Koontz, Dean - Soft come the Dragons Read online

  The same night, Timothy was moved from the ward.

  Quietly.

  He did not know where they were taking him. Indeed, having lacked most of the sensory stimulation afforded normal three-year-olds, he did not even care. Without proper stimulation, he had never developed rational, logical thought processes. He understood nothing beyond his own basic desires, the desires of his body: hunger, air, water, excretion. It never occurred to him to wonder where he was going—if he even knew he was going anywhere.

  But he wasn't ignorant for long. The military was hungry for another success (they had had only two others) and hurried his development along. They tested his IQ as best they could and found it was slightly above normal. That was a good sign. There had been fears that they would have to work with a psionically gifted moron. Next, the computers devised an educational program suited to his unique history. The program was initiated.

  He was expected to be talking in seven months.

  He was talking in five weeks.

  He was expected to be able to read in a year and a, half.

  He was reading on a college level in three months.

  Not surprisingly, they found his IQ was rising. An IQ is based on what an individual has learned as well as what he innately knows. When Timothy had first been tested, he had learned absolutely nothing. His slightly above normal score had been garnered solely on what he innately knew. Excitement at the project grew until Timothy had reached an IQ of 250 plus. It was now eighteen months since he had lifted his spoon without hands. He devoured books. But he switched from topic to topic, from two weeks of advanced physics texts to a month of 19th Century British Literature. But the military didn't care. They did not expect him to be a specialist. They only wanted him to be educated and conversant. At the end of eighteen months, they felt he was both these things. So they turned to other plans . . .

  They coached his psionic abilities, trying to develop them. There were many dreams in military minds. There were dreams of Timothy destroying the entire Chinese Army with one burst of psionic power. But dreams are only dreams. The sad fact was soon evident that Timothy's psi powers were severely limited. The heaviest thing he could lift was a spoon full of applesauce. And his radius of ability was only one hundred feet. As a superweapon, it was something of a washout.

  The reaction among the generals was more than disappointment. After the immediate paralysis wore off, there was a strong desire for revenge. They opted to dissect him to discover what they could of his ability.

  Luckily for him, the war ended that week.

  The Bio-Chem people had come up with the weapon that had ended it. At last turn, the Artificial Wombs had proved useless. The final weapon was a virus released on the Chinese mainland at roughly the same time the generals were discovering Timothy's limitations. Before they could dissect him, the speedy killer had wiped out approximately one half the Chinese male population—as it was structured to affect only certain chromosome combinations in only the Mongoloid race—and had induced the enemy into a reluctant surrender.

  Plans for dissection went astray. The Wombs were put under the administration of the Bio-Chem people, and they dissolved the project. The Bio-Chems were fascinated by Timothy. For three weeks, he was exhaustively tested and retested. He gave so many spoon-lifting demonstrations that he saw floating spoons in his sleep. And he heard their discussions about "what his brain might look like." It was a rugged three weeks.

  But in the end they didn't saw him up to satisfy their curiosity. Somewhere along the line, a leak had reached the press, and the story of the horribly crippled mutant who could lift spoons without touching them was a Three Day Sensation. During the excitement of those three days, the largest bureau of the now peace-oriented government, the Veteran's Bureau, stepped in and took control of him. Senator Kilroy announced that the Veteran's Bureau was going to rehabilitate the young man, provide him with grav plate servo-hands and a grav plate system for mobility. He was a Three Day Sensation again. And so was the politically wise senator who took credit for the project. . .

  Timothy (or "Ti" as he went by now, having never assumed a surname after gaining his freedom) stood on the patio that jutted beyond the cliff and watched the birds settling noisily into the big green pines that spread thickly down the mountainside. Behind him was the house that had been built from the money acquired from his book advances—Autobiography of a Reject and A Case For Artificial Birth—a proud monument of a structure erected over the ruins of a Revolutionary War pro-British secret supplies cellar. He cherished the house and what it contained, for it was ninety percent of his world. The other ten percent was his business. He was shrewd, and his business paid off. He used the receipts chiefly to maintain the house and to buy his books and the films for his private projection room. He had organized and launched, with his writing monies, the first stat newspaper designed solely for entertainment. No news. Just eossip and gossip and more gossip. It was a ten-page scandal sheet that stated out of the wall printers in eleven million homes promptly at eight in the morning and four thirty in the afternoon. But now his business was not with him in his thoughts, and he focused his attention on the birds that fluttered below. He directed his left servo-hand to pull apart the branches obscuring his view of a particularly fine specimen. The six-fingered prostho swept away from him on the grav plates that cored its palm, shot forty feet down the embankment to the offending branch and gently pulled it aside so as not to disturb the birds.

  But the birds were too aware: they flew. Using his limited psi power, Ti reached into the two hundred miniature switches of the control module buried in the globe of the grav plate system that capped his truncated legs. The switches, operated by his psi power, in turn maneuvered his hands and moved him about on his grav plate sphere as he wished. He recalled his left servo-hand now that the bird had gone. It rushed back to him and floated at his left side, directly out from his shoulder, just as the right hand floated on the other side.

  He looked at his watch and was surprised to find it was past time for his usual morning chat with Taguster. He flipped the mini-switches, floated around and through the patio doors into the plush living room. He moved across the fur carpet and glided into the special cup-chair of his Mindlink set. He raised a servo-hand and pulled down the glittering helmet, fitting it securely to his bony cranium (it too had been specially crafted), reached out with the other servo and threw the proper toggles to shift his mind into the receiver in Taguster's living room. There was a moment of blurring when intense blacks and grays swarmed formlessly about him. His mind flashed on the Mindlink Company beam past thousands of other minds going to other receivers, covered the forty miles to the city and Taguster's house. The blacks and grays swirled dizzingly, then cleared and turned into colors. The first thing he saw through the receiver camera was Taguster lying dead against the wall

  No. Not dead. There was blood, surely, pooling about the concert guitarist's head, but that same head was also moving, nodding in near unconsciousness, but nodding nonetheless. Ti settled his mind into the comfortable interior of the receiver and operated the voice box. "Lenny!"

  It was almost impossible for him to believe the musician was hurt—maybe mortally hurt. A good friend never dies. Never! The shock of the situation echoed back his trace pathway on the Mindlink beam and jolted through his body, trying to make that dumb hulk of flesh understand the horror of the situation.

  "Lenny, what happened?"

  Taguster raised his head a little, enough for Ti to see the thin dart buried half in his throat. Taguster tried to say something, but he could manage only a thick gurgle, like syrup splattering against the bottom of a galvanized bucket.

  Darts? Who would want to kill Leonard Taguster? And why hadn't they finished the job?

  The musician was gurgling frantically as if he desperately needed to communicate something. Ti's mind swam inside the receiver, as if it were trying to break free and dissipate its charge. He was fighting off panic, and he knew it. Ta
guster wanted to say something. But how could that be accomplished with his pale throat violated? He could not talk. And from the looks of it, the dart had been tipped with something that made it impossible for him to walk, something that had partially paralyzed him. He scrabbled a limp hand against the wall as if writing without implement, and Ti got the idea. He turned the head of the receiver around so that the cameras showed him most of the room. There was a desk with various writing tools lying on it, and it was only twenty feet away, against the far wall. But a receiver was not mobile—and Taguster could not move. Ti thought of retreating from the receiver and returning to his body, calling the police from his house. But from the looks of him, Taguster could not last that much longer, and the man's desire to communicate was too intense to ignore.

  Ti had never thought to experiment to see if his psi power traveled with his mind when he entered a receiver, but this was as good a time as any to find out! He squinted eyes that he didn't have (the cameras could not rightfully be called eyes, and his own orb was at home, lying lopsided in his irregular head) and forced his psi energies to coalesce in the vicinity of the desk. He reached out and toyed with the pencil. It flipped over and almost rolled onto the floor! He doubled his effort, lifted it, and floated it across the room to where Taguster lay dying. He imagined he was sweating.

  Taguster picked the instrument up and held it as if he were not exactly sure what to do with it. He coughed up blood and stared at that a moment.

  "Lenny," the mutant urged. "Write it. Write . . . it."

  Taguster looked blearily up at the receiver screen, seemed to nod. He raised his hand and wrote on the wall: MARGLE. The letters were shaky and uneven, but they were readable,

  "What does that mean?"

  Taguster seemed to sigh, dropped the pencil.

  "Lenny!"

  Taguster looked at the screen again, fumbled with the pencil, lifted it and scribbled under the word "Margle": NAME.

  So Margie was a name. And now that the connection had been made for him, Ti seemed to have remembered hearing it somewhere, though he could not place the source or context. Well, anyway, the musician had named his would-be killer, and the mutant felt justified in leaving the scene long enough to notify the police. But then, someone screamed.

  It was a woman's scream, high and piercing. It started full strength, turned to a gurgle much like Taguster's, and trailed away. It had come from the direction of the bedroom. There was another receiver in there, an extension of the living room box, and Ti vacated his present perch for the bedroom set.

  It was a woman. She had been trying to get out of the window, but her flimsy nightdress had caught on the window latch, delaying her just a moment too long. There were three darts in her back, and the yellow negligee was running with red, red blood. Ti looked to the right, hunting the killer. He had assumed the man had left, but he had only disabled Taguster, then had gone quickly on to the woman to kill her before she could escape. The blood had now soaked her negligee and was dripping onto the floor from the frilly lace edging. He shifted the camera to the left, and he saw his killer. And it wasn't a man . . .

  It was a Police Hound. Its dark metal body floated toward the doorway, its two servo-hands flying ahead of it, their fingers tensed as if they were ready to latch onto something and strangle it to death. The dart tube on its burnished belly was protruding, prepared for action. This was the killer, thirty-odd pounds of ball-shaped computer that could track a man by smell, sight, touch, and sound. And only the police should have one!

  But why would the police want to kill Leonard Taguster? And why should they use such a roundabout method of obtaining his destruction? Why not simply haul him in on some phony charge replete with carefully prepared evidence and do away with him legally?

  The Hound disappeared through the doorway into the hall, and Ti suddenly remembered Taguster lying back there in the living room. The Hound was going back to finish the job! The darts were evidently tipped with poison, though Police Hounds should carry only defense-and-capture narcotics. Now that Taguster's lover had been kept from spreading the news, it was time to take care of the guitarist in proper fashion.

  Ti retreated from the bedroom connection and shifted his mind back to the main receiver. Taguster was still lying against the wall in the same position, still not unconscious, still gurgling, trying to tell Ti who Margie was. But the Hound was on its way! Ti searched the room frantically for a weapon.

  The Hound came through the doorway and drifted toward Taguster.

  Ti found a curio, a small brass peasant leading a small brass mule, a hand-crafted trinket Taguster had brought back from his tour of Mexico. He lifted it with his psi power and threw it at the Hound. The toy bounced off the dully gleaming hide of the machine, fell harmlessly to the floor. The Hound drifted at Taguster, its dart tube thrusting farther out of its underside, its servos spreading to either side to give it a clear line of fire.

  Ti found an ashtray, tried lifting it, could not.

  Panic threatened to tip him into irrationality. But that, he cautioned himself, would do the musician no good at all. He was the man's only hope! There were only seconds left. Then he remembered the gun on the desktop. It had been lying at the opposite end from the pencils, heavy and ugly, a deterrent to burglars. He touched the pistol psionically, but he could not nudge it. He pressed harder, eventually moved it slightly until the barrel was pointing toward the Hound. Pulling the light wire of the automatic trigger was easy. The gun spat a narco-needle that bounced off the beast. That was no good!

  And then the Hound shot Taguster. Four times in the chest: thud, thud, thud, thud! The guitarist gurgled thickly, sighed, and dropped his head, quite dead now. Ti felt as if all the energy he had possessed had been sucked out of him by an electric vampire, yet he could not let the Hound escape. He sent his cameras swiveling about, looking for things small enough to be handled by his limited talents. He found various trinkets and figurines and rained them uselessly upon the killer machine. It surveyed the room, perplexed, firing darts in the direction from which the souvenir hail came, unable to discover its assailant. Then it turned a spatter of darts on the receiver head and floated out of the room—out of the house and away . . .

  For a time, Ti remained in the living room receiver, looking at Taguster's corpse. He was too weakened to do anything else. His mind filled with remembrances of their friendship, scene after scene flicking after one another like dried leaves blown by a cold autumn wind. Finally, when there were no more memories, there was nothing to do but return to his own set, to his own house. He broke with Taguster's receiver and allowed his mind to flow back into the Mindlink beam, mixing with the blacks and the grays and the almost subaudible murmuring of the thousands of other Mindlink customers. Colors appeared, and he was abruptly back in his own body. He sat for a moment, regaining lost energy, then used a servo to lift the helmet from his head and shut off the machine.

  What now?

  Ordinarily, he would not have had to consider that question, for he would have wasted no time in summoning the police. But it had been a Police Hound that had killed Leonard Taguster! If the legal authorities had conspired to take the musician's life, as unlikely as that seemed, then it was madness to contact them about investigating the crime! No, he had to know more before he took any action. But what did he have to go on? Margle! He had the name. He lifted out of the cup-chair and crossed the living room, moved through a painting-lined corridor, and came into the library. He stopped at the wall where the direct com-screen to Enterstat, his newspaper, lay like a cataracted eyeball. He punched a button, the third yellow one in an alternating series of green and yellow. A panel slid away beside the screen, revealing a computer keyboard, the direct line to the Enterstat computer. He punched out the letters M-A-R-G-L-E and depressed the bar marked FULL DATA REPORT.

  Thirty seconds later, a printed stat sheet popped out of the info receival slot and into the plastic tray, glistening wetly. He waited a moment for it to dry, then r
eached with a servo and picked it up. He held it up to his eye, read it, blinking. Klaus Margie was connected with the Dark Brethren, the underworld organization that had been encroaching on the territory once sacrosanct to the Mafia, and it was rumored that he was the number one man, though this information could not be checked for authenticity. He was six feet tall and weighed two hundred and one pounds. His hair was dark, but his eyes were "baby blue. He had a three-inch scar along his right jaw line. He was missing a thumb on his right hand. He believed in taking a hand in the common dangerous chores of the mob. He would not send one of his boys to do something he had never done himself. He was a man of action, not a desk-chained gangster executive. He dated Polly London, the rising young starlet. That was why Enterstat had his biography. End of information.

  Ti dropped the paper back into the receival tray and stared thoughtfully at the computer keyboard. That explained the Police Hound. The underworld could lay hands on anything it wanted by bribing the proper officials. And somewhere it had secured a Hound. Well, he could just go and dial the police now, report the murder, for they were not involved. Or could he? His intuition (a thing he had long ago learned to respect) told him he should know more about Klaus Margle before he put his nonexistent foot into a nasty patch of briars. He punched out the Enterstat main phone number on the com-screen and waited while the two-dimension media (almost entirely a business service now that three-dimensional Mindlink had taken over in the private communications area) rang the number. The blank screen suddenly popped into light, and the face of Enterstat's editor, George Creol, swam into view, settled, held still, staring out at him with large, melancholy eyes. "Oh, hello, Chief. What is it?"