Soft come the dragons

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.
    "I suppose." I refused to follow his gaze. "But I'm a medical man."
    "The gun?"
    His eyes shifted to my unsnapped holster. I opened my mouth to protest, closed it. I snapped the holster shut.
    "This way, gentlemen. The train is waiting."
    I turned to my men. There was a good deal of shoving and grunting and unnice exclamation until the air cushions beneath the nine computer units could be adjusted to move the heavy things up the slatted ramp and across the gaping holes of the dock toward the train that would take us the 120 miles to Yangchun.
    "You have a recent victim?" I asked Shukon, as we squeezed between the police and the mob that lined the dock.
    "About four hundred and thirty have died within the last twenty-four hours. You may have your choice."
    Somehow, he made me feel like a butcher at a wholesale meat auction. "Just the most recent," I said.
    An old woman broke through the police, threw herself in front of us, babbling swiftly in Chinese. I hoped the rest of the crowd didn't realize how little control the police really had over them. I looked protectively back to our Duo-component analyzer, confirmed its safety. Shukon gently lifted the old woman and led her behind the police. "Her son," he said when he returned. "She wants you to cure him. She thinks you can work miracles."
    "We just about can." I felt I had to be defensive with him.
    "Not miracles as large as that. He died yesterday."
    Mentally, I repeated the Hippocratic oath.
    At the end of the dock, steps led down to a concrete loading zone, crammed with more people. The train lay a hundred yards away, a black snake. The crowds surged, straining the police barricade. I wished the president had sent the troops first and to hell with the goodwill bit.
    Shukon moved first, snapping orders to police and civilians. The people, wild, seemed not to realize that we could not cure them until we had reached Yangchun, searched the ruins, come up with some clues. A boy, perhaps fifteen, crawled between policemen's legs, grabbed my ankles. Shukon—gentle Shukon—whirled and drove a foot into the boy's side. Drowned by the roar, there was a faint crunch of breaking ribs. The mayor brought the same foot down on fingers that convulsed like frightened worms.
    The boy screamed, blood black under his fingernails, red on his hands.
    "The women," Shukon hissed, "are understood. You are a man!" Then he hurried ahead, leaving me no course but to follow. We boarded the train without further incident, though I was beginning to be impressed with the stoical little mayor.
    Two of Shukon's henchmen brought a body aboard, dropped it in the first seat of the first car. After a few strong words about sanitary precautions, we sprayed the adjoining floor, wall, window,