DEAN R.KOONTZ. SOFT COME THE DRAGONS

I reached out to take a stronger hold on the thought plunging me downward toward the flaming pit below.

Wind lifted me toward the river.

I flew as if I were a kite.

The river swept me toward the ocean.

The water there was choppy and hot, and at places steam rose in spirals like smoke snakes.

At places, ice floated, dying.

I fought for the surface, trying to stay on top of the current, giving up thought direction, fighting only, fighting desperately for my own mind. Then I was suddenly up and splashing through the pillar of water that roared into the black, heavy sky; like a bullet out of a rifle, was I. Splash­ing, spinning, sputtering, I showered out of the mind of Child.

The room was dark. The hex signs glowed on the walls, partially illuminating the serious faces set in strange gri­maces.

“He threw me out,” I said in the quiet.

Everyone turned to stare at me.

“He just threw me out of his mind.”

VII

Rumors of war.

The Chinese had slaughtered the skeleton staff manning the last two embassies in Asia. Pictures smuggled out showed headless bodies.

Headless bodies on the Tri-D screen.

The Pentagon announced the discovery of the Bensor Beam, which shorted out all synapses in the human body, leaving the brain imprisoned in a mindless hulk. Named after Dr. Harold Bensor, the beam was already being re­ferred to (by Pentagon officials) as “the turning point in the cold war.” I knew the idea had come from Child; I recognized it—the way one recognizes a bad dream that is made into a movie. But the censors had learned from mis­takes they had made with me; the public would never hear of Child.

I wondered for a moment what kind of man this Bensor could be to want his name attached to such a device.

Pictures on the screen showed two Chinese prisoners on whom the weapon had been used.

I pushed breakfast away from me, unfinished, and got my coat from the closet. I was to meet Melinda at her apartment for another day’s session. She had a ton of equipment there and preferred not to move it. That eve­ning, we were going to the theater—and that was no busi­ness meeting! I was heeding the Mechanical Psychiatrist’s advice, trying to persuade myself that it had been correct.

The sky was now gray again and whispered snow. It was a regular old-time winter, a Christmas card sort of win­ter, sparkling and white. Somewhere, far above, floated Dragonfly.

“Did the FBI mistreat you at any other time?” she asked.

The black microphone dangled above us like a bloated spider.

“It was not the FBI so often as the doctors who treated me not as a human being, but as something to be pricked, punched, and jabbed at. I remember once—”

“Keep remembering,” she said. “That’s enough for one day. Besides, you said you had to leave by three o’clock. Sounded very important.”

I remembered Child. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

She was wearing a peasant blouse with a scalloped neck­line, and I found myself staring and thinking. And that in itself was a shock. It did not seem as disgusting as before. In fact, the fullness, the roundness seemed quite attrac­tive. Perhaps my Mechanical Psy had been correct.

“I must hurry now,” I said. “I’ll be late.”

“Then seven this evening,” she said, her eyes picking up the overhead light and glittering like two blue gems.

“Yes. Certainly, yes.”

She kissed me when I left! She put two small hands around my neck and put her lips on my lips. I lost memory of the sixty seconds or so following that.

I stood in the driveway a time before I managed to think enough to get in the car. And I sat in the car a time be­fore I managed to think enough to start it. My mouth burned where hers had touched it.

It burned all the way to AC.

I was in love. No question about it. I hadn’t even esped her since we’d met, and that in itself was unusual. I ima­gine I had been afraid at first that she would love me—and later, that she would not.

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