Polymath

by John Brunner

  From the safety of two hundred yards away, high in a tree, Lex’s keen vision could plainly discern what was happening. There had been almost total silence for an hour past, and his hearing was fined to such keenness that he could clearly hear the quarrel mounting. The participants made it easy by bellowing at each other. Gomes was practically out of his mind with fury; at first he screamed that the missing man was a traitor like Dockle, then, when he was found in the undergrowth, that he and Probian were incompetent fools.

  They roused Probian by throwing water over him, and he was so dazed that he could give no account of what had happened. His incoherence roused Gomes to explosion point. He made to kick Probian in the face. One of the other men jumped him from behind, demanding whether they were all to be treated as animals now.

  His companions shared his view. Mouthing hysterically, Gomes threatened them with his gun, calling them defeatists who had sold out to the people at the coast. The men exchanged frightened glances. One of them moved to Gomes’s side—most likely, persuaded by the gun.

  Now Gomes tried to compel them to go back down-river and recapture Lex, claiming he couldn’t have gone far. Lex smiled to himself. Quite right. But that order was the last straw on the men’s backs.

  They spread out as though to comply, collecting their belongings; then one of them, passing by the dying fire, snatched up a brand from it and threw it at the captain. At the end of its charge, his gun only flashed, no more than singeing his attacker. The rest piled on him and brought him down.

  There was a brief conference. All the heart had gone out of them. They were sick and tired of slaving for Gomes, even those who up to now had most faithfully carried out his orders. Down at the coast there was a polymath, and if he could get away with two armed men guarding him and seven others sleeping nearby, there was no limit to what he might ultimately achieve.

  They left Gomes, and Probian, and the man Lex had strangled, and took the empty gun, no doubt for purposes of bluff. Then, in a strung-out line, they headed back downriver.

  Perfect.

  Those six deserters had long been captured by Baffin’s party and escorted to the town, when Gomes began to recover. The day was bright and hot. He climbed dizzily to his feet, found himself with only two companions now, and cursed the men who had abandoned him. He staggered to the river and sluiced himself with water, then roused Probian, who lay in a near-coma.

  With kicks and oaths he drove the others to their feet, made them pick up what little gear the deserters had left them, and urged them onward, upriver.

  Discreetly, occasionally coming close enough to see them but following mostly by sound, Lex led his team after them.

  The man who had been strangled collapsed late in the afternoon, and not all Gomes’s screams and insults could make him continue. Gomes and Probian abandoned him, and Lex assigned Aldric to make him comfortable, provide him with food and water, and tell him that he would be rescued when the main relief party came by. That of course would not be before tomorrow.

  The vegetation closed tunnelwise around the river. Sustained now by sheer desperation, Gomes and Probian plodded on, always with Lex’s party a few hundred yards behind. Night came down, and they reached a site previously cleared, where they slumped down, so exhausted they could barely snatch a mouthful of food and water. Now the torture to which they were submitting the pair began to trouble Lex’s companions; even Jesset, who had at first said hotly that nothing was too bad for such devils, fell silent when she saw the state to which they were reduced.

  His eyes like chips of rock, Lex stared up toward the cleared ground where the hapless men lay sleeping. He said, “If we wake them a little after midnight, we can reach the plateau at first light tomorrow. Get a few hours’ sleep. You’re going to need it, I promise.”

  In the dead heart of the night they crept up on Gomes and Probian and woke them with handlights in their eyes. They were too weary to offer resistance. Fed, given water, they were taken captive in their turn, and driven onward again. Soon they were on high ground, having to clamber over the rocky ledges beside the falls and rapids, with starlight and Lex to show the way. Sometimes having to drag the prisoners, or lift them over the worst obstacles, they nonetheless made good time. Dawn was just breaking as they found themselves below the sad, futile remains of Gomes’s vaunted dam. The river ran free now, and its sound was loud enough to cover a few quietly-spoken words.

  “I’m going up first,” Lex whispered. “Send Gomes and Probian after me, then follow yourselves, as quickly as you can.”

  The others nodded. Gleefully Hosper hugged Jesset to him with his left arm, weighing his gun in his other hand.

  “And don’t use that unless you have to,” Lex ordered.

  He scrambled over the last rocky shelf, and was on the same level as the wrecked dam. He had judged that the gap here would be guarded, and he was right. As he turned and dragged the unprotesting Gomes up behind him, he heard a hiss of breath, and then someone said sharply, “Say, it looks like the captain got back!”

  A handlight beam, very faint in the morning twilight, slanted down and fell on Gomes and Probian standing dazed on the edge of the rock-shelf. After a moment two men emerged from cover, carrying—for want of energy guns—crossbows improvised from springy strips of metal and fraying lengths of cord.

  That summed up everything which had gone amiss here: that amount of ingenuity, lavished on arms….

  He waited a moment, judged it was safe to beckon the others up beside him—and was wrong. Gomes licked his lips.

  “Get back!” he croaked. “It’s a trap!”

  Lex kicked his legs from under him, sent him sprawling. Probian made to run forward; Lex caught his arm, spun him around, and dragged him to the ground. The same movement avoided a metal-spiked quarrel from the crossbow of the nearer guard.

  Not as quiet and simple as he had been hoping. However, it could have been worse.

  Half over the rock-shelf, Cheffy was sighting his gun on the guards. Lex knocked it aside before he could fire.

  “What’s the idea?” he called angrily in a feigned voice, relying on the half-darkness to keep the guards confused. “The captain’s gone out of his mind! He killed Dockle! And we lost—oh, just come here and give me a hand!”

  Bending, he whispered to Hosper and Jesset, “Stay out of sight for a moment! Aldric, Cheffy, come up quickly but keep your heads turned, don’t let them see your faces!”

  Bewildered, the guards—there were only the two of them—came closer in response to the ring of authority in Lex’s tone. To prevent them recognizing him, he bent down over Gomes, muttering something about their trouble on the way.

  And the moment the puzzled guards were near enough, he knocked them off balance.

  Responding as though the job had been rehearsed, Aldric and Cheffy gave each of them the extra push necessary to send them over the lip of the rock, and as they fell Hosper and Jesset pounced to beat them into unconsciousness.

  “Not so savage!” Lex snapped. “Remember, that’s what we came to put a stop to!”

  A little shamefacedly, they left their victims and climbed up to join the others. Expertly, Lex directed the tying-up of Gomes and Probian; when they were securely lashed they were carried into a shadowed dip between the ruined halves of the dam.

  Under his breath Lex issued his next orders.

  “Hosper, Jesset—you know the way around. One of you go with Aldric, one with Cheffy, and deal with the guard on the workers’ pens. Don’t shoot unless it’s unavoidable. They may be alert because of the noise out here, but most of it will have been masked by the river splashing. Don’t go near the ship—I’ll see to that part. Then free as many of the workers as you can, immediately. I take it we can rely on all those who are kept chained, Hosper?”

  The shock-headed man gave a bitter laugh. “After a while up here you forget there’s such a word as trust’! But the only people who are on Gomes’s side will be sleeping in the ship, probably barricad
ed in.”

  “OK,” Lex said. “Carry on, then—and try not to make too much noise.”

  That was a pious hope. There was a period of about ten minutes when the gray light of early morning lay like a stifling blanket across the plateau, which Lex spent worming his way toward the hull of the ship. Some progress had been made in raising it; it lay now on four piles of rock, its underside clear of the ground, networked with cracks and splits. Just as he reached a spot from which he could cover its main access lock, there was a scream, and time began to run out.

  A clanging alarm bell sounded. The lock flew wide. A terrific animal clamor rose from the workers’ pens, and haggard men and women, their wrists and ankles galled with chains, began to pour like angry hornets across the plateau. In the lock’s opening Cardevant appeared, and another man whom Lex recognized, one carrying another of the crossbows, both with whips. They stood irresolute for a second as they saw the freed workers boiling toward them like lava from a newly-erupted volcano, then took a unison pace forward as though determined to defy no matter what odds.

  Lex sighted carefully and burned the whip out of Cardevant’s hand. He gauged the power so accurately, there was barely a gleam on the hull at his back.

  That was more than they could take. In terror they dived back into shelter and slammed the door behind them. Splendid. They could stew there as long as they liked.

  Now, keeping one eye on the ship for any sign of another attempt to emerge, Lex rose into plain sight of the workers, tucking his gun into his belt as an indication of his peaceful intentions.

  Shouting, he waved them to assemble around him. “We’ve come to rescue you! We’re from the coast! You’re free now! It’s all over! We’re bringing you food and medicine and clothes, and we have Gomes prisoner! You can stop being afraid!”

  Wavering, bewildered, they swirled around him with vague eyes, some of them staring at their wrists as though they could not believe their fetters were actually gone. Not a few of them had started to weep.

  He had just decided he could afford to relax, when there was a sound behind him which was the most frightening noise he would ever hear in his life, more fearful than the wind wailing across the locks of Arbogast’s ship in the dead of last winter. It was the sound of fusion engines warming up.

  In complete incredulity, to the accompaniment of screams from the workers, he turned. And saw the cracked hull of the starship rising slowly from the ground.

  XXIV

  The cosmos had suddenly become an insane place, full of giddy whirling lights. Yet somehow he was still master of himself and knew what had to be done. He ran forward, away from the ship, shouting at the top of his voice above the climaxing roar of the spacedrive.

  “Lie down! Cover your eyes! Keep your mouths open!”

  Conditioned by intolerable months of blind obedience, the workers heard him and did as he said, falling like wheat before a sickle. He ran on, catching sight of Hosper and Cheffy emerging from one of the stinking adobe sheds in the wake of the latest group they had freed. Appalled, Hosper was about to fire on the ship.

  “Hosper! Don’t!” Lex yelled. And Cheffy, responding, caught his companion’s arm.

  “You cant let them go!” Hosper shrieked.

  “Do you think they can?” Lex bawled back. “Get down!” He flung himself forward on the stony ground and opened his mouth wide as the terrible noise beat at his ears. His whole field of vision embraced only the pebbles and dirt under his face. The noise went on.

  Were they going to make it? By some crazy miracle, were they? He felt sweat crawl down his face and his palms were sticky. Let them do it! Let them get into orbit, let Gomes be proved right and Lex be wrong, let him have condemned his fellows needlessly to being stranded on a lonely planet when drive and determination could have sent out a call for help and brought rescuers faster than light…

  The landscape was lit with unbearable brilliance now, and every grain of sand under Lex’s face was etched sharp by shadow. He dared not look up.

  The noise was fading. There was a wind. The angle of the tiny shadows was changing. He put his hands over his face and rolled on his side, risking a peep between his fingers. Shining like a new star, the ship was creeping into the sky. All around him he heard that other people were staring too, heedless of dazzling light. He identified a weeping voice as that of Jesset, and it mingled with the moans of a hundred others.

  And then…

  He pushed himself up on his knees and looked without shading his eyes. The ship was a mile high, two miles, dwindling and accelerating into the blue edge of the dawn. Silence was falling on the plateau, barely disturbed by a few final moans. They were all staring now, in awe, willing the ship to rise. With no reservation at all Lex wished like the rest.

  A beacon of all their hopes, the light shrank into the sky. A smudge, a pinpoint. A dust-mote.

  A… a pinpoint? A… a smudge? A smear!

  Back down the blue field of the morning, out beyond the land where the reflection of the sun lay like a road of gold across the smooth summer sea, the ship returned. Lucifer cast from heaven, it tore the air asunder and rode the terrible light of its own destruction downward to the water—and was gone. Where it plunged, there came back a single monstrous bubble full of flames. A long time later the sea beat sluggishly against the beach.

  His eyes still filled with the departed vision, Lex grew little by little aware that he was pounding the ground with his fists and that dry, formless sobs were racking his throat.

  Later, when they asked to be told what to do about the miserable half-human wrecks of Gomes’s tyranny, he refused an answer and went to sit by himself among the rocks, his head bowed.

  “Lex! Lex!”

  He stirred and looked up. Diffident, Delvia stood before him, her fair hair shaken back, a gun in her hand. There was a wealth of sadness in her eyes. He forced himself back to awareness, amazed that so much time should have passed, and gazed around the plateau, expecting to see the relief expedition at work. Instead, there were only a handful of newcomers, besieged by the desperate wretches he had liberated.

  “Is that all Jersode sent?” he demanded, jumping to his feet.

  “No, no!” She caught his arm. “There are fifty of us coming altogether, with everything we can carry! But when we saw the ship go up a few of us thought we should hurry the rest of the way, in case things were out of control on the plateau. And…”

  “What?”

  “And I wanted to see you, Lex. I could imagine the way you must be feeling. Not the way Gomes planned, but in another five years, ten years, maybe we could have fixed the ship, or done something.” Her words were pouring out in a rush, as though she had to get them all spoken before he could interrupt. “And those fools have thrown away that last tiny chance, and they’ve really finally and definitely burdened you with the troubles of a whole world, haven’t they?”

  Her lips trembled and her eyes grew large with tears.

  “But you’re going to make it; I know you will. You’re going to show us how to live here and we’re going to have children and we’re going to teach them all we know and well find ore and make tools and have farms and cities, and one day we’re going to send a message back to tell people where we are, and they’ll come and find us, they’ll say you’re the most wonderful man who ever lived because you realized we mustn’t found our world’s history on an army, on a war, on killing….”

  The words faded into a sob.

  Lex stood rock-still for a moment; then he put his arm around her and gently kissed her hair.

  “At least there’s one person who understands,” he murmured. “But you left out one thing that’s perhaps more important than all the rest. You’re right about the army, the war—but above all we had to be stopped from deluding ourselves with a false hope. That’s worse than no hope at all.”

  He felt the terror which had gripped him for so long leak away. His voice was perfectly calm and level.

  “You know som
ething? I figured out when Gomes came to the town what it is that a polymath has to do. He has to be right. Always and without exception. Nothing else is good enough.”

  “What a terrible thing,” she whispered.

  “Yes, it is. And I was so afraid that I was wrong after all…. But at least now there’s only one course open, so I can’t choose wrong. Come along, Del. We’ve got to go and set our home in order.” A shadow lingered on his face which belied his light tone.

  Now, definitively, without trace of doubt or chance of qualification: home. All they had. Where their children would be born, where they would be buried.

  But it’s going to be a good world eventually.

  He hadn’t meant to say the words aloud, and it was only when he saw Delvia smiling that he realized he had done so. Of course, saying it made it true. A polymath, after all, must always be right.

  He took her arm and they walked forward together.

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  Also by John Brunner

  A Maze of Stars

  A Planet of Your Own

  Age of Miracles

  Bedlam Planet

  Born Under Mars

  Castaways’ World

  Catch a Falling Star

  Children of the Thunder

  Double, Double

  Enigma from Tantalus

  Galactic Storm

  Give Warning to the World

  I Speak for Earth