Soft come the dragons

there to die. Not again. Not fail again . . . The phone buzzed. "What is it, Orgatany?"
    "This is Evret. Orgatany is dead."
    Son, son, son, must there be darkness now?
    "Dammit, let me talk to Bill!"
    "He's dead, doctor. He died ten minutes ago."
    An untruth, I thought. Must be an untruth, I thought. In truth, I did not think. "Evret, cut the bullshit! I have to talk with Bill. Let me talk to Bill. Bill. Bill, damn you to hell!"
    "Shut up!" Shukon shouted with more energy than he could possibly have had.
    I turned. There was still Shukon. Bill was gone, but there was still Shukon. There was still . . .
    "Grow up, doctor!" Shukon snapped. "Give him the information!"
    My head spun madly merry-go-round in the light-flash of memories. I fumbled the papers out, laid them on the rubble. I fought to steady the world in its dance. The world was so damnably big! The records said things about the brain. But I wanted a general synopsis. There would have to be a general synopsis, something Lin Chi could show to visiting party dignitaries . . . Time covers, yellowed and cracking with age, swirled like leaves down the canyons of recollection . . . Then I had it! "Evret?"
    "I'm here."
    "The virus settles in the mid-brain through the bloodstream. It only takes a single virus. One organism, Evret. Once settled, it releases minute quantities of toxin. But the toxin is not poisonous, for that would be traceable. It is merely a sedative. It puts the brain-stem to sleep. It simply paralyzes that area of the brain that controls circulatory, digestive, respiratory systems. It wears off in minutes, but by then the victim is dead."
    "Is there a toxin formula?" Evret asked, excited.
    I read it to him. "Tell Bill," I said. Up-down-up-down the old, old, old, old merry-go-round.
    "But Bill is—"
    "Tell him!" I roared.
    "Yes, sir." He signed off.
    "Now will you come with me?" I asked Shukon.
    He holstered the gun. "You . . . won't leave without me. I see that."
    I got him onto my shoulders, and started for the door." The rubble was like marbles beneath my feet. Past and present fled through my mind in cat-dog chase, tail-for-tail and teeth-for-teeth and foam about the edges of my thoughts . . .
    The hallway was now blocked in the direction we had come. I turned the other way. There had to be more exits. In time, we came across a fissure in the wall that slanted up. Dimly, far away, there was a white haze. I started up the slight incline, Sukon hissing his teeth, still refusing to groan.
    Forty feet into the wall, the pathway broke and swept vertical. My head pounded. There was blood all over me— Shukon's blood. "Hold on," I said. "I'll need both hands for climbing." I started up.
    My chest was afire, and the flames leaked up through my neck to play tag behind my eyes, incidentally setting fire to my brain too.
    On the merry-go-round of recollection, one horse/memory after another fled past the ticket taker, sliding up and down on brass poles. There was my father, lying on a white bed in a white room, his face and hands snow carvings. For a moment, he faded and became a spunky little Oriental mayor who cared desperately for the lives and pride of his people. Then he was my father again, dying from the new Chinese variation of smallpox. White, he was, white . . . Horse up, horse down . . . Then there was myself, telling my father that my A&I team would find the antitoxin for the pox. Then I was telling the same thing to a mayor in another time about another disease. Then again it was my father, and I was telling him not to worry. Telling him, telling him . . . Horse up, horse down . . . My father lay in the white bed, face too white. My father, dead nine minutes before the Duo had come up with the answer. White room, white bed, white father-corpse, and a view of stark and total whiteness from the hospital window to the lawn . . .
    My head spun with the old scenes. The wall before me flashed between them. My lungs ached, and breath was a stone in my chest. My fingers slipped, and I clutched, balancing on my toes.
    Shukon's arm struck my side. I howled in pain. "What is it?" he croaked.
    "Nothing." I caught the rock, shoved upward.
    "You are hurt."
    "A rib. Nothing—"
    My fingers scraped across rock, tore suit and flesh. Pain stabbed up my arms, but I clutched and held on.
    A third of the way up, I pulled onto a ledge that gave step to a shelf slashing seventy feet into the rubble. I stretched Shukon out, sat rubbing muscles and sucking in air.