Polymath by John Brunner

everything that had happened to him so far on this planet. The bitter disappointment of not continuing to fulfill his great ambition still lingered; it would linger, perhaps, all his life. And yet he was no longer faced with the daunting prospect of decades of study, training, analyzing, examination, guesstimating….
    Here, after all, was a world. Brand-new. More likely to be ultimately habitable than not. And wasn’t that the root of his ambition—to have a new world?
    Eventually he turned away. His back to Jerode, he said, “I know. I’m sorry. Ornelle tried to load me with a responsibility which wasn’t mine, and I lost my temper because I’m ashamed of not accepting a responsibility which really does belong to me. We can’t go on burdening you with all the administrative work. When we come back from this trip, I’ll turn the salvage team over to Minty and Aykin and get on with my proper job.”
    Jerode exhaled like a man coming up from an unendurable time under water. He said, “Lex, I can’t tell you how glad I am. How soon are you going to be back?”
    Smiling, composed again, Lex turned around. “Oh, about seven days altogether. That’s assuming we can break through the blockage in the river. If the vegetation on the way is as thick as Lodette predicts—although I imagine we can get to the other party’s site in about two days following the riverbed—we’ll spend much longer coming back because we’ll have to hack our way through dense undergrowth.”
    “Well, hurry!” Jerode said. His eyes were bright. Suddenly he laughed, and from the screened-off corner of the hut where Naline lay came an angry exclamation in Zanice’s voice, asking him to be a little quieter.
    When he had left Jerode, Lex was in a thoughtful mood. He had mentioned the lightning conductors, and Jerode had promised to refer the idea to Fritch. One tall metal post on high ground clear of the town should suffice.
    The breakdown of Ornelle, though, had given him new cause to worry. How much of it was due to her belief, throughout the winter, that the other party was going to join forces this year and make life easier for everyone? How many other people, not so close to the edge of sanity, might yield to despair when objective news was brought back about the death of the other human group? Despite his comment to Jerode and Cheffy about there being a dam-building animal here, he no longer seriously considered it possible that there were survivors on the plateau.
    He was not looking forward to what he expected to find up there.
    Without realizing, he had let his feet carry him towardthe spot on the beach which Delvia had chosen as a site for her self-allotted task. Raising his eyes, he saw her ahead of him, surrounded by accumulators and solar collector sheets. On a rack of sticks tied with string were the seven energy guns the community possessed, fully charged.
    So someone had brought back the gun Naline had used, and told her the story. Yet she was going on with her work, humming to herself. She had wrapped her tabard casually around her hips as before.
    One of the accumulators was ready. She disconnected it, set it on another and those on another, and carried the three of them ten paces to a waiting handtruck. The ease with which she did it took Lex aback. The things were heavy; they doubled the depth of the prints her bare feet left in the sand.
    He said, “Delvia!”
    She straightened and turned, wiping sweating palms on her ragged kilt.
    “They told you about Naline?” he said in a rough voice.
    “Yes. One of Bendle’s team brought the gun back.” She waved at the rack. “They’re all ready for you, by the way.”
    Lex simply stood, gazing at her. After a moment she snapped, “Well? Well? Are you waiting for me to burst into tears?”
    “Not really,” Lex said. “More, I’m wondering why Naline took a gun which presumably she knew was uncharged.”
    Delvia gave him a look of amazement. After a moment it yielded to