The Beasts Of Valhalla

6

Janet had called Bill Jackson's mother to make arrangements and negotiate certain ground rules for my visit with her fifteen-year-old son. I went to see him after lunch. The red and white farmhouse was close to the road, surrounded by a quaint, whitewashed picket fence. Mrs. Jackson, with her son standing slightly behind her, answered the door. She was a handsome woman, with sculpted features and alabaster skin highlighted by freckles. Her eyes were clouded with concern, but her son's were wide with excitement. Bill Jackson was a stocky, rawboned boy with reddish-blond hair and dark blue eyes that glittered with intelligence and good humor. I immediately liked him.

"Hey, you're Mongo!"

"Dr. Frederickson," Bill Jackson's mother said sternly, correcting her son.

"'Mongo' is fine, Mrs. Jackson."

"We'll compromise," the woman said, shooting her son a sharp glance. "You can call Dr. Frederickson 'Mr. Mongo.' And don't get too excited; you talk too much when you get excited." She took a deep breath, looked back at me. "Janet told you what we agreed on, Dr. Frederickson?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Aw, Mom," the boy said. "I know all about what happened. Mr. Mongo's not going to upset me."

"I'll decide what's going to upset you, Bill," the woman replied, stepping back and holding the door open for me. I stepped into the spacious house, redolent with the scent of flowers and other growing things.

Mrs. Jackson brought me a tall, cool glass of lemonade, and I went off with her son to his room which, like Tommy's, was decorated with fantasy posters and Lord of the Rings memorabilia. Bill closed the door, turned to me. His eyes were filled with tears.

"What happened to Tommy and Rodney was so terrible, Mr. Mongo."

Mrs. Jackson had known what she was talking about, I thought as I squeezed the boy's shoulder. "Thank you, Bill. Let's not discuss that, okay?"

"Okay." He wiped his eyes, brightened. "Boy, Mr. Mongo, it's really something to meet you. It's like meeting Frodo."

"I understand Tommy used me to score a lot of points."

"Yeah; that's because you're always getting involved with weird things. You know about Sorscience?"

"A little. I'd like you to tell me all about it. You scored points by matching real scientific phenomena with places and events in Lord of the Rings, right?"

"That's the basic idea, yes."

"Can you give me an example of how you'd score?"

He thought about it, shrugged. "Sure. Take Water Gel, for example. It's a clear paste that won't burn or transfer heat. If you cover yourself with it, you can walk through fire. Firemen are starting to use it."

"The correlation would be Frodo going inside Mount Doom to return the ring?"

"Right! Actually, there are a number of correlations, but that would probably be the best. Hey, you've read Lord of the Rings?"

"Where do you think I get my inspiration?" I asked with a wry smile.

Bill Jackson laughed. "I like you, sir."

"And I like you. What are some other examples?"

"Oh, changing lead into gold. Physicists have been able to do that in atomic reactors for years, but the process costs more than the gold is worth."

"Ah, yes, elementary wizardry; something Gandalf might do as a limbering up exercise before breakfast."

That earned another chuckle. "Yeah," the boy said, "but knowledge of the process isn't worth many points. First, none of us could duplicate it; second, Gandalf never actually changed lead into gold. You could score a couple of points by arguing that he could have done it if he'd wanted to." He paused, snapped his fingers excitedly. "Here! Let me show you something! I just charged up this stuff this morning."

He opened a deep drawer in a desk and took out a capped cylinder full of what looked like water but which smelled vaguely like a dentist's office when he took off the lid. He went across the room and took a fat gerbil out of its cage. Holding the wriggling animal by its tail, he came back to the desk and unceremoniously plopped the gerbil into the solution; the animal paddled around, its pink nose sniffing the air. I started to protest when Bill pushed it under and screwed the cap on.

"It's okay, Mr. Mongo, I'm not going to hurt him. As a matter of fact, he likes this. Watch."

Sure enough, the gerbil seemed to like it. I gaped in astonishment as the animal, obviously having undergone the experience before, didn't even bother trying to come back up to the sealed-off surface; it paddled about in the depths of the liquid, to all appearances as content and adjusted as your average trout. At first I thought that Bill had somehow taught the gerbil to hold its breath, but when I looked closer I could see its rib cage moving as if it were breathing. Since that was obviously impossible, I examined the surface of the desk, the wall behind it, and even the ceiling, for mirrors. There weren't any.

"That's one hell of a trick," I said. "How's it done?"

"No trick," Bill said, beaming with pleasure. "It's Fluosol-DA, an oxygenated perfluorochemical; PFC, for short. As a matter of fact, it's a distant cousin of Teflon. The Japanese have been making the stuff for years. It's used as artificial hemoglobin, and the FDA has approved its use for blood transfusions in certain circumstances, like with Jehovah's Witnesses. It exchanges oxygen and carbon dioxide, just like blood. As you can see, lab animals can actually 'breathe' the stuff, if it's been oxygenated."

"What purpose does that serve?"

"None. It's just an interesting phenomenon associated with Fluosol-DA."

The boy seemed to be immensely enjoying my stunned silence as he opened the cannister, plucked the gerbil from the fluid, and returned it to its cage, where it began plodding happily on its running wheel.

"How many points is that worth?"

Bill shrugged. "I think Obie was awarded twenty-eight out of a possible hundred for that. It's spectacular, and he had physical possession, but the correlations are weak. Nobody actually breathes underwater in Lord of the Rings. He matched it to the slaying of the Seeker in the lake. The Seeker could have been air-breathing, and the slayer had to hold his breath for a long time."

"Obie is another player?"

"Yes, sir. Obie-Auberlich-Loge. His father was the official scorer and arbitrator. In fact, Dr. Loge invented Sorscience."

The name Loge, Richard Wagner's God of Fire, rang a big, Nobel Prize-winning bell. Loge was certainly not a common name, and the Dr. Loge I knew of had earned doctorates in virtually every one of the life sciences. He'd won two Nobels-one for the invention of his Triage Parabola, a statistical model used for predicting the survival rates of various endangered species. But Siegmund Loge was into animals, not plants; he certainly didn't grow corn. Indeed, Siegmund Loge didn't do much of anything any longer, except make a fool of himself. At the age of seventy-four he'd gone instant bonkers, resigned all his positions, abandoned his research projects, and when last heard of was roaming around the country as "Father," a new brand of mystical messiah preaching Armageddon and Resurrection to people in the wilderness communes he had set up around the world. At last membership estimate, he'd passed the Rosicrucians and was breathing hard on the neck of the Reverend Moon. Some people will insist on believing anything.

"Do you know this Dr. Loge's first name, Bill?"

"Siegfried, Mr. Mongo. Like in the opera."

It had to be the son, I thought. Siegmund, Siegfried, and Auberlich; it sounded like an invitation list to a cast party for Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Rings within Rings. I made a mental note to myself to drop Garth a cryptical postcard saying that the doings in Peru County were more fun than a three-ring circus. "What does Dr. Loge do?"

"He heads the Volsung Corporation. That's all I know about his work."

"Have you ever met him?"

The boy shook his head. "No, sir. The scientists never come out of there. They're flown in and out."

"Obviously, Obie must have come out."

"Yes, sir. He was going to school here, at the university."

"The extension program?"

"No. He was a regular student. He must be nineteen or twenty. He hung around with us because we were all interested in fantasy."

"Obie boards at the university?"

"Right. But he'd visit his father on weekends. Someone would pick him up in a car, take him back and forth. That's where he got the Fluosol-DA. He brought it out to demonstrate for us so he could get a big score, and he gave it to me. It's not like there's anything secret about it; I told you they discovered twenty years ago that lab animals could breathe the stuff."

"What else can it fee used for besides blood transfusions?"

"Nothing; at least nothing that I know of."

"What would a bunch of plant geneticists want with artificial hemoglobin?"

"I have no idea, Mr. Mongo." He suddenly grinned mischievously. "Hey! Maybe they're all 'pod people' in there, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers!"

For some reason, I didn't find the notion overwhelmingly amusing. "Did Obie ever talk about what went on in there?"

"Never-except to tell us what we already knew; the Volsung Corporation was involved with plant genetics, gene splicing, recombinant DNA." He took a deep breath, got slightly red in the face. "Recombinant DNA research is the key to the future, sir. We'll have all disease-free crops that will grow anywhere, and even manufacture their own fertilizer. They already have bacteria that produce insulin, other bacteria that eat up oil spills."

Also bacteria that could produce human growth hormone, I thought. Unfortunately, the scientists had pieced together the little fellows too late to be of any help to me.

"We have super-wheat and super-corn," Bill Jackson continued in a voice that was steadily climbing in pitch. "It's going to revolutionize agriculture around the world! We'll be able to feed everybody! No one need ever go hungry again! They- " He abruptly stopped speaking, bit his lower lip, flushed. "I'm sorry, sir. I do talk too much when I get excited."

"It's all right, Bill. I'm interested in everything you have to say. Obie never even hinted at what specific projects Volsung might be working on?"

"No, sir. He never talked about specifics, and we all understood. There's a lot of top secret stuff in that industry, you know. They're always worried about industrial espionage."

Or some other kind of espionage, judging from the camouflage coloring of their building. Since General Foods wasn't likely to order up a bombing run, I assumed Volsung had to be concerned about someone-something-else spotting them from the air. Like a spy satellite.

"Bill, I'd very much like to talk to Obie Loge. Is he boarding at the university this summer?"

"No way. He was taking summer courses, but he was yanked out and flown home right after… after…"

"Take it easy, Bill," I said, gently patting his shoulder. "You want to take a lemonade break?"

He shook his head, wiped his eyes. Bill Jackson was a very sensitive, gentle, and kind young man.

"Where does Obie live?"

"Actually, I don't know. I guess I must have asked him, but he couldn't even tell me that." He cocked his head to one side, grimaced. "Of course, I never really cared. I wouldn't have wanted to visit him anyway."

"Why not?"

The boy shrugged. "Well, first of all he's a lot older than I am, and the only thing we really had in common was an interest in fantasy. He could really be a mean-excuse me-sucker when he wanted to be. A real sore loser. It's probably why he liked to hang around with us; he could push us around when he felt like it, and nobody his own age would put up with him."

"Bill, does 'Mirkwood' mean anything to you?"

He grinned, laughed. "Sure! You've got to be kidding, Mr. Mongo. Mirkwood's the evil forest that the Company passes through on their Quest. Don't you remember those giant spiders?"

"But does it mean anything to you in another context? Did it mean anything else to Tommy?"

He thought a long time about it, obviously anxious to please me, but ended up shaking his head. "No, sir. It doesn't mean anything else to me, and I never heard Tommy mention it outside the context of Tolkien and Sorscience."

"Bill, did Sheriff Bolesh or any of his deputies ask you questions like these?"

"No, sir."

"Did-?"

"Someone else did, though."

"Who?"

"I don't know his name."

"Would your mother?"

"I doubt it. He came up to me at the university. He didn't give me his name, but I knew he worked at the Volsung Corporation. I'd seen him around town once or twice."

"I thought you said- "

"The scientists never come out. This guy's like a chauffeur and handyman. He drives into town to pick up odds and ends, and he used to chauffeur Obie on weekends." Bill Jackson frowned, shook his head. "Spooky guy."

"How so?"

"He's kind of hard to describe. He wasn't spooky-crazy or spooky-mean; otherwise, I wouldn't have talked to him. He was just… spooky. He had these big brown eyes that kind of looked right through you, and you just knew he could tell if you were lying or telling the truth. He never smiled, and he was completely bald-like Yul Brynner. I'm positive he was pretty old, but I can't tell you why I think that. It was hard to tell his age."

Bill Jackson's words startled me. His description could have fit one of the two men with whom I shared the terrible secret I had mentioned to Janet, a secret that would die with me. But the man I was thinking of wouldn't be holed up in a windowless blockhouse in Peru County doing odd jobs and chauffeuring kids. Not likely.

"Bill, as far as you know, did anyone in the county work on the construction of that building?"

"I don't think so, sir. They brought in truckloads of construction workers, and they set up tents for them out on the prairie. When the building was finished, the workers were taken away."

My watch read four thirty. "Bill, thank you for answering my questions."

"Oh, any time, Mr. Mongo."

"You've been very helpful. I have to pick up someone at the bus station. May I come back if I have any more questions about Sorscience or Obie Loge?"

"Gee, I hope you do come back, Mr. Mongo. Listen, I think there's something else you should know. Tommy was real upset about something just before he took off."

"Bill," I said quietly, "I know that, and I don't think you and I should discuss it. I promised your mother I'd only ask questions about Sorscience."

"But this does have to do with Sorscience. I'm sure Tommy was mad because of something that had to do with Obie Loge. They had a big argument. Rodney told me. Obie was sore because Tommy had questioned something Obie wanted to use for a score."

"What?" I asked, feeling a chill run up and down my spine.

"I don't know. Rodney was in a hurry to get someplace. He just said that Obie was full of-excuse me-shit because nothing like what Obie was describing could ever exist in real life."

Zeke Cohen got off the bus, blinked and sniffed in the late afternoon sunlight like some lost night creature searching for New York's night air. His black hair was wrapped in a crimson bandana, worn low across his forehead. A wide-brimmed leather hat sat on top of his head; buckskin, fringed vest over red silk shirt, jeans, boots; about a pound of gold chains hanging around his neck, one small gold earring in his ear. It was a perfect disguise for traveling unnoticed around Peru County, Nebraska. Zeke was a graduate student in criminology, studying for his doctorate in laboratory sciences. He enjoyed a reputation as the fastest computer gun in the East, West, North, or South. He taught a new undergraduate class in computer sciences, and his students called him Wyatt.

"You're not carrying, are you, Zeke?" I asked as we drove across the flat farmland that stretched to the horizon in all directions. "Coke here is something that gives you cavities instead of holes in the nose, and grass is a soft green growth they cut with a machine called a lawn mower. They'll bust your ass good if they catch you with any shit."

"Huh? Oh, no. Not even a joint."

"Also, no cruising-in case you're feeling horny. There's nothing to cruise. 'Gay' here means ho-ho."

Zeke had been staring out the window; now he slowly turned his glittering black eyes on me. "Hey, Doc, what is that stuff out there?"

"It's called wheat, Zeke," I replied drily.

"So that's what it looks like when it's in the ground, huh?"

"You got it. You stop bullshitting me, and I'll stop bullshitting you."

He laughed loudly. "Man, I've never seen so much open space!"

"It's 'the heartland,' Zeke, m'boy."

"It looks kind of weird, you know?" He paused, glanced at me again. "You look funny here, Doc. Out of place."

"You mean, like a dwarf?"

"Yeah," he said thoughtfully. "Here you look like a dwarf." He laughed quickly, self-consciously. "Sorry, Doc. I didn't mean anything personal. I must be suffering from culture shock."

"No offense taken," I said evenly. "Here, I feel like a dwarf. But don't be too smug; you don't exactly blend into the landscape, either. Did you make those calls I asked you to?"

"Yeah. There's no Volsung Corporation listed on any of the stock exchanges, so maybe it really is a privately held and capitalized company. Just to make sure, I checked with a friend of mine in business administration who's a stock market maven. Genetic engineering is the hottest thing going, witness Genentech. If there were a new genetic sciences company that had gone public, or was about to, she'd know about it."

"Thanks, Zeke. You're already earning your money. I'll give you an advance when we get to my sister's place."

"Hey, Doc, I really appreciate this gig. Summer sessions are out, I'm tired of research, and New York is boring in August. Besides, I can use the money. Just what is it I'm supposed to do? You were a little vague on the phone."

"My nephew was big on computers; he's got a roomful of stuff. The basic unit is a Radio Shack TR4100, but don't let that fool you-and don't get careless. He's added on all sorts of goodies that he built himself, and he knew what he was doing. Basically, I want to know everything that's on the memory discs stacked next to the terminal. It's probably all encoded. You into fantasy?"

"You mean sword and sorcery stuff? Not really." He looked at me, leered. "I like detective novels. Somebody should write a huge detective saga, like one of those four-volume fantasy mothers."

"You'll just have to wait for my memoirs, Zeke. I hope you brought your glasses, because Tommy-my nephew-was up to his eyeballs in fantasy. He was particularly into the Lord of the Kings, which you'll find on the table by the terminal. It's almost certain that Tommy built codes from those books, so you'll have to read them. Take your time; the important thing is to make sure you don't erase anything."

"Got it."

"You'll be staying at my sister's home, in Tommy's room, so you can set your own schedule. You'll love the food. Anything you want, she or I will get for you. I'll check in with you at least once a day, and probably more. I'll give you my parents' number; that's where I'm staying. I want to know the minute you find out anything."

"Sounds like fun."

"I'd like you to stay put in the house. If you get restless, take a cow for a walk. In Peru County, you're a walking one-man band of minority groups, and a lot of people here won't like your music. I don't want anyone to know you're here."

Another leer. "Why? You think the good folks of Peru County would hang a gay black Jew?"

"No," I said without smiling. "I'm afraid they'll hang a dwarf and his sister."