Polymath

by John Brunner

  Ornelle was still standing, under the misapprehension that her revelation had provoked amazement and awe, when the cries became clearly audible.

  “They’re back! Lex and Baffin and all of them! They’re all back!”

  The air seemed to clear of something heavy and dark. They jumped to their feet in excitement. Ornelle alone seemed frozen, and Fritch broke the spell on her by saying as he pushed past her toward the door, “Now maybe you’ll learn to keep your silly mouth shut, Ornelle! Come on!”

  As the others crowded onto the verandah, she dropped to her chair again, laid her head on her arms and began to weep.

  The double news—not only that Lex and his party had returned, but that there were after all people alive on the plateau and two of them had arrived with Lex—spread like an explosion. Cheffy’s gang, picking up the equipment scattered when the rushing water hit the upstream site of their sedimentation plant, had been the first to see them—limping, filthy, scratched, Aggereth hobbling with his arm on Aykin’s shoulder. They had come back to town, their work forgotten, and as the word traveled around the rest of the community likewise abandoned their day’s jobs. Even Lex’s salvage team, who were out at the hulk of the ship marking it up for eventual cutting—the tools weren’t available yet but Aldric had hit on a promising new idea—came hastening back.

  But it wasn’t simply the general excitement which compelled the committee to call an assembly. It was what came to Elbing’s ears, what he relayed at once to Jerode at the infirmary where he was attending to Aggereth’s ankle and supervising dressings for the minor injuries of the others.

  “Doc!” the spaceman said breathlessly, clutching the doorpost to relieve the weight on his stump. “Is it true that the others are trying to repair their ship and put it into orbit?”

  Lex, his face showing appalling weariness, looked up from the chair where he was eating a hasty meal while one of Jerode’s nurses cleaned the cuts on his legs. “That’s right,” he confirmed. “Ask Hosper. He was Gomes’s super-cargo, by the way.”

  “Then they’re crazy,” Elbing said with conviction. “Captain Arbogast told me what a state it was in when he came back from his visit. It couldn’t be put back in space without a month in a grav-free cradle. No matter how long you slaved on it with handtools, it’d never lift more than a mile.”

  Hosper, who sat holding Jesset’s hand in a corner of the room, was gazing about him with hungry eyes at what had been accomplished here. It wasn’t surprising that they were both overwhelmed, Lex thought, after their weary months of sweating away at useless tasks.

  Yet no one knew better than he how much remained to be done.

  Now Hosper spoke up. “Are you a spaceman?” he demanded. And, at Elbing’s nod, he went on, “Well, then, listen. The underplates of our ship are all strained. There’s a crack that runs about three-quarters of the way around the hull. The whole drive gear has been shifted on its mounts. The—”

  “Don’t go on,” Elbing said. “I’m right. They are crazy.”

  The assembly came together in the hot air of early evening. It was immediately clear to Lex that the situation had worsened during his absence. People were grouped differently. The two factions were almost perfectly defined. On one side were the useful ones, clustered about members of the steering committee—lean, tired-looking, heavily tanned, with a kind of serious intentness in their quiet speech together. On the other side there was a totally new focus. Nanseltine and Rothers were together, and Nanseltine’s wife, looking very bad-tempered. She had been assigned to work on a project making soap from ash and grease, and resented it although there was virtually no other light unskilled work to offer her.

  That much was to be expected. What was new was that next to the Nanseltines sat Naline, half her face masked with a thick layer of yellow salve and a pad of dressing over her blind eye. Incredibly, there was discernible self-satisfaction in her manner, as though having attendance danced on her by the Nanseltines, Rothers, Ornelle—who sat on her other side—and many more people was a complete consolation for the loss of her eye. Lex had read in the history of psychology about self-mutilation to gain sympathy and attention, but centuries of advancement in education had almost abolished such pathological behavior. If he hadn’t seen what Gomes was doing, he would have found it hard to believe that regression could be so swift and far-reaching.

  Yet, after all, the basic individual was much the same. Only circumstances had changed significantly.

  The group centered on Nanseltine added up to a larger total than he had expected, and when he thought back on what Jerode had told him—summarily, in the infirmary—his heart sank. If only he and his companions had had a chance to sleep themselves out after their nightmare journey… But wild rumors were circulating, and it was imperative to scotch them.

  He found himself frowning over the absence of someone he had been subconsciously looking for. Delvia, of course. And there she was, coming shyly to the fringe of the crowd as far away from Naline as possible. A few people gave her nods of greeting. Silent, arms folded, she sat down apart.

  There was a sudden buzz of talk centered on Nanseltine, and the former continental manager climbed to his feet, his face red, his voice when he spoke charged with hostility.

  “Dr. Jerode! Since you’re delaying the start of this meeting I guess it’s up to someone responsible to initiate discussion. What we want is straight information.”

  White-faced, Jerode looked up from his notes. But Nanseltine plunged on before he could be interrupted.

  “We’ve been told that the other party, instead of tackling these hopeless and unwelcome schemes for a permanent stay which have been imposed on us, have made a bold and brave attempt, in spite of crippling disadvantages, to get their ship repaired and return to the comforts and sanity of civilization.”

  A ragged cheer went up. He waited for it to end.

  “We have it on the authority of someone invited by you yourself to join your self-appointed committee—who can hardly be charged with bad faith!—that you propose to play down, to disparage this important news. What impels you to this cowardly course, I don’t know: whether it’s your lack of enterprise, I might say of guts, or your reckless willingness to jeopardize our irreplaceable possessions—let me cite only the fact that the team you sent out under the young and inexperienced Lex departed with seven precious energy guns and returned with a mere two, plus a pair of deserters from the other party who represent extra mouths to feed, and moreover they lost a radio, medical supplies, and goodness knows what else, and of course let us not forget the hard work wasted when equipment for the drinking-water plant was washed out to sea….”

  He was going on and on, and a frightening number of people were approving his hysterical onslaught. Jerode looked dumbly at Lex, seeking guidance.

  What was to be done? Hosper and Jesset were pale with anger at what Nanseltine was saying; should Lex call on them? Elbing was muttering to himself; would the opinion of a spaceman carry any weight with people in this frame of mind? Of the members of his own team, both Baffin and Minty sat with their faces in their hands, pictures of hopeless misery, and the others wore expressions of uniform despair.

  No, it was no use trying to reach these people on a rational level. They wouldn’t believe even a firsthand account of life as Gomes decreed it must be. They would probably shout Hosper and Jesset down; they’d argue that Elbing hadn’t seen the other starship for himself, so he must be talking nonsense…. One couldn’t any longer regard Ornelle as sane, and in a very real sense people like Rothers and Nanseltine weren’t either. They still craved the adulation and status which they had enjoyed back on Zarathustra, which even there they had not truly deserved.

  Against an immense burden of fatigue, Lex forced himself to his feet. He drew a deep breath and shaped words which rang across the assembly like thunderclaps.

  “Go to the plateau, then, all of you who want to! And damned good riddance!”

  XVII

 
; The passion of his words startled the crowd into silence. Even Nanseltine, the flow of his vituperation broken, stood bewildered for a moment.

  More astonished still was Jerode. He said faintly, “Lex, you’re not putting that as a serious proposal, are you?”

  “Why not?” Lex blazed at him. “Let’s stop fooling ourselves! People who turn their backs on their one chance of survival simply aren’t fit to live!”

  “Jerode!” Nanseltine had recovered and was demanding the attention he had enjoyed before. “Jerode, tell this young fool that we have no time to waste on tantrums! We—”

  And at that moment the thing happened which broke the fiddlestring tautness of the atmosphere. As always, a dozen or so of the ubiquitous fishingbirds were perched on nearby roof-poles. Now one of them, tired of thinking whatever thoughts occupied its roosting-time, spread its dingy white pinions and made a clumsy leap into the air. As it passed over Nanseltine it let go one of the gummy black cakes of excrement which were scattered indiscriminately on beach, rocks, trees, and houses.

  The black sticky blob landed plump in Nanseltine’s hair, and a gust of laughter like a rising wind swept through the audience as he spluttered and clawed at it to wipe it away. It smeared his hands, ran onto his forehead, clung to his fingers when he attempted to shake it off. In moments he had become the clown for the assembly, and all their tension was hooting away in one vast peal of hilarity.

  Probably, Lex thought, he was the only person who knew that that laughter had been triggered by the single forced giggle he had uttered, reflex-quick after the event No. Maybe the only person bar one. He saw that Delvia wasn’t laughing. She was staring at him. When she noticed his eyes on her, she raised one eyebrow.

  The anger drained from him now, and cool determination took its place. Now or never he would have to establish his ascendancy over Nanseltine, Rothers, Ornelle, and the rest—to make sure that so many of the others saw the literal stupidity of their ideas they would never again be treated except with the contempt they merited.

  A moment when the chief spokesman of the useless faction was a figure of fun wasn’t an opportunity likely to be repeated.

  Out of the sea of laughter new words were rising—spoken first by Cheffy, Lex judged, and picked up by those near him. “Sit down! Be quiet! Sit down!”

  He let the shouts increase until they were almost drowning the last echoes of laughter, and then spoke sharply, raising his hand.

  “All right, calm down. I think that fishingbird deserves co-option to our steering committee, though. It knows nonsense when it hears it, and has no qualms about making the appropriate comment.”

  That produced another wave of chuckles and fixed their interest securely on him. He stepped up on the verandah and sat down on a corner of Jerode’s table, one leg swinging, exuding authority in every way he knew.

  In a confidential tone, as though appealing to the entire crowd for personal understanding, he went on, “Now there’s something that we’re long past due to get straight. There are always people who have their minds made up before they hear the facts. Back on Zara, or any developed world, it’s possible to put up with people like that. One lives remote from facts most of the time anyway. There are a dozen levels of insulation, from automatic housing to disposable clothes, from food factories to air-conditioned resort cities, which are designed to keep facts and us apart. In conditions like those someone who dreams up impossible projects can generally be tolerated, because computers and people with greater common sense tell them they’re making fools of themselves, which is up to them, but they’re not allowed to make fools of anyone else.

  “Here, though, we’re sitting on the facts. And they’re hard and sharp. Here, people who prefer fantasy to reality are a burden. If you’ve studied Earthside history, you’ll know how they handicapped our species in the pre-atomic age, and how much faster we moved ahead once sensible people realized that their commonest trick was to mess around squabbling with other people instead of buckling down to the jobs that really needed doing.

  “Look around this assembly, and you’ll see for yourself how the same trick has been pulled right under your noses. We’re stranded on a hostile, undeveloped world. Are we all putting our best efforts into making life tolerable, all working together as a community? I don’t think so. Because right here in this assembly there are two clear factions, and one is digging its heels in to hold the other back.”

  In the center of the crowd a number of people—a satisfyingly large number—looked around uneasily and tried to adjust their positions so that they did not seem to be on a dividing line.

  Well, that was a start.

  “I guess you’re wondering what makes me talk like this. Well…” Lex measured the length of his pause carefully. “A few minutes ago you heard Nanseltine dismiss me as young, inexperienced, unfit to head even a group of half a dozen people who cheerfully accepted me as their leader. I was prepared for him to say that, because it’s one of the things they warn you about in polymath training.”

  He articulated the last sentence very carefully, so that no one would be in doubt as to what he had said. Even so, the shock took a while to be digested. He glanced around, spotting key reactions.

  Jerode: pure relief, which might translate as, “He’s come into the open at last!” Hosper and Jesset: “Small wonder they’ve achieved so much here, with a polymath to help them!” Nanseltine: naked horror at the extent to which he had made himself appear foolish. Delvia: her lower lip caught up between her teeth, and a thoughtful nod. Aldric, Cheffy, Fritch, Aykin, Minty, and many many others showing mingled wonder, relief and excitement.

  It was inevitable that someone would challenge the remark. The one who did was Ornelle, clambering to her feet and pointing a quivering finger at Lex.

  “You’re lying!” she shrieked. “It’s a plot you’ve cooked up with Jerode to cover up what you did to Naline!” She clutched Naline’s shoulder convulsively with her other hand. “If you’re a polymath, why didnt you say so before? It’s a lie, a shameless lie!”

  “I didn’t say I was a polymath before because I’m not one,” Lex corrected. “I’ve had polymath training and incomplete physical modification. Let’s just get it clear what a polymath is, because if you don’t know I guess a lot of others here don’t. A polymath is a man or woman adapted and trained for years, right up to the age of forty, to take on one job on one particular planet. Not a superman, not a kind of walking computer, just a person with a special kind of dedication who’s been worked on by a vast team of experts, chemically, surgically, intellectually…. I couldn’t tell you this, because you’d expect me to perform miracles. First you had to get acquainted with me as a person, didn’t you? Otherwise you’d have regarded me as a machine.

  “And there’s another point, too. Even after he’s fully trained, a polymath has to spend another twenty years on the planet he’s been assigned to, getting to know it intimately, before he’s left in charge. Uh—to put it mildly, this world was rather hastily selected for colonization.”

  Wry grins. He estimated four hundred of them. That meant he was bringing a full half of the community to his side now. Even so, he had to kick the rest along too.

  “Now the polymath’s job after this special training is to oversee the work of the first continental managers and stop them making idiots of themselves.”

  There. Lex almost winced at the conceit implicit in the statement, but it was essential. Nanseltine, still scrubbing at his face and hair with a bit of cloth, was making himself as small as possible, as though hoping to escape notice. He wasn’t after Nanseltine personally, of course; he must, though, strip the man of his spurious claim to authority once for all.

  “Among the most important things he’s taught to watch out for is the risk of what’s happened here—people dividing what has to be a united effort until the planet is finally tamed. I’m disappointed that Manager Nanseltine”—he loaded the title with bitter sarcasm—“isn’t aware of that too. Maybe
it’s because he’s never worked with a polymath.”

  The corollary, that he knew very well how to oppose one, could almost be heard clicking into focus in the minds of the audience. Next, then, he must dispose of Ornelle. He hated the calculated way in which he was planning this assault, but he knew it was economical of their most precious asset: time.

  There was a prehistoric saying: “Needs must when the devil drives.” If there was a devil on this planet, it was in the minds of those who shut their eyes to the truth.

  “That’s not the worst division we’re suffering, though. A much more serious one has cut us off from our fellow survivors up on the plateau. I guess a lot of you have been wondering why they refused to answer our radio calls, why they didn’t want to work together with us. Well, the people who can tell you most about this are the strangers here, Hosper and Jesset, who came back with us. Let me put some questions to them.”

  Hosper rose, steadying himself on a torch-post. It was growing toward full dark, but no one had yet lit the torches. Lex whispered to Jerode, and somebody was detailed to attend to the job.

  “Hosper!” he went on. “Captain Gomes told us why he’d refused radio contact. Maybe you’d like to inform everyone what he said?”

  Looking tired to the point of collapse, the shock-haired man spoke in a flat unemotional voice.

  “He had us re-rig our antenna when the thaw came, and we thought we could appeal to you for help against him because he’s out of his mind, as you may know already I guess.” The words followed one another with almost no stress or inflection. “But we heard some woman moaning about how bad it was down here and how your starship had rolled out into the sea and you were all going to starve to death and die of plague and like that So Gomes got it into his head you were all going to come up and try to steal his ship from him, and he wouldn’t let anyone transmit at all, not even to say we were still alive. I never could make sense of all that and now I’m here and I’ve seen the miracles you’ve accomplished”—life was creeping into his voice at last—“I don’t even know if it was really someone calling from here or whether it was some trick Gomes played on us to stop us hoping.”