Robert Adams - The Witch Goddess

Corbett shrugged his solid, muscle-packed shoulders. “No matter, Doctor, there’s been no pursuit, anyway… knock on wood.” He tapped his knuckles once on the polished butt of his rifle. “And the blame could lie anywhere—I could have goofed as easily as Dr. Braun, or the fuses could have been faulty, or the timing mechanism, for that matter. Yes, we took extra precautions in protecting them, but even so, some hundreds of miles on muleback could easily screw up delicate devices like that.

“But if blame must be laid, leave the onus on me; as long as I get you and this pack train safely back to Broomtown, I don’t give a damn about those charges, Doctor.”

The woman tightened her fingers on his hand and parted her dark-red lips to smile lazily. “Why can’t it be ‘Erica’, Jay, as it was last night? Or do you forget so quickly?”

The massive black-haired man grimaced.“No, I’ve not forgotten you… or last night, Doctor . But there’s a time and a place for everything, and that is something I should have remembered last night; had I, Dr. Braun wouldn’t be pouting on rearguard right now.”

The olive-skinned young woman snorted derisively. “Harry Braun is a pompous, conceited, supercilious, oversensitive ass, Jay. And I know, believe me—we were married once, very briefly, five or six hundred years back. I took his possessiveness and his professional jealousy as long as I could, and when he reached the point of trying to beat up on me, I injured his then-body so seriously that he had to transfer, that night .

“Ever since then, David—Dr. Sternheimer—has been trying every sneaky, underhanded way that he knows of to get us back together. Why, I have no idea. That’s the real reason, I’m sure, that he picked both of us to transfer to these Ahrmehnee bodies for the initial part of the mission, before I found out what those lesbians had in their valley.

“But this dark, sexy body would have died virginal—and not one of the bodies I’ve spent any time in over the years has—before I’d have coupled with Harry Braun… and he knows it, too, Jay. It’s not you he’s pouting at, it’s me.”

Corbett opened his mouth, but before he could speak, the small, short-range transceiver lying on the slope between them crackled into life and a tinny voice demanded, “Well, what are we going to do, Erica? I hope we aren’t going to camp here. According to the map, there’s a sizable creek only a few kilometers farther on, and I need a bath… you most likely could use one too, after humping that damned Corbett all last night.”

Both of them reached for the transceiver, but the woman’s hand reached it first. “Dr. Braun, Major Corbett is the commander of this expedition, militarily speaking, and his is the decision regarding where we camp, how far we go each day or when and why and for how long we halt on any occasion. But you know the facts, I don’t need to repeat them to you. And what I do in my tent at night is my affair, not yours. I nearly killed you once; I can improve upon that effort if you press me too far with your spite and your unjustified jealousy, Doctor.

“Now, Doctor, for good and sufficient reasons, Major Corbett has elected to stop where we presently are to wait until one group of armed men pass across our route and to see if any others will follow them. So halt the pack train, Doctor. Major Corbett or I will notify you when he feels it safe to march again. End of transmission, Doctor !”

With a sigh, Harry Braun turned off his own transceiver and rehung it on the pommel of his mule’s saddle. Erica got bitchier toward him every year. Surely she was aware that he had never stopped loving her, not even when she had undercut him^ while they were still married—taken unjustified credit for the success of what had been a joint project—not even when she had flagrantly humiliated him by sleeping around with half the adult males in the Center, not even when she had very nearly ended his existence permanently by almost killing that fine young body he had had for only a few years.

He set his jaw, his lips forming a thin, hard line. Yes, she knew. Erica-the-Bitch knew that he still loved her and used the fact to torment him ceaselessly, giving whatever body she owned to anybody but Harry Braun. She—

“Mighty One… ?” The man forking the mountain pony at his side spoke diffidently.

Harry shoved his righteous rage far back in his mind and turned to the Broomtown man. “Pass up the word to halt in place, Vance, then take over the rearguard. Don’t shoot unless you’re attacked; otherwise, lie low and pass the word up to the van. That’s where I’m headed now.”

So saying, Braun nudged his well-trained mule into a smooth, distance-eating trot. He headed south, along the outer verge of the narrow track skirting the low cliffline of the plateau, occasionally deigning to acknowledge the deeply respectful greetings of the Broomtown packers and guards.

Broomtown was in that area once, long ago, known as Tennessee—or so stated David Sternheimer. But Harry privately disagreed with the senior director of the J&R Kennedy Research Center; he thought that it was actually located farther south, in the former state of Georgia. Not that the actual geographic location or their disagreement over it really mattered a rat’s ass anyway, thought Braun.

Broomtown had been established some century and a half earlier, when the settling of the formerly chaotic Southern Kingdom of Ehleenee under the direction and aegis of Milo Morai and his Confederation had made the base in central Georgia untenable.

“Damn that meddling mutant, anyway!” Braun muttered to himself. “If not for him and his western nomads we’d control most of the East Coast by now. The damned Greeks had become so weak and decadent that anyone could’ve taken them over with fucking little effort.”

As Braun trotted past a small group of guardsmen, their leader reined his pony about, drew his saber and saluted with a flourish. Half smiling, Harry raised a hand from his own reins and gifted the Broomtowner a curt nod in return.

Rough and hopeless as they had seemed at the start, each succeeding generation of the Broomtown folk was turning out better and better. To begin with, they had been only a small group of mountaineers—all related in one degree or another—living in miserable hovels behind a hilltop palisade and scratching out a meager existence from farming played-out land and raising a few skinny animals. In the leaner years, they raided smaller, weaker groups, and they lived constantly in dire fear of raids by larger, better-armed folk.

But the decision of the directors of the Center had radically changed all of that. Broomtown was now a village of some thousands of souls, living safely, securely, peacefully in rows of neat, well-built houses, some of which boasted as many as five rooms.

The technology of the Center had brought Broomtown the awe and respect of all its neighbors, and raids now were a dim fear of the past. That same technology had enriched the townspeople’s lives in other ways, as well—advanced methods of farming and scientific stock-breeding had given them far more food for far less labor, carefully selective breeding of the Broomtowners themselves was, Braun and his colleagues felt certain, the principal reason for the quantum advances of intelligence and abilities in the last few generations.

The sergeant who had just saluted him and that noncom’s elder brother, Sergeant Major Vance, were excellent examples of the sagacity of the Center’s breeding program for their base-cum-colony. Not only could these two read and write— something which all Broomtowners had been able to do for the last three generations—they and many of the once simple and primitive natives were now quite competent in the understanding and use of Center technology.