The Beasts Of Valhalla

13

Lippitt returned fifty minutes later with three frightened-looking medical technicians, a man and two women, in tow, and a box full of new clothes which he tossed onto a chair in the waiting room. One of the women turned out to be a doctor, and the first item on the agenda was to patch up Garth. His broken foot was placed in a walking cast, his ribs and the knuckles of his right hand taped. That done, we proceeded to the serious business of the day.

From the length of the list of tests Lippitt pulled from his pocket, it looked like Garth and I were going to be padding around nude for some time. Lippitt obviously knew what he was doing; he briefed the medical personnel on exactly what tests he wanted. Then he sat down in a secretary's chair, placed a revolver on top of a pile of papers where the three people could see it, and leaned back and put his feet up on the desk.

One of the technicians began the festivities by drawing samples of our blood. Lots of blood.

"Illegal gene-splicing experiments," I said as I watched the plastic tube at the end of the needle sticking out of my forearm fill up with blood.

" 'Illegal' is a matter of interpretation," Lippitt replied flatly as he stared up at the ceiling.

"Attempts at genetic engineering with mammals." "Right."

"Large mammals."

"Right. Let's be a bit discreet, Frederickson. We're not alone." "Looking for applications to humans?" No answer.

"You're unemployed now, remember? You don't owe them your loyalty any longer."

"Really? How do you know who 'them' are? I'm not sure myself." "You've got to be kidding. What are you, a salesman for Saks Fifth Avenue?"

"It may not be as simple as you think it is." "So? Who is 'them'?" No answer.

"You think I'm an idiot?"

"No. But I've had more time to think about it."

Mucous smears; nose, throat, rectum.

"Project Valhalla. Jesus, Lippitt! Some kind of biobomb?" No answer.

X-rays. Whir, clickety-clunk, whir. "What killed Coop Lugmor?"

"A star wasp. It's a jellyfish that lives in the surf off the coast of Australia. Its toxin is lethal, but most useful as a molecular probe. I suppose you'll want to know what a molecular probe is?"

"It's a chemical used to trace the passage of substances through cell walls."

"Correct. Would you care to discuss osmosis?" "I think not. A pineapple like Jake Bolesh shouldn't have been able to get security clearance to piss on a tree within five miles of the Pentagon, what's more connect up with a top secret research facility. How the hell did he get to work for Volsung?"

"Siegfried Loge hired him. Bolesh was just what Loge was looking for."

"Somehow, Jake always struck me as being a bit crude." That almost got a smile out of Lippitt, who was standing across the room, wearing a lead apron. "You should meet Loge. He and Bolesh didn't have much in common academically, but they were blood brothers in every other respect. If you were fond of Jake Bolesh, you'd fall in love with Siegfried Loge." "I'd like very much to meet him," I said evenly. "You won't." "Why not?" No answer.

Sonar tests; lungs and stomach.

"Where did Bolesh get the star wasp and the stuff he shot into us?"

"The star wasp was probably given to him by Loge." "The director of Volsung gave him a thing like that to kill a man?" Lippitt nodded. "I told you; Loge is a prince." "The serum?"

"Lot Fifty-Six. Loge certainly wouldn't have given that to Bolesh. I don't know where Bolesh got it, but my guess would be from Rodney Lugmor's room. You're aware that that stupid prick Obie Loge took your nephew and Rodney Lugmor into the complex?"

"I guessed. They were playing a game, and Obie Loge was looking to score some heavy points."

"That I didn't know; I never could figure out why Obie Loge would take two friends in there. A game?" "A fantasy game."

Lippitt thought about it, made a sound of disgust in his throat.

"It figures."

"Whatever Tommy and Rodney saw in there scared the shit out of them-enough so that they thought they 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.

"Getting information out of you is like trying to mine diamonds with a toothpick, Lippitt."

"Later, I'd like to try again with the eye tests. We'll use a little more anesthetic."

"I'd love to know the whole story before these tests kill me. For that matter, even you're not going to live forever."

"What is evil lives forever," Lippitt said in a distant, cryptic tone. "Oh, good. A- wheeze- riddle. Let's see… we're talking about- wheeze- DNA research, genetic engineering. The cell lives forever." Ahuh, ahuh, ahuh. Wheeze. "In a very real sense, the cell is immortal; it keeps passing on bits of itself in the form of genetic information from generation to generation, and it's been that way since we all crawled out of the slime. Every once in a while there's a missed signal, and that's what evolution is all about. So, what's evil about a cell?"

Gasp, pant, wheeze.

"Just a Spanish fable," Lippitt said quietly.

Galvanic skin reaction tests.

"Is Father more than foolish? Is Father evil?" "As a matter of fact, he's one of the kindest, gentlest men I've ever met. And, as you may have suspected from all the names, a devotee of Richard Wagner." "How do you know him?" No answer.

"What does Father have to do with the Valhalla Project?"

No answer.

"Why can't you just tell us all of it, Lippitt?"

"Maybe I will," Lippitt said softly, after a long pause.

"Why maybe? Don't you think Garth and I have a right to know?"

"I'm still thinking about it."

"Exactly what are you thinking about?"

No answer.

Lippitt was becoming increasingly distracted as the tests progressed. For some reason I couldn't pinpoint-a vague tension in my empty stomach-I found that ominous.

Reflexes. Bangety-bang, twitch.

"What do you owe these people?"

"It's our country, Frederickson. There are a lot of things to be considered."

"Our country, my ass! Our beloved country killed my nephew."

"No."

"And now they're hunting you."

"No."

"Bullshit, Lippitt! Bullshit!"

"I don't believe these people represent the country, Frederickson. Not in the sense that you mean."

"The government is damn well responsible!"

Lippitt sighed. "The government of the United States isn't the all-powerful, omniscient bureaucracy you like to think it is, Frederickson."

"No? Well, I've had some bad experiences. So have you."

He shot me a quick, sharp warning glance. I shrugged, let the tag line alone.

"The proof of what I'm saying is the fact that the Volsung Corporation was built in Peru County in the first place." Lippitt paused, smiled wryly. "If the 'government' you keep referring to had had the faintest inkling that you were associated with Peru County in any way, they wouldn't have come within five hundred miles of the place."

"I'll take that as a compliment, Lippitt."

"Sure."

My turn to sigh. "Why can't you tell us everything?" "I'm thinking about it."

My stomach flopped and tightened again. "You're making me nervous, Lippitt."

"I don't mean to."

"What's your connection with Father?"

No answer.

More blood tests. Incredible. They were draining us dry.

"Volsung had the most piss-poor security operation I've ever seen or heard of."

"You noticed," Lippitt replied drily.

"Kids wander in and out, material is taken out."

"I told you; the place was a madhouse, and the inmates were in charge."

"You were supposed to be in charge of security."

"Was I?"

"But then, you're pretty old, aren't you?" I said, watching him carefully. "They should have retired you a long time ago."

"Operatives who've done what I've done and know what I know don't retire, they just fade away."

"Clever use of the cliche."

"No cliche. 'Fading' is the term we use to describe the placing of an older or burnt-out agent into a cushy job."

"You were 'faded' into Volsung?"

"No. I was buried in Volsung. I had no real authority, and I had almost as much trouble finding out what was really going on in there as you did. In a very real sense, I was a prisoner; I was put in Volsung because I knew too much. If I'd moved around too much, asked too many questions, or made too many complaints, I'm sure Jake Bolesh would have been ordered to kill me, too. Meanwhile, it was Siegfried Loge who was really in charge of security-which was exactly the way he wanted it. Loge figured that the fences, the support of the community, the 'growing' program, and Jake Bolesh were all the security he needed."

"And Loge gave his smart-ass son the run of the place?"

Lippitt nodded. "These people had the most unbelievable contempt for people they considered less bright than they were. They thought they could take care of any problem. It was a security disaster."

"I'll grant you that it doesn't sound like the way the Pentagon likes to do things."

"Precisely. Those people cared about nothing but their work; when they got involved in something, Barnum and Bailey could have marched through there and they wouldn't have known the difference."

"But the funds-and your orders-had to come through the Pentagon."

No answer.

"Volsung isn't a box of paper clips; a very big budget item and continued flow of funds had to be approved by somebody in Washington, and it would have to show up in budget reports."

No answer.

"Who cooked up the Volsung Corporation and the Valhalla Project?"

No answer.

"You accepted your 'prisoner' status, not to mention all the shit going on around you, passively-at least for a time. That doesn't sound like the Lippitt I used to know."

His brown eyes searched mine. "I wasn't the Lippitt you used to know," he said at last. "First, it took me some time-too much time-to appreciate the fact that I was a prisoner. Then I realized I'd been manipulated, co-opted, by… whoever. I was feeling tired, depressed, defeated. Old. Then I got wind of this crazy dwarf who was tearing up Peru County, giving Jake Bolesh-and, incidentally, Siegfried Loge-fits. That's when I decided it was time to get off my ancient ass and do something." He paused and smiled in a way I had never seen before; it was a warm smile, lighting his eyes, softening his face. "I must say, Frederickson, you're an inspiration to an old man."

"What's behind the red door, Lippitt?"

"I'm thinking about it." The Ice Age that was the more familiar Lippitt had returned.

"You said you were 'buried' at Volsung because you knew too much. About what?"

No answer. The brown eyes were still bright, but the fire there was now cold. Dangerous.

"What does Father have to do with the Valhalla Project?"

"Let's eat."