The Beasts Of Valhalla

31

New York, New York. Home-at least it had been my home in the distant past, in the time when I had been human. Now, having traveled for months in rather unusual social circles and traipsing around Ramdor and inside Mount Doom, I knew how Dorothy and Toto must have felt when they returned to Kansas.

It was also depressing, after surviving being entertained by two generations of loony Loges, to see how much the looniest Loge of all had been able to accomplish in my absence. Posters of Siegmund Loge, looking like a Norman Rockwell rendering of God, were everywhere, along with announcements of rallies and prayer meetings. Outside the isolated communes, where the members believed they possessed secret knowledge of Father's real intentions, Father's message, as proclaimed in ubiquitous radio, television, and print ads, was nothing if not general, benign, and banal; everybody would kind of make nice with each other after April 1, when Father would deliver his "Treasure."

Not if we could help it.

"It doesn't make any sense," I said to Lippitt as we drove in our stolen car over the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan. "When's the last time anybody publicly announced the delivery of a weapons system that could turn out to be a doomsday device?"

"You're assuming 'Father's Treasure' is a weapons system. How's your heating unit working"

"It's working fine; if I suddenly fall asleep, check it out fast. I'm not assuming that everything about the Valhalla Project has been kept secret. In fact, you're convinced it's a renegade operation."

"I am."

"You agree that 'Father's Treasure' has to be Lot Fifty-Seven-the juice that's finally going to do whatever Siegmund Loge wants it to do?"

"Yes."

"Then why announce it to the world, for Christ's sake? Are they preparing to issue an ultimatum, or are they looking for public acceptance?"

"I don't know."

"A psychological ploy for recruiting hard-core commune members to experiment on? Come April first, Loge may deliver a lovely homily to the rest of the world while Warriors are shooting up commune members with Lot Fifty-Seven."

"I don't know, Frederickson," the D.I.A. operative said with uncharacteristic weariness in his voice. "You have to remember that everyone believes what he or she wants to about Siegmund Loge. This is February; if we don't get to him soon, it won't make any difference what he's planning to do in April. He'll have solved all the major problems, and other people will be able to carry on for him. Let's just hope Victor Rafferty is where he's supposed to be."

All Victor Rafferty did was read minds like other people read newspapers, and the existence of a bona fide telepath-only one, and an American at that-tended to create delicate problems and a crushing dilemma in all the world's espionage agencies.

Good intelligence wins wars-hot, cold, and lukewarm wars; declared and undeclared wars; military, political, and economic wars; ideological wars. All wars. Brain damage almost always debilitates; in Rafferty's case, it had somehow transformed the neurological circuitry in his brain to enable him to pick up other's thoughts, and the fact that this facility, when used, cost Rafferty dearly in terms of psychic and physical pain mattered not at all to the various intelligence agencies which viewed him as a kind of ultimate weapon, a human vacuum cleaner of the mind who, after plastic surgery and with a new identity, could assume various diplomatic posts, attend various cocktail parties, chat up various generals, ambassadors and politicians, and emerge in an hour with more ultrasensitive information than ten teams of conventional agents could gather in a year at considerable risk to their lives.

As he was recovering from an automobile accident, a bewildered and frightened Rafferty had shared the discovery of his growing powers with his surgeon, who had in turn brought in a psychologist. The psychologist had felt it her patriotic duty to inform certain government officials of the existence of this "perfect telepath." The information had leaked, and before long every intelligence agency that knew the secret had assigned people to carry out a single mission: enlist the services of Victor Rafferty. Recruit him at any cost-through money or promises of power, if possible; through threats or torture, if necessary-or kill him, to prevent him from being recruited by anybody else.

Mr. Lippitt, from the Defense Intelligence Agency, had been America's man on the job.

Victor Rafferty had wanted simply to be free. He had won that freedom, finally, by giving up everything-his wife, his career as a very successful architect, his identity; everything. He'd faked his own death in a manner that was sufficiently spectacular to convince his pursuers-including Mr. Lippitt-that he was no longer available, or a threat, to anyone. Then, after the necessary surgery and with a new identity, he had gone to work for an old and trusted friend-the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

International diplomacy had never been the same since.

Enter a certain dwarf private detective. Working on a case involving the question of who had really designed a certain building in New York City, I started uncovering certain curious facts and questions concerning a dead architect by the name of Victor Rafferty-who might not be so dead. I picked up Rafferty's scent, and other people started picking up my scent. Very heavy people started dropping in on me. One of these people had been Lippitt, who had assured me that Rafferty was very dead, and that people would be hurt and killed if I kept running around asking questions that suggested otherwise. I was, he'd said, acting as a kind of siren whose wail could be heard around the world. I must, Lippitt had insisted, stop my investigation.

I did not stop my investigation. People were hurt. People were killed. I was tortured to a point where I didn't want to live any longer, even after my physical wounds had healed. Rafferty, whom by this time I had flushed, had healed me-as he had earlier healed a curious but devastating psychological malady from which the D.I.A. operative had suffered most of his life. Both of us owed more than we could ever repay to the telepath, and when both Lippitt and I caught Rafferty trying to stage a second, even more spectacular, death on New York's waterfront, I had managed to broker an agreement. Lippitt certainly did not want to kill Rafferty or me. On the other hand, since Rafferty was still adamant in his refusal to work for the government, Lippitt considered it his duty to make certain that Rafferty wasn't running around loose; if Rafferty were loose, than Lippitt also had to worry about me, since I would be in a position to sell Rafferty to the highest bidder. All of this had led to a certain atmosphere of tension in the smoky, bullet-riddled boathouse where the three of us had ended up.

I'd offered a simple suggestion; since the three of us rather liked each other, why not try trusting each other? A pact of secrecy would never be broken by anyone without the consent of the other two; Victor Rafferty would, as "Ronald Tal," continue his work at the U.N., and would always be where Lippitt could reach and check on him. Years had passed, and the agreement had held. Now we needed the telepath's help.

Victor Rafferty was, indeed, a man who could tell the good guys from the bad guys. In Washington or anywhere else.

Except for streaks of gray in his otherwise jet black hair, Rafferty hadn't changed very much since I'd last seen him. He still looked exceptionally fit, his black eyes still glinted with intelligence, and his somewhat brooding appearance was offset by a friendly and casual manner.

"Gentlemen," Rafferty said, swinging around in his leather swivel chair as Lippitt and I entered the office suite of Ronald Tal, Special

Assistant to the Secretary-General. "I've been expecting you."

"Can we be overheard?" Lippitt asked in a low voice as he closed the door behind us.

"No," Rafferty said as he rose and shook my hand warmly. "The walls are soundproofed, and the offices are electronically swept every morning. We can talk here."

"You've been expecting us?"

"Yes, my friend," Rafferty said to me as he motioned for Lippitt and me to sit on the divan beside his desk. "You know I don't use my-talent-just to invade people's privacy; for one thing, it hurts too much. When I do scan, it's to serve some useful purpose. One gentleman I scan regularly is a certain diplomat from South Africa. By international agreement, only two facilities on earth are authorized to store live smallpox virus; one is operated by the U.N. in Geneva, and the other is the Disease Control Center in Atlanta. South Africa keeps live smallpox virus, and it isn't too hard to figure out why they keep it. I figure it behooves the millions of blacks in South Africa for me to know how nervous their white rulers are at any given moment. Anyway, a couple of months ago I scanned this joker and plugged into quite a fantasy-except that, to him, it wasn't a fantasy. He was smugly congratulating himself and his government for secretly funding our latest media guru, Siegmund Loge, in work to produce a biochemical agent that will render all so-called colored peoples happy with their lot, totally docile, and totally content to be ruled by the white peoples of the world, no questions asked. This agent would be released into the atmosphere at some point in the future-which, I assume by reading the papers, is now April first. Within days, 'colored' people would know and accept their 'place,' and South Africa's racial policies would, at long last, be vindicated. Interesting?"

"Interesting," Lippitt said.

"Interesting," I said.

"Either of you want something? Coffee? A drink?"

Lippitt and I shook our heads.

"I would have written off the thoughts as a bad daydream, except for the matter of government funding; that wasn't a daydream. This man considered himself to be Siegmund Loge's most trusted confidant, the only person to whom Loge unburdened himself and shared all his secrets."

"There are a lot of people around here with that fantasy, aren't there?" I asked.

Rafferty nodded. "Not a lot-but quite a few. There's a Russian, a West German, a Pole, and a few others-including, of course, an American. With the exception of the American, each believes that his government is the sole, secret source of funds for Siegmund Loge, and that Loge's work will serve the particular interests of that country."

"Why is the American the exception?" Lippitt asked in a flat voice.

"Oh, the American has his own fantasy-total domination of the world by the United States. The difference is that his group is non-official. Funding Loge isn't an official policy of the government. Some money comes from businessmen, and the rest is siphoned off from legitimate government funds. In their view, the biggest threat in this country is the press; they're afraid that anything official would eventually be discovered."

Lippitt looked at me. He had the grace not to say anything; he didn't even smile. Still, the look told me that as far as he was concerned, I'd been put in my place.

"You're being hunted by a great many people," Rafferty continued, glancing back and forth between Lippitt and me. "They don't know why you're so important, only that you're important and should be captured-alive, if at all possible. It's why I was expecting you; I was hoping you'd come to me for help. Mongo, where's Garth?"

I touched my head. "Don't you know?"

"I haven't scanned you or Mr. Lippitt; I wouldn't do that without your permission. I only know what I'm able to scan from the people around here."

"Garth's on his way to California. We think Siegmund Loge may be at the Institute for the Study of Human Potential, in northern California. He's traveling in a van with, believe it or not, a giant and a gorilla."

Rafferty frowned. "Something's wrong."

"What?" I breathed as I edged forward on the divan.

"It's bad news I picked up this morning-I was waiting until we had the other things out of the way. The van was captured a few hours ago. Garth wasn't in it. There was only the giant, a gorilla, and some other animal that nobody-at least not the man I was scanning-seemed able to identify. It was wearing clothes, but it definitely wasn't a man."

I must have made a noise-a sigh, a moan, a shout, a scream. Then I must have fainted, because the next thing I knew I was on the floor with Rafferty hovering over me and Lippitt cradling my head in his arms. I remembered about the animal wearing clothes, and I opened my mouth to make another noise.

"You've got to hold it together, Frederickson," Lippitt said in a voice that was as firm as his touch was gentle. "If Garth is past help, that's it; if not, we'll move as quickly as possible to help him. Your falling apart won't solve anything, and it will create problems. You're needed-for yourself, and to help Rafferty and me. To help all of us."

"I'm all right now," I said tersely as I got to my feet and pushed Lippitt away from me. I looked up into the concerned, brooding face of Victor Rafferty. "You know we're being hunted, but you don't know why Loge wants Garth and me, do you?"

Rafferty shook his head. "The men I've been scanning don't know."

"You'd better look," I said as I again touched my head, then removed my parka. "It will explain the smoked glasses and the battery pack around my waist."

"Scan me, too," Lippitt said.

A sensation like the tickling of a psychic feather joined the magnetic wind inside my mind as I rolled up my sleeves to bare my scales, held up my hands and spread the fingers; I'd cut away the webs three days before, but they were already growing back.

It took Rafferty less than a minute to extract Lippitt's story and mine from our minds. During that time, shadows moved in his eyes and across his face-pain, horror, pity, shock, outrage, rage, determination. Then the tickling stopped. "God," he said in a near whisper as he stepped forward and put both his hands on my shoulders.

"We want you to come with us to Washington," Lippitt said to the telepath. "You'll be able to tell us who it's safe to talk to."

"It's too late for that, Lippitt," Rafferty replied.

"Why? We need to put a stop to this, and fast. To do that, we need some big political and military guns."

"Those guns could end up aimed at us."

"But you said- "

"I said the government wasn't involved-but it might as well be. There's a large conspiracy, and many of the people involved control the levers of power, both political and military. I can find somebody for you to talk to safely, but I can't scan over the telephone; I can't scan the people that man will talk to-or, in turn, the people those people will talk to. At the moment there are only these Warriors after you. Go to Washington, and you're likely to have the F.B.I., the military, and every local police department after you as well. Orders will go out."

It was my turn to look at Lippitt. He looked away.

"We have to go to California right away," I said.

"No!" Lippitt snapped. His face was uncharacteristically flushed. "That's not the way! It's a miracle we've gotten this far, and sooner or later our luck is going to run out! We can't keep bucking the odds, Frederickson; now that there's an alternative, we have no right not to exercise it. Too much depends on us. We need help. We have to go to Washington."

"You go wherever you want," I said as I brushed past the D.I.A. operative and headed for the door. "I'm going after my brother."

"No!" Lippitt shouted, reaching out and grabbing my arm, pulling me back. "You're my proof, you dumb little dwarf bast- " Lippitt abruptly released my arm, flushed again and turned away. "I'm sorry, Frederickson; truly sorry. But I need you. Without your symptoms and story to back me up, they'll just lock me away."

"Mongo's absolutely right, Lippitt," Rafferty said quietly. "Siegmund Loge has accomplished what he has through the uncanny ability to play on and manipulate people's mind-sets and fantasies. You've fallen into the same trap with your mind-set, except that you've trapped yourself. You can't believe that a country which you love so much, and to which you've devoted your life, could be involved in something like the Valhalla Project. Well, it's not, so you can take comfort in that; however, a lot of powerful people who work for that country are very deeply involved, so you needn't be a fool and risk playing into their hands. Your fantasy is that everything is going to turn out all right if you can get the right people, your people, in government involved. The chance of our succeeding alone may be hopelessly slim, but it's the only chance. You don't want to go to Washington because you think it's the best, or only, move; you want to go to validate your belief in the United States of America."

"I want to make a phone call," Lippitt said in a strangled voice.

"Lippitt, that's a really dumb idea," I said.

"One phone call-to a onetime friend who now sits on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His name is General Baggins. We served together in World War Two, and I'd trust the man with my life."

"You'll be trusting him with a hell of a lot more than just your life, my friend. It's a dumb idea."

"One phone call," Lippitt said. "I'll tell him everything that's happened, try to convince him of the need for speed. He has the juice to have a battalion of Marines circling the Institute an hour after I hang up. Then it would be over: Project Valhalla would be stopped, and there might even be time left over to help Garth. Isn't that worth the risk?"

"Lippitt may be right," I said to Rafferty. "Maybe you and I are being too paranoid. There must be somebody in the military structure who can help, and Lippitt's general may be the person."

Rafferty shrugged, then went behind his desk, opened a drawer and took out a green telephone. "Go ahead and make your call, Mr. Lippitt-but do it on this telephone; the call can't be traced. Also, I might suggest that you don't tell him we're up here. If he insists on knowing where you are, tell him you and Mongo are at a pay phone on Roosevelt Island."

Rafferty went to a window looking out over the East River, and I sat down on the edge of the desk as Lippitt picked up the receiver and dialed a number. He got the general himself after ten minutes, and then spent almost a half hour talking to him. During that half hour I watched relief and joy spread across his face like a gentle fire of mercy, burning away a thick detritus of horror and hopelessness, fear and frustration, making him seem almost young again.

When Lippitt had finished, I spent fifteen minutes on the phone with the general, telling the same story but providing additional details when I remembered them. The general seemed sufficiently impressed with it all, supportive, grateful, and anxious to assure me that he believed our story. He assured me that a large armed force would be at the Institute within a very short time, and that every effort would be made to guarantee Garth's safety and force Siegmund Loge to prepare an antidote to whatever was poisoning our systems. When I hung up, I was almost happy.

Neither Rafferty nor Lippitt seemed happy. Lippitt had joined Rafferty at the window. Their backs were to me, but there was something in the stiffness of their stances and the tense angle of their shoulders and necks that I didn't like.

"Lippitt, Rafferty? What's the matter?"

Neither man answered, and so I hopped off the desk and went across the room to join them. As they stepped apart to make room for me by the window, an olive-drab helicopter swooped past and rushed to join a force of a few of its brothers and sisters around Roosevelt Island, in the middle of the East River, a half mile or so to the north.

We didn't need binoculars to see what was going on.

Power boats of every description-including a couple with Coast Guard and Navy markings-were converging on the island from both north and south. Military and NYPD helicopters hovered over the island, occasionally descending to disgorge soldiers and black-gloved Warriors in civilian clothes. Residents of the apartment buildings on the island came out and stared in awe as teams of armed men raced around the island, in and out of the buildings, searching for a certain dwarf with smoked glasses and an old, bald-headed Defense Intelligence Agency operative.

"I'm sorry, Lippitt," I said sincerely.

"Yeah," Lippitt answered with a kind of grunt. "Me, too."

Rafferty opened a wall safe, took out a.45-caliber automatic and a box of shells. He loaded the gun, put it and the box of shells in the pocket of a tweed overcoat, which he'd taken out of a closet. Lippitt and I were still staring out the window, our energy drained by entropy, our hope eaten away by despair.

"Gentlemen," Rafferty said as he stood by the door of the private elevator in his office, "it's time to go."