Polymath Page 4

  Here were the most precious items. And here the chaos was terrible.

  Computers, loosed from their mounts in readiness for transfer to the town, then left behind when winter intervened, had fallen across the floor and been shattered. The subradios were—as he had feared—corroded and crusted with crystals of sea-salt. The navigation room was a shambles out of which he could pick nothing but a few odds and ends to drop in his net bag.

  Depressed, he made his way toward the stern, where the engines were located. Something bad had happened here, too; a gap big enough to walk through in the wall of the fuelreserve store was the first sign of a succession of chemical explosions that had wrecked most of the drive gear beyond repair. His light revealed smears of multicolored corrosion, cracked plates, instrument panels pockmarked as though by shrapnel.

  He could sum up his report for tomorrow’s stocktaking assembly here and now. Nothing in the ship worth salvaging except as raw materials.

  Oh, perhaps the odd instrument might be reparable and come in handy for some unpredictable function. But nothing as immediately useful as power-tools or accumulators could have survived.

  Scraping the latest film of green from his helmet, he turned dejectedly back the way he had come.

  His first thought when he approached the cargo lock from inside was that the sea had gone dark. Then he saw that the opening was blocked by something. His light showed a slick dark surface, pulsating and straining, splitting open along horizontal lines to emit hordes of tiny flapping things toward which the hanging strands on the walls reached out eagerly.

  At the sight of this, a tremendous anger filled him. He spoke aloud, hearing the words echo eerie in his helmet “Damn you! It’s still ours! In spite of everything, it’s still ours!”

  He raised his hatchet and stormed forward at the creature sowing its multitudinous young. They swarmed like midges around him as he chopped, ripped, tore at the leathery flesh, with his hand as well as the hatchet; plunged through the very middle of it, through writhing blackness and out into discolored water where hopeful lesser carnivores were already gathering to pick at carrion; then, covered with foul ichor and trailing some riband-formed internal organ of the beast, in dismal triumph to the surface and the boat, leaving the shabby symbol of his defiance to die on the bed of the sea.

  V

  Zarathustra’s day had run about twenty-two and a half hours Earth-basic time and, as was customary on colonized planets, had been cut into an arbitrary standard twenty hours. Here on the other hand noon-to-noon ran about twenty-eight Earth basic hours. Some attempt had been made to modify one of the clocks from the ship, but there had been more demanding tasks. Now clocks and natural time were totally out of gear, though a record was being kept of the number of days elapsed.

  Was it a matter of mere convenience that people were suddenly thinking in terms of daylight and dark, or the first sign of reversion to actual primitivism? Jerode pondered the question as he looked out over their ramshackle little town from the crude verandah of the headquarters office. Most people were coming for evening chow, walking slowly and wearily back from their work, although Fritch’s team was still busy patching the roof of the single men’s house the other side of the valley. The thud of hammers and an occasional shouted order reached his ears.

  He had already had his meal, wanting a little time to think before the steering committee assembled at dusk. It had consisted as usual of a damp mealy cake from a diet-synthesizer wrapped in two crisp leaflike growths from the salad-tree and a chunk of preserved allfruit about the size of his thumb. So far only the salad-tree and three other much less palatable native plants had been found both safe and nutritious. Most of the vegetation contained an allergen which had given him a bad time at the end of last summer until he discovered he had supplies of a suitable drug with which to treat it like everybody else, when leaving Zarathustra he had simply grabbed what he could lay hands on, and wasn’t sure what he’d actually brought.

  That, though, was going to have to change. As a matter of urgency they would be compelled to tinker with que of the synthesizers so that it would secrete an antidote to the allergen. Dredged routinely on food, perhaps along with sea-salt, it would enable them to choose from a range of nearly thirty vegetables.

  And the traceelement hoppers on the synthesizers were almost empty—during the worst part of the winter they had had to subsist on nothing but synthesizer-cake—so another immediate job would be to set up extra salt-pans, fractionate the precipitate into appropriate submixtures, top the hoppers up…

  Jerode passed a tired hand over his face. There was no end to the list of essential tasks.

  There was a steady stream away from the kitchens as Well as toward them, which seemed odd; he saw people coining out directly they had entered. Then he realized they were taking their food to the riverbank, to sit there and eat in the last of the sunlight with their long shadows for company. Well, at least the evening sun wouldn’t cause much burning. And you couldn’t blame them. The equable, man-controlled climate of Zarathrustra had delivered warm summer evenings to order, and after the dragguig-long winter to be under a roof seemed like a waste.

  That river was a blessing, Jerode thought. It wasn’t very wide except at the mouth, and it was shallow enough for wading even now, when the snows must be melting around its source on the plateau inland. Of course, it had divided the settlement during the worst nights of winter, but they had just managed to rig a ropewalk across it before the fiercest gales, and that had been strong enough to hold out. Siting the town on both banks, though, had been a calculated risk. They didn’t want to drag timber too far, and there were two stands of trees they were drawing on, one either side of the valley.

  Most importantly of all, they had never lacked drinkable fresh water, even if they had sometimes had to bring it indoors as blocks of ice. Though it might be politic, once enough salt-pans had been set up, to use distilled water for drinking, reserve river-water only for bathing in…

  Yes, considering the circumstances of its foundation, this was quite a flourishing little town. Town? Well, it wasn’t such a grandiose word as “city,” at least. But for a mere fifteen buildings it was still a pious hope. At first they had slept in the ship, but the cramped quarters were inducing fearful tension among the refugees. He himself had insisted that an early start be made on housing. So they had found dense clay along the river, spread it to make floors, and set up long one-story buildings, using split-log planks on a frame of natural tree-posts, and Lex, who was clever at such things, had helped him doctor a diet-synthesizer to secrete a tough organic glue which had endured—most of it—through the winter. A barracks for single men, another for single women, five others divided crudely into screened-off cubicles for couples who had either been together when the evacuation started or linked up aboard ship for mutual comfort.

  There had been problems when new attachments formed during the winter, of course. But the few fights could be ascribed to anxiety and claustrophobia. The traditions of Zarathustra, like most well-settled colony planets, had been opposed to violent sexual jealousy. And plans were in hand for extending the—well, the married accommodation.

  Jerode sighed. Yes, there was going to have to be some kind of discipline to make these ad hoc unions stick, something stiffer than the casual suit-yourself practices of Zarathustra. Because there would be children this year if the assembly agreed, and children must not become a community charge. There would be too much resentment from nonparents.

  He wished he knew more about primitive psychology. He had picked up a few pointers from Cheffy, but basically their social evolution would have to be a cut-and-try process, like everything else.

  Four of the original fifteen houses were currently derelict. They had been incomplete at the start of the winter, and cannibalized by Fritch to reinforce the walls of the bigger buildings. This one, the headquarters hut which served as a kind of administrative office, was in fairly good shape, though. Jerode gave the split-
log planks of the wall an approving nudge.

  His mere touch dislodged one of the planks. It fell with a crash.

  Heart sinking, he bent to examine it. On the brownish smear of glue which had held it in place, a cluster of yellow specks moved uncertainly, as though startled by the sudden light Some parasite which had found the glue digestible. Add one to the list of immediate jobs.

  “I see you’ve discovered our latest problem, Doc,” a voice said from behind him. He turned. It was Fritch, the burly dark-brown man who had been an architect on Zarathustra and had supervised all their building here.

  “You have a lot of it? Is it serious?” Jerode demanded.

  “Pretty.” Fritch shrugged. He was holding his evening meal sandwich-wise in one hand, and had been biting at it as he walked. “Little Hannet leaned on a plank where that mold or whatever had been at work, and it gave way and she fell ten feet. Wasn’t hurt, luckily. Landed on a bed.”

  “So are all our houses going to collapse on our heads?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I’ve put a team to work cutting nails out of scrap sheet metal. We can reinforce the worst-affected walls until you or Bendle find something to mix with the glue and make it unpalatable. Bendle says he thinks there’s antimony in some of the sea-plants, and we can burn a sample and see if adding the ash helps. Anyway,” he concluded, raising his food to his mouth again, “I see I needn’t have hurried over. I thought I’d find everyone else here.”

  “Arbogast is coming,” Jerode said, looking toward the river. “Bendle is bade from the beach, and so are Aldric and Cheffy—saw them go for chow a few minutes ago. Did you see Lex?”

  “Yes. He managed to get inside the ship. Says it’s in hopeless condition.”

  “We weren’t expecting much. Still,” Jerode amended, frowning, “if Lex says it’s bad we can take it literally. If Arbogast had said it, I’d have assumed he was disheartened. What did he say, do you know? Did he concur?”

  “He didn’t go down.” Fritch spoke around a mouthful.

  “Didn’t he?” Jerode exclaimed. “Why?”

  “I gather he couldn’t face it.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Jerode muttered. “I think I’d better have a private word with him later.”

  “You’re not going to like the sound of this either,” Fritch said. “Nanseltine is agitating for membership of the steering committee, and a lot of people have fallen for his argument that someone who was a full continental manager back home must necessarily be competent for the job.”

  “He isn’t.” Jerode’s tone was final. “Someone who did nothing the whole winter long but sit on his butt and complain simply doesn’t have what it takes.”

  “Sure, I agree. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to face a lot of opposition tomorrow.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then Arbogast came in sight around the corner of the adjacent hut, walking with head bowed. When they greeted him he muttered his reply and went straight inside to take his place at the committee table.

  Jerode lifted an eyebrow at Fritch, who shrugged.

  “You’ll just have to do what you can to straighten him out, Doc,” he murmured. “We’re so short of capable people.”

  Jerode nodded and answered equally softly: “I asked Ornelle to attend the meeting, by the way. I’ve always pegged her as basically sensible, and I gather she’s become the de facto administrator in the single women’s house. We’re going to need people to take care of human problems now, as well as simply organizing the work we have to do.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Fritch approved. “But the person I’m really pinning my hopes on is young Lex. He’s the most original mind we have. The rest of us—well, let’s face it. We’re shackled by the preconceptions we brought from home. He’s naturally inventive, isn’t he?”

  “Quiet,” Jerode said. “Here he comes.”

  A few minutes later they were all assembled around the rough table: Arbogast at the head by custom, Jerode on his right. Since, during the voyage here, everyone had grown used to obeying their captain, relying on their doctor, it had been automatic to let them remain in charge. Then came Fritch, Bendle, Aldric, Cheffy, self-elected for their specialist knowledge or professional skills. Bendle looked terribly tired. Then Ornelle, subdued and wan, and last, facing Arbogast, Lex, who had been coopted when he proposed the ropewalk over the river, and since then had come up with several suggestions for improvised gadgetry that surprised even Cheffy, with Ins extensive grounding in early human history.

  No, Nanseltine wouldn’t fit in, Jerode thought. That’s our justification for being here. We work well together.

  He’s a man accustomed to giving orders, nothing else. And he’s not even a competent planner, really, fust a mouthpiece for computers of the kind we don’t have.

  But it had worried him that no woman had emerged who was an obvious choice for a position of authority like the rest of them. Thinking ahead to the days when there might be time for petty politics, when the single women would be a pressure group to reckon with, he had hit on Ornelle, because—as he had told Fritch—she had become a kind of housemother figure. He was not, though, entirely sure she was a good choice.

  Still, time would tell.

  He waited. There was silence. They looked expectantly at Arbogast, who had his hands on the table palms up, the fingers curled over. He didn’t raise his head.

  In a grating voice he said suddenly, “I—I think I should vacate this place in favor of someone who deserves it.”

  He thrust back his chair with a scraping noise and walked out, looking neither right nor left.

  Bendle and Ornelle, astonished, made to stop him. Jerode and Fritch exchanged glances and signaled to the others not to speak. When Arbogast was gone, Jerode made up his mind. He moved to the head of the table and cleared his throat.

  “I’m afraid the captain is unwell,” he said. “He’s been much affected by—well, by what’s become of his ship. You know about this already, I think?”

  Nods from Lex, Aldric, Cheffy, Fritch. Jerode glanced down at notes, he had made, spread on the table before him.

  “So I’ll have a quiet talk with him later. For now, let’s not discuss it, but get straight down to business. I’ll report on the health situation, then we’ll hear from Lex regarding the ship, Fritch about accommodation, Bendle about our summer biosphere, Aldric about material resources, Cheffy about possible new projects. Then well draw up a priorities list, and before we adjourn I think we’d better—uh—spend a little time on a problem which is going to come up at the assembly tomorrow, which is the reason for my asking Ornelle to join us. Right!”

  It wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t too bad at all. When they had run through all the reports and the list was complete but for some undecided questions concerning relative urgency, Jerode judged they were ready to hear his recommendation, not included in his initial statement, about permitting some experimental births. He added the rider that the permission should be limited to the immediate future so that children now conceived would be delivered before the fall.

  “And that brings us to a special problem of group discipline,” he wound up. Warning them that the matter should not be mentioned outside this room, he explained about Delvia.

  All of them looked to Ornelle for comment. She had not previously spoken.

  “As to the question of children,” she said slowly, “I think we’ve got to say yes. Not only because it may help to give us the psychological roots we’ll need to live here…”

  A good point. Approving nods.

  “But also because there were few enough of us to start with, and now the winter has wiped out the other party—”

  “Ornelle!” Jerode cut in, seeing dismayed looks all around the table. “There’s no proof that the others haven’t survived.”

  “Well, nobody said anything at this meeting about sending an expedition to find out!” Ornelle retorted. “That means you’re taking it for granted, doesn’t it?”r />
  “Of course not,” Jerode soothed. “It’s because we need all our manpower until we’ve coped with our really urgent problems.”

  “Nonsense. If anyone here believed they were alive, you’d be eager to get up to the plateau and see if we can help each other.” Ornelle spoke with finality. “Anyway, I don’t see why we need to argue about Delvia. I’ve been mulling the question over, and I’m damned certain there’s no question of imposing an abortion on her. She’s much more likely to come asking you for one. She’d find a child too much of a handicap on her—her other activities. Believe me. I’ve had the whole winter to watch her at close quarters, you know.”

  “That’s as may be,” Jerode said. “What I’m worried about is the risk that if the news gets around, there may be still more resentment against her, because we didn’t enforce what was, after all, a decision taken collectively by us all.”

  “Oh, sure!” Ornelle leaned forward, elbows on the table. “But there’s something that doesn’t seem to have occurred to all you men. It wasn’t conscious choice that led all the women to agree to a ban on babies. It was despair. Apathy. The belief that there wasn’t any point in having children, because we were all quite likely to die, adults, children, the lot. All right, you’re now about to convince everybody that we aren’t doomed, what with your nice tidy plans that you’ve been discussing. So you’ve got to face this brand-new problem!” She slapped the table. “What are you going to do, once you’ve made people confident, if they decide—collectively!—they’re no longer going to do exactly as you self-appointed experts tell them?”

  VI

  “I’m glad you thought of inviting Ornelle,” Lex said in a low voice. Jerode glanced up from shuffling his notes back into their original order. The substance they were written on had been their first fortunate discovery here; time was a river-plant whose leaves grew in tight yellow scrolls which, unrolled, could be dried and trimmed to make an excellent substitute for paper. Though they did stink for a long while after cutting.