Separation (27 page)

An all too familiar gleam in his eyes
indicated fanaticism combined with delusion. Allenby then offered a
smile, this one not so horrid looking. “If you think I’m crazy, I’m
not. I’m determined, more so than I’ve ever been. You have given me
that incentive.”

He clapped his hands twice, and this time,
two more goat-men appeared, dragging Anastasia between them. She
resisted, but they were strong and held her fast. “What is your
will, master?” asked one of them.

Allenby practically gloated. “See how well
I’ve trained them? Each of them has the intelligence of a
persimmon, but they have the strength of three ordinary men. These
are my guards. I’ll have an army of clones soon enough, and then
I’ll take my place upon the legends of this planet.”

Insane, this thing had to be insane, thought
Harry as he looked at his wife. Worry shone from her eyes, but she
gave no sign of pain and said nothing. “Are you okay?” he
asked.

“Don’t worry about her,” said Allenby as he
quickly strode over and stood in front of Harry, towering over him.
“I’d worry more about what I’m going to do to you. I’d also worry
more about what I’m going to do to that bitch you call a mate.”

This monster outsized him by ten inches and
over a hundred and fifty pounds, Harry estimated. Fighting down
dread, he stared his opponent in the eye. “Call my wife a bitch
again, and I’ll end you.”

Allenby put his hands on his hips and leaned
back to offer a laugh. “You are nothing! And you will regret not
helping me.”

He clapped his hands again, and two more
underlings appeared. Both of them were large, dull-eyed, and
brutish, with the heavy torsos of oversized pit bulls and heads
like snakes. They even had snakes’ tongues, flicking them out
lazily. One of them asked, “Yes, what is it, master?”

“Escort these prisoners to their cell. Once
you arrive, hold the female, but don’t harm her. Hold this male,”
he indicated Harry with a wave of his hand, “as well. I’ll be down
shortly.”

“Yes, master.”

The snake-men took them down the passageway
to the spot where Allenby had first emerged. One of the guards
pressed a button on the wall and the rock façade slid aside.
“Move,” he said.

Down the hard earthen passageway they went
until they reached a jail cell at the end of the hallway. It was
large enough to house two people and had two cots in it. “How
thoughtful,” Harry remarked as he gazed at the interior. “It’s our
honeymoon suite.”

Anastasia let out a harsh laugh. “They
probably don’t understand.”

“No, they don’t,” Allenby’s voice said. For
something so large, he moved quietly and quickly. “But it doesn’t
matter. They follow orders very well.” He nodded at the guards and
one of them immediately yanked Harry’s arms behind him and held him
fast.

“I want you to see this,” Allenby said to
Anastasia. “Watch and learn.”

Anastasia stood rigid, her face a mask. Harry
also stood tall and waited for the monster to begin the beating.
When it came two seconds later, at least it wasn’t a surprise,
although he was surprised at how much punishment he could take.
Blows rained upon his face and his torso. Allenby beat him all
over, but spirit unbowed, he didn’t make a sound until after he’d
been smashed for perhaps the twentieth time.

Number twenty-one made him groan, but he
fought off the pain, sequestering it in the back of his mind.
Anastasia broke down first, though, crying, “Stop it,” over and
over.

“I’ll stop when I feel like it,” the monster
replied with satisfaction oozing from every word. He continued his
assault. “I want him to feel pain, to know agony.”

Agony had now become Harry’s constant,
unwelcome companion. He felt himself going away, and hoped his wife
would somehow manage to escape.

Waking up in a world of hurt, Harry felt a cool cloth
on his face. “Am I dead yet?” he asked.

“If you open your eyes, you’ll find out.”

He knew that voice. Opening his eyes as
requested, he found himself back in the cell, lying on a filthy
cot. Anastasia sat next to him, squeezing the blood out of a rag.
“There’s a bucket of water next to the cot. I got this rag from
that monster,” she said, the distaste heavy in her voice. “He wants
you alive. He knows you’ll heal.”

Harry wasn’t sure about the last part. Every
part of him ached, especially his ribs. Allenby hit like a
sledgehammer, and his fists felt like concrete mixed with steel. As
he took in shallow breath after shallow breath, he heard his bones
begin to grate, reform, and the pain of regeneration was almost as
bad as the beating. It took all he had in him not to scream.
Concentrating, he blocked out the agony and forced himself to sit
up. “I’ll heal, but I won’t enjoy it.”

Taking in a few more breaths, he gazed at the
lock on the cell door, noted its solid construction, and decided
they’d have to get out another way. “So, how are we going to get
out of here? Have we got a plan?”

“I wish I knew.”

They waited, and sure enough, the sound of
footsteps came. Two snake-men opened the door. Armed with machine
guns, one of them opened up the cell door and motioned Harry out.
“Our master wishes to speak with you again.”

“Can’t you think of anything original to
say?” he asked.

“No.”

Well, chalk up that response as being
somewhat original. Harry painfully got to his feet and went to the
door. “See you later.”

They escorted him to the chamber room where
Allenby was sitting on a specially constructed steel chair, bent
over a laptop and gently pecking away at the keys. “Glad you’re
here, Goldman. You’re just in time to witness a first in upgraded
cloning.”

“You mean, another mistake, don’t you?”

A grunt, perhaps signifying disagreement,
came from the giant. “You really don’t think I have the
intelligence to pull this off?”

“No.”

In spite of his antipathy toward this
monster, Harry found his curiosity aroused. It wasn’t every day
that a breakthrough in science was achieved. At the same time, he
knew of the dangers. Combining one kind of animal DNA with human
DNA proved effective most of the time. He’d seen how perverted it
had become when two or more types were used, especially when some
of them came from invertebrates. This time, Allenby was proposing
to use all of them.

In a way, though, it made sense. The old
phrase of ontogeny repeats phylogeny flashed through his mind. It
meant modern man contained every single genotype of his ancestors,
from fish to ape. This maniac, though, wanted to rewrite the entire
genetic code and do it within the period of less than five minutes,
assuming his machine worked.

“We’ll see,” Allenby grated as he finished
typing in some commands. Task over, he clapped his hands and one of
his goat-men followers came over, clad only in a loincloth.

“I am here, Master,” he said with a certain
amount of reverence and bowed.

This whole master-servant thing was nothing
short of disgusting. Groveling before this thing was not on Harry’s
to-do list, but he bit his lip in order to stifle a response.
Allenby didn’t seem to notice. If he did, then he didn’t care, and
he nodded at the oversized chamber. “You are the next generation,”
he said to his minion. “Step inside, and be forever
transformed.”

Obediently, the goat-man walked inside and
the door closed behind him. Allenby murmured that his man had
already received the necessary DNA cocktail. “Now, the machine will
accelerate the process.”

He threw the switch. In a flash, the chamber
lit up and Harry moved back a step as the screaming started. “You’d
better kill the power, or else what’s inside might kill you,” he
warned.

“It has to continue,” said Allenby, his voice
oozing confidence. He quickly typed in some other commands. “He’s
got to stay in another two minutes.”

This was evolution at its fastest, but not
necessarily at its finest. Millennia of change, discarding unneeded
genes while enhancing others, cross-channeling... all of those
things and more were occurring in the test subject. He continued to
scream as changes which shouldn’t have happened in the first place
were thrust upon his being and his essence was being transformed
into... what?

“Ready,” said Allenby, and tapped a button.
The power to the chamber abruptly shut off, and he arose from his
seat, a smile on his hideous visage. “In this demonstration, I used
only half the necessary genes. Science shall march on.”

The door to the chamber opened, and the
goat-man stepped out. At least... part of him did—literally. His
body had been halved. The part that stepped out was goat in nature,
a goat’s head and left leg. The torso flopped around, as if it had
no spine. The arm looked mostly human.

An eye, large, protruding, and full of
terror, swiveled around madly in an effort to understand the horror
that had been wreaked upon it. Its half-mouth quivered in a silent
scream. A second later, the remaining part of its brain flowed out
onto the floor and it collapsed.

As for the other half, it appeared to be a
mixture of goat, bovine, horse and something else that Harry
couldn’t figure out even if he had the time or inclination to. It
stayed behind, and both halves subsequently dissolved into a puddle
of organic goo. Allenby let out a bellow of what had to be supreme
frustration.

“Science marches on,” observed Harry with
just the right amount of irony.

“Have a care, Goldman,” Allenby roared as he
stared at the puddles of organic slime. His hands quivered as well
with barely suppressed rage. “You’re still my prisoner, and your
life hangs in the balance. Yours, your wife’s... they belong to me,
as does that thing inside her.”

At the mention of the baby, Harry almost lost
it, but knew he didn’t stand a chance against this creature. In
addition, his men were armed and they’d shoot upon command. “So
where do you go from here?”

“Not me—you,” the creature responded as he
once again seated himself at the computer. “You have the knowledge.
You’re just as interested in this as I am. Help me to perfect
it.”

Perfect it? And risk a tidal wave of inhuman
creations crawling across the land? Not likely, Harry thought, but
if there was a way to buy some time... “If I help you, I want one
thing. Let my wife go free.”

Allenby let out a most mocking laugh. “Let
her go free? You must be joking. She’d bring the authorities, not
that I care. As I said before, this place is too well defended.
Even if someone does manage to breach my defenses, there are other
places to go.”

With those words, Allenby snapped his fingers
and two of his snake-men appeared. “Take him back to his cell.”

They grabbed Harry’s arms, but he shook them
off. “I know the way.”

As he walked off, he heard the words of, “You
have one hour to think things over. If you don’t accept my generous
offer, I will kill your wife.”

Harry started back, intent on finishing
things, but something heavy hit him in the back of his head, and
the next thing he knew, he was back in his cell with Anastasia
staring at him. “Uh,” he muttered, tired of being bashed in the
head all the time. “How long have I been out?”

“About thirty minutes,” she responded. “Did
he give you an ultimatum?”

It wasn’t much of one. Help or watch someone
he loved die. He couldn’t live with either option, but sooner or
later he’d have to make that choice, and things were fast coming up
on the sooner part. “I...” he began, and then stopped as a familiar
aroma came through and he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Do you
smell that?”

Anastasia stood up tasting the air with her
nose, and a faint smile creased her lips. “Yeah,” she said. “Guess
who’s coming to dinner?”

It didn’t seem possible, but their Italian
compatriot had managed to find his way over. It was just a question
of where he was hiding.

Predictably, the guards came when the time
limit was up and once again escorted Harry to the central chamber.
This time, they took Anastasia with them, and held onto her while
the chief monster took center stage. Allenby dismissed his other
men and told them to wait in the back room. He must have felt
totally confident to have done so.

“So here we are again,” he said in a voice
full of triumph. “I have you, I have your wife, and I have the
means with which to claim my godhood. Are you going to help
me?”

There didn’t seem to be much of a choice, but
Harry wanted one thing in his favor. “Where’s Istvan?”

Allenby blinked. “Why do you want to
know?”

“He’s a friend. I just want to make sure he’s
okay.” It seemed like the most logical excuse to think of.
“Besides, as you said, you’ve got me and a whole lot of your men on
hand, just in case.”

His words seemed to have an effect, as
Allenby cocked his misshapen head to one side as if deciding to
accept the request or not. Finally, he snapped his fingers. One of
his men walked over and bowed. “Yes, master?”

“Get the pig.”

The minion immediately ran off to a different
side door near the end of the cavern and returned within a minute
holding onto Istvan. “He’s here now,” Allenby observed and pointed
at the computer. “Start working.”

Heaving in a deep sigh, Harry began to check
things out. Grudgingly admitting the already-done research was
cutting-edge, he set about finding the flaw in the theory. Typing
in his own equations, he delved into the DNA pattern that had been
set out. Sweat popped out on his brow, the tension mounted
exponentially, and after thirty minutes, Allenby prodded him with
a, “Well?”

Sitting back, Harry shook his head. The
problem was as he feared. The bonding of animal and human cells
couldn’t be reversed. Istvan’s blood proteins would help, but the
stoppage was temporary at best. He estimated that even if the
process did work, reversion would occur in two months or less.