Polymath Read Online Free Page B

she checked in the act of reaching for it to wash down the pill.
    “You heard me. Here I’ve been telling myself that you are one of the reliable people we have, able to think fairly straight in spite of being completely unprepared for this predicament, while so many who are supposed to be trained or talented have taken to running around in circles gibbering! But, like I say, you’re letting me down.”
    “I don’t understand,” Ornelle muttered.
    “To start with, what’s the panic about contacting the other party? They probably had a far tougher winter on high ground. Our antenna collapsed. So may theirs have, and it might still be buried in a snowdrift. Even if they have had time to worry about setting it up again, they may not have anyone to spare to sit by a radio and hope to hear from us. Give them a chance to clear up the mess of winter and get themselves organized.”
    “If they were in bad trouble,” Ornelle said stonily, “the first thing they’d want to know would be if we’re OK If they weren’t in trouble, then they’d want to find out if we were and needed any help. No, I’m afraid there’snot much hope for them.” She sighed and gulped down the pill.
    “So that’s the weight you’ve got on your shoulders. An imaginary one. I thought so.”
    “Weight on my shoulders? What do you mean?”
    “You’re standing there like a—a badly stuffed doll! Here, look at yourself.” Jerode unfolded the lid of his medikit and snapped it to the mirror setting. “You ought to be ashamed of maltreating your body that way.”
    Dully, Ornelle regarded her reflection. Her skin was pallid, there was a slackness around her eyes as well as the red of tiredness and tears, and her breasts, pale-nippled, were like shrunken pears. Whereas her belly was sagging forward.
    Not from fat.
    “Pull it in, woman,” Jerode ordered. “Take a deep breath, set your shoulders back, and look at the improvement.”
    He waited while she obeyed. Then, as he saw a change of expression pass across her face, he shut the kit.
    “You need some sun,” he said. “Ten or fifteen minutes a day for the first few days, no more—I’m troubled enough with sunburn cases. But I want a color on you like mine in ten days, understand? All over. You don’t get much calciferol from sunlight, but we’ve got to take advantage of everything.”
    Flushing, Ornelle turned to pick up her clothes from the chair where she had hung them. “I’m sorry,” she said after a while. “It’s just—oh, you know.”
    Jerode didn’t say anything. She went on, “Anyway, what did you want me for?”
    “A bit of advice. I need a woman’s opinion before I make up my mind on a problem that’s just arisen. You know Delvia?”
    Drawing her shirt on, Ornelle gave a bitter chuckle. “Do I know that—that exhibitionist? Does anyone not?”
    “Yes, she is rather atypical of our group, isn’t she? Conspicuous! Well, she came to see me—one of the sunburn cases I mentioned—and I checked her over. She’s pregnant.”
    Ornelle stared blankly. “Well, I’d never have expected that,” she said at length.
    “Why? Because she’s not the maternal type?”
    “That she’s not! No, I wouldn’t have expected her to be so careless. It’s not that she lacks experience, I’llswear to that. In fact…” Ornelle hesitated. “In fact I think she’s downright nymphomaniac.”
    “Is it true that you’ve had trouble with her in the single women’s house?”
    “Who told you that?”
    “People tell doctors things, don’t they? And since we don’t have a psychologist… That’s irrelevant, anyway. The point is this. We agreed collectively on arrival that we weren’t going to permit children until we knew more about our environment. Embryonic tissue is fragile, and we don’t want to start off with teratoid births. That was a unanimous decision on my advice. I think we’ll probably be safe in relaxing the rule now—in fact, I planned to ask for volunteer