Polymath (2 page)

“Apt,” Lex murmured. “Any leaks, by the way?”

“Not now. Two or three cracks we had to seal.” Cheffy shut off the hot-spray, gave a final dab with the spatula, and stood up.

“What are the pegs for?” Lex said. “Rowlocks?”

“Yes, of course.” Aldric kicked at a pair of long, wide-ended objects lying in the boat’s shadow. “The free
paddles we ware trying last year weren’t very efficient, you’ll recall. Nor the punting-pole.”

Lex gave a dismal nod. It had been when his puntingpole stuck in bottom-mud that young Bendle had fallen overside and never come up.

“So I’ve been putting these together in my spare time,” Aldric went on. “Theoretically, they should drive a loaded boat better. We’ve hung a tiller on the stern, too—there. Not that I’m going to make any guarantee, you realize.
I
never expected to have to cobble together primitive makeshifts like these. If it hadn’t been for Cheffy’s interest in Earthskle history, I don’t imagine I’d ever have dreamed of making oars.”

Lex nodded. It wasn’t the first time that Cheffy’s purely intellectual awareness of subtechnical devices had had to be translated—generally by Aldric, who was a deft craftsman—into hardware improvised from anything to hand.

Momentarily depressed again by the colossal scale of the task they’d taken on, he said, “What makes you so sure we’re going to have a
loaded
boat?”

Aldric looked out to sea. “She has settled, hasn’t she?” He sighed.

“Sunk is more the word,” said Cheffy. “Probably sifted half full of wet sand into the bargain. You’ll be working in at least a dozen feet of water, Lex.”

“Luck’s been with us so far,” Lex countered with forced casualness. “It may not be as bad as you think.”

Cheffy snorted. After a pause, he said, “How do you Imagine the others made out? I gather Ornelle’s been trying to raise them by radio, without success.”

True enough. Consequently no one was giving much for the chances of the only other refugees known to have reached the sanctuary of this planet. He was sorry Cheffy had mentioned the subject; he’d hoped that everyone would be too busy for at least another few days to worry about the party whose ship had landed—or crashed—on the inland plateau.

“Gales must have been terrible up there,” Aldric said, reaching for the stern of the little boat. “Well, let’s push her to the water. The captain ready yet, Lex?”

Shading his eyes, Lex stared back along the beach toward the air-compressor.

“Just about, I guess,” he replied.

The last band was tied. Critically Naline passed her
hand over the slick surface of the suit, touching the knots in turn. As she felt the one on Arbogast’s chest, she gave a murmur of surprise.

“Are you all right, Captain?” she demanded.

“Of course,” Arbogast grunted. “Why?”

“You’re shivering,” Naline said. In the act of laying down the latest charged cylinder, Delvia glanced around.

“Nonsense,” Arbogast said. He stepped back, avoiding the eyes of the girls. “Is my air ready, Delvia?”

“Yes, three cylinders.”

Arbogast bent stiffly to pick them up, paused while Naline—still looking worried—placed his helmet on them, uttered a word of thanks, and headed for the waiting boat.

Looking after him, Naline said under her breath, “I hope he doesn’t have a fever. You can’t see it, but his whole body is—well, sort of vibrating.”

“That’s nothing to do with fever,” Delvia said. She turned quickly to the compressor and disconnected the accumulator leads from its motor, then picked up and began to unfold the solar collector sheets. “Give me a hand to spread these flat, will you?” she added over her shoulder.

Moving to obey, as she always obeyed Delvia, Naline said in a puzzled voice, “But he
is
shivering, I tell you. And in full sunlight.”

“Not shivering. Trembling.” Delvia pegged down the corners of the first sheet and coupled the accumulator leads to its output terminals.

“What? Why?”

“The ship—what else? All winter long he’s talked about nothing except patching her up and getting her aloft. Now he’s come out and seen what’s happened to it. He’s grounded.”

“Aren’t we all?” Naline countered bitterly.

“He’s a spaceman. I guess that makes it tougher. And he isn’t so young anymore.” Delvia brushed sand from herself.

“Besides,” she went on, “don’t you remember when things began to get bad at the start of the winter he kept trying to persuade everybody to take shelter in the ship?” She gestured in the direction of the thin shining arc which was all of the vessel now showing above water. “How’d you like to be in there? Come on—I’ll trim that hair for you now.”

“Air,” Aldric said, checking the items of gear over the stern of the boat. “One, two, three cylinders. Weighted belts. Boots—”

“Last time,” Lex realized suddenly, “we were just walking on the bottom. But these are ordinary magnet-soled spaceboots. I don’t want to be dragged feet first against the hull every time I go close.”

“Thought of that,” Cheffy said briefly. “I told Aldric to change the magnets for chunks of lead. But we couldn’t find any. He had to make do with plain steel. Go on, Aldric.”

“Net bags. Lex, don’t pick up anything which well have to haul up on a cable, will you? I’m not sure how stable this boat is, and I’d hate to be tipped into the water. One waterproofed handlight. At least it says it’s waterproof. Two hatchets, the best we could think of in the way of weapons. There is absolutely
no
means of making an energy gun fire under water. Cheffy tells me they used to use compressed air for underwater guns, so I’ll get to work on one as soon as I can think of something expendable enough to use as ammunition.”

“Don’t expend it,” Lex suggested. “Use something long enough to tie a cord to. We have plenty of that.”

“There are things down there,” Aldric countered sourly with a jerk of his thumb at the sea, “which I would not care to be tied to if they took off for deep water. Of course, if you want the thrill of a submarine joyride in the wake of a hurt and angry monster…?”

“Point taken,” Lex said, and grinned.

“I’m glad. We don’t want to lose more people than we have to. And what do you think of our new anchor?” Aldric held up a shiny metal object consisting of a shaft and four spiked, curved tines. On the shaft was a coarse spiral thread, and fitted loosely on this was a rotating collar bearing four sharp blades.

“If this gets caught in bottom-weeds, or some beastie tries to cling to it, you haul on the cable sharply, that releases this spring catch—see?—and the blades spiral up the shaft.” He gave it an approving pat and placed it in the boat.

“Cheffy, are you going with them, or shall I?”

“I’ll go. You can make the next trip.” Cheffy swung his legs over the side of the boat. “Push us out a few yards, will you? And mind where you put your feet.”

Lex scrambled lightly aboard and took the bow thwart “OK, Captain,” he called to Arbogast.

But Arbogast was staring toward the sunken spaceship again, his hands hooked together in front of him, his knuckles bright white. He didn’t seem to have heard.

“All set, Captain!” Aldric said sharply.

Arbogast let his hands fall to his sides. He swallowed hard before speaking. “I… I changed my mind. I’m not going.”

“What?” Aldric took a pace toward him. Cheffy, startled, paused in the act of setting the oars in the rowlocks. Only Lex, slewed around on his thwart so he could see the captain, gave a slow nod. He hadn’t been altogether unprepared for this.

Arbogast bowed his head and walked off up the beach, his dragging feet leaving smeared marks. The dying horror pegged to the ground sensed his passage and hunched once more to try to strike at him.

“Now just a moment!” Aldric said hotly, starting after him. “You can’t leave Lex to—”

“Aldric!” Lex launched the name on the air like a dart. “Aldric, let him alone.”

“The hell!” Aldric snapped. “Look—it was his idea he should go, wasn’t it? Are we to waste another hour finding a suit to fit me or Cheffy, have it tied up, go hunting for different boots? It took most of yesterday to find enough wearable kit!”

“Keep your temper,” Lex said. “Think of it his way. How would you like to go see your old home wrecked and smashed, with alien creatures crawling in every corner?”

“Did I suggest it? Did I?” Aldric wiped his face. “And—hell, talk about homes being wrecked and smashed!”

“Calm down, Aldric,” Cheffy said. “Lex is right. At least we don’t have to
see
what’s become of our homes.” He spat over the side of the boat.

Aldric drew a deep breath. “OK,” he said resignedly. “Let’s go hunt out a suit for me.”

Lex hesitated, thinking wryly how just a few minutes ago he had rebuked Delvia for taking risks. But—he excused himself—a survey of the ship was essential before tomorrow’s assembly, when they were due to take stock of their resources. He said, “I can go down by myself.”

“You’re crazy,” Aldric said. “Without a phone? When we don’t know half the species of sea-life around here? What it’s likely the rutting season for things as dangerous as that multilimbed horror Bendle had to nail down? You’re apt to wind up as stocknourishment for a clutch of eggs!”

“I’ll keep my hatchet in my hand. Oh, get in the boat!” Lex was suddenly impatient. “We need to know what’s happened inside the ship!”

And, as another argument struck him: “I did two dives last fall, damn it, and the captain hasn’t done one before. It’s quite likely safer for me on my own.”

Aldric shrugged. “OK—but I don’t have to like it.”

He bent to the stern, leaned his full weight against it, and pushed it free of the sand. It rocked violently as he lumped aboard. For a minute or so Cheffy fumbled with the oars, finding them hard to synchronize; then he abruptly got the hang of it and the boat began to move steadily over the calm water. On the beach Bendle’s team paused in their work to watch.

Arbogast was plodding on without turning. Lex saw Delvia and Naline talking agitatedly, obviously about the captain; he hoped neither they or anyone else would run after him demanding explanations.

Determinedly, he looked ahead toward the tarnished but still-gleaming spaceship. It was possible to see how the curve continued below the surface, but it would be some time before they were close enough to tell what part of the vessel was uppermost. As a mode of progress lowing a boat was apparently inferior even to walking.

“It’s moved five hundred yards at least,” Aldric said from the stern. “Lex, how do you imagine it traveled so far?”

“Rolled, I guess. Too heavy to have floated out.” Who could have predicted that on a moonless world—hence effectively a tideless one—no beach was stable? There were no meteorologists among their panicky handful of fugitives; in fact there were hardly any trained personnel,
so that a dilettante like Cheffy and a hobbyist like Aldric had emerged as leaders where technical matters were concerned. He went on, “If I remember the old layout correctly, that whole stretch of ground where the ship rested must have been undermined. And we know the bottom shelves gently. As soon as it rolled enough for the locks to admit water, there was nothing to stop it sinking deep into the seabed. Must have been as fluid as a pumping-slurry with the currents.”

“If only the locks hadn’t been open,” Cheffy said. “Remember the noise? Wind blowing across the opening, making the whole ship sing, as though it were playing the organ at its own funeral. I hope I never hear anything so eerie again.”

Lex and Aldric were silent for a moment, remembering not only the noise—which they would carry in mind until they died—but other things. Arbogast losing his temper when he realized what the sound was, and attempting to reach the ship in a ninety-mile gale with waves breaking over the hull. And railing against the fool who’d left the locks open, until it was worked out he must have done it himself, because he had been trying to persuade everyone to shelter aboard during the winter instead of trusting themselves to ramshackle huts of planking and piled dirt.

“Why did we pick this place, anyway?” Aldric grumbled.

“Reckon we’d have done better on high ground?” Cheffy countered.

“No. No, probably not. Lex, what do you suppose has become of the others? Think they lived through the winter?”

“Maybe. Don’t see why not, in fact.”

“I don’t see why,” Aldric put in. “They haven’t contacted us since the storms gave over, have they?”

“They could simply have lost their antennas,” Lex said. “Remember, they did at least have the ship’s hull for shelter. A gale could hardly have made that roll.”

“So I hear,” Cheffy said. “Like a squashed egg! And wasn’t Arbogast pleased? Thinking he’d put down badly until he saw what the other captain had done. What’s his name—the other captain, I mean?”

“Gomes,” Lex supplied, “Yes, the ship was badly cracked.”

“And,” Aldric said, “they’ll have had subzero temperatures much longer than us. They’re probably iced solid, half buried in snow—at least the salt spray off the sea kept
that from happening to us. But there were chunks of ice in the river until two or three days ago.”

“You don’t have to tell us,” Cheffy said. Trying to look over his shoulder, he lost control of the oars and had to fight to stay on his thwart. “Hah! I wan’t designed for traveling backward. How much farther?”

“We’re past halfway,” Lex said.

“I’ll row back to shore,” Aldric offered. “Who knows? The boat may be lighter on the return trip instead of heavier.”

Something snapped at the port oar a second later, as though to underline the grimness of his humor. When the blade lifted again, it carried with it a writhing creature, wet-shiny pink in color, which had sunk its fangs in the wood of the blade.

“Damned nuisance,” Cheffy said in a resigned voice. “Aldric, I told you these things ought to be made out of metal. Aluminum for choice. Hollow, too.”

“When I get my electric furnaces rigged, I’ll let you know,” Aldric retorted. “Can you shake it off?”

Cheffy shipped the starboard oar awkwardly, then put both hands to the other and flailed it around. The creature emitted a gush of yellow fluid that discolored the sea, but clung fast.