Soft come the dragons

number of safari experiences to talk about. Many a good hour was passed listening to the tales of cats, lean, well-muscled cats that lurked in the brush with glistening claws and yellow teeth to slash and rip and tear at the unwary. There were stories of strange birds. There were tales of strange temples, exotic rituals, narratives about smooth, dark native women.
    But then the Englishman died, spitting blood from his mouth and nostrils.
    So it was that new faces brought new ideas, making one feel that life still had something in its dried-out carcass to make you want to live. And like I said, there were always fresh countenances. Libby (his real name was Bertrand Libberhad), Mike, Kyu, and I were the only regulars. Old-timers of the first order, veterans. Libby topped me by being a patient for eleven years; my own term was nine years long. Kyu and Mike were the juniors, having put in only eight years each. And the others in the ward were temporary, here for a week, a month, two months, then gone, carted away to be thrust into the raging fires of the Flue and burned into ash. It was good for us veterans that so many of them died; new faces, you know.
    Yet it is because of one of these new faces that I am now alone, sitting here in the dark, listening for heavy wings of blackness—alone.
    The new face was Gabe Detrick. That wasn't odd, for every face has a name just like Libby and Kyu and Mike. But he was so young! He seemed to be no older than thirty. We went to sleep with the twelfth bed empty; when we woke, there was Gabe, a great, naked man not long ago a boy. Some eyeless moment of the night had seen him wheeled in and dumped on the bed like so much fresh meat.
    Much speculation ensued as to why a young man should be brought to the Old Folks Without Supporting Children Home. One had to be fifty-five before they came in the night, those lumbering crimson-eyed androids without mouths and with gleaming wire sensor grids for ears, and shot you with drug guns and carted you away. But this man on the bed was young—nearly a boy.
    When he finally shook off the drugs and came to, silence fell upon the room like the quiet after a giant tree has crashed upon the breast of the earth and now lies solemn and dead.
    Every eye fell upon him, even Kyu's blind one.
    "Where—"
    No one allowed him to finish; everyone scrambled toward him to explain his present predicament. When he finally forced his groggy senses to an understanding, he ranted almost as a mad man would. "I'm only twenty-seven! What the Hell is going on here?" He jumped out of bed, swayed slightly on his feet, and began to pace around the room, searching for an exit. We followed, him—the few of us who could walk—like sheep preparing to watch the shepherd kill the wolf.
    Eventually, he noticed the dim lines of the flush door and streaked toward it, mouthing everything foul he knew. He pounded on the blue paneling even though word was gotten to him that it would do no good. He pounded and pounded and swore and pounded until the decibels of his uproar reached sufficient quantity to stimulate the "ears" of a passing robot. The automaton rolled through the door and asked if anything were wrong.
    "You're damn right something is wrong!" Gabe shouted.
    The robot leered at him. Robots actually have no facial expressions comparable to a human being, but they had been assigned expressions by the patients. This one—who we called Doctor Domo—always seemed to be leering. Perhaps it was because his left eye glowed a dimmer red than his right.
    "My name is Gabe Detrick. I'm an accountant. Address: 23234545, Lower Level, Mordecai Street, Ambridge."
    There was a familiar crackling that always preceded ev-everything Dr. Domo said, then: "Do you want a bed pan?"
    We thought that Gabe was going to smash a fist right into the leering devil's alloy face. Kyu screamed as if it had already happened, and his terror seemed to dissuade Gabe from the act
    "Dinner will be served in—click, clack—two hours," Domo squeaked. "Is that the trouble?"
    "I want out!"
    "Are you dying?" crackled the metal man.
    "I'm only twenty-seven!" He said it like anyone older must be ancient papyrus cracking and flaking and ready to crumble to dust. I think we all disliked him a bit for his tone.
    "Do you want a bed pan?" the robot asked again, obviously bewildered. It was programmed to answer seven hundred different questions: May I have a bed pan, may I have more paper, what's for dinner, I have a