The Beasts Of Valhalla

hoarse voice cracked. 'You do what I tell you to do, damn it! What's the matter?! You afraid to go in there?'

'No, sir,' London replied calmly, his voice very soft. 'I'm a soldier, not a torturer. I did warn you about standing too close to the cell.'

'I'm giving you a fucking order!'

'I don't take orders from you, sir. Your father is my commander, and I won't do anything I feel is against his wishes or interests. If he ordered me to step into the black cell, I would; in the meantime, I must carry out my duties as I see them. I think you forget the value of these men.'

'Why don't you step in here, kid killer?' I said to Loge. 'I'll kick your balls up far enough to open your throat.'

Loge stood trembling with fury, and for a moment I thought he was going to attack Stryder London; I would have liked to see that. Instead, he abruptly began to laugh. 'Some bodyguard you are, London,' he said contemptuously as he hauled his son to his feet, pushed the teenager toward the door. 'Let's get out of here, super-soldier.'

'In a minute, sir,' London said as he studied Garth. 'I have to find out something.' He stepped up to the bars, motioned to my brother. 'Come here, please.'

'You want to talk to me at close range, London, get rid of your gun and step in here. That will put us on a little more equal footing.'

'I won't hurt you, Frederickson. If that were my intention, I'd have done it while you were choking Dr. Loge. I could have maimed or killed you in seconds, and you know it.'

'Yeah, but you didn't know then how cranky this fruitcake was going to get. He said science should be fun; I wanted to run an experiment to find out how long a fruitcake can go without breathing.'

'What I want is for you to try to blind me. If you can do it, it's done. There'll be no retaliation.'

Garth and I exchanged glances. There was silence; even Obie Loge had stopped groaning, and was staring, shocked, at the Warrior. Stryder London was serious.

'Why?' Garth asked quietly.

'Your reflexes appear to be extraordinary. You must be kept alive, and as long as you're alive you pose a threat to the personnel here at Ramdor. It's my job to protect these people, and-as you noticed-scientists are not always as cautious as they should be. I need to test your combat skills, and in exchange for your cooperation I'm offering you the opportunity to blind me.'

Garth shook his head. 'You go play your games with somebody else. I've got nothing against you, pal. I'll save my energies for those people I do have something against.'

London stared at Garth for some time in silence. When he did finally speak, his tone was curt, edged with anger. 'People like you are a big part of what's gone wrong with this country, Frederickson. Both of you; neither of you thinks straight, and so you make the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons-usually out of sheer sentimentality. Your dwarf brother, for whatever reason, couldn't bring himself to kill a gorilla; he couldn't even bring himself to kill a man who had a shotgun leveled on his chest, simply because that man had once been a friend. If he had been able to do these killings, Dr. Loge and his son might now be your captives-instead of the other way around. Do you see my point?'

'Uh, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?'

'You're a fool.'

'I'm sorry; I'm trying as hard as I can to understand your point. A stitch in time saves nine? When in Ramdor, kill, kill, kill?'

'I am your enemy.'

'Be what you want to be. What I said was that I have nothing against you.'

'You have an opportunity now to neutralize an enemy, without risk. It's only simple logic that you take the opportunity. If you need emotion to make you act in a logical manner, consider that I would have killed your nephew and his friend without a second thought, if my first thought had been that the act was necessary.'

'That does it, London; I'm not going to invite you to any of my parties.' Garth nodded in the direction of the father and son standing by the open wooden door at the end of the corridor. 'If you want to see what effect the shit Jake Bolesh put into me has had on my nervous system, send those two in here.'

London shook his head, then abruptly turned and walked quickly out of the dungeon. The Loges followed, slamming the heavy door shut behind them.

'He seems impressed with your speed,' I said as we both stared at the closed door. 'Me, too.'

Garth turned to me, a haunted expression on his face. 'It doesn't stop. We're still changing, aren't we?'

I sighed, nodded as I absently scratched the scales on the back of my right hand.

The Loges found a way to get in their licks without fatally damaging the goods.

They returned an hour later, by themselves. The tranquilizer darts they shot us with contained a little extra something-probably scopolamine, to enhance the effects of the electronic choke collars we found around our necks when we woke up. The collars were made of leather laced with wires and radio-controlled electronic components that caused the wires to contract in varying degrees in response to the movement of a joystick on a black metal control box; the farther back the joystick was pulled, the tighter the collar grew.

For an hour the Loges had at us, occasionally trading control boxes, choking us into unconsciousness a half dozen times. Finally they got tired of it and went away.

The experience, as my mother would say, took a lot of the starch out of us.

25

Deja Vu.

X-rays. Clickety-click-click.

For some reason, Garth and I had been separated for the biological testing. Each of us had been assigned a keeper with a control box; Garth had drawn the gorilla.

'Hugo, what's a friendly giant like you doing in a place like this?'

Too big to fit in any of the chairs in the small examination room, the eight-foot giant was seated cross-legged on the floor, his back against the wall and the black box in his lap. His head was bowed slightly, and he wouldn't look at me. 'I don't feel like joking, Mongo,' he rumbled. 'I don't like having to guard you like this.'

'Who the fuck is joking?' I snapped. I was rapidly losing patience with Siegfried Loge and his minions. I managed to twist my arm around under the leather straps that held me to the table, held up the back of my hand; the scales glistened in the fluorescent light. 'You think this is a joke, Hugo? You think what's happened to my eyes is a joke? Those crazy Loges are going to kill Garth and me when this is finished. You were my friend. Why should you help them harm the two of us?'

Hugo raised his head, brushed his long hair away from his eyes, and looked at me. 'They said you'd say strange things, Mongo. It won't do you any good. We've all been briefed.'

'What?'

'I know what happened.'

I glanced around at the X-ray technician, who was putting another plate in the machine suspended over my head. Except for her full beard, she was an attractive woman with a pleasant manner. 'Do you know what he's talking about?' I asked.

'Please hold still, Dr. Frederickson,' she said, smiling sweetly. 'We understand, and we don't hold anything against you. Your brother should have known better, though.'

'Uh, Hugo; refresh my memory. What happened?'

'Why do you want me to tell you what you already know?'

'Humor me. It helps to pass the time.'

Hugo shrugged resignedly. 'You were at Dr. Loge's first clinic, in New York City- '

'What?'