Robert Adams - The Witch Goddess

“What,” demanded Corbett mildly, “in the hell are toothache roots, Johnny?”

Wordlessly, the Ganik dropped the reins over the pommel knob, thrust his good hand into a narrow bag hung from his belt and then held the open hand out for the officer’s inspection. On the broad palm rested a half-dozen thin, grayish, stringy roots.

‘Try you sum, Majuh, they’s good fer enythin’ whut hurts you, enytahm it hurts you, and they don’ mek you sleepy, lahk them stick-you thangs does, neithuh.”

Corbett accepted the proffered roots, but postponed trying them until a later time. However, from then on, he could save the almost expended supply of drugs for Braun.

Burdened with the still-gnawing presentiment of trouble fast approaching, Corbett decided that the unit would remain for a week, maximum. If Braun showed no improvement in that time, they would pack up and push on, regardless.

But, strangely enough, once the officer and his assistants had again gone through the long, hard, nauseating procedure of opening and draining the scientist’s leg, Braun did begin to improve… if longer and increasingly longer periods of lucid consciousness filled with whimperings, free-flowing tears and querulous, nagging complaining about anything and everything could be classed as improvement.

Despite the almost-constant annoyance, however, Corbett did consider Braun improved. He still was running a low-grade fever, but the officer thought that most likely was to be expected for a while, at least until he could get the injured man back to where he could receive the benefits of medical treatment by a real doctor.

Jay Corbett intended to find an excuse for promoting the two troopers—Thurston and Farmer—who had been sharing the nursing of the whining and petulant scientist; they showed the patience of Job. What with keeping their patient and his bedding clean and dry—Braun pissed himself several times each day, claiming that his intense pain robbed him of all control, but Corbett, who had been in rather severe agony himself at various times, believed not a word of it and wished that he had the materials and knowledge to catheterize the selfish, childish bastard—cooking for him and themselves, feeding him, and seeing after their own mounts and the two that carried Braun’s litter on the march, the officer wondered just how and when the two men managed to get any sleep at all.

Toward the end of their second week in the valley camp, with the swellings noticeably subsiding in the visible portions of Braun’s injured leg, most of the discolorations beginning to show signs of fading, and Braun himself becoming restive and all but unbearable to be around, Corbett had some of the men rig a padded seat and backrest under a shady tree near the bank of the swift-flowing stream and had the doctor— screaming and sobbing that they were killing him—borne down to and installed upon it.

As trooper Thurston gently tucked a blanket around the scientist’s legs and lower body, Braun raised his head, looked up at Corbett with teary eyes and said, between his snuffles, “Why can’t you just shoot me and be done with it, Corbett? Does torturing me this way give you a charge? You know, surely, that if I do get back to the Center alive, you and the rest of these pigs will rue the day you hurt and humiliated me, don’t you?” After a very long sniff and a swallow, he added, with a measure of his old arrogance and pomposity, “You know, even if these half-civilized bastards don’t, just how powerful I am on the Council and the Board of Science, and I…”

Jay Corbett used his command voice to the troopers. “Very good, men, thank you and dismiss. You, too, Thurston—I’ll call you if I need you. “

When the men were gone beyond easy listening, the officer squatted before Braun and said, “Doctor, you are right about one thing: I don’t like you, I never have liked you, even in the happy centuries when I didn’t know you very well. Now that I’ve come to know you far more intimately than I’d have ever preferred, come to know just what a rotten excuse for a human being Dr. Harry Braun is, my dislike for you has doubled, in spades! I think I’ve hidden that dislike of you from most of these men, but your own inexcusable behavior has eroded every bit of respect they ever had for you, and along with it, I’m afraid, went a good deal of the mystique that once surrounded all of us from the Center. Any day now, now that your ravings and tantrums have shown these sepoys of ours that our feet are clay, we can expect them to recognize us for the exploitive, parasitic vampires we really are and hoist us on our own petard. And you know, Braun, I can hardly wait for that day of final reckoning.”

Braun’s face had paled to as light a hue as the dark Ahrmehnee skin would fade. “If such a day ever does come, you damned traitor, you won’t be there to see it. You’ve just sealed your fate. When Dave Sternheimer hears what you just told me…”

Corbett smiled coldly. “Ah, but you won’t, Braun.”

“Oh, yes, he will,” Braun snapped. “The only way you can prevent it is to kill me outright, stop torturing, degrading me, humiliating me in front of these trained apes of yours.”

The officer shook his head, his lips still bent in his frigid smile. “After all I’ve been through and put many of my men through to get your living carcass this far, Braun, I mean to see that you get all the way back alive… alive enough, at least, to be able to transfer to another body before this one dies. Oh, yes, my good Doctor, you’ll get back alive, because I have a use for a living Dr. Harry Braun, back at the Center. Oh, and you’ll not be saying a word against me to Dr. Sternheimer or to anyone else… ever.”

Braun sniffed disparagingly. “There’s not a thing you can do to stop me, once I’m back, Corbett.”

“No, there isn’t, really, Braun,” Corbett agreed, but then added, “However, if you do say more than is good for us , then I would find it necessary to tell Dr. Sternheimer of some of your misdeeds, you see. I know Dr. Sternheimer and his values quite well, Braun, and I know which of us two would get the really dirty end of the stick from him. I have said some things, agreed, but you, Braun, you have done things.”

“What are you talking about, Corbett, Center rumors? Fagh, not even an undereducated yokel like you could be stupid enough to think Dave Sternheimer would believe—”

“Just shut up, Braun, unless you’d like to hurt—really hurt—for a while,” Corbett snapped, then returned to his softly mocking tone. “No, Braun, no rumors these, but facts. You’ve been raving from fever for weeks now, when you weren’t babbling under sedation. During that time, you’ve told me some very interesting things, Dr. Harry Braun. If Dr. Sternheimer and certain others knew of some of those things… well, I’ll leave it to your mind. I think your imagination is likely more vivid than mine.”

“I… what… what did I… you can’t think anyone would believe anything I said in… in delirium?” spluttered Braun.

“No, not really,” agreed the squatting officer blandly. “But Dr. Sternheimer might decide to try pentothal or hypnotism, or maybe both together, and the things I’ll tell him—if you force me to tell him—would give him some questions to ask, a place to start from.

“As to exactly what you told me, that is my—rather, our —secret, unless, until, you force me to make your various misdeeds public knowledge. You have been a very busy, very amoral, very malicious, backbiting, backstabbing , self-serving, utter bastard, over the centuries, haven’t you, Braun?”

He paused, studying Braun as if he were some rare, loathsome insect impaled upon the point of a pin. “All right, in case your cesspool brain is churning up the thought that I’m just trying to delude you, that I really know nothing of any value or importance, I’ll tell you one of the little dirty secrets you detailed to me.