by Robert Adams
"He says that Erica then took charge, since his leg was broken at that time, reorganized the survivors and headed back down here. But he says that she was killed—or captured, depending upon which version he's telling—by a tribe of savages who killed most of the other survivors at that time—or at a later time, or at an earlier time, here again dependent on which of his versions we're using. He says that they are the ones who speared his right thigh and that they pursued him almost to the place where he was found by those friendlies.
"Even before you and your men showed up here, Jay, I did not know whether to believe Harry or not. Now, sitting here with a man who supposedly died months ago, and having just seen and spoken with some of the men who I was told died with him, I'm inclined to disbelieve the entirety of Harry's yarns."
Major Jay Corbett had been fighting a raging battle with himself ever since he and the men had arrived in Broomtown to learn that Dr. Harry Braun had made it to the base alive. On one side of that battle were ranged his basic honesty and his duty to the United States of America, to the service of which he had pledged himself on the plain at West Point more than a thousand years ago, and the Center was the last shred of that once great, once powerful republic now remaining in a much-altered world.
On the other side of the struggle were massed his hopes and plans and dreams for his Broomtowners. These hopes and plans and dreams had so often in the past centuries been thwarted by the Board of Science and the scientists who sat on the Council, who all seemed to look upon Broomtown and its inhabitants as a vaguely interesting experiment which was producing marginally useful human by-products, trainable to a degree but not really sapient.
Corbett had been aware of the criminality of this outlook for years and had fought against it, tried to change it time after time after time, only to see his best efforts derided or lightly dismissed by the members of the Board of Science, then defeated by the Council members who also sat on the Board.
From time to time, David Sternheimer had seemed in some sympathy with him. But although he was the Center Director, his was but a single voice in Board meetings, and he had never, he said, found any real support amongst his peers. Therefore, when Jay Corbett had thought to have found a Way to control Harry Braun, who sat on both Board and Council, it had seemed to him that the impossible dream was suddenly become a near reality for him and, through him, for the men and women of Broomtown. But now, after the needless, senseless deaths of Sergeant Cabell and Trooper Homer, he was not so sure that he could or should go through with the extortion of Braun's support.
At last, inevitably, duty, honor, country won out. However, he was resolved to win from the Director as many immediate concessions for his Broomtowners as he could.
"Jay," Sternheimer was saying, his still-unlined, boyish face grave and solemn, "it… it's Erica. You know… I know you must know how I__tell me, is she really dead?"
Regretful of having to do it in this callous way, Corbett said, "In a minute, Dave, but first"—he took a very deep breath—"I want formal commissions for about twenty of my Broomtown men, lieutenancies and captaincies for most of them, and—"
Sternheimer waved a big hand. "Make them all admirals, Jay, I don't care, but about Erica… ?"
"Just a moment more, Dave," said Corbett, half hating himself for keeping his friend dangling in suspense in regard to a matter that was so important to him. "I want to start bringing some of the men of the friendly tribes into the army, but I'll need your authorization for that, and…"
Sternheimer extracted a pen from his pocket, grabbed a long sheet of blank paper from a box atop Corbett's desk and furiously scribbled his signature at one end of it. "Put anything you want to above that, damn you, Jay, but tell me if Erica's really dead!"
"I will, Dave, I will, but there's just one other thing."
Sternheimer clenched the big fists of his new, youthful body, swelling the muscles of the forearms. "Jay, I've given you a blank check for your damned Broomtowners. What the hell more do you want out of me?"
Corbett mentally crossed his fingers. "A seat on the Board, Dave, that's all."
Sternheimer snorted. "That's impossible, and you knew it before you asked it. To be on the Board you've got to be a scientist. You're not—you're a soldier."
"I hold a Ph.D., Dave. I could claim the title 'Doctor,' did I so wish, did I not prefer a military title."
"Your doctorate was in history, as I recall," retorted Sternheimer with more than a touch of deprecation. "That does not make you a scientist. After all, we have to live, to operate, by rules. Order is necessary to the well-being of man."
"You've bent those same rules before, when there was something or someone you wanted for a purpose, Dave. You've seated psychologists, engineers, even, as I now recall, a M.SW. Are you afraid to have me on the Board, Dave?"
Sternheimer squirmed uncomfortably. "No, Jay, not at all. As a matter of fact, I think a man like you—blunt, honest, outspoken, eminently practical—would be most refreshing among all those prima donnas, those impractical, idealistic dreamers who presently fill many of the seats. And as well as you and I have always gotten on, I might have some real, forceful support for a change with you down the table from me. But, Jay, I'm sorry, it all comes back to the same, indigestible fact. You are not, despite your valid doctorate, a scientist. That's all there is to it."
It had been just what Corbett had been waiting for. He had planned this kill long and carefully. With all of his force, he slammed home the verbal harpoon.
"Oh, but I am, David. I do hold a degree in science. Not a doctorate, true, but a degree nonetheless. My degree is in military science, Dave. So when do I take that Board of Science seat?"
Sternheimer opened his mouth to object, to protest, then closed it again. Smiling crookedly, he finally said, "Damn, you're a devious one, Jay. No wonder you've been such a shrewd strategist. You led me and I followed as unsuspectingly as a dumb bullock following a judas goat. I begin to think that you're too inherently dangerous a man to not have on the Board.
"Okay, you're at the top of the qualified list, as of now. You get the next vacant seat. Now, Jay, please, about Erica… ?"
Corbett sighed. "I didn't see her die or see her dead body, Dave, but still I'm certain that she's dead." Then he went on to tell the director all that Harry Braun had revealed in his fits of delirium, adding that every man in the command had heard the sordid details directly from the mouth of the murderer. He ended with a recountal of Braun's cold-blooded murder of Sergeant Cabell.
Long before he had finished, there was a look in the blue eyes of Dr. David Sternheimer that boded ill for Dr. Harry Braun. Only saying, "Thank you, Jay," the director rose from his chair and strode purposefully toward the door. But then, hand on knob, he turned and spoke.
"By the way, Jay, the Board of Science sits a week from Thursday. There will be a vacant chair—Dr. Braun's. You'll occupy it. The copter will radio when it's leaving for the base, here, to bring you down. Plan to stay overnight, at least. Goodbye for now, Jay."
Epilogue
For all that the Kleesahks, who had gone up the cliffs before dawn, and the two cats, who had preceded the column up the single trail by an hour's time, had all telepathically reported no signs of human life on the shelf, Bili still took no chances. So far, there had been no deaths from either his force or that of Count Steev Sandee, and only a few injured or wounded—almost all of those from noncombat causes— and he intended to keep it that way, if possible.
"As long as possible, I should say," he silently corrected himself, as his big black warhorse bore him toward the foot of the trail that led up to the shelf. "Yes, the campaign is concluded. The farmer Ganiks have all been driven south and west, off their lands, and the outlaw Ganiks are now all either dead or on their way out of New Kuhmbuhluhn. All that's left to do now is to regarrison this place and start sending down farmers and stockmen from the north to settle the lands we drove the Ganiks off.
"Yes, the Ahrmehnee and the
Confederation nobles are already discussing, planning their return east, all they're going to do when they get home. But I, for one, am not deluding myself. From all that I've heard, all that I know of matters, this Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn is hard pressed in the north by a strong and warlike folk moving down from the Ohyoh country or somewhere beyond. For all his grace and courtesies and sincere-sounding promises regarding this matter and that, Prince Byruhn is as shrewd and devious and slippery a character as ever I've run onto—his personal device should be a fox, not a wolf—and, in his straits up north, I hardly think he's going to just allow a couple of hundred well-armed, well-trained, seasoned and proven veteran warriors to ride out of his little kingdom until he no longer feels so threatened.
"Then there's that weird prophecy—so-called—of Pah-Elmuh. His mind is very different from human minds and he does possess talents, powers that I've never heard of, or even imagined in a human mind. It's possible, therefore, that he could have delved deeply enough into my mind without my knowledge that he was so doing to have dredged up all of the needed information concerning my antecedents to flesh out his prophecy—which prophecy is very convenient to Prince Byruhn's goals and objectives, just now.
"But could it be true? Could Blind Hari of Krooguh, the tribal bard who they say was over a hundred and fifty years old when he came east with the Kindred and was fifty or more years older than that—for all that he was not an Undying—when he returned westward with those prairiecats who wanted to get back onto the plains, have really been the so-called 'Eyeless Wise One' who made this prophecy among others to Pah-Elmuh's forebears, so long ago?
"And what of this 'Last Battle'? Yesterday was the last battle—if that stinking means of executions and mercy killing could or should be dignified with the name 'battle'—of this Ganik campaign. Yet Pah-Elmuh attested last night that the true 'Last Battle' at which I will be 'Champion' lies in the future, so that is bound to mean we, or at least I, will fight in the north of New Kuhmbuhluhn."
He had not been shielding his mind and his thoughts, and now he received a silent beaming. "If you fight in the north, then so do I, my Bili, my dear love. Remember, I am not one of your soft, eastern women. I, too, am a proven warrior."
"Of course you are, my dear," he mindspoke Rahksahnah. "But fear you not, I doubt me that Prince Byruhn will allow even one of us to freely depart his lands until the king, his father, and he have come to some sort of terms with these invaders from Ohyoh, however long that takes."
The precautions of the young commander proved unnecessary, of course. Aside from the waiting Kleesahks and cats, only the wandering ponies, the fish and frogs in the lake and the clan of stoats in the cave remained of all the living creatures that had for so long occupied the shelf. But the human invaders had been preceded by dark, flapping clouds of carrion birds—ravens, crows, starlings, buzzards, hawks, even a pair of eagles—all now working assiduously at nature's recycling of the scattered corpses of Ganiks and ponies. Bili and his column temporarily interrupted several such grisly feasts on their route up to the cavemouth, much to the loudly voiced displeasure of the avian feasters.
There were two horses left in the cave stable. Both proved capable of mindspeak, and when once Bili had determined from their expressed thoughts that they would be happy with such an arrangement, he took them into his own squadron as remounts. Both geldings were big, clearly well-bred mounts and the previous Kuhmbuhluhn or Ahrmehnee owners were most likely long-dead.
He and his officers helped themselves to the piles of loot, then invited all the others to do the like. Those items that they either did not want or could not carry were left behind for the garrison and, eventually, for farmers who would come soon or late to take over the shelf and caves.
Hornman Gy Ynstyn spotted something gleaming in the light of a torch and stooped to pick up a brace of small brass cylinders, no larger or longer than his smallest finger, each closed at one end by a brass disk in which was centered a smaller disk of red copper with a small depression in its center. Shrugging, he dropped them into his belt-pouch. They might prove useful if he should again need to patch his brass bugle.
They had missed the Witch Goddess of the Ganiks by some hours, but still the future of them all lay ahead… waiting.
