Soft come the dragons by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1970-10-15T07:00:00+00:00

Anyway, for weeks after that, Gabe seemed older than the rest of us, almost like one of the walking dead. He explained to us all about the old man who lived next door to him who had been due to go that night, and how the robots must have gotten the wrong address. We explained there was no grievance board of human beings to take the problem to, that we had never seen a human other than patients since we came into the ward. He pounded on the door, took more pokes at more robots and learned the hard way. With the truth creeping in on him, that he would never go free being a thought constantly in his mind, his spirit faded. He was more depressed than we were. Yet he tried not to let it show, he turned outward with his misfortune and directed his vigor at us, trying to cheer and pep. He was always sympathetic, more so the longer he lived with us. I remember once:

"Goddamn it you took them! I know you took them! You mamza pig! Thief!"

Hanlin, a new face, was so red that his nose was a mighty volcano preparing to burst, his lips already sputtering white lava. "Brookman, you're a liar. What do you want me to say? What would I want with them, hah? What for would I want your silly toys?"

"I'll carve you up when they bring the knives with to eat! Little mother pieces. Blood all over your lousy face!"

Everyone had turned from his bed to watch the drama unfold. But the fact that Brookman and Hanlin were supposed to be friends kept the significance of the scene from weighing on us immediately.

Gabe was quicker. He vaulted a bed—actually leaped right over it—which proved a great pleasure to the bedridden among us who had too long been confined with doddering old men and had forgotten the agility of youth. He vaulted the damn bed and picked Hanlin and Brookman completely off the floor, one wrinkled old skeleton in each hand. "Shut up, you two! You want some robot comin' in here and shocking you both to death?"

"That lousy kike called me a thief!" Hanlin bellowed. He fought to get away from Gabe, but he couldn't twist enough strength out of his old lemon peel body.

"What's the matter?" Gabe asked, trying to bring some measure of calm to the affair.

"He stole my straws. The Goddamn mamza pig stole—"

"Hold it, Brookie. What straws?"

Brookman got a strange look on his face then, somewhat like a child caught at a dirty game. He was no longer the fighter, every inch the old man. "Man's gotta have somethin'. Somethin' his own, God."

"What straws?" Gabe asked again, uncomprehendingly.

"Been savin' my milk straws. You can make all kinds of things with them. I made a doll. Just sorta a doll like the one Adele and me gave to our Sarah when she was a baby." There were little crystal droplets at the edges of his dark eyes.

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