The Beasts Of Valhalla

38

For three days we were kept in obviously impromptu but effective confinement inside a locked and reinforced storeroom with an adjoining toilet. We had no contact with anyone, and our meals were delivered to us through a narrow opening cut out at the bottom of the door.

On the evening of the third day we got a special surprise for dinner, a hose instead of food trays. We were gassed.

We awoke in separate beds, in a rather cheerful and tastefully decorated bedroom illuminated by recessed lights.

"Shit, I'm shedding again," Garth said as he rose, stripped, then shook out his pajamas and brushed hair off his sheets and pillow. As his body continued its rapid transmutation back to normal size and appearance, his fur kept falling off in thick, matted chunks.

My own pajamas even fit me, which attested to the fact that someone-presumably Siegmund Loge-had gone to a lot of trouble to see that we were comfortable. On dressers next to each of our beds had been laid out several changes of underwear, three pale blue overalls which looked appropriately sized, fine leather boots, and Adidas sneakers.

I grunted. "It always amazes me how you find exactly the right thing to say in any given situation. Here we wake up in a Louis the Fourteenth bedroom, original Picassos on the walls, and the first thing you worry about is grooming. This is the Magic Kingdom, m'boy."

"What can I tell you? I'm anal-compulsive." Garth pulled a handful of fur off his buttocks, dropped it into the large metal wastebasket next to his bed. "Sorry I'm messing up the place. Let's hope our host has provided us with a vacuum cleaner."

There wasn't a vacuum cleaner, but we weren't missing too many other things. There was a large bathroom with separate tub and shower stall-most welcome, since we were a bit gamy after sitting around in the storeroom for three days-and two sets of toilet articles. The refrigerator in the kitchen was well stocked, and there was a freezer filled with meat and frozen fresh vegetables. There was even a wet bar in the living room, also well stocked; it sat next to a Plexiglas shield, similar to the one in Siegfried Loge's Treasure Room, which cut us off from what appeared to be a very expensively equipped media room and a rather long, narrow corridor with a door at the end.

What we didn't have in our section of the apartment, besides a vacuum cleaner, was an exit.

The man standing on the other side of the shield was two or three inches taller than Garth. He was gangling and rawboned, had large, gentle-looking hands, and appeared remarkably fit for someone who had to be in his mid-eighties. His full head of snow-white hair was longer than in his pictures or on his posters, and fell across his shoulders. His face was full, free of wrinkles, and he had eyes of the deepest blue I had ever seen; the eyes were limpid, swimming with compassion and glinting with intelligence. He was wearing a loosely belted white cardigan sweater over a blue silk shirt, finely tailored charcoal slacks, and looked like a physically fit Santa Claus, or a Sunday school God, out of costume, smoking a pipe. Simply standing still and silent, his personal magnetism was enormous; he was a man who'd successfully lied to tens of millions of people, yet I knew he was a man whose words I would trust instinctively. If I didn't know better.

"I'm Siegmund Loge," the scientist said, removing his pipe from his mouth and stepping closer to the shield. His voice, slightly amplified through hidden speakers in the apartment, was deep, rich and resonant, slightly hypnotic, the kind of voice a person can listen to for long periods of time without growing tired. "I'm most pleased to meet you at last, Garth and Dr. Robert Frederickson."

Garth and Dr. Robert Frederickson would have been most pleased to meet Dr. Siegmund Loge on more intimate terms, and we both hurled our bodies at the Plexiglas, again and again. The shield was remarkably resilient, and all we did was manage to bruise our shoulders. I sorely missed Whisper.

"Please don't," Loge said, looking genuinely concerned as Garth and I, panting, sat down on the thick carpet for a breather. "You'll hurt yourselves."

The thought that Siegmund Loge should be so solicitous of our health gave both Garth and me a good chuckle, and caused us to redouble our efforts to get at him. This time all we managed to do was break up most of the living room furniture, and snap three steak knives from the kitchen.

Loge had waited patiently through our little tantrum. Now, as we stood and glared at him, he relit his pipe, puffed on it thoughtfully as he stared back at us, then sighed and shook his head. "This is very disturbing," he said in his sonorous voice.

Garth and I looked at each other, puzzled. It took a while, but I finally realized that Loge was referring to our recovery. "You didn't know the process could be reversed, did you?" I asked.

Loge grunted his affirmation. "Apparently severe trauma will do, precisely that, which may mean that even less severe trauma could arrest the process. I believe the problem can be solved, but I should have anticipated it."

Severe trauma, indeed, I thought-like almost freezing to death. "Don't feel bad," I said. "All the clues were right under the noses of your crazy son and grandson, in their Mount Doom, but they were too busy jerking off with their toys, games, and fantasies to see the implications of the fact that many of the animals they threw into that heat and cold not only survived, but multiplied. Is there a chemical antidote?"

Loge slowly blinked, shook his head. "What would be the point of having an antidote?"

"What's the point of the Valhalla Project?"

Loge simply stared at us. Once he removed his pipe from his mouth and seemed about to speak, then thought better of it; he put his pipe back in his mouth and puffed.

Garth tapped on the Plexiglas in front of Loge's nose. "Mongo wants to know why a nice senior citizen like yourself wants to risk destroying the world."

Loge just continued to puff and stare; he seemed lost in thought.

"I'd say it doesn't make any difference, Loge," I said. "The whole thing looks like a bust to me. You may do a lot of damage and cause a lot of suffering, but doctors and scientists will certainly discover the temperature factor before too long. The shit you want to make may not even work anywhere outside the temperate zones, which excludes most of Russia. What do you say we all go home and forget this thing? You gave it the old college try."

Loge grunted, took a pencil and small note pad out of the pocket of his sweater, and began doodling; before our eyes, he was apparently solving the problem. "No," he mumbled. "The problem can be solved. It's in the reverse transcriptase."

"Just where I thought it was," I said, and looked at my Chief Researcher.

"It's a genetic substance that can read RNA into DNA," Garth said. "You can inject new material into genetic programs, cause those programs to run backwards along evolutionary lines. Controlling the reaction from the reverse transcriptase is the key to this thing."

"I'm sorry I asked," I replied, and turned back to Loge. "Where are Mike Leviticus and the other Warriors who brought us here?"

Loge finished a series of equations, gave a smile of satisfaction which I found maddening, put the pencil and pad back in his pocket. "They were sent back after they wired your apartment for sound and constructed this shield."

"You didn't want us to talk to them, did you?"

"No," Loge answered simply.

"Because what we had to say might contradict some of the things they believe about you and Project Valhalla. In fact, each one of them may believe something different. No wonder you kept us drugged. Warriors are trained to be close-mouthed, even with each other. You certainly didn't want us to start them debating with each other."

"Correct. The two of you happen to be the most dangerous men on the face of the earth; yet, you may still end as the saviors of humankind."

"Oh, you're just saying that because you like us-you're going to give us delusions of grandeur. I assume you're referring to our reaction to the shit Jake Bolesh put in us?"

"Of course. Without the two of you, and your unique reaction to that particular formulation, I might never have found the correct formulation."

"You have it now?" Garth asked quietly.

"Yes," Loge answered with a saintly smile of gratitude. "It is done, thanks to the information I was able to gain from your bodies. Also-thanks to your remarkable wills to survive, your resourcefulness and resilience-I discovered, and was able to correct, this problem of reversal outside certain temperature parameters. You are, or were, the most dangerous men on the planet because you would not stop coming at me, and I must confess that on a number of occasions I was afraid that you might actually be able to stop me from completing the project. That would have been a tragedy with dimensions you can't imagine-yet."

"Oh, woe. When do we get to know what you're really up to, so that we can try to imagine the dimensions of the tragedy we would have caused if we'd been able to stop you? Garth and I are really into tragedy."

"Soon. Not yet. When you do understand the reason for Project Valhalla, Dr. Frederickson, I don't believe you'll find things so amusing."

"Listen, Dr. Loge, Garth and I aren't exactly splitting our sides now; a lot of people find our sense of humor somewhat bizarre." To my mind, Project Valhalla, whatever it really was, still had one major flaw. But I couldn't recall ever winning a single Nobel Prize, and I wasn't about to argue with a double laureate. Also, after watching him casually doodle through the problem of reversal with a pencil and paper, I wasn't about to stimulate him with any hints. "Who else is here?" I asked.

"Nobody. We're alone."

"Bullshit."

Loge simply shrugged. "Why should I lie about something like that? It's true; we are alone."

"No security?"

"Security against what? The only threat against us in this place would be from a Greenland or NATO force, 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 reflection, the tender and merciful grace, of my own goodness, the air supply that kept me from drowning in what I was seeing.

So our decency, too, Loge showed us, though the horror of the images never stopped. Whatever feelings Garth and I had ever felt stir in us were nothing, mere breezes on the skin of the soul, compared to what we were feeling now; Siegmund Loge was working on our souls' skin with a tattooer's needle of notes and colors.

How Siegmund Loge had lived for more than eighty years with this pain weighing on his soul without being crushed by it, I couldn't imagine, and I realized, with shame, what a very shallow human being I was compared to this very great and very sad and very compassionate old man. I believed that Garth felt the same.

Mr. Lippitt had told me I'd be impressed by Siegmund Loge. I was impressed. And I knew that whatever happened next, a sea change had taken place in my soul by the time the last sweet and haunting notes of Gotterdammerung had faded away.

Garth and I would never forget what we had experienced in this room, and we would never be the same.