The Beasts Of Valhalla

and my Warriors couldn't defend against that. Illusion and isolation remain my principal weapons of security, as they have always been. Next week, of course, things will be different. Hundreds of people will begin arriving to prepare for manufacture and distribution.'

'What about the babies who were sent to you?' Garth asked in a low, menacing tone.

'They were sent back to their parents some time ago-and I would like you to believe that, while they were here, they were expertly cared for by a trained staff. No infant suffered because of its stay here.'

'They weren't… tampered with?'

'No, Garth. After I learned of your reactions to the last formulation, I knew there was no need for the work I had planned to do with the infants; you two were the work, the human experimental subjects, the living laboratories in which the solution to a correct formulation could be found. Indeed, it's arguable whether I could have produced that reaction in any other humans on earth. You were indispensable in bringing the Valhalla Project to fruition. I believe Mr. Lippitt understood this danger from the beginning. Considering his mind set, I'm surprised he didn't kill the both of you. An unpredictable man, that one.'

'What happened to Mr. Lippitt and the man who was with him at the Institute?' I asked carefully, almost afraid to hear the answer.

'They're both dead. I'm sorry.'

The news hit both Garth and me like bullets in the stomach. We were alone, without allies, imprisoned and at the mercy of Siegmund Loge while the clock of the world ran down.

Seeing our reaction, Loge stepped closer to the shield. Tears actually glistened in his sea-blue eyes. 'I really am sorry,' he said. 'I know they were your friends, and I understand your grief. But remember that I've lost a son and a grandson. Believe me, it doesn't make a difference. All of the death and suffering for which you hold me responsible is insignificant compared to… what would have been, and can now be prevented.'

'What's it about, Loge?' I asked through clenched teeth. 'Which of the dozen different versions of Project Valhalla we've heard is the right one?'

'None.'

Garth and I looked at each other, then at Loge. The old man had both his hands placed on the shield, almost as if he wanted to reach through and touch us. For a brief moment, grief and loneliness swam in his eyes. Then it was gone. He stepped back, seemed to be making an effort to compose himself as he refilled his pipe from a pouch in his pocket, lit it.

I asked, 'Besides yourself, who else knows what the Valhalla Project is really supposed to do?'

'Nobody,' Loge answered in a voice that trembled slightly.

Garth punched the shield with his fist. 'Damn it, don't you think we have the right to know?!'

'Yes,' Loge murmured in a voice that was almost inaudible. 'And I want you to know.'

'So tell us, already!' I said, thoroughly exasperated.

'Soon.'

'Why not now?'

'First, there's something you must see. I believe it will explain many things-my need for the isolation in which you find me, the things I think about in that isolation. Then you will understand Project Valhalla.'

Again, Garth punched the shield. His face was flushed a deep, brick red. 'Let's get one thing straight between us, you fucking screwball. You don't need us any longer, do you?'

'For experimentation and knowledge, no,' Loge replied evenly.

'Then for what?' I asked quickly.

'Soon, Dr. Frederickson.'

Garth stepped back from the shield, took a deep breath, and slowly relaxed his fists. 'If you don't need us, why are we still alive? Why bother bringing us here in the first place?'

'All your questions will be answered soon, Garth. I promise you.'

'Go to hell, you fucking Nazi,' Garth said, and spat at the glass. 'Shit, even the rest of the Nazis couldn't have thought this one up-it took the biggest Nazi of all.'

Loge's face, distorted by Garth's spittle on the Plexiglas, contorted in pain; Garth's words had cut him deeply. He wiped tears from his eyes, looked down at me. 'You like people, don't you?'

'Yes,' I answered softly. 'But I like them the way they are.'

Loge nodded absently, then turned and slowly walked away down the long corridor.

We didn't see Loge for the rest of the day, and he didn't come in the morning. We tried shouting into the intercom in the living room, but it seemed to be dead. We tried shouting at the walls, where we assumed microphones must be hidden, but got no response and no Loge. We even tried shouting up at the recessed television cameras in all the rooms, but there was still no response.

We were just sitting down to a lunch Garth had prepared when the lights in the apartment went out. A few moments later we heard the haunting, E-flat opening chords of Das Rheingold; the sound filled the apartment and seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, vibrating in our bones as well as our ears.

Suddenly there was a glow, then a flicker at the entrance to the living room. We rose, walked into the other room-and came to a dead stop.

Standing, we didn't move for close to three hours.

Like the shield in the Treasure Room, the Plexiglas sealing off the living room could reflect images, which in this case were being rear-projected from the media room beyond. What we were watching was a series of slides and short film clips, a visual presentation precisely edited in rhythms that matched the music in the introductory opera in Wagner's Ring cycle.

One brief series of slides showed a soldier snatching an infant from its mother's arms, then bashing the baby's head against a brick wall.

Another series showed a soldier disemboweling a pregnant woman.

These images passed before our eyes even before the thirty-six E-flat opening bars of Das Rheingold were over, and were followed by other, similar images throughout the length of the opera. As horrible as were these opening sequences, the ones that followed were just as horrible, and had the same emotional impact. Although each sequence was brief, some images consisting only of the flash of a single slide, not a single image or sequence of images was ever repeated in the three hours.

None had to be. The record of human cruelty, even when presented in snippets, was easily long enough to stretch through Das Rheingold.

And beyond.

Each day for the next three days, beginning at precisely one o'clock in the afternoon, another opera in the cycle was presented, each with its own accompanying slide and film show. During this time I-and Garth, too, I believed-came to understand what heretofore had been only a vaguely bemusing puzzlement when practiced or described by other people: religion and religious experience.

Siegmund Loge was our high priest, and he was baptizing us in an ocean of feeling inside ourselves deeper than we had ever imagined.

After Die Walkiire we began to fast. And we continued our fast.

Also, we were silent for these four days… not only during each opera and its accompanying visual presentation, but afterwards, like monks in retreat.

Tens, hundreds of thousands of slides and film clips flashed through the seventeen-and-a-half-hour length of the Ring cycle. Loge, the Nobel laureate, was also revealed to us now as a consummate artist as well as an ultrabrilliant scientist. By precisely matching these images of unspeakable and indescribable horror to Wagner's masterpiece, the vast opus of a Nazi sympathizer, Loge had found a way to speak of the unspeakable and describe the indescribable; what he had done was to construct a kind of spiritual submersible, comprised of music and light, that took us to the very bottom of the ocean of evil that stains the shores of the human heart.

The onslaught of horror was so terrible that finally, with music as a catalyst, it transcended horror; it created in us a feeling of profound sadness that I realized, with a suddenness that literally took my breath away, was a