The Beasts Of Valhalla m-4

by George C. Chesbro

  I felt a tug at my sleeve, turned to look at Golly.

  FUCKING THANKS FOR SAVING US

  "Thank you for coming down to help me. If it hadn't been for you, we'd have probably been eaten."

  ?

  GOLLY STAY WITH FUCKING MONGO

  "You have to stay with me, sweetheart. Who else would put up with a foul-mouthed gorilla?"

  FUCKING THANKS

  "Thank you, Hugo, for believing in me and taking the chance you did," I said to the giant. "I'm sorry you were burned. The medics in the ambulance down there will treat you. I'm sure your friends will be glad to see you. One more favor: Please don't tell anyone what really happened. We'd just as soon that the people we're going to visit next didn't expect to see us."

  Hugo refused to shake my hand, and he scowled a very serious giant scowl. "I want to come with you. These people used and made a fool of me."

  "Being a fool is one thing, my friend; being dead is quite another. We keep right on truckin', but the chances for our survival aren't very good."

  "What difference does it make?" Hugo said, his face still set in a scowl. "I heard you and Mr. Lippitt talking; if these people aren't stopped, there may not be a decent world left for anyone to live in-or we may all be dead. Let me help."

  FUCKING HUGO WANTS TO COME

  GOOD FUCKING IDEA TO HAVE A GIANT

  "The lovely lady is right," Lippitt said, ending the debate. "Your offer of assistance is accepted, Hugo, and we thank you. Now we have to figure out a way to get some money."

  "Mongo and I still have almost half a bag of gold coins stashed in the van," Garth said. "If nobody found and took the van, there's easily enough there to get us to California."

  Lippitt stood looking down the valley for a long time, thinking. "We should split up," he said at last. "Garth, you take Hugo and Golly with you in the van to the Institute. Do what you can to size up the situation, play it by ear. I understand that you want to wring an antidote out of Loge, but I know that you also understand it's even more important to stop the Valhalla Project."

  "Where are you and Mongo going?"

  "Washington."

  "Why?"

  "With Hugo and Golly, the only safe way to travel is in the van. It will take at least four days of hard driving for you to get to the Institute. London's plane has probably already landed, and Siegmund Loge may be working on your biosamples right now. We're running out of time. Mongo is walking proof of the danger we're all up against; with him, I should be able to get the right people to listen to me. Then we'll have heavy help."

  Garth shoved his hands in his pockets, shook his head uncertainly. "That's assuming the 'right people' you want to talk to haven't been behind this thing from the beginning."

  "Right."

  "That's a big assumption, Lippitt," I said.

  "It's a correct one. In any case, it's the only logical move at this time. Alone, we're still up against impossible odds. This way, we at least have a chance to turn everything around. I might even be able to expose the cabal I believe exists. We can't all go, because then we risk total defeat if we're captured or killed before we sort out the good guys from the bad guys. This way, each group will have a backup in the event the other fails. Garth, Hugo and Golly attack the brain of the operation while you and I, Mongo, attack the heart."

  Garth and I looked at each other, nodded in agreement.

  "There's one more reason we have to split up," Lippitt continued. "Mongo and I have to see someone in New York before we go to Washington. If this man agrees to help us in Washington, it will narrow the odds against Mongo and me considerably."

  Feeling the hair on the back of my neck rise, I looked at Lippitt to see if he meant the man I thought he meant. He did.

  "Who?" Garth asked.

  "I'm sorry, Frederickson, but we can't tell you without his permission. I told you what I did just now because I believe there's hope we can not only succeed, but survive; I wanted to share that hope with you."

  Garth looked at me, hurt in his eyes. "Mongo?"

  "He's right, Garth," I said, feeling an ache in my belly. "We can't tell you-not now. But it's the best reason of all for splitting. Lippitt and I have to go to New York alone."

  Garth stared at me for some time. When he did speak, the hurt had moved to his voice. "This has something to do with what happened in New York years ago-the killings, the torture, the gun fight and explosion on the waterfront. Right?"

  "Yes," I replied softly.

  "That's the bond between you and Lippitt-this secret you share."

  "Right," Lippitt said tersely. "And don't blame Mongo for not sharing it with you; he was doing you a favor. The secret is a compact which can't be broken without the consent of all three parties-Mongo, this man, and myself. The man has lived up to his bargain; Mongo and I must continue to live up to ours." Lippitt paused, gazed hard at Garth. "This man could start World War Three. In a way, he controls a power that's as awesome as what Loge threatens to unleash."

  Now Garth seemed impressed. "And you think he'll help us nail Siegmund Loge?"

  "All Mongo and I can do is ask him."

  Garth shrugged, smiled thinly. "Tell your man he'll be joining a pretty strange Company."

  "Oh, I will. And I'll tell him we're on a pretty strange Quest." On the very rare occasions when he chose to display it, Lippitt had a rather pleasant smile.

  "Where do you want us to drop you off?"

  "We'll cruise the airport. If there aren't any black gloves there, maybe Mongo and I will see if we can get on a plane."

  GOLLY NOT TELL FUCKING SECRET

  GOLLY GO WITH FUCKING MONGO

  "No, Golly," I said, patting the gorilla's shoulder. "You go with Garth and Hugo. They need a beautiful lady to keep their minds off their troubles."

  Walking across the sulphurous, burning landscape back toward where Garth and I had left the van, I caught Lippitt's eye, indicated that he should join me behind the others. He fell into step beside me as I slowed my pace even further.

  "What is it, Frederickson?" Lippitt asked in a low voice.

  "I've got a problem, and I don't want Garth to know about it-there's nothing he can do, and he has enough to worry about."

  "What's the problem?"

  "After they drop us off, do you think you can rig a battery pack and heating elements inside my parka and clothing? It has to be unobtrusive; we can't afford to have me looking like an astronaut, but I have to keep my body temperature elevated."

  Lippitt touched my cheek with the back of his hand. "You're going cold-blooded, aren't you?"

  "Right. I'm okay now, but I'll get sleepy the moment we hit the cold."

  "How long?"

  "It's a fairly recent symptom-a couple of days. But it's developing quickly. I had a real problem with the cold areas in the mines. If I fall asleep and get really chilled, I'm not going to wake up again. I want to be around to see how this all comes out."

  BOOK III

  Warriors

  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' peop
le 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?"