rope.

  Then, ghostly, he faded into the dark. At the very edge of hearing he could detect noises from downriver. Presumably Jerode or someone had sent “rescuers” after him. He must intercept them before they came so close that they disturbed Gomes’s gang.

  XXIII

  By the time they found the second body, partly burned, partly digested by the crippled bag-monster, Baffin’s team was prepared to accept that Delvia had been right. They couldn’t imagine how it was being done, but they realized Lex must be trying to demoralize his captors to the point at which Gomes would lose control.

  They saw, as night was falling, how guns were being used to clear a campsite ahead. Then a fire was lit, and the flames reflected on the nearby trees. Baffin decided not to do the same, but with great caution to follow the trail in the dark in the hope of mounting a sneak attack.

  It was while they were stealing through the night that Lex appeared in front of them, grinning broadly and holding up his strung-together guns like a successful fisherman.


  They were so taken aback that at first they could not react Fritch broke the tension with a mutter of sincere—if reluctant—admiration.

  “You young devil! How did you manage it?”

  Lex explained briefly, distributing the guns as he talked. There were almost enough to go around.

  “You didn’t get them all!” Baffin said, having counted.

  “No, I left one with Gomes,” Lex agreed. “For a reason, don’t worry. Now listen carefully to me. All hell is due to break loose, and we’ll have to pick up the pieces. I want some of you to come with me—Hosper, you and Jesset because you know the layout on the plateau, and you, Aldric, and you, Cheffy. Baffin, I want the rest of you to camp down here. About dawn they’ll find out what’s happened. Gomes may finish them because he’ll be so furious, but some of them will probably get away and come back downriver. Wait for them; when they get here, take them to the town under guard. Then tell Jerode to make up a big relief party, with all his nurses who aren’t pregnant. Bring blankets, clothes, food, anything you can. By the time that stuff can be brought to the plateau, it’s going to be desperately needed. Plan for at least two hundred sick and injured, and everyone weak and exhausted.”

  He gave a faint chuckle.

  “Gomes’s situation must have been disastrous enough when he set out for the coast. You figure what will happen when he gets back having lost all but one gun, and probably all but one companion.”

  There were answering smiles.

  He beckoned to the four he had detailed to go with him, turning as he spoke.

  “Follow me. Move quietly. We’re going back to watch what happens when Gomes wakes up.”

  Gomes rolled over, grunting, blinked his eyes open. One second later he was sitting up, hand on his gun, and shouting at the top of his voice. It was barely dawn; the light was watery-gray. Probian lay sprawled on the ground, breathing stertorously. There was no sign of his fellow-guard, and the other six men were sleeping soundly. The prisoner, of course, was gone.