Soft come the dragons

all things—a good teacher; Jeff, whose own sharp intellect made me first question the world around me; Harry, who was a companion through dark hours; Andy, who stayed up nights and was all together and married well; Jack, for the Night of the Empty Bottles and for looking for the world's fulcrum; Bob, for being Bob and therefore unique; Don Wollheim for buying the first three books and having faith; Ed Ferman for things mentioned later; Bob Hoskins for teaching me much; and especially to Gerda for the aforementioned intellect, warmth, and creativity—and for growing sexier every year. . . .
     
    Harrisburg, Penna.
    February, 1970

SOFT COME THE DRAGONS
     
    This was my first published story in the field of science fiction, the one that changed my life. Ed Ferman had rejected several stories with encouraging notes instead of form rejection slips. When I mailed "Soft Come the Dragons" to Fantasy and Science Fiction, I told Ed that I had a Druid friend who was going to cast a spell upon him and the entire staff of the magazine so that they would start buying my work. With the check for the story, Ed enclosed a note beginning "I had thought Druid spells were long ago impotent, but . . ."
    This is a story of myths and science and how one is nothing without the other. If we live by myth alone, we do not advance. But if we should ever live by only science, disregarding our fantasies, we will be less than machines in the skins of animals. This opinion must be universal, for I have received letters on this story from England and Australia. It will soon be published in Spanish. And Samuel R. Delany once told me it was a beautiful story. I consider that a compliment from highest sources. . . .
     
     
    "and what will you do when the soft breezes come and the dragons drift in to spread death?"
    Marshall wriggled in his seat, reached for another sugar packet to empty into his mug of coffee.
    "I'll tell you what you'll do. You'll get up when the alarms sound and dress in your uniform and go down in the cellar complex like a red-eyed mole in flight from his own fear. You'll get up when the alarms sound and monitor everything as usual, hiding until the dragons float out and are gone."
    "What am I supposed to do?" Marshall asked. "Maybe I should pet them and pour out milk?"
    "You wouldn't pet, you'd club. The milk would have cyanide in it"
    Marshall slammed his fist into the table. "You forget, Dante, that I am commander here and you are only third line officer."
    Mario Alexander Dante snorted, picked up his folio, and walked out of the rec room. Mounting the twisting stairs, he climbed two floors, stepped out into a dark, narrow haE-way, and ambled to the glass observation lounge that hung like a third story patio over the beach.
    It was low tide. The sea stretched away across the horizon like poured glass, glittering like a queen's jewels or like a shattered church window. Only small waves lapped at the shore, depositing minute quantities of sand, etching out microscopic gullies in the orange beach as they dragged away a corresponding amount of other grains.
    It seemed to Mare Dante that the ocean was the same on any world. It was the womb, the all-encompassing mother where men migrated at least once in their lives—like lemmings. He had walked to the edge of it on some nights, hoping to see a face. . . .
    Just above the horizon floated the twin moons; their reflections stretched long across the ocean, cresting every wavelet with a tint of golden dew.
    The trouble with Marshall, Dante reflected, was that he lacked imagination. He accepted everything at face value-tempered only by what his instruments told him. Being truthful with himself, he understood that he saw the old Mario Dante in the commander, and that this was why he disliked the man. The old Mario Dante, before the car crash that took Ellen and broke her body and tossed it into the ocean, before he lay in a hospital piecing together his shattered mind for seven months, the old Mario Dante had been lacking in sensitivity, in imagination. In unlocking his mental block so that he could accept the death of Ellen, the psychiatrist removed other things in passing, and opened a whole new portion of his mind.
    But still, he disliked Marshall. And he was certain that the commander's Achilles' heel would be struck by an arrow from the quiver of the dragons. The dragons that came daily with the tidal winds.
    The dragons of emerald and vermilion and yellow and white of virgin