The Beasts Of Valhalla

35

At dawn, I knew I was in a lot of trouble.

The wind had died down, but as the sun rose the field of snow before me became a blinding glare of luminescence that leaked into my eyes around the edges of my smoked glasses, causing me considerable pain and just about blinding me. I was very cold, and it was a constant battle to keep my eyes open and absorbing the pain. I shut off the snowmobile, turned to Golly.

The gorilla was a picture of wretchedness as she shivered and huddled against me, and I knew just how she felt.

"I'm sorry, Golly," I said through chattering teeth. "If it's any consolation to you, Stryder London has to be just as cold as we are. We have to keep going as long as Stryder London; if we don't, I'm afraid we may never find him."

If I hadn't lost him already-which seemed a pretty good possibility.

GUFLLY CKIN C LD

"What?"

I Y FUGHKCG C?OL

My first thought was that the computer, even with its atomic battery, was malfunctioning in the cold. I reached out to touch Golly's face-and almost lost a finger when she snapped at my hand. I pulled back my hand and stared into the yellow eyes-which now seemed murky, their light dim. Her lips curled back from her yellow teeth, and a low snarl came rumbling up from deep in her chest.

Golly was feeling funny all right, I thought, and a rogue gorilla suddenly gone stupid and nasty wasn't exactly what I needed at the moment; I certainly wasn't going to mess with her.

Cursing softly to myself, I slowly turned around and started up the engine. I was almost glad to see that the wind had risen again, for in the gusts I could see better-or, at least, without pain-than I could against the glare.

I'd gone about fifteen yards when I bumped into the back of London's snowmobile.

Shhh.

With Whisper in one hand and my machine pistol in the other, I leaped out of my snowmobile and waded forward through the snow, ready to put a bullet through the first thing that didn't have hair and moved.

Half frozen, disoriented in the swirling snow and very much afraid, I ducked down and looked around me, half expecting at any moment to see Stryder London emerge from the gusts to put me out of my misery.

A dark shape went past me, but it wasn't Stryder London. Golly, growling and slapping at the snow on the ground and in the air, was wallowing away from the snowmobile.

"Golly!" I shouted, struggling after her. "Don't go away! We have to stick together! If I can find something to burn, I'll start a fire!"

I managed to reach her, wrapped my fingers in her fur-and ducked just in time to avoid having my head torn off my shoulders as her arm swung around. I sat down hard, couldn't have escaped if I wanted to as she hovered over me, eyes bloody with rage. Then she shivered, turned around, and disappeared in the swirling snow.

Golly-who had saved Garth and me by throwing Obie Loge down the waste chute into Mount Doom and had then come down to help me-was going to freeze to death in a very short time unless I could get her back with me and start a fire.

Dangerous or not, I had to try and save her.

Fighting against the desire simply to lie down and go to sleep, I struggled forward toward the spot where Golly had disappeared, swinging my shoulders back and forth to gain momentum, pumping my knees up and down, thinking that being a dwarf in a snowstorm is a real pain in the ass.

Then, suddenly, it was as if I were looking through a window in the storm, and what I saw through the window, twenty yards ahead, were the bare, skeletal shapes of trees-lots of them; Golly, whatever her mental state, had known where she was going. Whimpering with both cold and delight, I half ran, half swam through the drifts and fell on my face inside the shelter of the trees.

Protected by the natural windbreak of the forest, I could see. Lying still on my belly, hugging the frozen loam of the forest floor, I looked around; there was no sign of Stryder London. Already I felt warmer.

"Golly!" I shouted as I got to my feet. "Come here! I'm going to start a fire!"

Nothing.

I ran around for a while, shouting her name, making a lot of noise. I knew that I might attract London as well as Golly, but that was the point of the exercise. Even if I hadn't been dependent for my life on a battery pack that was rapidly draining, I knew now that I could never hope to track down Stryder London. I suspected-desperately hoped-that I had one last, secret weapon in my arsenal, one that had apparently gone unnoticed even during the extensive biotesting; if anyone had detected what I considered to be my most horrible symptom, it had never been mentioned to me. To use it against Stryder London, I had to be in physical contact, and if I couldn't find the Warrior leader, then he would have to find me.

Shhh.

Whisper made short work of cutting up deadwood on the ground into a collection of wood shavings, twigs, and a good-sized pile of logs. I gathered together a mound of wood shavings and dead leaves, stuck the muzzle of the machine pistol into it and emptied the gun. The flame discharge from the barrel ignited the leaves, and within minutes I had a roaring fire to warm me and save my batteries. I placed the empty machine pistol and Whisper on the ground near the fire where they could be seen, then sat cross-legged by the flames and waited.

I didn't have long to wait. I heard nothing and was just comfortably dozing off when I felt a circle of very cold steel touch my ear.

"Hello, General," I said. "Please don't tell me to freeze. I've already done that number."

"What the hell is this all about, Frederickson?"

"What's what about? Take that gun out of my ear, will you? It's cold."

"The shots and this fire; you must have known I'd find you."

"That was the idea, dumbie."

Keeping his machine pistol leveled on my chest, London moved around me. He picked up Whisper, lifted up the edge of his parka and stuck her in his belt. He examined the empty machine pistol, threw it away into the forest behind him. Then he studied me through narrowed lids. "What do you think you have up your sleeve, Frederickson?" he asked at last.

"Nothing but arms."

"Show me."

I stood, unzipped my parka and spread it to show that I had no more weapons.

"What's with the battery pack?"

"I've gone cold-blooded, and I need a heating unit to keep me alive. You can check it out if you want to, but there's no trick. The game's over. One way or another, I'm going to die soon. I want to die with my brother."

"I don't believe you, Frederickson," London answered without hesitation. "You're not a quitter. I've known a lot of very good fighting men, but I've never met a man who keeps coming, no matter what the odds, the way you do. You're quite mad, you know."

"Now you sound like Garth," I replied as I zipped up my parka. "Would you take me to him, please?"

"You have no chance of defeating me or the purpose of Seigmund Loge, Frederickson. Absolutely none. You never did."

"I thought I just said that."

London used Whisper to slice narrow strips of bark from a tree, and he used the strips to tie my hands behind my back. Then, using a long strip as a choke tether, he led me off through the trees to the northwest. We traversed a gully, went over a couple of small hills, finally came to his camp. He'd built a solid lean-to on the lee side of a small cliff, and there was a steady hardwood fire that was virtually smokeless. Garth, his hands and feet bound by rope, was lying on the ground close to the fire. A rope around his neck snaked away and was anchored to the trunk of a tree close to the lean-to.

Garth glanced up at our approach, and by the light of the fire I watched his human eyes fill with inconsolable grief and a sense of loss. I shrugged, managed a very thin smile.

"What now?" I asked as I sat down next to Garth.

London tied my neck tether to a tree. "I take you to Dr. Loge," he answered as he tied my ankles together with a length of rope he'd taken from the lean-to.

"He's somewhere in Greenland, isn't he? Inside a ring."

London looked up, obviously startled. "Who told you that?! How could you know?!"

"I do know. What kind of a ring is it? Where is it?"

London straightened up. "You'll find out where Dr. Loge is when I take you to him."

"He's going to dissect Garth and me, you know. That's what you're taking us to."

London removed Whisper from his belt, turned her over in his hands. "My job is to deliver you," he said as he hefted Whisper, then flicked his wrist and sent her flying through the air. The blade stuck in a log, quivered, the Damascus steel glinting in the firelight. "What's done with you isn't my concern. You know I have my regrets, but I have my duty."

"What's done with us may not be your concern, but it's still your responsibility."

"I'm sorry."

"When do we go?"

London looked up at the sky, which had grown very dark. "There's a storm coming-a bad one. We'll wait it out here, and by tomorrow morn- "

Suddenly Golly came flying off the edge of the cliff above the lean-to. She hit the ground, rolled, and came up charging at London. The Warrior clawed for his gun and had it halfway out of his holster when Golly hit him. The Warrior flew backward through the air and almost landed in my lap. Golly started to charge again, abruptly stopped when she saw the gun swinging around toward her, turned to her left and headed around the fire for the trees. London leaned over me, took careful aim on Golly's back and was about to pull the trigger when I leaned forward and sank my teeth into his right cheek.

London's burst of fire went over Golly's head, and she disappeared from sight as London cursed and flailed at me. I hung on to his cheek, chewing the raw flesh and working saliva into the wound. Finally he tore free, and I spat out the chunk of flesh he'd left in my mouth.

Holding one hand to his bleeding cheek, London raised his machine pistol to club me, then thought better of it. "You're not the class act I thought you were, Frederickson," he said, as if that were the best insult he could think of. Then he turned and walked away into the woods, apparently looking for Golly.

London looked more than a little peaked when he returned about five minutes later. In fact, he didn't look well at all. His face had gone gray and seemed to grow even darker before my eyes as he staggered, caroming off the naked trees. He fell on his back in front of the lean-to, got up on his knees, crawled toward us.

Somehow, he'd managed to hang on to his machine pistol.

Garth and I looked at each other, and I could see in his eyes that he understood what was happening.

London also understood what was happening, and I could see by the look in his eyes that he didn't appreciate the irony of it all.

"You… poisoned me," Lieutenant General Stryder London, AWOL from the U.S. Army, whispered hoarsely as he flopped on the ground in front of me. "Kill… you… too."

Garth and I watched with more than passing interest as the hand with the machine pistol lifted off the ground; it was trembling violently, but it was moving. Toward us. Then it stopped, collapsed to the ground.

"Now that's a class act," I said as London twitched and died.

Garth threw back his head and uttered a long, drawn-out howl of triumph and joy.

"Don't get too excited yet, brother," I said as I tested the strength of the tether around my neck and only managed to tighten it. "There's a blizzard on the way, the fire's going out, and London hog-tied us pretty good. Can you work yourself up into one of your mighty snits?"

Garth slowly shook his head. I glanced at Whisper, stuck in the log twenty feet away; she might as well have been twenty miles away.

"Golly!"

There was no response, no gorilla-only the rising wind whistling through the swaying trees. The flames of the campfire were starting to gutter and die, and I was growing cold and sleepy. I fumbled at the knot around my wrists with my gloved fingers, got nowhere.

"Golly?! Golly! Hey, babe, we could really use a little help here!"

Inspired by desperation, I began belting out arias from The Magic Flute like show tunes, shouting them out at the top of my lungs, hoping I could be heard above the wind. Finally I stopped, looked around.

Nothing.

Act Two. More arias, complete with a la-la-la orchestral accompaniment. I could feel my voice going when I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder. I yelped, looked around to see Golly standing behind me.

GO Y LOV?UPQINGM ZAAT

"Right, babe. I love Mozart too, remember? Listen to me carefully, Golly. I want you to take the knife out of that log over there and bring it here. I want you to cut us free. Do you understand?"

?

More Mozart. This time I hummed a cheerful, soothing etude. Golly inclined her head, half closed her eyes, and seemed to be swaying tentatively in time to the music.

"Golly, please try to concentrate and understand," I said softly.

"I understand now what you meant when you told me you felt funny; you're losing your wrongness. But you have to stay like people just a while longer. Understand?"

FUCKING TRY

"If you can't, sweetheart, Garth and I will die. You have to take the knife out of the log and bring it here."

Golly slowly ambled over to Whisper. She cocked her head and stared at the blade for a few moments, then pulled it free. She shuffled around the campfire three times, then responded to more Mozart and coaxing, and came over to me. Half an aria, another instruction, and she cut the bark strips around my wrist.

Not knowing how she would respond, and not caring, I wrapped my arms around her neck and kissed her brow. Then I took Whisper from her hand, cut the rope around my ankles, and cut Garth free. I immediately rushed to throw more logs on the fire, and the three of us huddled around the leaping, life-giving flames.

"Listen, guys," I said, "I've got a problem. London's plan was the best; wait here in the shelter of the cliff, by the fire, until the storm blows over. I can't do that. I've gone cold-blooded, and the only thing keeping me alive in this cold is a battery-operated heating unit. The batteries are going dead. I have to make a run for it now, hope that I can find the snowmobile, and hope there's enough gas to get me back to the Institute-if I can find it in the- "

Garth didn't wait to hear any more. He straightened up, came over and pushed me in the direction from which we had come. I resisted, clutched both his naked, hairy forearms.

"Garth, I don't know what's going to happen out there. I've lost my sense of direction; even without the storm, I'm not sure I can find my way back before I run out of gas. If you and Golly stay here, at least you have a fire, and maybe there's a chance- "

Now Garth actually growled at me, and anger flared in his eyes as he motioned for me to lead the way. I grabbed one of Golly's hands, Garth grabbed the other, and together we hurried back through a forest that had grown ominously still. Heavy snowflakes had begun to fall.