Polymath Page 9

  Lex and Baffin took turns to lead, their energy guns at the ready. Lodette was walking next, her bright eyes darting from side to side, warning them out of her specialized knowledge when they approached poisonous growths such as blisterweed or halting them cautiously when she spotted something not previously encountered. Now and then she used up one of the irreplaceable cubes for their only camera. More than five hundred had been rescued from the ship, but almost all had already been expended by Bendle’s team.

  Zanice and Aggereth, both apprehensive, followed her, and Minty and Aykin walked companionably at the rear, Aykin toting the heavy radio and accumulator on his broad back.

  It was nearly noon when one of the unpleasant bubbling grunts broke from a few yards away, and they stopped dead on seeing branches flail as though a monster were thrashing about in the shrubs. Lex heard Aggereth’s teeth chatter for a second before he clamped them firmly together.

  Gun in hand, he advanced to the side of the riverbed.

  Over his shoulder he said, “Lodette, we haven’t run across any big carnivores, have we?”

  “No. And the environment typically wouldn’t support any. A beast over say fifty pounds’ weight would be too heavy to be arboreal among such thin branches, and too bulky to move fast through this undergrowth. You’d expect to find the big carnivores in savannah-type country.”

  “Then what’s that?” Lex said, and was surprised to hear his voice steady.

  Peering out of the mesh of vines and creepers less than ten feet from him was the head of an animal. It was identifiable as a head only because of its gaping mouth; evolution here had not elaborated so many organs out of the basic gastrula as on most human-occupied planets. The hide was mott led. On a jointed neck the head weaved from side to side.

  “That’s—uh…” Lodette had to pause and swallow. “It’s a herbivore, Lex. I’ve seen a couple of them back home. They got at our salad-trees. But we had no trouble scaring them off.”

  The mouth closed, opened; the head tilted skyward. The bubbling grunt repeated—and Lex slashed the beam of his gun down, across, and around. Vegetation shriveled, jerked back as though the branches were springs in tension. A waft of stinking smoke curled up.

  “There’s your carnivore,” Lex said softly.

  On the ground crouched, or squatted, or simply rested, a thing like a soft black bag, mouth uppermost. It was closed around the hind end of the herbivore, sucking at it, eroding it, dragging it down.

  They watched with horrified fascination. It seemed impossible that the black bag, big though it was, should engulf the herbivore, which was about the size of a pony. Yet it was doing so. Now, with a sudden plop, the herbivore vanished completely.

  “The damn thing must live in a burrow!” Lex realized. “That’s only its mouth!”

  “Lex! Watch out!”

  The cry came from Aykin, standing five yards to the rear. He dived forward. But Lex, whose reflexes had been sharpened artificially like many other of his talents, had needed only the noise of a pebble falling into the riverbed to alert him.

  Inches in front of his feet, almost masked by mud, dead weeds and intertwined roots, another black bag was opening. Its movement cracked off the disguising mud. It gaped, shut again, then opened to an incredible diameter, almost four feet, so that Lex could see down into it. Its interior was lined with ferny villae, hanging limp.

  He said thoughtfully, “It looks as though this thing needs to drink as well at eat.”

  “You mean—you mean these are both part of the same creature?” demanded Aggereth, aghast. “Then it may run right under where we’re standing!”

  “Quite possibly,” Lex agreed. “This is a hazard I hadn’t anticipated. Well, we’ll just have to be more careful. Lodette, do you see any complex of characteristic signs we can watch out for?”

  The biologist bit her lip. She turned around slowly, surveying the neighborhood. While she was making up her mind, the black bag in the riverbed—still vainly gaping for water—rose questingly upward until its rim was a yard high and marked the earth like an ulcer. A thick nauseating stench erupted, and gases bubbled underground.

  “Yes, there you are,” Lodette said suddenly. She pointed to a lush-looking bluish-green stalk with heads on it remiscent of asparagus. “That’s a plant the herbivores are very partial to. Usually they eat all the buds they can reach. But here, you notice, they’re growing right down to ground level, with only a few patches browsed clean.”

  “They eat it where they aren’t eaten themselves, is that it?” Minty said with a wry smile. She was holding Aykin’s muscular forearm with both hands.

  “Exactly. Where these shoots are common, we can be fairly sure we ought to walk warily.”

  “Excellent, Lodette,” Lex approved. “All right, let’s move on.”

  “What about the—the thing?” Aggereth said, gesturing at the black bag.

  “It’s dying without the water from the river,” Lex said. “There’s no point in doing anything about it.”

  But around the next bend what they had been expecting happened. The greenery walling the river closed in, and they were faced by the mouth of a dim greenish tunnel. Lex sighed, and on glancing around was met with looks of dismay.

  “It’s far worse than it was last year,” Baffin said.

  “Yes, it is.” Lex looked up at the sky. The clouds were darkening, and though the rain had held off so far he felt it might break any time. He came to a decision.

  “We’ll rest here,” he said. “Make a ring and keep a lookout over each other’s shoulders. Break out rations and remember we may have to stretch them later on. Aykin, while we’re still this close to the town, I think it would be a good idea to talk to Elbing.”

  The party made no attempt to hide their relief. They set down their burdens and stretched gratefully. Only Aykin, staring at the tunnel of foliage, didn’t at first respond.

  He said, “Lex, do you really think we’re going to find the river’s been blocked by a landslip, as we’ve been assuming?”

  “It seems the likeliest explanation,” Lex answered.

  “Yes, but look how dense those plants are. Isn’t it possible the roots make such a tangle they choke the stream? That would account for the flow recommencing at the end of summer when the vegetation dies down.”

  “Possibly, but I don’t think so,” Lex said. “They’d have to grow at a fantastic speed to cut the flow from normal to nothing in a little over an hour, which is what happened.”

  “Besides,” Lodette said, “if this were a regular seasonal occurrence, that carnivore on the bank would be adapted to it. Instead, it seems to be dying without water.”

  “Yes, of course,” Aykin said, and set about rigging the radio.

  “In fact,” Lex continued, “I think I know where the landslip probably happened. Baffim, do you remember where the river cuts the edge of the plateau?”

  “Where we had to scramble among all those rocks and boulders? Yes, of course. The banks are pretty high there. Do you think we’ll find the water’s backed up behind the blockage, or would it have found a new course by this time?”

  “I hope it’s found a new course,” Lex said. “That much water backing up into a lake would probably drown the other party’s site completely.”

  “Ready for you, Lex,” Aykin said. Hefting the antenna-weight and aiming carefully, he tossed it into the top of the tallest tree near them. That was only fifteen feet or so above ground, but at this short range it should suffice.

  It did. The signal was very clear, although faint—being intended for orbit-to-ground communication the transmitter was designed for a more effective power-source than one GD accumulator. Lex summed up their morning’s progress and described the “tunnel” into which they would now have to plunge.

  Elbing acknowledged the information laconically and passed on good wishes from Jerode.

  “How’s Naline?” Lex inquired.

  “Better, I hear. But feeling’s running high. The d
oc posted a notice giving his view of the facts—all about how she knew the gun was uncharged, so she can’t have been serious and just wanted to attract attention, and so on. It’s a pretty unpleasant business, though.”

  What would they find when they got back? Hysteria? Demands for a trial? A lynching? Lex didn’t like to think of the possibilities. He made to sign off.

  “How’s the weather?” Elbing inquired.

  “Rain’s held off so far,” Lex told him. “With luck—”

  At that exact instant, a crackle came from the radio. He glanced toward the hills, then jumped up. Yes, the dark clouds were piling on the high ground now; he saw lightning like threads of silver wire sewing across their cushiony surface. Very distantly, the rumble of thunder followed.

  Squatting on their bedrolls, they made their meal a hasty one. As he brushed the last crumbs from his upper lip, Baffin said, “Lex, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “If the other party are dead, what’s most likely to have killed them? Simple exposure?”

  “I’d imagine so. Zanice?”

  “Oh, yes. We didn’t get off so lightly ourselves, remember. Think of Elbing’s leg.”

  “It could just as well have been disease,” Minty put in. “Or eating the wrong kind of local food. I don’t believe they had as many diet-synthesizers as we do, did they?”

  “Nor the people who could alter them to make antal-lergens and stuff,” Baffin confirmed. “In fact we all tried to persuade them to come down to the town with us, because there weren’t any decent resources handy. No timber within miles, some fresh water but not so much as we have—had!—just bare rock… But they insisted they’d rather stay put.”

  “Well, they arrived here the way we did, practically suffocating,” Lex pointed out. Having finished his chunk of synthesizer cake, he linked his hands around his knees and rocked back and forth. “So they can’t have had much time to plan their landing. Putting down on barren ground on a new planet has a lot to be said for it, though—you aren’t immediately concerned with alien plants, animals, and poisons. And the only technically-trained people in Gomes’s group were grounded in disciplines which weren’t going to be very useful, like engineering. On the other hand I think Baffin has a good point. Once they knew that we had a doctor with us, and an experienced biologist, it was foolish of them not to trek downstream to our site. Granted, it would have meant a huge extra strain on our facilities, but it would have meant a lot of extra workers, too.”

  “I think they were downright stupid,” Baffin said. “In fact I told them so. I mean, if they were afraid to put down anywhere but on bare ground, they might at least have picked a smooth patch of desert somewhere, with a good clean aquifer under it. It was courting disaster to choose a little rocky plateau so far above sea level.”

  Aggereth stood up, shrugging into his pack. He said harshly, “It’s a bit academic, isn’t it? Talking about the rights and wrongs of their decision, I mean! After all, we’re on our way to rob their grave.”

  “You’re right,” Lex agreed. “OK, let’s move.”

  XII

  Through the enclosing tunnel of vegetation they moved steadily onward. Lex frowned on seeing how dense the plants were right to the bank and overhanging it. He had allowed an extra day for the return trip, but it was beginning to look as though that had been a grave under-estimate. Either they’d have to be content with a mere inspection of the other party’s site, instead of a thorough search for salvageable items, or they’d have to stretch out their rations for the additional day. Coming back they would not be climbing as they were now—they had reached steeper going—but traveling downhill would be no advantage if they were forced to chop a path at every step.

  Animals moved in the undergrowth; occasionally things moved on branches spanning the river, with a scratching of clawed feet. Once flicked up his gun and let go a single flaming bolt, and a creature with six symmetrically distributed legs and a pincushion body fell ahead of them. From the middle of its underside hung a long elastic tentacle tipped with a gummy ball. Lodette confirmed his spur-of-the-moment deduction that it must be a snare for prey, though she doubted whether it would harm a man unless the sticky ball was poisonous. No one was inclined to put that to the test.

  They had agreed to make the best possible distance this first day. Accordingly they did not halt promptly at sun-set, but continued with handlights. But the strain of scrambling over the loose rock that here filled the river-bed, often climbing more than walking, grew too much.

  “Enough’s enough,” Lex said finally. “Let’s clear a campsite, shall we? This looks like as good a spot as any. Baffin, burn the vegetation back a bit. The rest of you stand aside—we don’t want to scorch you.”

  The others obeyed. With scything blasts of their guns Lex and Baffin shriveled the cover for a distance of fifty yards on all sides. The stench was foul, but lasted only a few minutes.

  They made a fire of dry roots and heated soup to drink, then worked out a watch-rota and settled, exhausted, on their bedrolls. Except for an occasional animal cry, it was very quiet. Lex, who had ceded the first watch to Minty, thought as he lay down that one might almost call it peaceful.

  But suddenly Minty let out an exclamation. Roused from the brink of slumber, everyone sat up in alarm.

  “Water!” she cried, playing her handlight on the ground. “Look!”

  Brownish trickles were coursing over the pebbles and mud. Aggereth climbed feverishly to his feet.

  “If that’s the river coming back, we have to get out of here fast! We might drown!”

  “But it’s not, and we won’t,” Lex said, after a careful study of the flow. “It’s the first effects of that storm ahead.

  We’ll be OK so long as we don’t lie down on the lowest parts of the riverbed, even if they are the smoothest.”

  With a snort of annoyance Lodette, who had picked a flat expanse of dried mud that must have represented the site of a late puddle, moved her gear to a safer spot.

  “Think I should contact Elbing?” Aykin said. “So they’re ready for this when it reaches them? A little rainwater would be better than nothing.”

  Lex shook his head. “It won’t get as far as the coast. It’ll be absorbed by the dry ground.”

  “Are you sure?”

  On the point of saying—snappishly because he was tired—“Of course I am!” Lex hesitated. With a stir of surprise he realized: Yes, I am sure. Because I’m beginning to get the feel of this planet. Like that creature with the sticky ball underneath. I never saw anything like it before. But I knew somehow what it had to be.

  Amazing. He gave Aykin a crooked grin. “Yes, because if I wasn’t I’d move my bed, wouldn’t I? Now get some rest.”

  He was right. By morning only a few damp patches acknowledged the rain as they continued doggedly upriver. Now it was definitely “up”; they came to long rapids and little sharp falls, and they began to see clear sky overhead for a hundred yards at a time as the vegetation thinned. While breakfasting they had spoken with Elbing, who told them Jerode had intended to talk to them this morning but was still asleep after a disturbed night. Ornelle had had another bout of hysteria, and someone in the single women’s house had filled Delvia’s bed with blisterweed, causing a tremendous row.

  It took one person to set the example, Lex thought as he picked his way over treacherous pebbles, and there they all were behaving like children. Damn Naline!

  At midday they were in striking distance of their goal. They occasionally glimpsed the highest rocks in the neighborhood of the plateau, and once Lex saw a gleam of sunlight reflected on what might—or might not—be the hull of the starship. But they had not yet come to the blockage in the river, and everyone was now staring ahead, rather than looking constantly to all sides, as though expecting momently to see the dam. He had to remind them to keep up a proper lookout.

  Then he sighted a flat-topped boulder, almost cubical and thirty
feet on a side, half sunk in the soft ground at a bend. It would make a good place to break for the noon rest. Gratefully everyone scrambled up the smaller rocks around it to lay their burdens down on its flat top.

  Aykin rigged the radio. Munching his ration of synthesizer cake, Lex heard Elbing acknowledge the call through the usual daytime mush of solar static, and ask for him because Jerode wanted to have a word.

  “Doc,” Lex said, “how are things going?”

  “Badly,” was the short reply. “Have you located that landslide yet? It’s hot again down here today, and we need that water back urgently. The stink of our sewage alone is enough to drive you crazy.”

  “No, we haven’t found it,” Lex admitted wryly. “And we’re almost in sight of the plateau. It must be right up where we suspected, close to the other landing-site. We may reach the place this afternoon if all goes well, but it may not be until tomorrow that we can tackle the blockage.”

  “Do your utmost,” Jerode said. “Lack of water is just compounding a situation that’s explosive enough without it. I’ve saved the sight of Naline’s right eye, but her left needs a new cornea and I can’t do anything about it with the resources I have. Should have started an organ-bank last winter instead of burying our bodies intact, I guess, but there was just so damned much else to do…. Did Elbing tell you what happened to Delvia last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m inclined to accept Delvia’s version of the background, but the fact stands, most of the other women are hostile to her, and Nanseltine came to me this morning all puffed up because a gang of them appealed to him to get her put on trial. I’ve no idea what sort of offense she could be charged with—I don’t think there’s one in the Unified Galactic Code—but that won’t stop them. They’ll invent something.” Disgust clearly came over in his voice, despite the interference. “And of course too damned many people are standing around wringing their hands. The whole of Cheffy’s crew, to start with.”

  Lex bit his lip. He saw Baffin frown, and Minty and Aykin exchange worried glances. On the off-chance that they might have constructive ideas, he looked an invitation at them.