24.

Gradually, I struggled up through what felt like a sea of foul-smelling cotton to consciousness. I was lying on my back on stone, felt cold, clammy, and sleepy. Also, my head and neck hurt like hell. I opened my eyes to slits, immediately closed them again when light lanced into them.

“Garth?”

“Here, Mongo.” Garth’s voice came to me from somewhere just behind and above my head. His large hand felt very warm as it touched my forehead. “You all right?”

“Yeah, except that I can’t see in this light. Any sign of my glasses?”

“No. What happened to you? You’ve got a bump on your head the size of a coconut.”

“That damn gorilla dropped me on it. I should have shot her when I had the chance.”

“I had a seizure, didn’t I?”

“A seizure and a half. You okay?”

“Yes.” He was quiet for some time, then added: “That was the worst one yet. I’m sorry, Mongo. I guess I’m responsible for us being here.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, pushing his hand aside and sitting up. Pain flashed through my skull, but my head stayed on my shoulders, so I assumed nothing was broken. “It was just a lousy plan. Where’s ‘here’?”

Garth pulled me to my feet, then began to chuckle. “Take a guess.”

“Come on, Garth. Damn it, I’m really not in the mood.”

He chuckled again. “Oh, be a sport. This is Ramdor, right? We’re the guests of the Loges, those masters of fun and fantasy, right? Now, give it some thought and tell me where we are.”

“A dungeon,” I answered with a sigh.

“There, now; I knew you’d get the answer. It comes complete with stone walls, floor, and ceiling; the cells have genuine rusting iron bars, and it’s dank and gloomy. There are blazing torches on the wall, although they may have fudged a bit there because I think they’re gas-burning. There’s no sign of any rats, but I haven’t given up hope. It’s really neat.”

“Yeah. It sounds like a real sight for sore eyes.”

“There are two other cells like ours, empty at the moment. There’s a narrow stone corridor outside that ends at a heavy wooden door about twenty yards to our left. At the other end of the corridor is a room with walls of polished black stone that looks like marble; there’s a television monitor and floodlight mounted in the ceiling, an unlit torch and short sword mounted in brackets on the wall.”

“They should have put us there.”

“I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be. There’s a knobless door cut into the rear wall, but it’s open on this end. I don’t like the look of it.”

I turned my head to the left at the sound of the wooden door opening; it creaked quite nicely. Three sets of footsteps approached. “Company?”

“Yep. A fat, mean-looking kid who probably thinks he’s a bad-ass because he wears a machine pistol in a holster; he’s got a pimple on the end of his nose, and he doesn’t like the fact that I just told you. There’s a solid, tall guy in a Warrior uniform, and he probably is a bad-ass. The third guy is about my height, angular, hawk nose, and pale eyes. He’s wearing a Bayreuth Eight-three T-shirt and a Mets baseball cap. Good morning, motherfuckers. Kill any kids today?”

“I’m Siegfried Loge—”

“The Mets cap,” Garth interjected.

“The kid killer.”

Epithets didn’t seem to have much effect on Siegfried Loge. “Why are you keeping your eyes closed, Dr. Frederickson?” he asked calmly. His voice was slightly nasal, airy.

“I’m trying to take a nap.”

“Your eyes are very photosensitive, aren’t they, Dr. Frederickson?”

“Yes,” Garth answered. I slapped his arm, and he put his hand on my shoulder. “They’ll find out anyway, Mongo.”

“Indeed, we will,” Siegfried Loge said.

“My brother needs the glasses he was wearing, Loge. He can’t see without them.”

“Give him the glasses, Obie.”

“Fuck him, Dad.” Dear, sweet Auberlich. “Let him be blind.”

“All right, Obie,” the elder Loge replied casually. “And you can lead him wherever he has to go.”

There was a silence that lasted a few seconds, then Garth squeezed my shoulder. “Put out your hand, Mongo.”

I did, and felt the smoked glasses drop into my palm. I put them on, looked around. The “dungeon,” including the sinister-looking black cell and the pimple on the end of Obie Loge’s nose, was as Garth had described it to me.

The Warrior standing next to Loge was staring at me impassively. He had a distinctly military bearing exuding quiet self-confidence, and he looked rock solid. Like the other Warriors, he wore black gloves, and I assumed he had bone-blades on the sides of his hands. His dark hair was cropped very short, and his eyes glinted with intelligence. He held his head high, his broad shoulders back; he would easily have blended into the scenery at West Point.

Siegfried Loge, in his sneakers, jeans, T-shirt, and baseball cap looked more like the third-string pitcher on a local saloon softball team than the scion of an ultrabrilliant scientific family, and Auberlich Loge looked like what he was—a fat teenage thug. Both Loges had the kind of pale hooded eyes that I cross the street to avoid.

Siegfried Loge absently fingered the medallion around his neck, a gold wire sculpture of the four-ring symbol the Warriors had emblazoned on their shoulder patches. “Do you know where Lippitt is?” he asked me.

“Damn,” I said, patting my pockets. “I seem to have misplaced him.”

The man with the close-set, pale eyes smiled wanly. “What’s the most terrible thing that comes into your mind when you hear the word ‘torture,’ Dr. Frederickson?”

“Being forced to sit through Götterdämmerung.”

“They don’t know,” the Warrior said in a flat voice as he continued to study Garth and me. “Even if they made a joint decision to split up, Lippitt wouldn’t tell these two where he was going, or what he planned to do.” He paused, added softly: “A very dangerous man.”

“What do you think of them, Stryder?”

“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” the Warrior replied without looking at Loge.

“You wouldn’t think one dwarf and his big brother could wreak so much havoc or be so elusive, would you? I guess it’s a good thing they decided to come to us, or we’d never had found them.”

“I take full responsibility for the failure of my men,” the Warrior replied evenly, still not looking at Loge.

“Good,” Loge said curtly. “That’s what I wanted to hear. On occasion, you can be rather arrogant. I wanted to hear you admit failure.” He paused, addressed Garth and me. “This is Stryder London, gentlemen. He’s been described as the ‘ultimate warrior,’ and he leads our security forces. I find it rather amusing that the ultimate warrior and all his merry men couldn’t stop you two from wrecking a multimillion dollar operation in Nebraska and burning down half the state of Wisconsin. We’ve got a great security force, all right; it took a half-crazy giant and a gorilla to finally catch you as you were on the way up to my bedroom.”

“I wouldn’t stand too close to the cell, sir,” Stryder London said drily.

Loge ignored him as he glanced back and forth between Garth and me. “It’s amazing that it should come down to the two of you. Jake Bolesh should be around to see what an incredible contribution he made when he tried to kill you with those injections. You may be the only two people in the world who could have survived this long, and we have to find out what it is in your genetic makeup that allows for a controlled reaction. That’s the breakthrough. There are the answers to a lot of questions in your bodies.”

“What are you trying to do, Loge?” I asked. “Is it a biological weapon for the Pentagon? Spell it out. What’s the point?”

“Point?” Siegfried Loge removed his baseball cap and ran his fingers through a tangle of thick, wavy black hair. Then he began to laugh; the laughter began as a chuckle, but quickly built up to a kind of nasal bray that grated against my senses like fingernails scraping a blackboard. Obie Loge glanced uncertainly at his father, then also began to laugh—but nervously. Stryder London’s face revealed nothing, and he continued to stare straight ahead.

“Why does there have to be a point?” Loge continued when he had finally managed to bring his laughter under control. “Why can’t science just be fun?”

Now Garth decided to take matters—in this instance, Siegfried Loge’s neck—in hand. In a blur of motion, his right arm shot through the bars and his fingers closed around Siegfried Loge’s neck. The scientist’s eyes went wide and his face started to turn blue as Garth, smiling grimly, squeezed his windpipe.

Stryder London reacted almost instantaneoulsy, stepping forward and jabbing stiff fingers up into Garth’s exposed armpit, attacking the nerve cluster there that controlled the arm and hand. Obie Loge was shouting obscenities as he engaged in the futile exercise of trying to pry loose Garth’s fingers from around his father’s neck.

Grabbing the bars for support, I kicked Obie Loge in the groin with sufficient force to ruin his sex life for at least a week. He dropped like a stone, mewling in a high whine as he rolled around on the floor and clutched at his testicles. I started to go for London, but the Warrior had already managed to break Garth’s grip and had stepped back, out of reach. Loge had collapsed to the floor next to his groaning son and was holding his throat with both hands.

“Nice work, brother,” I said.

“Likewise, brother,” Garth replied as he shook and rubbed his arm to restore feeling.

Loge swallowed hard, with obvious difficulty, then took a hand away from his throat and pointed a trembling finger at Garth. “Blind him,” he rasped. “Do it right now!”

The basic Siegfried Loge: gone was the soft-spoken gentility, and the nasal laughter was just an echo in the bizarre in-house prison he had built. All that was left was the mad, naked cruelty of a man who tortured animals and men, and ordered children murdered. I stepped closer to Garth.

“London, did you hear me!” Loge continued. “I want to see and hear that man’s eyeballs pop! Get in there and do it now!”

“No,” Stryder London said evenly.

Ignoring his stricken son, Loge struggled to his feet. His face was livid as he confronted the Warrior, and his hoarse voice cracked. “You do what I tell you to do, damn it! What’s the matter?! You afraid to go in there?”

“No, sir,” London replied calmly, his voice very soft. “I’m a soldier, not a torturer. I did warn you about standing too close to the cell.”

“I’m giving you a fucking order!”

“I don’t take orders from you, sir. Your father is my commander, and I won’t do anything I feel is against his wishes or interests. If he ordered me to step into the black cell, I would; in the meantime, I must carry out my duties as I see them. I think you forget the value of these men.”

“Why don’t you step in here, kid killer?” I said to Loge. “I’ll kick your balls up far enough to open your throat.”

Loge stood trembling with fury, and for a moment I thought he was going to attack Stryder London; I would have liked to see that. Instead, he abruptly began to laugh. “Some bodyguard you are, London,” he said contemptuously as he hauled his son to his feet, pushed the teenager toward the door. “Let’s get out of here, super-soldier.”

“In a minute, sir,” London said as he studied Garth. “I have to find out something.” He stepped up to the bars, motioned to my brother. “Come here, please.”

“You want to talk to me at close range, London, get rid of your gun and step in here. That will put us on a little more equal footing.”

“I won’t hurt you, Frederickson. If that were my intention, I’d have done it while you were choking Dr. Loge. I could have maimed or killed you in seconds, and you know it.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t know then how cranky this fruitcake was going to get. He said science should be fun; I wanted to run an experiment to find out how long a fruitcake can go without breathing.”

“What I want is for you to try to blind me. If you can do it, it’s done. There’ll be no retaliation.”

Garth and I exchanged glances. There was silence; even Obie Loge had stopped groaning, and was staring, shocked, at the Warrior. Stryder London was serious.

“Why?” Garth asked quietly.

“Your reflexes appear to be extraordinary. You must be kept alive, and as long as you’re alive you pose a threat to the personnel here at Ramdor. It’s my job to protect these people, and—as you noticed—scientists are not always as cautious as they should be. I need to test your combat skills, and in exchange for your cooperation I’m offering you the opportunity to blind me.”

Garth shook his head. “You go play your games with somebody else. I’ve got nothing against you, pal. I’ll save my energies for those people I do have something against.”

London stared at Garth for some time in silence. When he did finally speak, his tone was curt, edged with anger. “People like you are a big part of what’s gone wrong with this country, Frederickson. Both of you; neither of you thinks straight, and so you make the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons—usually out of sheer sentimentality. Your dwarf brother, for whatever reason, couldn’t bring himself to kill a gorilla; he couldn’t even bring himself to kill a man who had a shotgun leveled on his chest, simply because that man had once been a friend. If he had been able to do these killings, Dr. Loge and his son might now be your captives—instead of the other way around. Do you see my point?”

“Uh, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?”

“You’re a fool.”

“I’m sorry; I’m trying as hard as I can to understand your point. A stitch in time saves nine? When in Ramdor, kill, kill, kill?”

“I am your enemy.”

“Be what you want to be. What I said was that I have nothing against you.”

“You have an opportunity now to neutralize an enemy, without risk. It’s only simple logic that you take the opportunity. If you need emotion to make you act in a logical manner, consider that I would have killed your nephew and his friend without a second thought, if my first thought had been that the act was necessary.”

“That does it, London; I’m not going to invite you to any of my parties.” Garth nodded in the direction of the father and son standing by the open wooden door at the end of the corridor. “If you want to see what effect the shit Jake Bolesh put into me has had on my nervous system, send those two in here.”

London shook his head, then abruptly turned and walked quickly out of the dungeon. The Loges followed, slamming the heavy door shut behind them.

“He seems impressed with your speed,” I said as we both stared at the closed door. “Me, too.”

Garth turned to me, a haunted expression on his face. “It doesn’t stop. We’re still changing, aren’t we?”

I sighed, nodded as I absently scratched the scales on the back of my right hand.

The Loges found a way to get in their licks without fatally damaging the goods.

They returned an hour later, by themselves. The tranquilizer darts they shot us with contained a little extra something—probably scopolamine, to enhance the effects of the electronic choke collars we found around our necks when we woke up. The collars were made of leather laced with wires and radio-controlled electronic components that caused the wires to contract in varying degrees in response to the movement of a joystick on a black metal control box; the farther back the joystick was pulled, the tighter the collar grew.

For an hour the Loges had at us, occasionally trading control boxes, choking us into unconsciousness a half dozen times. Finally they got tired of it and went away.

The experience, as my mother would say, took a lot of the starch out of us.