by Robert Adams
. But the captured woman remained weak, .seldom able to even stand or walk without assistance, and neither he nor Lizzie nor anyone else seemed to be able to talk with her. She did not speak Ahrmehnee, rather did she babble on in some rapid, abrupt language that often sounded a little like Ganik but was not.
She was still lodged in Long Willy's cabin and was still tended and looked after by Lizzie Flat-chest, fed the best fare that the camp had to offer. Willy had, after having proved his strength and right to lead upon the bully's head, finally allowed Strong Tom to possess the woman, as was his indisputable right. He also had given each of his new bullies a brief session on the woman, but he had closely supervised all of these sessions and made certain that she was not bitten or otherwise injured and that she had several hours to rest between sessions.
But once these perfunctory and begrudged bows to bunch-law were done and over, Long Willy declared the interior of his cabin off limits to any uninvited man and placed a pair of his new bullies—a special pair, a pair who seemed much more interested in each other than in the Ahrmehnee woman—before the single door whenever he had to be away for any length of time.
In any case, Long Willy was not granted much time to worry about Johnny Skinhead and his group, for about noon one day, One-ball Sierrason came into camp on a barebacked pony, with his tale of the debacle on the moonlit track.
Long since intolerant of the constant jokes about his single testicle—it was all he ever had had and he knew of no way to grow another—One-ball had taken to the brush alongside the track to squat and had happened to be there when the host of strangers had ridden in to slaughter his erstwhile mates. He had managed to make it into the wooded eastern hills unseen. There he had found this pony, removed its hobble and, as his only armaments were his assortment of knives, had not gone anywhere near the track, but rather had ridden straight for camp.
"Whin we-awls fust laid down, you could hear them ponies awn the track, Long Willy, but whin sumbody he tole ole Johnny Skinhaid, old Johnny 'llowed he heared 'em, too. Thin he said won't nobody but Strowng Tom and his mens and not to wake him up no more till theyed done got there."
Long Willy sighed and shook his shaggy head sadly. "Wai, I must of got my brains awf my maw, 'cawse pore ole Johnny nevuh wuz too lowng in thet d'reckshun. Did you say whin you fust come in you'd seed ole Johnny go down, One-ball?"
The survivor nodded once and then spoke around the mouthful of catfish he was masticating gingerly, favoring his loose, rotting teeth. "He'd stood up and wuz a-pullin' out his sword. And I knows it wuz him, 'cawse I seed the light 'gainst his shiny haid. Enyhow, thishere stranger awn whut lookted like a Kuhmbuhluhn hoss rid up aside of him and basted him with one them iron clubs the Kuhmbuhluhn mens fights with lots of times. I din't see no more, aftuh thet, Long Willy, I skeedaddled. But Stinky Parsons, he laid low lownguh, he did, and he tole me ole Johnny, he wan't kilt outright; he said the feller whut had bashted him down come back aftuh everbody elst was done fer and sliceted ole Johnny up with a knife."
Long Willy looked around, then demanded, "Where be Stinky, now? He din't ride in with you."
With great effort, Sierrason swallowed the half-chewed chunks of fish, and replied, "Naw, Long Willy, soon's we two rode by where the firesticks kilt so many fellers, Stinky allowed as how he 'uz gonna cut wes' and head fer Buhbuh's camp. He wawnted me to come along of him, but it's two, three days longer a ride, and I 'uz so hongry. My pore teeths the way they is, I cain' eat roots and stuff no more, or nuthin' whut ain' been cooked."
While One-ball again filled his mouth with catfish, Long Willy sat in silence, thinking hard. So, that Plooshuhn-damned bug-tit bastard of a Stinky Parsons had been one of Buhbuh's spies all these years, and now was on his way to report the costly failure of Long Willy's folly to the Kleesahk. Which meant that there now remained only four, possibly five, days for him to learn the secrets surrounding the uses of the firestick. And he must learn, for strong and quick and deadly as he could be with sword or club or longknife, he freely admitted that the Kleesahk was more than he could take on and expect to live.
Although he had allowed the other men only one rape apiece, Long Willy himself had been making use of his prisoner whenever the mood struck him, day or night. So when he strode into the small, cramped cabin and jerked off the rotting deerskin covering her naked body, the dark-haired young woman cringed, whimpering, then sobbed and began to cry when she saw that another man was behind him. Nor did the demented, sadistic cackling of Lizzie Flat-chest, crouched in her corner niche on the other side of the cabin, in any way comfort the memoryless woman.
But when the tall rapist had taken from him the armload of burdens he had been bearing, the other man went back to stand just inside the open door. Trembling all over like a foundered horse, the nameless woman waited for this too-familiar man to remove his clothing and once more subject her to the horrors of his lust.
But he did not. Instead, he tugged her by one arm up into a sitting posture, jammed the butt of a smoky, sputtering torch into a ready-made hole in the dirt floor, then squatted before her, talking earnestly… and almost comprehensibly.
At length", he unwrapped from a cocoon of cloth and hide a vaguely familiar device. She knew that she should know just what the long, oddly shaped, shiny thing was called, knew that at sometime she had used this thing or something like it, but like all other memories, this one too eluded her grasping mind.
After talking on and on for some time, often pointing a long, dirty finger at different parts of the object and at the torch, her frequent ravisher offered the nearly remembered object to her, signed that she was to take it into her hands. At last, as the shaggy man became more insistent, she took the long, heavy device into her hands and turned it over and over, studying the differing shades and textures of metals and wood, pummeling her unresponsive brain to try to dredge up some dim memory that might explain to her its function or utility.
The dirty, cracked-nailed finger of the man jabbed at a certain area of the object, and his speech became vehement. So she concentrated her tactile examination on that area, eventually crooking a finger about a rounded projection of metal and experimentally pulling… and the projection slid smoothly back, drawing with it the larger bit of metal of which it seemed a part. But then the rounded projection slipped from her hold and it and the larger piece all slammed back into the original position with a loud clanking noise.
At this, the man grabbed the thing back from her and spat out an excited-sounding stream of almost-meaningful words. He talked on and on and on, becoming more and more agitated of demeanor and, finally, almost shouting at her. Then, all at once, he jumped up, screaming something at the bewildered-looking captive. One big foot, shod in heavy hide, lashed out and sped toward her. The toe struck her between her breasts and slammed her back against the wall of unpeeled logs, and all the world exploded for her in a flash of white-hot pain succeeded almost immediately by black oblivion.
Long Willy excitedly handled the now fully charged rifle, for he was certain that he had seen a flash of yellow fire—actually, he had seen the momentary reflection of the torchlight on the brass cartridge case as the bolt fed it into the chamber—deep within the bowels of the firestick. Placing the larger, flat end against his belly, he thrust a forefinger through the metal ring below the place where he had seen the spark of fire and jerked it toward him, as he had seen some 'of the strangers do.
But no fire and noise resulted; pulling on the triggerguard does not fire a rifle. There was only a faint click as the pressure of his finger released the cross-bolt safety.
Snarling his rage and frustration, the Ganik leader took the piece by both hands gripped around the barrel and swung H with all his strength against the doorjamb.
And that was the end of the road for ambitious Long Willy Kilgore. The heavy-caliber explosive bullet struck him in the pit of the stomach and bored through the soft organs almost to his spine before exploding.
The woman stayed un
conscious for bare seconds, then sat back up, her head filled with an all-encompassing agony.
However, there was now more in her head, much more, and that more boded deathly ill for many of her captors, those who would fall before the wrathful rage of Dr. Erica Arenstein.
Chapter Six
First to follow Long Willy into death was Flat-chest Lizzie, still cackling even as the exploding bullet turned her misshapen head and its contents into wall-festooning gobbets. The crone was followed almost immediately by Strong Tom, whose fatal error was to come through the low door as Erica turned from the body of Lizzie. Recalling in full just how cruelly he had used her when finally Long Willy had let him at her, Erica shot him in the groin, the force of the projectile flinging his solid body outside to flop and shriek in the dust until, after a time, he bled to death.
No other presences darkened that doorway, so Erica crawled—she still felt too wobbly to stand for long—back over to the foul and filthy mattress on which she had lain and suffered for so long. Part of the armload that had been brought in was all of the equipment that had been hung and belted on her body when Braun had clubbed her down there in the defile. From one of the pouches on her belt, she took a thirty-round magazine and used it to replace the smaller one in the rifle. Then she sat and waited for another Ganik to come in.
But the next ones to come, Erica did not recognize, for neither had availed themselves of the "sessions" that Long Willy had offered all of his new bullies.
Lee-Roy and Abner were brothers, and neither had ever had a woman, nor did they want to, for they had each other. Such as they were not uncommon among the Ganiks, among which race all sorts of mental and physical aberrations—rare among other races—were commonplace.
All of the bullies, along with every other living soul in the camp, had stood and watched Strong Tom slowly die of his frightful wound, assuming the whole time that it had been Long Willy who, finally having mastered the use of the firestick, had revenged on Strong Tom's blood that bully's long years of insubordinations. But when the bully was finally dead, the two brothers thought it might be wise to ask Long Willy if he wanted them to stand post at the door of his cabin. Otherwise, aroused as they both were from witnessing the dying agonies of their late associate, they were of a mind to seek out their own hut for a bout of lovemaking.
It was a distinct shock to them to see the body of Long Willy stretched out on the floor of the cabin as dead as Strong Tom. Their gazes locked upon their dead leader, they did not even take notice of the naked woman until she spoke to them in Ahrmehnee.
"Who the hell are you two bastards? I warn you, if you come near me you'll be as dead as that son of a bitch is!"
The threat was implicit, so neither man moved, but Abner said in atrociously accented and slurred Ahrmehnee, "We don't neethuh of us tawk Ahrmnee; cain'tchew tawk no Ainglish?"
"Far better English than you, you filthy, ignorant savage!" snapped Erica. Then, noticing that they did not seem to understand twentieth-century American English any better than they had the Ahrmehnee, she switched to the tongue known as Trade Mehrikan, a widely spoken dialect of English which while debased to some extent was not slurred as far from its ancient origins as the bastard dialect of these Ganiks.
At last, she seemed able to communicate. "Did you kill Long Willy?" asked Abner, apparently spokesman for the pair.
Erica thought fast, then answered, "No, my firestick slew him. My firestick slays anyone without Power who touches it."
Recalling the death of Long Willy's elder brother from an almost identical wound, Abner and Lee-Roy thought that her reply made sense, but inquired, "But you did kill Strong Tom, din't you?"
"Yes," admitted Erica, adding, "I killed him because he… he abused me while I lay sick."
Abner's eyes grew wide. "You means fer to kill everbody whut fucked you? Everbody, atall?"
Erica nodded, grim-faced.
"Hot damn!" Abner smacked fist to palm. "Kin Lee-Roy and me watch? You won* kill 'em too quick, will you? I hopes you kills ole Six-fingers Allen the first!"
The other Ganik spoke up then, saying, "Yeah, yeah, kill ole Six-fingers first, huh?" He giggled. "Thin kill the othuh Allen, thet Julian, huh?"
Corbett crouched ankle-deep in the running water, his saber in his left hand, his cocked pistol in his right. In the shadow, the pony's rider sat dark against darkness, and there seemed to be at least one more mounted man behind him, so the officer leveled the pistol's muzzle at what seemed to be the chest area of the saberman, thumbed off the safety and…
"Hold on, there, Major," said a deep, familiar voice. "It's me, Sergeant Gumpner, me and Allison." Then, his voice cracking slightly, he said, "Thank God you're still alive, sir. I… we all thought you all was dead back there."
Corbett had his men cut the hobbles off all the ponies they could find and catch; the sole true horse he had them add to their own collection of animals, for, despite its poor condition, it appeared to be of a similar breed to his own big troop horse.
When all of the Broomtowners were gathered in the tiny, hidden plateau area, the sergeant rendered his report, then took Corbett over to where Harry Braun lay, feverish and babbling in delirium. The officer examined the swollen leg carefully, then wiped off his befouled hands and arose, frowning.
"I think you were right, Gumpner—he does appear to be in the early stages of gangrene. I don't know how much good I can do, if any at all. God, I wish Erica were here! But we can't move him the way he is, not even in a litter.
"So have another fire laid closer, over by that flat rock, eh? I'll sack out here, where I can keep an eye on him through what's left of this night, and when the sun's bright I'll do what I can to drain that leg."
Seated side by side on the stony ground, leaning against a pair of saddles, Corbett and Gumpner watched the delirious scientist, smoked their pipes and carried on a low-voiced conversation for a couple of hours. In addition to their official relationship, the two were close friends of many years' standing, and so, knowing Gumpner's innate curiosity, Corbett not only gave him an account of the battle at the defile, but told him just what decisions he had made and why he had chosen what courses he had from among other alternatives, freely and openly answering such questions as the noncom put to him.
In Gumpner's mind, it was continuing education at the feet of a man that he and all of the other Broomtowners all but worshiped. Of course, they deeply respected all of the other men and women from the Center. For how could they—ordinary, short-lived men, only a few generations removed from a savagery no less primitive than that of their neighbors—help but respect men and women whose lives were measured in many hundreds, not a few score, of years, men and women whose highly developed minds had lived since before that centuries-past war which had destroyed the fantastic-sounding civilization built by the distant ancestors of today's howling savages? But most of the Center people were at best cool, distant objects of deference who often behaved as if the Broomtowners were trained and mildly intelligent animals or, at best, retarded but usually obedient children.
Major Jay Corbett, on the other hand, spent a minimum of his time at the Center. There had been very few weeks during the thirty years that Gumpner had served in a military capacity when Corbett had not been either in Broomtown or out somewhere in the hills and woods with Broomtown men on a training exercise, a patrol, a reconnaissance or, more rarely, a short campaign against threatening tribes.
Where other men and women of the Center, especially the scientists, frequently were scornful and patronizing of the Broomtowners, in particular of the career soldiers of Broomtown who often risked and sometimes gave their lives to guard and protect these same Center folk on their expeditions into the territories of hostile tribes and races, Corbett had never been stinting in his praise of the Broomtown men who had earned such praise. Furthermore, Gumpner knew for a fact that Corbett not only had gone as high as the Center Director himself to see about reducing or eliminating punishments meted out to Broo
mtowners for supposed disobediences or insubordinations having to do with Center folk resident in Broomtown.
When the grizzled old soldier had ridden off, south from the defile, he had been a subordinate obeying the orders of his superior. But here, near the small fire, smoking and listening to the fatherly man, this patient, ever-understanding man, he thought that he at long last comprehended the true meaning and depth of friendship.
His late father, Sergeant Major Gumpner, who had served under Major Corbett for more than forty years before retiring to nurse his arthritis and old wounds, had once long ago tried to explain this very variety of emotion he now felt. Now, only after all these years, did Gumpner feel that he truly, truly understood what the old man had been trying to convey to him.
"One thing of significance that I noticed on the second patrol, that day, the one over the hills to the east of that gap—" Suddenly Corbett broke off short and leaned forward, his dark eyes on the twitching Braun.
"… killed you, killed you, fin'ly killed you, damned bitch-dog, you…" Braun was mumbling, still delirious. "… all these years, cen'tries, been nothing but trouble, tsuris for me since damned day I met you, dirty cunt… rid of you at last… bitch on wheels… my project, took all the credit for my goddam project… you and that asshole Sternheimer, got him hot for you, you cooze, fucked him a few times and the shmuck let you take all the credit for my project.
"You tried to kill me, damn you, but I did kill you… nobody… never ever know… hope the Ganiks eat you! No-good whore, fuck anybody… everybody but me. Oh, Erica, my love, my love, why do you treat me this way…"
Then the unconscious man .drifted off into a spate of meaningless mumbles, interspersed with moans, while his sweat-drenched face contracted, relaxed, then contracted again.
