DEAN R.KOONTZ. SOFT COME THE DRAGONS

“Sure,” Lib said with not so many tears in his voice. “Sure, I had a girl like that. Boston. She was Italian. Real dark hair and eyes like polished coal. She was gonna marry me once.”

“She loved you?”

“Yeah. What a fool I was. I loved her and was too dumb to know. Mistake, huh?”

“We all make them. I had a girl too. Bernadette. Sounds like a fake name, but that was hers. Green eyes.”

“Was she pretty, Gabe?”

“Pretty as the first day in spring when you know the snow is gone for good and maybe a robin will build a nest outside your window soon. Real pretty.”

“Sony for you, Gabe.”

“And did you ever tie on one helluva drunk, Lib?”

“Yeah.” There were tears in his voice again. “Yeah, a few. Once in New York for three days. High as a kite, not knowin’ where I was at.”

“So did I,” Gabe said. “New York too. You could have picked me up and set me down in the middle of a cattle stampede without me ever the wiser.”

I think Libby might have laughed then. A funny little laugh that threatened tears and didn’t really announce joy.

“And Lib, did you see much of the world, you’re be­ing a seaman?”

“Tokyo, London, Australia for two weeks. I been in ev­ery one of the fifty-six states.”

“More than I saw.”

Then in the wings of the shielding darkness, you could hear it—like phlegm bubbling in his old throat. “But, Gabe, I can’t piss.”

“You’ve been in love and been loved, Lib. That’s more than a lot of people can say. You’ve seen almost every cor­ner of the world, and some places in it, you’ve drunk your­self silly. Don’t forget all that.”

Then I realized that he was not trying to con the old man into forgetting his sickness. He was trying, instead, to show him that there was a dignity in Death, that he could hold up his withered head and say that life had not been an empty cup, the dry bed of a river.

Libby saw a little of that too, I think.

He said: “But Gabe, I don’t want to die.”

“No one ever does, Lib. I don’t; Sam doesn’t.”

“It does hurt!”

“You said it didn’t.”

“I never would admit pain.”

“How hard have you tried to relieve yourself?”

“I think blood came a little the last time. Oh, Gabe, blood. I’m an old man, and I’ve rotted to pieces here for years and saw no sky and no girls and no newspaper, and now my vitals are bleeding on me and my gut feels like it’s gonna up and explode with the pressure.”

Gabe pulled out the bed pan potty and sat it on the floor. “Try once more, Lib.”

“I don’t want to. I might bleed.”

“Just for me, Lib. Come on. Maybe you can.”

He helped him out of bed, set him on the degrading little chair, knelt besides him. “Try, Lib.”

“Oh, Mother of God, Gabe, it hurts!”

“Try. Take it easy. Nice and easy.”

The darkness was horrible.

“Gabe, I’m—I can’t!” Libby was crying and choking. We heard the potty chair go skidding across the room. The next thing, Gabe was crooning, holding the old man to him there on the hard floor.

“Lib, Lib, Lib.”

And Libby only moaned.

“You’ll be all right.”

“I’ll sleep. It’ll be just like sleeping.”

“That’s right. That’s all it is—just a sleep, a nap.”

Libby shook, his old crumbling paper lungs wheezing. “The robots sleep at night, Gabe. Only they wake up.”

There was a sudden change in Gabe’s tone. “What do you mean, Lib?”

“They sleep. They charge up, plug themselves in. Ain’t that hell, Gabe. They sleep too.”

Gabe put the old man back in the bed and waddled around the baseboard looking for the nearest outlet. “Damn-it, Libby, you won’t die. I promise you. There’s a way out. If we can blow the fuses, catch all the metal people plugged into useless outlets—”

Several breaths were drawn in.

“Lib, you hear me?” Gabe was crying then. “Lib?”

Libby could never have answered. He was dead, lying life­less in the heap of old gray linen that covered his sagging mattress. But that seemed to give Gabe more determina­tion than ever. “Anyone have a piece of metal? Any metal?”‘

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