DEAN R.KOONTZ. SOFT COME THE DRAGONS

we invaded Mother China and no one tried to stop us. The government had collapsed six days before, and the Chief of Staff of what remained of the hungry, ragtag Chi­nese People’s Army had requested our immediate assistance. Still, when the destroyer Barbara Dee wallowed to a full stop off the coast of Luichow Peninsula in the South China Sea, every gun was trained on the shore. And every man in those first landing craft unsnapped his holster. After all, we were landing in China! We had been asked to bail them out. And, indirectly, to bail ourselves out too. . . .

Since the foolproof Nuclear Shields, conventional war­fare had evaporated. This did not mean an end to war—just an end to War-as-We-Knew-It. After the pacification of the angry atom: germ warfare. In the forty-one years since the end of the atom-age war threat, both ideological camps had made great advances in this new form of com­bat. The game went on …

The game of killing. As the landing craft surged toward the shore, I thought of my father—my dead father.

The Chinese were more skilled at virus development, as even the Freeworld Propaganda Bureau reluctantly admitted. Fortunately we led the field in Analysis and Immuniza­tion. IBM and Rand had designed the equipment my A&I team used. It was every bit as incredible as the Chinese production capabilities.

We hoped it wouldn’t fail us now.

What little we knew of the chaos on the Chinese main­land didn’t help our spirits any. Dr. Lin Chi’s pet secret project had gotten out of hand at Yangchun Laboratories. The staff had perished, even as it fled. Dr. Lin Chi had lived long enough to reach a destruct lever, blasting the labs to rubble. But the disease spread, now claiming victims as far west as Homalin, Burma, and as far east as Shanghai. The Chinese philosophy on A&I had always been: Don’t waste money on cures; spend it on weapons. We can afford to lose some people. That was backfiring now.

In one week, the death toll spiraled toward five million. The Chinese A&I couldn’t handle it. On the morning of the twelfth day, eleven million dead, the government fell. On the afternoon of the fifteenth day, the Chief of Staff formally surrendered, then asked for help.

Open hands. No guns.

I was the first American to touch foot on conquered China. How to tell what it was like? Not patriotic fervor, cer­tainly. More relief. Relief that, if this disease didn’t loll us all, the world was finally united under Russo-American control. War was dead. As dead as Lin Chi. As dead as my father. Disease in China. a dragon in the land of drag­ons, as The New fork Times had uncharacteristically blurbed it If we could just get the dragon to eat its own tail . . . Anyway, I stepped onto the slushy sand, my holster still open, and marched up the beach toward the rickety docks of Chankiang.

The mayor of Chankiang was waiting with a squad of raggedy, mismatched police who were trying desperately to hold a huge crowd at bay. “I am Pin Shukon,” he said. He spoke perfect’ British English. He was portly, Buddha-like, a little man with a Mandarin moustache greased to single-hair points.

“I am honored to make your acquaintance,” I said, try­ing to maintain the best possible Chinese tonal form I could.

“Perhaps we should speak in English,” he said.

“My Chinese—”

“Is atrocious. However, it is a difficult language.” There was an indescribable quality of hatred in his voice. Hatred with a note of resignation so Oriental in nature that the hate seemed a thing ceremonial and of no real significance.

The other thirty technicians of the A&I team and Orga­tany, my assistant, had come up behind.

“I see you come well supported,” Shukon said thinly.

I saw that his white frock-shirt was stained with sweat, dirty. For the first time, I saw the fatigue in his eyes, the sharp wrinkles of exhaustion around them. He had been awake—but for short naps—since the disease had struck his village.

“This is my A&I team. No soldiers. We took General Soro at his word.”

“There will be soldiers.” He looked to the destroyer and the dropping troop transports.

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