I'm not sure what you're expecting from printing non-characters. Switching to Dump shows the right output is returned: 
SV = PV(0x98d16d0) at 0x98d4760
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (TEMP,POK,pPOK,UTF8)
  PV = 0x99243c0 "\320\200\340\240\200\341\200\200\342\200\200\344\200
+\200\350\200\200\360\220\200\200\360\240\200\200\361\200\200\200\362\
+200\200\200"\0 [UTF8 "\x{400}\x{800}\x{1000}\x{2000}\x{4000}\x{8000}\
+x{10000}\x{20000}\x{40000}\x{80000}"]
  CUR = 33
  LEN = 36

[download]

Note that you need the latest version. 1.0 only supported string of bytes in the 8-bit string format.

In reply to Re^43: Interleaving bytes in a string quickly by ikegami
in thread Interleaving bytes in a string quickly by BrowserUk

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