Chapter 4

"I don't believe that I should be the justice in this case, since I'm the one pressing charges," Elaine explained to the Bard Geoffrey. "This time-walking woman abandoned her family when they needed her the most. They all died because of her!"

"You don't know that for certain," Jeff said, more quietly than the Golden Goddess had been speaking. "She may not have had anything to do with it."

"But she did!" the goddess insisted. "And she knows it! In her own mind, I saw the images she used to escape her past and come here. She did it on purpose! She wanted to get away!"

"That's not a crime," Jeff told her.

"It is when you take the only person who could have protected her family with you," Elaine replied. "Her husband was in a position where he was protecting my sister and her Chosen People! This... witch... brought him with her from there to here! Without his protection, they were discovered and killed – every last one!

"She is responsible for the death of my sister, Béla, and my sister, Beth," Elaine said icily. "She even remembers killing Beth. I want her tried, and I want her executed." There were tears in her eyes.

"We don't execute people for what they do," Jeff explained. "That was the Goddess of the Land's edict. Would you go against your dead sister's wishes to avenge something that happened two hundred years ago? What would she think?"

"I don't care what she would think!" Elaine was crying openly now. "I only know what I feel! That woman has to die for what she did!" She allowed Jeff to hold her while she sobbed into his shoulder.

In another part of the house, Tabatha and Jake Hedron, who was her husband and also was the son of Jake Pestova, who had been Béla's husband, sat together on the bed.

"So you're under house arrest, then?" Jake asked.

Tabatha nodded, her mind numb with the new knowledge of the terrible charges that were being leveled against her. That, on top of the grief of finding out her entire world was lost to her, made her almost catatonic.

"She wants to reinstate the death penalty just for me," Tabatha said numbly. "For me!" She broke down into tears again. Jake held her against him, not saying anything.

Jake didn't understand how they had gotten here, or why they had come here at all. From what little he knew of Tabatha's history, she had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. She'd saved his life, after all. He'd been shot in the head and dumped in the desert by that mutinous bastard Blacker and somehow, Tabatha had known where to look. She hadn't even known him then, or even who she was looking for. But she had found him, rescued him, and personally nursed him back to health.

'But why would she come here?' he asked himself, over and over. 'There's got to be something here that can help us back there!'

Jake spent most of his time at the university, a few buildings away from his captive wife. There was an incredible amount of data available there, and it was all free for anyone who wanted to study it.

What Jake was interested in most, of course, was legal precedence. He had only four more days before his wife went on trial for causing the deaths of two immortal goddesses. One of the first items he found was a record of the only other execution that had taken place after the instatement of the present judicial system. Someone had attempted to kill a goddess. Not just 'a' goddess, but Béla, herself.

It was difficult to read, as this was a handwritten account by the Great Bard Geoffrey. But, enraged by the attempted assassination, the other goddesses and most of those present during the brief trial had demanded the woman's death. She was executed mere hours after her attempt on the life of the Goddess of the Land.

And now, his beloved wife was being accused in the death of two goddesses, one of whom was Béla, again. The terrible feeling in his stomach as he read through various edicts was that his wife didn't stand a very good chance of surviving the coming judgment.

The one positive thing that had come from the death of humanity was that the fragile paradise he found himself in was orbiting Jupiter once every thirty hours, now. Normal days and nights had been reestablished a little over a century ago, now that there was no one on earth to view them.

He thought it strange that there was a morning sun and an afternoon sun, but never a 'noon' sun. For a couple of hours each day, both the northern and the southern sun were lit at the same time. That was as close to 'noon' as it got.

There were hundreds of disks of data to sort through. Sabrina had evidently spent several years downloading data from the last remaining Praetor. Most of the disks were labeled in her handwriting. They weren't in the pristine order he would prefer, but after a day of sorting through and reestablishing a semblance of order to them, he knew which ones to study.

It had been two days now since he'd seen his wife. It was two more days before her case was to be brought before the justices. But he had to take a break. Jake was so exhausted he couldn't even operate the primitive computer to read the data he needed to know and Sabrina was off taking care of his wife, as usual.

Tabatha looked up as Jake came into her room. She cried out joyfully and fled into his arms, sobbing hysterically. Finally getting herself under control, she merged her mind with his, discovering that he had not found anything that could help save her.

"It's all right," she cried softly, sniffing back her tears. "Just make love to me. Make love to me and never stop. Make me forget. God, I've missed you so..."

He kissed her wet face passionately. For some reason, he didn't feel aroused like he normally did when he was around her, but he used his hands and mouth on her, making her cry out her orgasm to the uncaring walls and the cold stone ceiling surrounding them.

As she lay on the bed, breathing heavily from her efforts, Tabatha mind-linked with him again to let him know how much she appreciated his company. They both felt his exhausted body finally begin to respond to her presence. She twisted around and started undoing his trousers. He helped her get his clothes off, then climbed into bed, his head buzzing from lack of sleep.

He knew he couldn't give her the loving she deserved – the loving she so desperately needed to forget she had no future – but he would do the best he could.

Tabatha reached for him and kissed his growing member. She sucked him into her mouth, moaning with her pleasure at having him in her bed again. Her mind was open to his and he could feel the thickness of himself in her mouth – the eroticism of sucking him into her mouth that made her feel so vulnerable, so ready to be taken by him.

She knew when he was ready, and released him, lying back on the bed to make her body available for his pleasure. Jake climbed on top of her and shoved his cock between her legs. He could feel her sensations as well as his own as her body opened up, expanding to accommodate him. Then they were fucking as one – a single sexual unit thrusting into itself and receiving itself in ecstasy.

In only a couple of minutes, it was over. He rammed his pelvis against hers and pressed as hard as he could as he pumped his semen into her. Tabatha was coming, too, arching her back, lifting him into the air as he lay on top of her, trying her best to make their bodies become one with each other as she came.

They collapsed down together, his heavy weight crushing her into the primitive mattress of the cot. In seconds, he was asleep, snoring on top of her. Tabatha lay like that for hours, barely able to breathe under his weight as tears streamed down the sides of her face and into her ears and hair. Instead of pushing Jake off, she held him as tightly as she could until she finally fell asleep, still lying beneath him.