The Dragon Man Part 2

Sara observed, not without a certain disturbance of her own, that the discussion had now escalated-or perhaps deteriorated-into a fourteen-bang row.

"All right," Mother Maryelle said, when she had won silence for a second time. From now on, it's one at a time. If we can't manage it without help, I'll get the snowing globe."

The snowing globe was a pre-Crash antique which Father Stephen had given Mother Maryelle for her hundredth birthday-having acquired it, of course, at a junk swap in Old Manchester. Whenever her turn to be chairperson came around, Mother Maryelle controlled disputes that got out of hand by stating the three fundamental rules that the person holding the snowing globe was the only one who could speak, that the person holding the snowing globe had the sole authority to decide who to pa.s.s it on to when he or she had finished, and that anyone who ever broke the snowing globe would forfeit a month's wages to the household pool.

After ten seconds of silence, Mother Maryelle said. "Right. Lem, would you care to explain why you can't agree that we're all disturbed by Sara's antics?"

"Perfectly natural thing to do," Father Lemuel said, dismissively. "Had to happen sooner or later. Glad she's got the guts. Lot of fuss about nothing."

Mother Maryelle already had the claw-hammer raised, ready to bring it down if anyone spoke before she gave them leave. "Jo," she said.

"I really do think it's a matter of trust," Mother Jolene said. "Sara did something we told her not to do, and she carried on doing it while we were telling her to stop. She obviously has no faith in our judgment and our reasoning-and that's serious."

Sara knew even before Mother Maryelle's gaze had swept around the whole table that it was going to flick back to her.

"I trusted myself," she said, as firmly as she could. "I trusted myself not to fall-and once I was in the crown, even though I was a little bit scared, it would have been harder to fall than hang on. It was easy. I just wanted to do it-to have a look around. If you want to punish me, that's okay."

"Gus," said Mother Maryelle, quickly.

"It was dangerous, Sara," Father Gustave said, soberly. "It frightened all of us as well as you-except Lem, apparently. It made us anxious, not just about the possibility that you might fall and hurt herself, which thankfully didn't happen, but about this whole project, this whole enterprise."

"That's a bit strong!" Mother Jolene put in, before Mother Maryelle's glare silenced her.

"Is it?" Father Gustave went on. "I'm well over a hundred years old now, Jo, and this is the first time I've ever been a parent. We might all have another chance some day, if Internal Technology continues to improve, but the longer we live, the harder it will become to get licenses, so everyone here has to work on the a.s.sumption that this is our one and only chance to raise a child. Even if it weren't, the prospect of failure would be too much to bear. We'll only be living together for twenty or twenty-five years, but if we do the job right, we'll be parents until we die, no matter how widely we scatter when Sara goes her own way. There's a lot at stake here-so we're ent.i.tled to be frightened. We're ent.i.tled to be terrified by the possibility of failure, of disaster, even if Lem thinks that makes us over-protective. We don't know how long Sara might live; if you trust the ads the IT people put out, she might live to be a thousand; if not-and it's going take a long time before anyone can be sure-she might only have three or four hundred years...barring accidents. But I don't think Sara understands, as yet, what kind of risks she's running when she invites the possibility of accidents. I think we need to try harder to make it clear to her. That's what we need to do-what we need to decide."

Ordinarily, Sara would have switched off half way through a speech as long as that, but the day's excitement was making her unusually alert, thus helping to maintain her concentration. "Lem," said Mother Maryelle, swiftly. "Have you got any objection to that that?"

"Of course I have," Father Lemuel said. "We can't let our fears shape Sara's life-no, cancel that, it's precisely because we can that we have to take care. We shouldn't shouldn't let our fears shape Sara's life. Of course we're scared of being shown up as lousy parents. Even I'd have to live far longer with the shame of having messed it up than I could bear. But it's not her business to calm our fears-it's our business to calm hers, which we won't do by coming down on her hard if she ever steps out of line. She's only a child, granted-but she's not an idiot. She knows she took a risk when she climbed up to the roof. If she'd fallen, she'd have hurt herself. But she watches TV. She rides robocabs. She knows full well that there are people who take much greater risks for the thrill of it, day by day. She knows that there are people sitting at this table who've been bikers, flyers, skiers...I don't suppose she has any real notion of what each of us did for a living before we applied for our license, or what those of us who are still working do, but if she did she'd know that at least half of us have taken measurable risks on an everyday basis in the past, and that at least two of us are still taking measurable risks even now. Okay, we're a boring bunch, on the whole-not a single extreme sportsperson among us-but not one of us would ever have refused on our own behalf the kind of risk that Sara took today, let our fears shape Sara's life. Of course we're scared of being shown up as lousy parents. Even I'd have to live far longer with the shame of having messed it up than I could bear. But it's not her business to calm our fears-it's our business to calm hers, which we won't do by coming down on her hard if she ever steps out of line. She's only a child, granted-but she's not an idiot. She knows she took a risk when she climbed up to the roof. If she'd fallen, she'd have hurt herself. But she watches TV. She rides robocabs. She knows full well that there are people who take much greater risks for the thrill of it, day by day. She knows that there are people sitting at this table who've been bikers, flyers, skiers...I don't suppose she has any real notion of what each of us did for a living before we applied for our license, or what those of us who are still working do, but if she did she'd know that at least half of us have taken measurable risks on an everyday basis in the past, and that at least two of us are still taking measurable risks even now. Okay, we're a boring bunch, on the whole-not a single extreme sportsperson among us-but not one of us would ever have refused on our own behalf the kind of risk that Sara took today, in the grounds of her own home, while half a dozen of her parents watched in the grounds of her own home, while half a dozen of her parents watched. So I say that if this is a test of some kind, Sara's pa.s.sed it; we're the ones who are in danger of failing. If we over-react, we fail. Why not just tell her that she scared us-which she must have realized by now-and ask her to be careful, please, to think hard before she scares us like that again?"

Sara was tempted to applaud, but that would have been one impertinence too many. Mother Maryelle had the claw-hammer raised and ready, but this time she had to bring it down to stop three simultaneous protests. "This is obviously going to be harder than we thought," she said, ominously. "Quilla."

Sara immediately guessed what would happen next. She understood that Mother Maryelle's comment had been a hint, which Mother Quilla was expected to take up. Mother Quilla did, immediately proposing a motion that the meeting should be held "in camera"-which meant, in simple terms, that Sara should be sent to bed while her parents got on with the serious business of tearing into one another without her inhibiting presence.

Father Stephen seconded the motion-but Father Lemuel was, for once, unstoppable. "No," he said. "That's the cowards' way out. She's old enough to hear us, now."

For two or three minutes, Sara was immensely pleased by that compliment, and by the fact that in the hectic discussion that followed the original motion was eventually forgotten, and never even put to the vote. After two or three hours, however, she realized that no privilege came without penalties, and that that the privilege of listening to her parents argue about what they should and shouldn't say and do in front of her-especially while she was alert to every word-was a very dubious one indeed.

Eventually, Sara decided that Father Lemuel hadn't said the half of it when he'd observed that they were a boring bunch on the whole on the whole. Individually, there were only one or two who could have bored for England, but collectively....

The meeting went on for a very very long time, and got nowhere. By the time Sara did get to her room, free to collapse on her bed, she felt that she had been more thoroughly and more imaginatively punished for her reckless adventure than she could ever have imagined possible. But that too, she eventually realized, was a far-from-insignificant milestone in her increasingly complicated life. long time, and got nowhere. By the time Sara did get to her room, free to collapse on her bed, she felt that she had been more thoroughly and more imaginatively punished for her reckless adventure than she could ever have imagined possible. But that too, she eventually realized, was a far-from-insignificant milestone in her increasingly complicated life.

CHAPTER V.

Although no punishment had actually been agreed by the committee of her parents once Father Lemuel had sown the seeds of deep dissent, Sara still expected to be put under house arrest for at least a month after the hometree-climbing incident. She was somewhat surprised, therefore, to be invited to accompany Father Stephen and Mother Quilla on a junkie expedition to Old Manchester on the following Sunday. It wasn't until she mentioned the fact to Gennifer during Friday's school break that the reason became clear to her.

"It's not a treat," Gennifer told her. "It's what everybody's parents always do. If the whole lot of them can't stop arguing among themselves long enough to tell you off they delegate someone-or some two-to whisk you off somewhere quiet where the rest of them can't get in the way, so that they can give you a good talking to."

"They could do that in my room," Sara objected, even though what Gennifer had said had a suspicious ring of truth about it. "They often come in one at a time for little chats-except for Father Lemuel."

"It's not the same," Gennifer told her, shaking her head to emphasize the point. "Mine always do the most serious tellings off outside the house, on neutral ground. Davy said the same when I mentioned it to him, and Luke and Margareta confirmed it. I think it must be in the parents' instruction pack."

"Oh," Sara said. She considered the implications of this statement for a few moments before saying: "Well, at least I get a trip to Old Manchester out of it."

"I've never been there," Gennifer admitted. "Is it nice?"

"It's not nice nice," Sara said, smiling wryly at the thought. "But it is interesting. People come to the junk swaps from all over the country, and the ruins are...well, I'm not sure what they are, but they're not like Blackburn, or anything else around here. Father Gustave says they've been allowed to rot for far too long, and it's about time the reconstruction crews got busy, but Father Stephen says that the junkies need at least another fifty years to sort through the rubble if we're to save the Legacy of the Lost World."

"You're lucky to be near enough to go," Gennifer said. "We live in a town, but we're further away from civilization than you are."

"You can look at Old Manchester any time you want," Sara pointed out. You can set your bedroom window to look out on it. You can probably watch me at the junk swap if you want-I'll wave to a flying eye if I see one hovering. I wouldn't call it civilization, though. It's mostly just a mess. Anyway, Father Gustave says that civilization was what they had before the Crash-what caused the Crash. He says what we have now ought to have a new name."

Gennifer shrugged her shoulders, having no interest at all in Father Gustave's opinion on such abstruse matters, but she didn't have time to change the subject because break was over and their hoods had automatically tuned into the virtual cla.s.sroom again-and not for anything as relaxing as a history lesson. Sara found elementary biochemistry extremely hard going, although she knew it had to be done. It was, after all, the stuff of life itself.

Gennifer turned out to be right about Father Stephen and Mother Quilla having been delegated to have a serious word with Sara about the climbing incident, but Sara was glad to discover that they were in no hurry to get on with it. Indeed, when they all climbed into the robocab clutching their lunchboxes and bags of junk, Father Stephen and Mother Quilla seemed even more enthusiastic than Sara to stare out of the window and pretend to be interested in the scenery. It wasn't until they were on the Old Roman Road that either of them took the opportunity to speak.

"This road is two thousand years old," Mother Quilla told her. "Well, not the road, but the route it follows. It's a lot straighter than many that were built after it."

"I know," Sara said. "I've been on it before."

"I only had six parents myself," Mother Quilla went on, without the least hint of a mental gear-change. "Father Stephen had four. Father Lemuel had to make do with two, just like the days before the Crash."

"Not exactly like," Father Stephen pointed out. "He wasn't biologically related to them-and his mother certainly didn't have to give birth to him."

"Details", said Mother Quilla, dismissively. "The point is, there were only two of them. Not four, or six... and certainly not eight. Two's a pair, eight's a committee. Have you ever seen a picture of a camel, Sara?"

"Yes," said Sara.

"Well, before they became extinct, people used to say that a camel was a horse designed by a committee. They didn't say how many people there were on the committee, but if it wasn't eight it might have been. The point I'm trying to make is that it's difficult enough for two people to agree, or compromise, it's more than twice as difficult for four, and more than twice as difficult as that for eight. There are people who think that eight people is too many to parent a child, and there's a real possibility that the Population Bureau will change policy if things don't seem to be going very well. Everyone's on trial, you see-the whole system as well as individual households. But if the new Internal Technologies do work as well as the manufacturers say, and the human lifespan really will extend to a thousand years as from today or tomorrow...well, you can do arithmetic. If anyone is ever to have the chance again of parenting more than one child-and if they don't, then how will they benefit from the practice?-they're going to have to form even bigger households than ours. So...."

"I only climbed the hometree," Sara pointed out.

"Yes, I know," said Mother Quilla. "It's not the climbing we're worried about-not any more. It's not being able to decide how to cope with it."

"I only wanted to see what I could see," Sara said, defensively. "I promise I won't do it again."

"It's not that, Sara," Father Stephen chipped in. "The point is, it won't be the last time that you do something that worries us-and in a way, it would be a great pity if it were. If you only ever did what we told you, you wouldn't be able to develop the independence you'll need to organize your own life when you go your own way. We just want you to understand what happened the other night. We feel that we let you down, you see, by not being able to form a united front and give you clear guidance. It couldn't be good for you to see us fall out like that."

"Oh," said Sara, unable to think of anything else to say.

"But it's probably inevitable," Mother Quilla said, taking up the thread again. "If eight people could agree about everything, we wouldn't need democracy. If eight people had ever been able to agree about anything really important, Old Manchester would never have been built, let alone ruined."

"It wasn't bombed," Sara pointed out, figuring that she needed to say something to demonstrate that she was following the argument. "The people had to move out to be nearer the facfarms when the petrol ran out. Not like London, or Jerusalem."

"It wasn't quite that simple," Father Stephen said, "but that doesn't matter. The point is that it's not unusual for eight people not to be able to agree. It's unusual when they do. Not that anyone thinks you should have carried on climbing the hometree when we told you to stop-except perhaps Lem, who'd always rather be in a minority than a majority if he possibly can, and would probably like you to grow up the same way."

"Which will be your decision," Mother Quilla put in. "Not now, but some day. What we're trying to say is that what happened on Wednesday night is normal, not something for you to worry about."

"I wasn't," Sara said, truthfully.

"Good," said Father Stephen, sitting back in his seat to signify that the conversation was over, for the moment-which was perhaps as well, because the robocab had drawn to a halt on the edge of St Anne's Square, where hundreds of junkies had set out their blankets full of petty treasures salvaged from anywhere and everywhere in the ruins of the pre-Crash world. From now on, Sara knew, Father Stephen would be in a world of his own: the world of the collector, the searcher for curious things whose value their present owners did not fully appreciate.

"You will stay with me, won't you?" Mother Quilla said, anxiously, as they got out of the cab. "You won't go off on your own?"

"No, I won't," Sara said, meekly, feeling that she owed Mother Quilla at least one promise, and maybe as much as a whole week of good behavior. In any case, the kind of crowd that was thronging around them now both was far too intimidating and far too vigilant for her to risk getting too far away from Mother Quilla's side. She knew only too well that if the impression got around that she were lost, there would be a great many more than eight people fussing around her furiously, until she was safely un-lost again.

She had to turn away, though, when a cloud of dust suddenly blew into her eyes. It had been whipped up by four bikes that had just roared past along the edge of the square. The riders-all male, she a.s.sumed, although it was impossible to tell-were decked out in all their finery, but Old Manchester wasn't the best place to show off peac.o.c.k feathers and tiger-striped fur, because they always picked up a grayish patina of powdered concrete. The ancient city was being slowly ground down by the scourge of the westerly wind and the rainstorms it carried in from the Irish Sea. The dirt on the ground was thick and murky, having as much red brick and ground gla.s.s in it as concrete residues-but whenever a few sunny days allowed it to dry out it was the tiny particles of concrete dust that rose into the air like a miasma as the pa.s.sage of pedestrians and vehicles disturbed its rest.

When she had rubbed her weeping eyes clear, Sara saw that a second cab in Blackburn's blue-and-silver livery had drawn up behind the one in which she had travelled. It was just disgorging its lone pa.s.senger.

Sara didn't expect for an instant that she would recognize the pa.s.senger, even though the cab must have kept close company with their own for almost the whole of its southward journey, but nor did she expect to be so astonished by the sight of him.

The man who got out of the other cab was almost as unfashionably tall as Father Stephen, and even thinner. Like Father Stephen, he had darkened the color of his smartsuit almost to black for outdoor wear, and there were hundreds of other people in the square whose dress was equally sober-but the resemblance ended at the neatly-shaped collar. Like Father Stephen and almost everyone else in the square, the newcomer had politely left his face exposed to public view, the smartsuit's overlay remaining quite transparent...but Sara had never seen a face like his before.

There seemed to be hardly any natural flesh lying upon the bones of the skull, and what there was bare hardly any resemblance to the soft contours of conventional adult appearance. It had a slight quasi-metallic sheen, which made it seem more like the skin of a lizard than a man...or like the polished plastic face of an android robot.

Although Father Lemuel was fifty-six years older than Father Stephen, and nearly a hundred years older than Mother Jolene, no one but a doctor or a master tailor could have read the difference in their features; whatever signs of aging Father Lemuel's flesh was prey to, his smartsuit cancelled them out. This man was different. This man's face was afflicted with all manner of stigmata, for which his smartsuit could not compensate, and which it could not conceal. Something terrible must have happened to him, Sara thought; it was as if he had been so badly burned in a fire that the even cleverest biotechnicians had been unable to repair the scars.

While Sara stared at him, he did not see her at first. He was looking in another direction. Then, as he began to turn his head to scan the crowd, he caught sight of her. He looked straight at her, and met her eyes. His expression changed, although it was not until some time afterwards that Sara, replaying the scene in her memory realized why. He had seen the horror on her face.

Oddly enough, Sara had not actually been conscious of feeling horror-she had interpreted her own reaction as surprise-but her face had shown it anyway. The man had been concerned, anxious to rea.s.sure her-but no sooner had he raised his arm slightly, and taken half a step in her direction, than he changed his mind. Abruptly, he turned away, thus hiding his face, and marched off into the crowded marketplace.

At the time it seemed rather rude; Sara did not realize for several minutes that he had done it for her sake, because he had thought it the simplest and easiest way to set her mind at rest.

"Who was that?" she whispered, as the man with the terrible face hurried away, clutching a rucksack twice the size and weight of Father Stephen's.

Mother Quilla followed the direction of her gaze easily enough.

"Nothing to worry about," Mother Quilla said. "It's only Frank Warburton. They call him the Dragon Man."

The image of the shop window in the Cloistered Facade of New Town Square surged out of Sara's memory with an uncanny brilliance, perfectly fresh, in spite of all the time that had elapsed since she had gone to see the fire fountain.

She had always a.s.sumed, without even knowing that she was making an a.s.sumption, that the Dragon Man had been called the Dragon Man because his shop had a dragon in the window. It had never occurred to her, and nothing anyone had ever said to her had carried the least suggestion of it, that the Dragon Man might be some kind of dragon himself.

"What's wrong with him?" Sara demanded.

"He's very old," Mother Quilla said, in what seemed to Sara to be a remarkably off-hand manner. "He was quite old-by the standards of his time, that is-when the first Internal Technologies came on to the market, and the preservative measures he took then weren't as effective as the ones that came later. He's not the oldest person in the world, by any means, but...well, you don't get many people his age turning up to junk swaps. Everybody in the north-west knows him. He's been around all our lives. I suppose it is a bit of a shock when you see him for the first time, though. There's nothing to be frightened of. Lem knows him from way back-Gustave too, I think. Well, know know might be putting it a bit strongly. They were acquainted, maybe did some skintech business. He's into sublimate technology now. An example to us all-in the sense that it's good to know that you can still keep up with the times, even if you're two hundred and fifty years old." might be putting it a bit strongly. They were acquainted, maybe did some skintech business. He's into sublimate technology now. An example to us all-in the sense that it's good to know that you can still keep up with the times, even if you're two hundred and fifty years old."

"Two hundred and fifty?" Sara echoed, wondering why the number seemed so much larger than one hundred and fifty, which was Father Lemuel's age, give or take a few years. A quick calculation a.s.sured her that even two hundred and fifty wasn't old enough to remember the world before the Crash; it seemed just as remarkable, though, that Frank Warburton must have been born during during the Crash, into a world in mid-collapse. the Crash, into a world in mid-collapse.

Frank Warburton, Sara realized, must not only have had to make do with two parents, or even one, but must actually have been born from his mother's own womb. In terms of human evolution, he was practically a dinosaur.

Or, at least, a Dragon Man: something rare and strange.

"He used to be a tattoo artist," Mother Quilla added, as if the thought had only just resurfaced in her mind. "He's probably here hunting for obsolete equipment. Electric needles, that sort of thing."

The way she p.r.o.nounced the words told Sara that Mother Quilla hadn't the slightest idea what kind of equipment Frank Warburton had used in the long-gone days when he was a tattooist, even though she must have looked into the window of his shop a dozen or a hundred times.

Most of the people at the junk swap, Sara knew, would be trading ancient communications technology: primitive computers and mobile phones, sound systems and TVs. The currency of junk swap culture wasn't invisibly inscribed in smartcards and hologram-bubbles, but it consisted very largely of plastic wafers and discs-every obsolete means of data-storage that had ever been invented. Such wares were exchanged even by the minority of traders who had come to trade jewelry and toys, pottery and gla.s.sware, paintings and snowing globes, although none of them would ever have admitted that they were compromising the etiquette of barter by introducing any kind of "money". According to Mother Quilla, though, the Dragon Man was different. Even here, he was an anachronism, an outsider, an exotic specimen. He might not be the only collector of tattooing technology in England, or even in Lancashire, but could there possibly be another who had ever used used that technology in his work...or in his art? Could there possibly be another who was so fully ent.i.tled to style himself a Preserver of the Legacy of the Lost World? that technology in his work...or in his art? Could there possibly be another who was so fully ent.i.tled to style himself a Preserver of the Legacy of the Lost World?

"Come on," said Mother Quilla, taking Sara's hand and drawing her gently away from the spot to which she had become rooted. "He's not that unusual. You must have seen people as old as him in virtual s.p.a.ce."

It wasn't until Mother Quilla said it that Sara realized that she had not. She had certainly seen people from the old world-even the world before the Crash-but she had never seen them as she had just seen Frank Warburton, still carrying the damage inflicted on his flesh before the biotechnologists found ways to repair all wounds and set aside all signs of aging.

In virtual s.p.a.ce, it was said, you could see everything. All the world was there, and all the world's accessible history, and imaginary worlds by the thousand as well...but that didn't mean that if you took the obvious paths through the Global Village you would be certain to see everything it contained. Some things went unheeded, even when they weren't hidden. That seemed, for a moment or two, to be an important revelation-but then Sara and Mother Quilla lost themselves in the crowd, and in the strange simmering excitement of the possibility of making discoveries.

CHAPTER VI.

The first effect of Sara's unexpected encounter with the Dragon Man was to renew her interest in dragons-an inspiration that took hold of her while she was still in Old Manchester. She used up every sc.r.a.p of her junk h.o.a.rd to acquire three more figurines and an old flag depicting a red dragon on a green-and-white background.

When she returned home-after another long lecture from Father Stephen and Mother Quilla about the importance of family life-she dusted off her entire collection of models and repositioned them on her shelves. That evening, she went back to her desktop to discover what reference-texts that had previously seemed "too old" for her had to say about the subject, but rapidly tired of their tedious commentaries on the different kinds of dragon favored by various ancient cultures and the special significance of dragons in Chinese tradition. She was, however, drawn to a number of advertis.e.m.e.nts on one of the shopping channels, which offered "dragon experiences".

Sara already knew that there were numerous Fantasyworlds populated wholly or partly by dragons. She had looked out into several of them from her bedroom window. She had even entered one or two of them by means of her hood, which had placed her within the virtual worlds in question, allowing her to "ride" dragons as they flew through their virtual native skies. She had not found such experiences very satisfactory, because they had been far too obviously artificial. The "dragon experiences" that had now caught her eye boasted of a far greater degree of realism, whether one entered the imaginary worlds in question as a dragonrider or as a dragon. The ads promised that "you'll really believe that you're there"-and Sara couldn't help wondering whether they might be able to deliver.

The snag was that the "dragon experiences" in question needed not one but two supportive technologies. They required a coc.o.o.n capable of producing the sensations of touch and smell that a mere hood could not provide, and they required an injection of special nan.o.bots whose purpose was to enhance such sensations from within.

Father Lemuel owned a state-of-the-art coc.o.o.n, which he was occasionally prepared to let Sara use for educational purposes. The nan.o.bots were another matter entirely. So far as Sara knew, none of her parents was a habitual user of "entertainment IT," and it was not the kind of thing of which they usually approved. When the price of the bots was added to the Fantasyworld's access charge, the total was the kind of sum that could make Mother Maryelle roll her eyes in horror.

Unfortunately, Sara had no credit of her own with which to make direct purchases in the virtual world. When she became a teenager, an account would doubtless be set up for her, but there would be little point in asking for one now, even if she had not rendered herself open to an automatic refusal by climbing the hometree less than a week before. If she wanted to ride a dragon, or to be a dragon for a while, she would have to ask one or all her parents to fund the trip-and it was a lot to ask, even if she could convince them that the experience had real educational value.

There seemed little point in raising the matter at a house meeting, where it would only provide yet another issue about which her parents could argue. Father Lemuel was the only one who possessed a coc.o.o.n's whose inner lining could interact with her smartsuit cleverly enough to simulate the physical sensations required by the "dragon experience", and he also seemed to be the parent with the most money, so the sensible thing to do was to approach him privately. That wouldn't be easy, given that Father Lemuel spent so much of his time in the coc.o.o.n that he was rarely around to answer requests, but it was certainly possible. He was not a man who welcomed interruption, so it would be necessary to wait for the right moment, and to make the approach in the right way, but Sara was convinced that it could be done.

Fortunately, there seemed to be an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Sara was intrigued by dragons because she was intrigued by the Dragon Man, and-as more than one of her parents had pointed out to her-Father Lemuel knew the Dragon Man. At least, Father Lemuel had known the Dragon Man in some previous era of history, long before Father Lemuel had come together with her other parents to form the household in which she was now being brought up.

Sara knew that there was no need for Father Lemuel to emerge from his beloved coc.o.o.n to eat, excrete or exercise, but she also knew that he was not a man to ignore good medical advice. Even though people came to no particular harm if they remained in virtual s.p.a.ce for weeks on end, popular opinion judged that it was healthier for the mind and body alike to spend time in the real world at regular intervals. Father Lemuel's excursions into reality were unpredictable, except for house meetings, and often occurred while Sara was at school, but she was confident that an opportunity for private conversation would present itself eventually, and she was prepared to be patient.

As it happened, patience wasn't required. Father Lemuel was as enthusiastic as all her other parents to follow in the footsteps of Father Stephen and Mother Quilla by taking her aside for a quiet chat. She didn't have to lie in wait for him-he came to her, while she was playing in the garden on Thursday evening, ostentatiously keeping a generous distance between herself and the hometree's wall. Mother Verena was weeding the vegetable patch and Father Aubrey was grooming his herbs, but they were both out of earshot from the swing on which Sara was sitting, rocking gently back and forth.

"Would you like a push?" Father Lemuel asked.

"No, that's all right," she said. "I can manage." She felt that she was now too old to require any a.s.sistance, or to take pleasure in such simple things.

"Did you enjoy yourself at the junk swap last Sunday?"

"I made some good swaps, but I'll need to find some new junk for the next one. Father Stephen did well, but he didn't get as excited as he sometimes does. Mother Quilla looked around, but she didn't swap very much."

"Quilla doesn't have quite the same att.i.tude as Steve," Father Lemuel observed. "Her heart's not in it."