Soft come the dragons

mrs. cauvell?
    They said it was.
    The android's voice clicked off, its throat humming for a moment before going tomb silent. Inspector Jameson got to his feet. "Sorry to inconvenience you. It has been, a pleas-sure. Thank you for cooperating."
    "Only too happy," Frank said.
    "Hope you find the mutant," Laurie said.
    They watched through the porthole as the inspector and the android stepped into the police car and pulled onto the highway, growing smaller, smaller, and disappearing in the distance.
    From the looks of the sky, it was going to snow again.
     
    Somewhere a mutated boy hid, shivering.
    Some unbearable moment, his nerves split; he ran.
    He ran right into the arms of the android. The eyes of the metal man were jewels, even as the tears on his own cheeks frosted into diamonds. He backed away, but there were others behind him. There was no place to go.
    He unleashed the psychic forces at them, watched them go up in flames, watched their faces melt, watched their insides smoke.
    But there were more of them. And they would not wait. Nozzles opened on their hips. Fire sprayed; flames engulfed him, swallowed, digested him.
    All the while the snow fell . . . little white bullets . . .
     
    "They got some poor devil," Laurie said, handing him the paper.
    He looked at it, grimaced. HALLUCINO-CHILD FIGHTS IT OUT WITH POLICE. Not "fights it out with robots," for that was too crude. That would make the entire thing seem promutant. Cauvell wagered a live cop had not come within a hundred yards of the boy.
    "It's my fault," Laurie said.
    "That's absurd! How could it possibly be your fault?"
    "We were too open. We left a trail or clues, at least, that made them search."
    "And it was an emergency," he argued. "You'd have blasted the both of us to kingdom come if you had tried to hold back that force any longer."
    "Just the same, they might not have flushed the boy out if we—"
    "Forget it. What's for supper?"
    "Spaghetti."
    The next night it was pork chops. The next night, meat loaf. The night after that, he woke up to her heavy breathing.
    "Laurie?"
    Her eyes were open. "Yes?"
    "Why didn't you wake me?" He got out of bed, began to dress.
    "Frank?"
    "What? Hurry and get your clothes on."
    "Frank, maybe it would be a lot better if I just let it kill me."
    He stopped tucking his shirt in and turned around to face her. He could see only the vague outline of her small but womanly body outlined by the sheet, her hair like spun silk . . . He crossed to her and lifted her head up. "What is that supposed to mean?"
    She was crying.
    "Don't you love me?" he asked.
    She tried to answer, but the words were sobs.
    "Then get the hell dressed," he said gently.
    And he left. In the kitchen, he took the gun from the drawer. Outside, the sky was clear; the wind was stiff, whipping the snow into a frenzy. When he brought the car to the front door, she was waiting.
    "Where will we go?" she asked.
    "Farther out than before. And we will cover well."
    Christmas was coming.
    He thought about that as he drove. He thought about parties and eggnog, church services, candles on altars, candles in windows. He thought about Christ climbing down from his bare tree and wondered what Ferlinghetti would have written had he lived in the present and been married to a hallucino-child.
    Far out in the country, he angled the Champion onto a side road, cruised along it for a time, broke off the road into a wide trench that petered out into woods at a clearing in the center of the forest. They were three miles from a road, sheltered on all sides by trees, exposed only directly overhead where the clearing allowed the stars to look down. When they got out, they heard the helicopter whining somewhere above them.
    Then the sun came on. The copter settled into the clearing, its headlamps like the eyes of some tremendous moth, its rotors like wings.
    "Frank!"
    He grabbed her, pulled her back into the car, scrambled behind the wheel.
    please do not attempt to escape. It Was the Voice of T.
    He would have to reverse out of there, which would be a disastrous undertaking in this rugged terrain. Or he would have to push through them. Jameson, T, and another android labeled JJK were crossing the hoary field, legs frosted with snow, weapons drawn. He rolled down the window. "What do you want?"
    "If you bought groceries that morning, Mr. Cauvell," Jameson said between breaths, "why did no grocer within fifty miles have a record of your personal purchase?"
    T was twenty feet