The Dragon Man Part 13

CHAPTER XXV.

Because a little of Mother Quilla's and Father Stephen's pedantry had rubbed off on her, Sara knew that it couldn't really be all of Frank Warburton's work that was taking to the air, because sublimate accessories had only been a part of his most recent endeavors. She knew, too, that most of the accessories he'd actually fitted to his customers' smartsuits had been things of no great distinction-which meant that only the tiniest fraction of this display could actually have consisted of creatures he'd made and supplied. But this was neither a duplication of nor a tribute to his mundane accomplishments.

It was a mirror of his dreams.

Sara knew that by far the greater part of what survived of the Dragon Man's everyday labours was bound into the real and artificial flesh of his customers, many of whom were long dead, and other miscellaneous living canvases, many of which were long discarded. Most of his accomplishments were lost in the infinite obscurity of the past. What remained was doubtless spectacular, but this was far more than a remainder.

There were shadowbats by the thousand. Most of them were tiny, but some of were them so large that they could have folded themselves around a living person-even an athlete-like a cloak. Some of them were huger still, unwearable by anyone but a giant, designed as if for human beings who were yet to be, but in reality not for human beings at all. These were shadowbats whose only reason for existence was to be be shadowbats, not accessories to other beings' lives and costumes. shadowbats, not accessories to other beings' lives and costumes.

There were shadowbirds and shadowbees, and shadow beings that were no mere mimics, but potential inhabitants of whole shadow worlds-not virtual worlds contained within the illusory gla.s.s of picture windows, but worlds in real s.p.a.ce, like the islands where genetic engineers were trying to recreate all the species lost to extinction during the Crash, or the planets of alien suns which no interstellar probe had yet contrived to reach.

There were creatures made of fire-fiery flies and fiery birds and fiery serpents-which reminded Sara of something Ms. Mapledean had one told her cla.s.s about life being a process of slow combustion, in which the body burned the food it took in as fuel, not merely to provide the energy of movement but the energy of thought and the energy of imagination.

There were other bright creatures too, like the angels of which Frank Warburton had spoken, ent.i.ties not of living fire but of a purer living light.

There were UFOs.

There were Chinese kites.

There were flying fish and flying flowers.

There were even flying pigs.

The display was neither solemn nor entirely serious. It was playful and exuberant. It was hectic, as if with irrepressible laughter.

Suddenly, the jostling of the "old fogies" on the hilltop no longer seemed silly or irreverent. Only a few of them had ever met Frank Warburton, or had even been familiar with his work, but they had been his colleagues, his peers, his fellow tinkerers, his fellow adventurers. They had been the people capable of giving form to the dreams that he had entertained, but to which he had not yet been able to give form himself. They were the people capable of constructing his real memorial, and they had not merely been willing to do that but eager to do it.

There was a sense, Sara knew, in which they were advertising themselves and their profession. There was a sense in which this was all publicity, calculated to generate commercial gain. But that didn't mean that it wasn't a fitting celebration of Frank Warburton's life and career. That didn't mean that it wasn't an appropriate tribute to Frank Warburton's long survival and still-unfulfilled ambitions.

There were dragons, too.

Most of all-because they were so large, so imperious and so magnificent, and because Frank Warburton had, after all, been a Dragon Man among Dragon Men-there were dragons.

Some were red and some were gold. Some were royal blue and some were imperial purple. Some were every color under the sun, not to mention quite a few that defied the sun to illuminate their mystery.

Oh yes, there were dragons a-plenty.

The most remarkable thing of all, however, was not the presence of the dragons, nor their number. It was the quality of their flight.

Sara had thought it remarkable that six shadowbats could form a flock, coordinating their own movements-even when intoxicated, or poisoned-with the movements of their fellows, so that as they ducked and dived and soared and swooped and swerved, looped the loop and curled and whirled themselves into shapes as improbable as their formations, they remained a kind of unit. People, as she had just witnessed, could not organize themselves as economically and as gracefully as that even while they were shuffling about at less than walking pace. Here, though, was a flock whose members must have numbered in the tens of thousands, and whose species must have numbered at least a thousand...and yet they were flocking together together, maintaining a collective ident.i.ty as a cloud of clouds: a supercloud as disciplined in its flight and its momentary metamorphoses as a crystal, despite the fact that it was as energetic as a flame.

There was nothing untidy about the astounding legion, however hectic its movement was. It was more orderly than any flicker-winged flock of solid birds. It was more graceful than any multifinned school of silver fish. It was more shapely than the fire fountain in Blackburn's New Town Square.

At first, the dragons flew above the rest of the vaporous host, organizing themselves into a peculiar hierarchy, at whose summit was a single creature larger and more glorious than all the rest-which Sara recognized immediately as an embodiment of the design which had hung in Frank Warburton's shop window for far longer than she had been alive.

It was not long, however, before the flock of dragons merged with the greater flock, to form a company even greater and far more various than their own.

The light and the darkness that danced around one another in a ceaseless ballet as the creatures of brightness mingled with creatures of shadow seemed perfectly natural. The ensemble was dignified in spite of the rapidity with which its components moved, decorous in spite of their delicacy.

Sara remembered how the shadowbats, disturbed by the nectar of her rose, had become even vaguer than artifice had intended, as if they had been attempting to change into something other than bats. None of the individuals in the cloud that soared and streamed above Frank Warburton's monument was drunk, and none was attempting to become something other than it was, but the whole formation seemed to her to be far more than the sum of its parts, in versatility as well as substance. It was only what it was, and yet it held the promise of mysterious changes, the hope of unpredictable progress and metamorphosis.

She knew that it was only vapor. The entire host had no more ma.s.s than a storm-cloud-but the vapor was almost alive, and no matter how stupid its individual elements might be, the whole had a kind of intelligence. That intelligence was manifest in the way the cloud played so cleverly and so exuberantly with light and color, and Sara had no doubt at all that it was the Dragon Man's intelligence: the intelligence that had made Frank Warburton a Dragon Man.

It was beautiful, and it was unprecedented. There had never been a display like it in the history of humankind. Given the furious pace at which technology continued to advance, there would probably never be another with quite the same balance of naivety and sophistication. So, at least, Sara was eager to believe. And why should she not be eager to believe it, given that she had known the Dragon Man more intimately, on the last day of his life, than anyone else?

Sara remembered what the Dragon Man had said about her being more aware of the ceaselessness of change than most of his clients, and what he had said about knowing how much he himself had changed, and the extent to which he had lost the sense of being his true self. She wanted to believe that if he had been here, he would have been able to recognize his true self in that marvelous flight of angels, bats and dragons, and know that it had not been lost even though he could no longer embody it.

She took particular care to remember the words that Frank Warburton had regretted having spoken-the words that had revealed more of himself than seemed polite at the time. He had confirmed Father Lemuel's judgment that synthetic organs did not have the same capacity for feeling that real ones did, because biotechnology had not yet progressed to the point at which its pract.i.tioners could duplicate the emotional orchestra of hormonal rushes and neural harmonies accurately enough to make the music of real life come out in tune. She wanted to believe that the vast cloud of clouds pirouetting above her head was dancing to the tune of real life, which was coming out absolutely and gloriously right.

It was more illusion than reality, and she knew it, but Sara could see the Dragon Man himself within the cloud, no longer half-dead and half-alive, but complete in life and death alike.

She did not feel in the least ashamed of herself because she could find nothing to say, after three full minutes of the miraculous display, except: "He's here, after all. He is."

She did not feel the need, given that it was so obvious, to add the judgment that the funeral had been anything but pointless.

Nor did she trouble to add the observation that, even though lucky and good would have been entirely the wrong words to use, she was uniquely privileged to be where she was, and who she was, at this particular moment in time.

Afterwards, although it did not seem that an hour had pa.s.sed, the hummingbirds came. There were thousands of roses on display, hundreds of which must have been designed to generate colibri nectar, but more hummingbirds came to visit Sara's rose than any of the others.

She understood the reason why, and did not want to dispute its adequacy.

She was young.

People wanted to look at her, and welcomed an excuse to do so a little less discreetly than they usually did.

It was a temporary thing, she knew. In a year or two, it would pa.s.s. But in the meantime....

She enjoyed every minute, all the more so for knowing that she would be able to renew the sensations, and savor them anew, when she reported to Gennifer everything that she had sensed and felt, within and without.

Mingled with the hummingbirds, always outnumbered but never quite invisible, was a little flock of shadowbats. They moved with more stately precision than the similar flock that had been lured into her bedroom, presumably because they had been given an extra tweak to protect them from the unfortunate side-effects of the tweak that Frank Warburton had improvised. There was, in any case, far too much compet.i.tion for her nectar to allow them any opportunity for intoxication.

Sara counted the shadowbats twice, having expected that there would be six and being mostly surprised to discover that there were only five. Then she worked out why Mike, when he changed his mind, had not asked the manufacturers to replace the whole set. He had planned a small funeral ceremony of his own for the six lost creatures, deliberately refraining from duplicating the one that she had captured and taken to the Dragon Man's shops.

Compared with the death of a man, the loss of six shadowbats was a very tiny matter-but one that still deserved commemoration. When she caught Mike Rawlinson's eye for one more brief moment, before their respective committees of parents hustled them away, Sara knew that, in spite of their extreme youth, she and he both understood very well what the absence of that sixth shadowbat meant.

It meant that no loss of life was too trivial to be mourned, even-perhaps especially-in a world where humans could legitimately nurse the hope that they, or at least their children, might be capable of living forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Brian Stableford was born in Yorkshire in 1948. He taught at the University of Reading for several years, but is now a full-time writer. He has written many science fiction and fantasy novels, including: The Empire of Fear The Empire of Fear, The Werewolves of London The Werewolves of London, Year Zero Year Zero, The Curse of the Coral Bride The Curse of the Coral Bride, and and The Stones of Camelot The Stones of Camelot. Collections of his short stories include: s.e.xual Chemistry: Sardonic Tales of the Genetic Revolution s.e.xual Chemistry: Sardonic Tales of the Genetic Revolution, Designer Genes: Tales of the Biotech Revolution Designer Genes: Tales of the Biotech Revolution, and Sheena and Other Gothic Tales Sheena and Other Gothic Tales. He has written numerous nonfiction books, including Scientific Romance in Britain, 1890-1950 Scientific Romance in Britain, 1890-1950, Glorious Perversity: The Decline and Fall of Literary Decadence Glorious Perversity: The Decline and Fall of Literary Decadence, and Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia. He has contributed hundreds of biographical and critical entries to reference books, including both editions of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and several editions of the library guide, and several editions of the library guide, Anatomy of Wonder Anatomy of Wonder. He has also translated numerous novels from the French language, including several by the feuilletonist Paul Feval. Many of his books are being published by the Borgo Press Imprint of Wildside Press.