The Beasts Of Valhalla

might want to tell somebody else about it. Rodney may have smuggled the serum out, the same as my nephew snuck out a pass card. Rodney's parents were away, so Tommy took off to stay with his friend and talk about what they should do.'

'Your nephew-and Lugmor; pretty gutsy kids.' 'Damn right,' I said, feeling a lump rise in my throat. 'I'd never realized how gutsy. Tommy wasn't exactly your Superman type.' I swallowed, choked back tears, cleared my throat. 'Anyway, after a few days Obie Loge knew he was up to his ass in alligators; either he told his father what he'd done, or his father found out about it.'

Lippitt nodded.

'Jake Bolesh, Volsung's happy warrior in charge of doings on the outside, was told to take care of them.' 'Correct.'

'Did you give that order, Lippitt?'

'No.'

'I didn't think so. Killing kids-or having someone else do it for you-isn't your style. What's behind the red door?' No answer.

'You didn't much like what you saw either, did you? That's why you're 'unemployed.' They're hunting you, aren't they?' No answer.

Urinalysis. Tinkle-splash, fill the bottle. Wait. Fill another bottle. They wanted stool specimens, but Garth and I just laughed at them.

'I want to take time out to call our folks,' Garth said in a deep voice still resonant with anger. 'They'll be worried out of their minds about us.' 'No.'

'You're not my commanding officer, Lippitt!' 'It really isn't a good idea.'

The doctor had Garth and me lying on twin examination tables while she listened, poked and probed and punched, then listened some more. Lippitt was standing between the tables, checking off items on the list he had made for himself. 'How long were you down there?' 'Too long.'

'How did you come to be there?' No answer.

'You seem to have picked up some medical expertise.' 'Some.' A long pause, then: 'I used to be a medical doctor, Frederickson. It was a long time ago.'

'How did they find out so fast that I'd been inside Volsung and had taken files on the Valhalla Project?' 'Careful, Frederickson. Ears.'

'Ears, bullshit; she's working on my gall bladder. You don't care what we're talking about, do you, Doc?'

The doctor, a handsome brunette in her mid-thirties, seemed to be taking a liking to me. She gave me a slow wink, but said nothing as she continued her prolonged voyage over my abbreviated body.

'Lippitt? How did they find out I was in the unmentionable building and took the unmentionable files?'

Lippitt looked up from his sheets, smiled faintly. 'Why, Frederickson, you disappoint me. I'd have thought you'd have figured that out a long time ago.'

'I've been slow this week. Bad biorhythms. Give me a clue.'

'The gorilla snitched on you.'

It occurred to me that Lippitt had gone a little mad.

Anal and genital examinations. Sperm samples.

'Garth and I are a mite hungry, Lippitt. We haven't eaten in half a week.'

'I know that, Mongo,' Lippitt said quietly. 'You can't eat until I'm sure we have all the blood and urine samples we need. I'm sorry.'

'Not even a Twinkie?'

'Not even a Twinkie.'

The idea of having catheters threaded into our hearts didn't hold great appeal for me.

'Angiograms are dangerous,' I said, gripping the technician's wrist.

Lippitt just stared at me.

'Yes,' I sighed at last, relaxing my grip and leaning back. 'I see your point.'

The spinal taps and bone marrow tests hurt. A lot.

'Where-ouch! — did you get the wizard outfit? Ouch!'

'Siegfried Loge's collection of fantasy memorabilia; Loge is obsessed with fantasy literature and 'heroic' music. I'd just heard what had happened to you, and I was in a hurry to get to the jail before Bolesh found some excuse to kill you. I was still working at Volsung, so I couldn't let Bolesh-or you-see my face. I grabbed the first thing I could find, which happened to be in Loge's closet.'

'You putting me on?'

'On the contrary,' the D.I.A. agent said easily. 'I told you you'd love Loge. He's indisputably a genius, but he's also mad as a hatter and cruel as… a Nazi.' He paused, smiled wryly. 'The whole damn place was a madhouse. You get a bunch of superscientists together, give them any piece of equipment they ask for and carte blanche to do with it what they want, and you find out they're like children loose in a toy store after all the adults have gone home. At least this crew was like that.'

Lippitt, most uncharacteristically, seemed to be feeling positively chatty, and I didn't want to break his mood. I flashed a broad grin. 'Sounds like a great place to work.'

Lippitt grunted. 'He used to play Wagner's Ring constantly-all sixteen hours of it at a stretch. He'd let a few hours go by, then start it all over again. He had everybody else wearing earplugs.'

'I saw the speakers. I thought they were part of a PA system.'

'Oh, they were that all right. You know how many times I've listened to Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried, and Gotterdammerung? I know the scores by heart. I feel eminently qualified to conduct at Bayreuth.'

'You know something, Lippitt? I actually think you're mellowing with age. That was funny.'

His smile disappeared. 'There's nothing funny about Siegfried Loge.'

'Like father- ouch, Goddamnit! — like son, huh?'

Lippitt studied me for a long time. Something dark and dangerous moved in his limpid brown eyes, and suddenly I felt very uncomfortable.

'What do you know about Father?'

At first I didn't understand the question, and then I realized that Lippitt had misunderstood me. I'd been talking about Siegfried and Auberlich, just making small talk and trying to sidle up on Lippitt. He thought I'd been referring to 'Father'- Siegmund Loge. The subject didn't seem to be Lippitt's idea of small talk, and my heart began to beat a little faster.

'Just what's common knowledge,' I said, trying to sound casual while I watched him and tried to read his reaction. 'Double Nobel winner. He got one for his work with enzymes. The second was for his design of the Triage Parabola, a complex mathematical model used to rate endangered species in order to focus the most effort and resources toward those it's still possible to save. Some called him the smartest man in the world-until his cracker barrel tipped over. Now he thinks he's God, and a few thousand hyped-up kids agree with him. What do you know about him?'

No answer.

'Is Siegmund Loge involved with Volsung and the Valhalla Project?'

No answer.

Eye tests; for me, excruciatingly painful. I could only tolerate the bright lights for a few seconds at a time, and so-with Lippitt's permission-the doctor and technicians turned their attention to Garth. 'What does Father have to do with all this, Lippitt?' No answer.

Treadmill. Gasp, wheeze, pant.