Polymath (11 page)

She slapped her thigh with her open palm. “But I tell you this! If Ornelle or anybody says she could have done different, it’s a lie.”

“Go on,” Lex said in a neutral tone.

“Thanks, I’m going to! Since I’m setting the record straight, I might as well make a proper job of it. Look. I’m a long way from my adolescence and I never had one like Naline’s anyway, so it took me a shamefully long time to figure out what was attaching her to me. She’s never seen me, Delvia-as-is. She’s invented a Delvia that never was, sweet and generous and big-sisterly and so on in quantities enough to justify the way she throws herself at me. Why do you think I’ve been taking men like—like trophies even when it was still so cold it was damned uncomfortable and no fun at all? I’ve been trying to smash this nonexistent Delvia, get Naline to notice the real one!”

“Did you tell her to come out here and work with you today?”

“I did not. I don’t give her orders. I didn’t tell her
to go away either, though. I’ve been hoping she’d recover from her hysteria. But she hadn’t. She tried to pick a quarrel, and I kept calm, and she accused me of hating her and snatched up a gun and ran off. I didn’t chase her. I didn’t think she could do any harm with it. It had been given to me as expended, for recharging. Lex, I swear I didn’t know there was enough power left in it even for a flash discharge!”

Her face was pale; her lips were trembling. Lex looked at her for a long time. At last he said, “Go and talk to Jerode, Del. Ornelle’s had a breakdown, and she’s said a lot of things that’ll make him readier to listen to you. Between you, you may be able to figure out how to prevent you being lynched when the news about Naline gets around.”

The little expedition moved off at first light the next day—partly to get as far as possible before having to camp for the night, partly to avoid making a ceremony of the departure. Lex had walked two or three miles up the riverbed to reconnoiter, to a hill which gave a good view of the next several miles still, and knew the going was fairly clear to start with. But for this, he might have postponed their leaving. A wind off the sea was piling up the clouds which had been on the horizon yesterday, the sun was hidden, and as the clouds approached the land they began to be carried upward.

With luck they might not spill their rain until they were over the high ground inland, then move on before Lex and his companions caught up. But they spread a pall of gloom over the first stage of the trip. Once or twice they had to use handlights even though dawn was long past. At least, however, it wasn’t raining.

The people they were leaving behind might have been more pleased if it had been. It would have meant fresh water for washing, as well as the scant ration for drinking
provided by Aldric’s solar stills… which in any case could not last long unless the sun came back.

The contrast with the going at the end of last summer was amazing. This time it was far tougher. Newly-sprouted plants of all kinds fringed the river and a network of roots meshed out from the banks. The disappearance of the water had left them dry and fibrous, and the rotting bodies of freshwater animals were piled in what had been the last puddles. At first there were stands of quite tall timber on either side—trees twenty to fifty feet high, draped with an incredible tangle of creepers, vines, and plants for which no names had yet been invented. The river narrowed and its course grew steeper; then the trees were replaced by sucker-rooting shrubs only half as high, but equally festooned with creepers.

The mud had dried out and gave a good footing. They made fair progress throughout the morning. Around them were strange noises: oddly-shaped birds, yellow-gray and brown, shrilled and boomed, carapaced insects hissed and stridulated, and sometimes there were bubbling grunts which suggested that some large creature had been taken by what passed for its throat and was being strangled.

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 doc 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.”