Polymath: Empire Book 1

by John Brunner

Present, not past, he reminded himself sternly. On the useless side then—no, correction: the less useful side, because everyone here had to count—the Nanseltines and their cronies; you could spot them now, the ones complaining because they didn’t have chairs too or because they didn’t see why the Nanseltines should when they didn’t. Also the fawners, like Rothers, of whom a cluster centered on Nanseltine’s wife, saying of course MANAGER Nanseltine should have a chair.

  And in the middle of these categories, almost half the total number: category undecided.

  The arguments ended when Cheffy, with his characteristic tact, suggested moving the chairs to one side of the crowd where they would obstruct no one’s view. With a sigh of relief Jerode turned to Arbogast. An expectant hush fell.

  Slowly Arbogast drew himself to his feet. He looked dreadfully old, as though the past day had aged him fifty years. But his voice was firm, and carried across the crowd.

  He said, “Fellow… castaways! Up till now you have in a sense been—well, under my command. I have not objected. In space, and directly following our arrival, I was fitted for it, I think. But all I know is space and spaceships. On a planet’s surface, I think it better for everyone if I relinquish this unenviable position to someone suited to the new circumstances.”

  Lex looked at Nanseltine to see if he realized what was coming. Nanseltine didn’t react, but his wife did.

  The corners of Lex’s mouth turned down sharply. Might have guessed….

  “I propose therefore,” Arbogast went on, “that this assembly should be presided over by someone we all respect and admire for his invaluable work. Dr. Jerode, will you…?”

  He made a quick flourish; then he picked up his chair and carried it to the side of the crowd distant from Nanseltine. Finally catching on, the latter looked startled—and his wife, furious. A buzz of comment rose and faded.

  Jerode looked at Lex and shrugged. He tinned and called across the crowd, “Is that acceptable?”

  There was a ripple of applause.

  “Very well, then.” The doctor shuffled his notes. “As you know, our position has much improved in spite of…”

  When Jerode got around to describing the urgent work ahead, Lex was able to sort a great many more of the crowd into their respective categories. The useful ones frowned, hut were cheered by realizing what a well-planned program had been devised. The less-than-useful also frowned, then gave up listening and began to mutter restively among themselves. Still, there was no real trouble until Fritch finished talking about work on the accomodation. Nobody was minded to object to improving their living conditions.

  But then Bendle talked about possible new food supplies, and went on at great length and with a lot of jargon, and people fretted visibly. Jerode’s voice shook when he rose to call on Aldric next, to discuss water supplies, the manufacture of tools, and other technical matters.

  “The ship!” someone cried at the back of the crowd. “Hey, what about the ship?”

  “Yes! Yes!” Twenty voices shouted agreement, and a pattern of nods made heads wave like grass under wind. Jerode, uncertain, stood blinking, and Aldric—on his feet to approach the verandah—hesitated with his notes in his hand.

  “Very well,” the doctor said at last. “If it’s your wish I’ll call on Lex, who visited the ship yesterday.”

  The useless ones were the ones who applauded now. The others only came alert. Lex unfolded his long legs and made the one step up to take station beside Jerode.

  “The ship,” he said in a clear, penetrating voice, “is about one-third under mud, about one-third under water. Salt water. A highly corrosive liquid. I entered it through an open cargo lock”—his eyes flicked to Arbogast, who winced, but he had to rub in the facts—“and found that when it rolled over, everything unsecured was smashed. What was not broken by being flung against the wall or ceiling is in unsalvageable condition. At least two explosions occurred in the fuel-reserve room and shattered most of the drive gear. Sand and mud—hundreds of tons of it—have sifted inside. Sea-creatures and weed have taken possession. This is exactly what we were expecting.”

  He paused, assessing the impact of what he was saying.

  “Accordingly,” he resumed, “the best we can make of the ship from now on is a stockpile of metal and other raw materials. And it isn’t going to be easy to get at it, either. We’ll have to develop some way of powering cutting-tools under water, means of floating large pieces back to shore—rafts, maybe—and solve other problems which will take so much time I can’t recommend them for immediate attention. All I can recommend right now is stripping out loose fragments that can be brought back in the boat.”

  He glanced at Jerode. “I think that’s all I can say.”

  “Thank you, Lex. As you said, I think we expected the substance of your report. Now we’ll hear Aldric, and—”

  “Just a moment!” That was Rothers, sitting beside the Nanseltines, having moved when they shifted their chairs. Lex glanced his way. Nanseltine’s wife was speaking urgently to her husband and several people nearby were nodding vigorously. Now, ponderous, Nanseltine got up.

  “Who went over the ship?” he demanded, setting his shoulders back. “No one but you?”

  “That’s correct,” Lex said, climbing back on the verandah.

  “No one but you!” Old mannerisms were returning to Nanseltine, that was obvious. “Are we to take it, then, that this—this defeatist view is based exclusively on your inexpert observations?”

  “You’re welcome to put on a suit and come down with me to see for yourself. I think we might find one to fit you.” Lex weighted the words with deliberate sarcasm.

  “Don’t descend to personal insult, young man!” Nanseltine glowered, while those of the crowd who hadn’t got Lex’s point at once got it now and smiled regardless of which side they were on. Meantime, the former continental manager continued, “What I, and a lot of other people here, want to know, is why we don’t have the expert opinion of a spaceman instead of this—this amateur evaluation.”

  There was silence. Someone whispered, “Which spaceman?” The words carried, and Arbogast heard. With dignity, head erect, the old man—suddenly it was natural to think of him by that term—rose and faced Nanseltine.

  “Manager Nanseltine!” he said. “Perhaps you’re not aware of the condition of the spacemen among us! You seem aware of rather little of what’s going on here!”

  A ragged cheer commented on the rebuke.

  “I had four men in my crew! One had his skull cracked by a bale of goods that fell on him while we were clearing our holds to make room for you people! One is present, who had to have a leg amputated after frostbite. One was trying to inspect the ropewalk across the river in a gate, lost his grip, and fell into the water. No doubt he was swept out to sea and drowned. And one was on ground leave on Zara. That leaves myself, and Lex, who volunteered to work under me during our flight and in whom I, if not you, repose some confidence as a result.

  “I cannot deny, however, that I had intended to go down and inspect my ship. I didn’t do so, for reasons I—” His voice cracked, and he ended on a lower tone—“I would rather not try to explain. I will only apologize. Excuse me.”

  He lowered his head and walked away, out of sight as he turned the corner of the nearest building.

  Nanseltine had the wit to realize that if he pushed his line of questioning any further now, he would turn his audience against him. Making the most of a bad job, he said loudly, “Since the captain is prepared to trust Lex’s judgment, that will suffice.” And he sat down and shut up.

  Unfortunately not everyone else had that much grace. Rothers, the former computer chief, jumped up in his turn.

  “You mean we’re not even going to try to refit the ship and get off this—this pestilential mudball?”

  You could see the words hitting and hurting the useless ones.

  “It’s a heap of scrap—weren’t you listening?” called Cheffy.

  “Oh, be quiet!�
� chorused a dozen young voices. For a moment it looked as though the trouble were going to die down. But then—and Lex clenched his fists in impotent anger—Ornelle tossed fuel on the flames.

  “The party up on the plateau had a ship too,” she said. “That one can’t be under water. And we haven’t heard anything from them, so it’s likely they have no further use for it. Why aren’t you mounting an expedition to go and see?”

  That lunatic proposition snatched at the fancy of those who would rather delude than save themselves. At once a roar of excitement went up. People leaped to their feet—Nanseltine again, Rothers again, forty or fifty in all—demanding to be heard. In vain Jerode shouted for order.

  Lex bit his lip and looked toward Ornelle. Her face was very white and she met his gaze defiantly.

  He drew a deep breath and let out a sudden wordless bellow, so startling that everyone froze in surprise. Before they could recover he had lanced a question at Rothers.

  “The ship repair yard at your port—did it handle ships that size?”

  “Why—why, of course!” the man answered.

  “How big was it?”

  “Ah…” He licked his lips. “About a mile and a half square, I guess.”

  “How much of the operation was done by hand?”

  “Why—why, none, of course!”

  There was a laugh. It came from, of all people, Delvia. Obviously she had her wits about her.

  “Doc, a motion,” Lex said quickly. “I think this calls for a vote of confidence in the steering committee.”

  “Just what I was thinking,” Jerode said with relief. “Those who—”

  But he didn’t have to take a count. It was passed by acclamation, a majority of over two-thirds. Lex noticed, with interest, that it was Delvia who triggered off the clapping.

  Frustrated for the moment, the useless ones made no more trouble. But Lex was profoundly glad that the question of Delvia’s pregnancy hadn’t come up after all; Jerode simply didn’t mention it, and was wise not to in the heated atmosphere of this meeting.

  So they’d got away with it this time, at least.

  It wasn’t until the assembly ended just before dusk that Arbogast’s body was found among the rocks fringing the beach, with a spent energy gun clasped in the right hand which was now his only recognizable feature. He had opened the beam to widest spread and turned the weapon against himself.

  VIII

  The shadow of Arbogast’s suicide lay chill across the hot bright days that followed. Towing a sled laden with scrap salvaged from the ship up the beach to where Aldric and his gang were working on the solar boilers and stills,

  Lex wondered how long their precarious balance was going to last. Twenty days had elapsed, then thirty, without disaster. But he had a fearful feeling that time was gnawing at their psychological props like termites, and eventually…

  Aldric raised a face half masked with dark glasses to acknowledge the delivery. Lex tipped the scrap to the ground with a clatter and stood back, wiping sweat from his forehead.

  “How are things with you, Aldric?” he said, low-voiced. “Going smoothly, by the look of all this.”

  Aldric hesitated. Then, pretending to examine the scrap piece by piece, he moved close enough to Lex to whisper.

  “No, Lex—not so smooth. Matter of fact, I’d been wanting a word with you, and now might be as good a time as any. Here, let’s stroll along the beach a bit.”

  “Sure.” Lex caught the handle of his sled in one hand and drew it behind as he fell in alongside. “These sleds are OK on the beach,” he muttered, “but we’ll need wheeled trucks some time soon…. Sorry. What were you going to say?”

  “Among other things, I’m wondering how hot it’s going to be in midsummer.” Aldric paused, judging they were out of earshot of his crew. “I’m getting a lot of complaints about noontide work, and not frivolous ones, either. I had a case of heatstroke yesterday. Cheffy says some hot-climate countries back on Earth used to have a period for sleep in the middle of the day. I’m not so sure that would be the answer; it’s easier to stretch to a day longer than Earth-basic, harder to cut down to a shorter one. And that would mean, in effect, having two short days. Halves of days.”

  “If Cheffy says people adjusted to it, he’s probably right,” Lex said. “Whether we’d be willing to is another matter. But surely if the heat does become unbearable…Well, what else could you do with the time you can’t work, except doze?”

  “I know what you mean,” Aldric grunted. “On or off the job!”

  Shading his eyes, Lex looked along the beach. In the near foreground was Aldric’s domain: in a weird spidery layout there were solar boilers that doubled as distillation equipment interspersed with crude turbine generators. The drive of the ship had been cannibalized for many of the parts, once everybody was convinced there was no but absolutely no hope of repairing it. Ornelle had held out for nearly a week.

  Beyond, fishing nets hung in the sun on racks, drying while girls checked the knots. Bendle had succeeded in preparing an antidote for the commonest allergens in the sea-life, and although they looked revolting even after they’d been cooked half a dozen species were now providing welcome and quite tasty variety in their diet. Back inland, ground was being cleared for planting—Bendle was up there with his team right now, studying the reproductive processes of their first standby, the salad-tree, in the hope of selecting for the strain with the best leaf-yield.

  In the other direction the solar collector sheets were all spread out. Accumulators were being charged continuously. He saw Delvia, burned brown now, laughing and joking with a gang of Fritch’s men who were waiting for replacement accumulators for their power-tools.

  Inland again there was a noise of sawing punctuated by crashes. Timber being felled. He could just discern a line of yellow trunks drying in the sun. The odd-shaped whitish forms of fishingbirds rested on them like wilting flowers. Their gummy black droppings were all over the beach—not to mention the roofs and, worse still, the pathways of the town. They were becoming a distinct nuisance, and some means would have to be found to frighten them away.

  “I wonder where those birds go for the winter,” Lex murmured. “Maybe we should follow their example.”

  Aldric gave a harsh laugh. “Won’t do us much good,” he said. “One of Bendle’s people told me about them. They aren’t migratory. They encapsulate—secrete a kind of gelatinous shell for themselves—and spend the winter stuck to the rocks. They thought they were eggs at first, but the eggs are being laid now.”

  Lex nodded absently; the list of curious habits among the local fauna was too long already for him to be surprised. Besides, he had been carefully educated to expect the unexpected. He said, “Well, if heat’s our only problem, we can either develop the siesta habit as Cheffy suggests—which won’t be as hard as you make out, if you remember that the midsummer days are very long—or else plan a secondary program of jobs for everyone that they can fill in with in the shade for an hour or two either side of noon.”

  “I don’t think a change of work is the answer,” Aldric said. “It’s a question of—well, frayed tempers. Look I gave Rothers a job to keep him sweet, melting down scrap in a solar furnace, with half a dozen assistants under him. I thought a bit of petty authority would satisfy him.”

  “It didn’t?”

  “It did not. He had an argument with one of his helpers, lost his temper, hit the guy—knocked him against the back of the furnace-mirror and bent it clear out of shape. That’s why it isn’t out here working. I had to detail my two best handymen to restore the curvature. Meantime Rothers is snarling at everyone and slowing down my work.”

  He made a gesture that embraced the entire field of view. “All this looks great. Signs of progress. But underneath it’s ready to explode.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.” Lex sighed. “And I go right along with your point that a change of work won’t be enough. It’s about time we cheered ourselves up somehow—sort of cong
ratulated ourselves on our marvelous achievements. I’ll talk to Jerode about it, make a report to the next assembly. Initiate some hobbies, perhaps, stimulate competition, provide a few luxuries…. I’ve been wondering about music. We could handcraft some instruments, I guess.”

  “Just so long as somebody’s thinking about the problem,” Aldric said. “I have too much to do to waste time worrying. Just thought I’d tell you.”

  Yes, Lex thought, the physical problems could be overcome. Given the rest of the summer, the town could be made moderately comfortable, twice as warm as last winter, with far more room for people to spread out. The food problem was almost licked. There was adequate water. Clothing was still a difficulty, but it was amazing how long fraying fabrics could be made to hold together. Besides, in this heat everyone preferred to wear the minimum.

  A point struck him. He glanced toward Delvia again. Yes, Naline was there. While Fritch’s men were loading up with charged accumulators, she was keeping her back turned so she wouldn’t have to watch Delvia laughing and chatting.

  It hadn’t come to an explosion yet—but it would. Damn Delvia! Her old tabard was becoming a collection of rags linked by threads; instead of darning it like the other girls she had reduced it to a kind of kilt, thereby proving that she possessed the handsomest bust among the refugees.

  And yet she was a tough and reliable worker herself. How could one reprimand one of the most useful people around? She hadn’t been assigned to her particular job. She had just seen that someone would have to make sure charged accumulators were in regular supply, so she had proceeded to coordinate the arrangements in an orderly and economical manner. And Naline, of course, had shadowed her.

  Would it serve any purpose to bring her onto the steering committee? J erode kept asking him that question; every time Lex returned the same answer. She and Ornelle would waste hours wrangling over personal differences, and Ornelle was coping usefully enough with the human problems she had been allotted. The register of intended pregnancies, for instance—that had been her idea. It would be open for another month at most. No winter births if humanly possible.