Soft come the dragons

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.
    "That's Marcus Aurelius. She writes all those pornographic novels, or nearly pornographic. Lily, Bodies in Darkness, those."
    Honey hair.
    "How would you like to . . ."
    I ignored what he was saying about her.
    Soft lips.
    "And those legs . . ."
    Blue, blue eyes.
    "Hey, she's looking this way."
    Smooth, lovely shoulders, a graceful curved neck.
    "Hey, she's looking at you. That girl's looking at you . . ."
    Honey hair smooth lips smooth hips blue eyes blue eyes blue eyes . . .
    "Hey, where you going, Sim? You can't leave yet. What's the rush. Hey. Hey!"
     
    How foolish I had been at that party. But that was long ago now. I was so much younger then—and I'm older than that now.
    By the time I reached the government building, I had made the decision. I loved Melinda. I feared Child. He could throw me out—perhaps he could swallow me up. There was something to his warnings to leave his thoughts alone. Something to do with the G association I had chanced upon—something to do with God. I loved Melinda. I would never again risk my mind; I would always save it to contemplate her beauty. I would tell them first thing. The job is ended; go in peace.
    But it didn't run that smoothly.
    They were waiting when I got there. Harry fidgeted nervously with his hands. I thought that I had never seen him as he had been the last few days—and especially as he was now. There were bags under his eyes; the old tic had reappeared in his left cheek; his hair was uncombed.
    I esped to see what was troubling him.
    It was floating on the surface of his mind, and the thought symbol his psyche had given it was a bloated body floating in a pool of blood. Beneath the image, I read it: WAR. The rumors were not just rumors anymore. Brushfire stuff had gotten hotter. Some Asian pilots had tried dropping a few plague bombs off England, covered by one of their newer inventions, a low altitude radar distorter that Harry did not understand. WAR. A bloated black body floating . . .
    Extremely shaken, I sat down at the table and looked across the shiny surface at Morsfagen. There were tiny beads of perspiration on his chin and forehead. Damn them! Damn them all! Trying to kill Melinda!
    "What have you come up with overnight?"
    "Nothing more than yesterday," I said. "He threw me out because I was reading some thought