top of the escarpment lasted less than a minute, it became a protracted, nightmare journey through black rock and backlit mines where things skittered away as we passed. It was worse than anything dreamed up by Hieronymus Bosch.
I had a pretty good idea of what we were going to see when the door opened, but that still didn't prepare me for the panorama of agony-unidentifiable creatures in various stages of devolution, all lined up in rows inside glassed-in, soundproofed cages atop steel pedestals inside a large laboratory that was all gleaming white tile. Wires from monitoring devices inside the cages snaked to the ceiling, were bundled into cables that ran along the ceiling to a central monitoring and control panel that filled half of one wall to the left of the elevator. Garth, a tough New York City cop, was green, and I turned away as I felt my stomach turn.
What was in the cages were all variations of the things Lippitt had splashed over a fender to show us what we were up against, and why we might want him to kill us; Loge's laboratory was Lippitt's horror show multiplied a hundredfold. All of the creatures, to various extents, were 'melting' into bizarre combinations of fur and feathers, fangs and beaks, claws and flippers, hide and scales.
Every living thing in the room, except for the two Loges, was dying like that.
'This is a terrible thing' was all I could think of to say, and I delivered the line rather feebly.
'So are nuclear weapons,' Loge declared flatly as he stared at the cages where the creatures mewled, coughed, barked, and screamed in-to us-silent agony.
'Then it is a weapon you're developing.'
'Don't be stupid, Frederickson,' Loge said in the same odd, flat tone of voice. 'It's unbecoming. Did you think we were making cheesecake?'
'I wanted to hear you admit it.'
'This is a unique weapon. When we learn from your bodies how to control the reaction, it will be only a minor step to tailoring it so that it can be targeted against specific populations based upon membership in gene pools.'
'Races?'
'Oh, it can be targeted to race, certainly. More important, it can be targeted against nationality, as long as the gene pool is sufficiently discrete.'
'It would work better against, say, Icelanders or Georgian Russians than against Americans.'
'Correct, Frederickson.'
'You need to control the reaction so that you can mask what's happening to the people, slow it down, make its source untraceable. The victims might not even know they'd been attacked, much less know what kind of weapon had been used against them.'
'Correct, Frederickson.'
'That makes it an offensive weapon.'
'Right again.'
Obie Loge was checking cages. When he found a dead animal, he would open a side of the cage, don elbow- length rubber gloves, then remove the animal and carry it to our end of the lab where the waste chute was located. He would pull open the large lid, drop the creature down the chute, close the lid. Then he would watch the show down below on a television monitor to the left of the waste chute.
Garth nudged me. I looked up into the profound sadness of his face and eyes, knew instantly what he wanted to do. I winked, nudged him back. Garth yawned, thrust his hands into his pockets and, under the watchful eye of Golly, began to stroll in and out of the rows of cages.
'It's illegal.'
'Naivete doesn't become you either, Frederickson. Every nation stockpiles illegal antipersonnel weapons, from mustard gas, to anthrax bombs, to binary nerve gas. Besides, it's arguable whether this research is actually illegal. The United States isn't a signatory to the Geneva protocols outlawing this kind of weaponry.'
'For Christ's sake, Loge, forget what's legal or illegal; forget the question of morality. What if this-whatever it is you're cooking up in here-gets loose into the environment before you have a handle on it? It could change the face of the planet.'
'Trust us.'
'Dad?' Obie Loge called from where he was standing in front of the television monitor. 'It's pretty quiet down there now. Can I use live ones to feed the kitty?'
Siegfried Loge nodded, held up three fingers.
'You and your father are fucking lunatics, Loge. No; you're beyond lunacy. I don't know what to call you.'
'If we're lunatics, I don't know what that makes all those nice people in Washington who run this country,' Loge replied mildly as he watched his son select something that quivered, carry it back and drop it down the chute. 'Government people came to my father on this matter, not the other way around. You think we could throw around money like this, or enjoy the protection we do, without government backing?'
'Where is your father? I would think he'd be anxious to meet his two prize specimens.' The cries of the animal Obie Loge had carried across the laboratory still echoed in my mind.
'He is anxious to meet you, and he will. He's a busy man.'
'He's carrying on direct human experimentation somewhere, isn't he?'
'He's a busy man.'
'Maybe he's a dead man. Lippitt had him targeted from the beginning. You're a fairly bright man for a lunatic, but you don't have the mind of your old man. Without him, Project Valhalla will never be completed. Lippitt always understood that.'
Loge shook his head. 'Mr. Lippitt will never find my father. It's Lippitt who will die-if he's not dead already.'
The next animal spewed fluid all over the floor, screamed as Obie Loge brought it to the chute, dropped it down.
'Specifically, what's happening to us?' Garth asked in a casual tone as he leaned against one of the pedestals near the waste chute.
'Your brother, if his cells don't suddenly explode, will become a creature closely resembling a snake,' Loge answered matter-of-factly. 'Your changes are less dramatic, but in a way more interesting. You seem to be following a very direct evolutionary line back through the humanoids. If you don't explode, I think we'll actually be able to see what the precursor of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon looked like. I really hope you make it; anthropology is a minor interest of mine.'
'I think it might be a good idea for you to tell your boy to call it a day on the live animal thing,' I said as I watched Obie Loge looking for another animal, then glanced at Garth.
Loge shrugged, smiled thinly. 'He has to keep Mount Doom populated. Why should I tell him to stop?'
'I think you should tell him to stop because Garth is getting aggravated.'
Obie Loge yelped as Garth's fingers closed around his throat; the boy went up on his toes, and his tongue started to protrude from his mouth.
'Wait!' I shouted, wheeling on Golly and extending both my arms. 'He won't kill! Don't you! Just wait!' I tensed, holding my breath. Golly had immediately flipped open the tops on both control boxes, and her thumbs hovered near the blue kill buttons. She looked uncertainly at me, then at Loge.
'Kill the animals in the cages,' I continued as I slowly turned around to face Loge. 'Kill them all. Then Garth will release your son.'
Loge had cocked his head to one side and was staring at me intently. 'If I nod to that gorilla, your brother dies instantly from electrical shock. You know that.'
'Not quite instantly, Loge. You've seen his reflexes and you know how strong he is; at the instant you're burning his brain, he'll be snapping your kid's neck. Then I go after you, and Golly will have to kill me.'
'What the hell do you think you're doing?' He seemed more interested in the answer than he was in whether or not Garth killed his son. Obie Loge's face was turning blue, and Garth was grinning. 'I won't let you escape. You try to escape, you die.'
'You're not listening. We have a simple request; put these animals out of their misery. Do it now. Then Garth will let your kid go. We're not trying to escape.'
'What's the point? I'll have a new shipment of test animals trucked in.'
'We'll take whatever victories we can find in small doses, one day at a time. You have a simple choice, Loge;
