Polymath (17 page)

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.”

“The call was from here all right,” Jerode said, and the words were an indictment. He sounded vaguely astonished, as though he had just put two and two together. “I found Ornelle weeping over the mike of our radio, and I recall I had to tranquilize her because she was over the edge of hysteria.”

Heads turned. All the eight hundred people looked at Ornelle, and the looks were angry.

“She was at it for going on three days,” Jerode finished.

“You mean
she
did it?” Beside Hosper, Jesset was rising, pointing at Ornelle on whom all eyes were turned. Famine-thin, yet with a fire of hate burning behind her dark eyes, she looked like what suffering had made her: a wild beast. “It was because of her that we had to go on being whipped, starved, chained together? Not daring to lie down when we were sick for fear of being beaten back to work, threatened with guns if we rested for a minute?
Her
doing?”

For a moment Lex feared she might spring at Ornelle and serve her as she had treated Cardevant. He barked, “Jesset! On the plateau! Where do people sleep?”

“In filthy hovels made of mud! On the bare ground!”

“Gomes and his officers?”

“In the shelter of the ship!”

“How long do you work?”

“Dawn to dusk every day, sick or well!”

“What do you eat?”

“Synthesizer cake! Two a day!”

“What do you drink?”

“River-water! Boiled in clay pots on open fires!”

“If you refuse to work?”

“They make you work in chains!”

“If you’re too ill to work?”

“They whip you until you get up!”

“If you can’t get up?”

“They let you die!”

And then, suddenly, her face crumpled and she began to cry. Hosper caught at her, drew her down beside him with both arms, and pressed her to him. His words were audible to the entire gathering.

“You’re safe now, Jesset! You’re safe! You don’t have to be frightened anymore.”

When the following silence had become unbearable Lex spoke again, hearing his voice gravelly and unfamiliar.

“I suggest that we make available to those who want to work on spaceship repair whatever they need for their journey—issue rations, canteens of water, bedrolls, and so on. Doc, you’ll organize that, won’t you? And it isn’t difficult to find the way. You merely follow the river until you come to the edge of the plateau. In fact you can see the hull of the spaceship from quite a distance off. I did think it only fair, though, that those intending to make the trip should be informed of what they can expect at the end of it”

He looked out over the assembly, That brief, bitter interrogation of Jesset had finished his work. It told the audience more with its ferocity than houts of detailed explanation could have achieved. People had scarcely moved. Yet there had been a withdrawal. Nanseltine and Ornelle, because they had been named, were—cast out. Even Naline had turned her single eye on Ornelle and was staring at her as though at a stranger.

Once, Lex reflected sadly, there had been creatures called scapegoats. Centuries later, parsecs distant, for the sake of the community he had created scapegoats anew.

When it was over he felt drained of every ounce of vitality, yet paradoxically at the same time he was so keyed up he could not think of relaxing. A temporary solution had been found to the worst problem afflicting their community—a human one, inevitably; now, as though that had been fogging the foreground of his mind, a hundred other problems sprang sharply into focus. As the assembly melted away into the darkness, he sat slumped In a chair and stared unseeing toward infinity. His party had kept going all last night to get back to the coast, and the night before they had only snatched a couple of hours’ sleep. Now he craved for rest, and his busy mind would not concede it.

Moreover, the committee members were gathering around him, a little hesitantly because the Lex they had known had turned out to be that improbable, near-alien creature, a polymath. Not all his careful disclaimers had rooted out their half-superstitious regard for those to whom the fate of a whole new world could be entrusted.

It dawned on him that they were grouping about him in a semicircle, waiting to be given orders. He spoke irritably, not looking at anyone.

“Before we go any further, let me make one thing dear. You are not going to come running to me with
every petty little question that crops up, understood? You’re all able men in your own right. You’ve done wonders here. If you haven’t acquired the confidence you need to trust your own judgment, you’re not the people I think you are. So, for instance—Bendle!” His eye fell at random on one of the group. “If you want me to tell you how to run long-chain structure analysis with three clay pots and a GD accumulator, don’t waste your breath. I am not a magic box on legs, press a button, and out pops what you want. I’ve been tossed like everyone else into a situation I didn’t ask for, I’m hardly even capable of feeling grateful to be alive because this is the wrong planet as far as I’m concerned, and I can get as angry as anybody else when I’m pushed to it.”

The committee members exchanged glances. After a pause Fritch spoke up bluffly.

“Point taken, Lex. I guess all of us want to go on seeing things run by popular consent, too, not by one man the way they are up on the plateau.”

“And I guess a lot of us didn’t realize how lucky we’ve been,” Bendle supplemented. “I felt bitter when my boy died. If I hadn’t been too busy to sit and mope I could have wound up like Arbogast.”

They were talking sense. Lex cracked a faint relieved smile.

“No, what we came to ask you about is the thing that’s bothering a lot of people,” Fritch went on. “That is, what are we going to do about the other party? Some of us are so incensed, they’re all for organizing a sort of army and going up to set free the slaves. Of course Hosper and that little spitfire of a girl of his are pressing the idea on everyone they can get to listen. But as I understand it, they were coming after you with guns, and they’d cheerfully have murdered you if you hadn’t lured them into this—this underground man-eater thing.”