Polymath by John Brunner Read Free Book Online

silence for a moment. Then Arbogast came in sight around the corner of the adjacent hut, walking with head bowed. When they greeted him he muttered his reply and went straight inside to take his place at the committee table.
    Jerode lifted an eyebrow at Fritch, who shrugged.
    “You’ll just have to do what you can to straighten him out, Doc,” he murmured. “We’re so short of capable people.”
    Jerode nodded and answered equally softly: “I asked Ornelle to attend the meeting, by the way. I’ve always pegged her as basically sensible, and I gather she’s become the de facto administrator in the single women’s house. We’re going to need people to take care of human problems now, as well as simply organizing the work we have to do.”
    “Not a bad idea,” Fritch approved. “But the person I’m really pinning my hopes on is young Lex. He’s the most original mind we have. The rest of us—well, let’s face it. We’re shackled by the preconceptions we brought from home. He’s naturally inventive, isn’t he?”
    “Quiet,” Jerode said. “Here he comes.”
    A few minutes later they were all assembled around the rough table: Arbogast at the head by custom, Jerode on his right. Since, during the voyage here, everyone had grown used to obeying their captain, relying on their doctor, it had been automatic to let them remain in charge. Then came Fritch, Bendle, Aldric, Cheffy, self-elected for their specialist knowledge or professional skills. Bendle looked terribly tired. Then Ornelle, subdued and wan, and last, facing Arbogast, Lex, who had been coopted when he proposed the ropewalk over the river, and since then had come up with several suggestions for improvised gadgetry that surprised even Cheffy, with Ins extensive grounding in early human history.
    No, Nanseltine wouldn’t fit in
, Jerode thought.
That’s our justification for being here. We work well together.
    He’s a man accustomed to giving orders, nothing else. And he’s not even a competent planner, really, fust a mouthpiece for computers of the kind we don’t have
.
    But it had worried him that no woman had emerged who was an obvious choice for a position of authority like the rest of them. Thinking ahead to the days when there might be time for petty politics, when the single women would be a pressure group to reckon with, he had hit on Ornelle, because—as he had told Fritch—she had become a kind of housemother figure. He was not, though, entirely sure she was a good choice.
    Still, time would tell.
    He waited. There was silence. They looked expectantly at Arbogast, who had his hands on the table palms up, the fingers curled over. He didn’t raise his head.
    In a grating voice he said suddenly, “I—I think I should vacate this place in favor of someone who deserves it.”
    He thrust back his chair with a scraping noise and walked out, looking neither right nor left.
    Bendle and Ornelle, astonished, made to stop him. Jerode and Fritch exchanged glances and signaled to the others not to speak. When Arbogast was gone, Jerode made up his mind. He moved to the head of the table and cleared his throat.
    “I’m afraid the captain is unwell,” he said. “He’s been much affected by—well, by what’s become of his ship. You know about this already, I think?”
    Nods from Lex, Aldric, Cheffy, Fritch. Jerode glanced down at notes, he had made, spread on the table before him.
    “So I’ll have a quiet talk with him later. For now, let’s not discuss it, but get straight down to business. I’ll report on the health situation, then we’ll hear from Lex regarding the ship, Fritch about accommodation, Bendle about our summer biosphere, Aldric about material resources, Cheffy about possible new projects. Then well draw up a priorities list, and before we adjourn I think we’d better—uh—spend a little time on a problem which is going to come up at the assembly tomorrow, which is the reason for my asking Ornelle to join us. Right!”
    It