The Beasts Of Valhalla

God didn't make you right!

'Perhaps it's because you're a dwarf, Mongo,' Lippitt added in a flat voice.

'Garth isn't a dwarf.'

'No, but he's your brother. His genetic pattern must be very close to yours; although he isn't a dwarf, he certainly must carry the recessive gene for dwarfism. The pattern is close enough so that he too becomes a kind of living laboratory. If Father gets hold of either one of you, he may finally have the key that will enable him to produce Lot Fifty-Seven-the serum that will be effective for every human.'

'Why couldn't any of my blood relatives do? Or any dwarf, for that matter?'

'It's possible they would do, but I suspect not. There can be enormous differences, even within families. The three generations of Loges are a good example; Siegmund Loge is as kind and gentle as Siegfried and Auberlich are savage. Who is to say such differences aren't at least partially genetically induced?'

'If the old man is so nice, what's he doing creating monsters?'

'A very good question. Perhaps I'll be able to find the answer before I kill him.' He paused, sighed. 'In any case, I don't know what all the genetic factors may be. That's another reason I decided not to kill you; they might just find somebody else.'

'Thanks a lot, Lippitt. That's very thoughtful of you.'

Lippitt shrugged, almost smiled. 'Besides, I'm rather fond of the two of you. Frederickson, you know that's true.'

Garth grunted in disgust.

'I believe this nightmare will end if I can kill Father,' Lippitt continued seriously. 'But you do see why I want the two of you to hide; you may be the only people in the world who can help Loge develop Lot Fifty-Seven- if he finds you, and if he discovers exactly what's happened to you. His people will be looking for you, because you're both loose ends; it's important for them not to find you. After a time, they may simply assume you're dead.'

'We're lousy hiders!' Garth snapped, and immediately began to shudder.

'Frodo returned the ring to Mount Doom, where it was forged,' I said. 'He destroyed it.'

'Frodo made his journey at the risk of letting the ring fall into the hands of the Dark Lord. Since you are the ring in this case, the usefulness of the analogy ends.'

'Not for us,' Garth said through clenched teeth. 'We'll kill the son-of-a-bitch, after he fixes whatever is wrong with us.'

'You'll risk delivering to Siegmund Loge exactly what he may need to bring the Valhalla Project to completion.'

'Garth and I just want to get straight,' I said wearily. 'We're not into saving the world.'

'Aren't you, Mongo?' Lippitt said quietly. 'Think about it. Things could actually come down to that.'

'If this group of men behind Loge is as powerful as you say it is, Loge's people are bound to find us eventually anyway. When they do, they'll realize what's happened. Better to take the offensive. Garth and I will hunt Loge in our own way.'

Lippitt thought about it, shrugged. 'Why not? Maybe it's just as well. That way, if they stop me, you may still have a shot at Loge.'

'A Company,' I whispered.

Lippitt laughed loudly. In the past I'd rarely seen him smile, much less laugh. 'On a Quest!' Lippitt said at last, and then laughed some more. Garth and I exchanged an uneasy glance.

Finally the laughter tapered off, and Lippitt shook his head. 'You realize it's hopeless, don't you?' the D.I.A. agent continued. 'It's going to happen. Siegmund Loge is going to pull off the Valhalla Project, and God only knows what this planet is going to look like in two or three generations.'

'You say it's hopeless, Lippitt.'

'Well, maybe there's a million-in-one chance of finding Loge, getting through his security, and then nailing him before one hell of a lot of forces combine to capture or kill us. An old man, an epileptic policeman, and a half-blind dwarf who can barely tolerate sunlight. So, why do I feel like laughing?'

'Because you've set aside lifelong loyalties and given up everything in order to come down on the right side. 'Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose,' Lippitt: Kris Kristofferson.'

Lippitt walked up to Garth and extended his hand; after a long hesitation, Garth took it. Not being inclined toward theatrics or emotionalism, I held back. Then, almost without realizing it, I found myself stepping forward, reaching out and clasping my hands around theirs.

16

Lippitt had given us a lot of cash and left the car with us, after changing the plates. Suspicious of motels so close to Peru County, we slept in the car that night.

In the morning I found a cool, swift-moving stream and took a bath. We stopped at a diner and I ate three eggs boiled for exactly three minutes, drank one cup of coffee. There was a single rose growing outside the diner, and I smelled it.

We headed north toward Wisconsin and a place where one of Father's communes was rumored to be located. Garth, with his unpredictable seizures, couldn't drive, and so I had to. Even with dark glasses the sun was hurting my eyes, so I stopped at a medical supply house for glasses with smoked lenses. When I came out, Garth was suffering a seizure. In his fury or frustration or desperation, Garth grabbed the edge of the door and yanked. The door tore off its hinges.

BOOK II

Pieces for Death and Silence

17

There are a lot of cows and trees in Wisconsin, and it took the better part of three months and most of our liberated Pentagon money to find Father's commune in northern Bayfield County, near Lake Superior.

The good news was that no one seemed to be on our trail, which could mean that Garth and I were presumed dead, and any loose guns belonging to Father or the Pentagon were off somewhere chasing after an ancient, wily Defense Intelligence Agency operative. The rest was all red ink. Whatever had been injected into our bloodstreams had been absorbed into every cell in our bodies, where it was merrily cooking away in the chromosomes, canceling controls in the DNA, finding and randomly transcribing tiny, forgotten genetic messages which had been discarded in an evolutionary wastebasket hundreds of millions of years deep, sending those messages back into our flesh First Class, Special Delivery. It had been almost two days since Garth had suffered a nervous seizure, but my right foot-the one with the scaly membrane growing between the big and second toes- itched all the time.

Naturally, it was Halloween.

We switched places a mile or so down the highway from the commune-operated fruit and dairy stand we had spotted on the first pass; Garth slid behind the wheel, and I climbed in the back. I rested my hand on the stock of the Colt automatic Lippitt had given us and pulled a blanket up over my lap; if word had been sent to Father's worldwide ring of communes to be on the lookout for the 'keys to Valhalla,' some unfortunate acolyte was going to find out that this particular set of keys could do a lot more than unlock genetic secrets.

Garth drove slowly up the highway, then pulled into a small parking lot and stopped close enough to the stand so that I could see without being seen, hear the conversation, and cover him. I felt vaguely ridiculous; the