Soft come the dragons

We sprayed them with plastic. I was determined to keep the bacteria contained—even if there were no bacteria.
    "I told them," Shukon said, "that you would bring their men back to life if they showed their intention of letting us pass."
    "But I can't do that!"
    "They don't know that."
    "They damn soon will!"
    "Be calm. They are moving the barrel."
    The chief horseman, a fierce-looking man, dropped off his mount and, clutching the rifle, reached for the railing to push himself onto the first step. The barrel rolled away, clattering . . .
    Abruptly, a gun slipped magically from Shukon's sleeve. It spat a firetooth that lodged in the horseman's chest. Blood spread across the man's jacket, spotted the tea-colored vest. He hung there, looking surprised. Shukon shot again. Blood spewed out of the horseman's mouth, and he fell backward onto the dry, dry earth.
    "Move quickly!" Shukon snapped at the engineer.
    The train lurched, shot forward. The other horsemen, delayed by confusion and surprise, took too much time mounting their shied horses. The train left them behind without revenge.
    "You have your two samples," Shukon said. "Shall we go inside?"
     
    I'm a medical man. Sure, A&I is part of the war effort, our defense system. But chiefly, I want to cure. I kept telling myself this as we moved deeper into Mother China. I get it from my father, I guess. He developed the BTRR technique that won him the Nobel Prize. I remember when the story was blurbed on Time's cover. brain tissue replacement and repair technique: bronson wins nobel the banner read, breaking the familiar red border of the cover. The old man didn't get around to reading it until five months later. He was too busy working on something to "help those poor damn cancer patients." He never lived to prove that cancer was a malfunction of a segment of the midbrain and directly connected to psychosomatic origins. But someone else did, working from his notes. Like him, I'm a medical man. Sometimes, I think I put myself in great danger just to prove I'm like him. Back then, however, I didn't yet understand the guilt that drives me.
    Nervously, I flicked through the Duo's two-page summaries. Nothing on either horseman. They died of nothing.
    "What next?" Orgatany asked. "The men are nervous."
    There was only one thing I could think of, a phrase I tried never to use: "Tell them we've been in trouble before and lived through it."
    "But we were always able to isolate the bacteria before. We were always quickly immunized. Now we can't even find the goddamned germ!"
    "You sound as scared as I am," I said, rubbing the pain throbbing behind my ears.
    He grinned, in resignation more than amusement. "Hell." He stood and plunged back toward the cars where the team worked. He would hold up, I knew. He was a damn good boy . . .
    "Yangchun," Shukon said, pointing through the window.
    All along the tracks, crowds pressed to the edge of the ramp, straining at the rails almost as if—simply by touching —they could be healed.
    "Is there any way we can keep from detraining here?" I asked Shukon, not wishing to fight another crowd who would crush us with love. "There should have been a spur line to an installation as large as Lin Chi's."
    "I believe there was."
    "Would you inform the engineer that we would like to be taken directly to the labs then?"
    "It will take what you call—string-pulling."
    "Just don't tangle any."
    Fighting the lurching train, he made his way to the locomotive.
    Fifteen minutes later, we were stopped a thousand yards from the ruins of the Lin Chi's laboratories. Here it was that the good doctor had invented the disease that gobbled him up. Always a danger in germ warfare. A careless move. A vial is broken. Contamination spreads. In this case, it was something that spread too fast. Apparently, Lin Chi had not found an antitoxin yet. There was nothing left but to fuse the buildings in a nuclear blast before the wind could . . .
    But the wind had . . .
    "Dr. Bronson," Orgatany said, tapping me on the shoulder.
    I looked up.
    "It's Jenners. The Duo mechanic's assistant. He's dead."
     
    The cover of Time . . .
    Of Time . . .
    Of time . . .
    Jenners was most assuredly dead. Dead of nothing. And it certainly wasn't old age at thirty-one. Organs don't wear out that fast. Unless you're a Lord Byron. Jenners wasn't. Lin Chi's disease had gotten him, and it might get the rest of us at any time.
    "Get me a suit, Bill," I said. "I'm going into the labs."
    "You're the