The Dragon Man Part 8

They were perfectly coordinated, as if they were operating as a practiced team rather than a mere haphazard flock. They never seemed to be in the least danger of colliding, even though their flight was becoming more excited, and their speed was increasing. The scent emitted by the rose was no longer perceptible in her own nostrils; it was vanishing from the air almost as soon as it evaporated.

Were the shadowbats really getting drunk, Sara wondered, or was that merely the best a.n.a.logy she could draw? It wasn't a helpful one, in any case. She had never been drunk herself, and had never seen any of her parents drunk-they were very careful about setting a bad example while they were at home. All she knew about drunkenness was based on TV shows she had seen-mostly comedies, at that. She had no idea what being drunk felt like. She imagined it as a combination of dizziness and pleasurable excitement, a matter of getting carried away carried away.

Sara had only ever been "carried away" by sheer excitement, and she realized as she watched the aerial display that it was something she no longer experienced very frequently. Without being quite aware of it, she had "grown out of" the capacity to laugh until she cried when she was tickled or chased...and it was possible that what the phantoms were experiencing was nothing like that at all. Perhaps it was more like the greed that sometimes inspired her to eat sweet things too quickly...or the sense of triumphant achievement she had felt, all too briefly, the day she had climbed the hometree.

That too, she realized, was something she had not felt for quite a while, although she couldn't believe that it was something people grew out of, the way they lost the knack of being tickled to hysteria.

Perhaps, Sara thought, the effect of the perfume on the shadowbats was more like the drugs she had been warned about in school-but she found it hard to believe that such frail phantoms were capable of hallucination, or being interested in any hallucinations they might chance to experience.

The idea of a shadowbat, or a flock of shadowbats, lying down in a coc.o.o.n so that they could visit a fantasy world or take some kind of training program was absurd enough to bring a smile to Sara's face. But was it really so absurd? If the shadowbats' sensory apparatus was so much simpler than her own, wouldn't that make it easier for them to be fooled by simulatory input?

Perhaps, she dared to think, shadowbats didn't need hoods or coc.o.o.ns, or even picture windows, to look out into alternative worlds. Perhaps they only needed an appropriate scent...perhaps, when they breathed colibri, they were transformed in their own tiny minds into hummingbirds, or dragons, or things of which only bats or phantoms were capable of dreaming....

It was all unbelievable-but Sara felt strangely proud of herself for having been able to imagine it, and wondered if Father Lemuel would be proud of her too, if she told him about it. She had no plans to tell him yet, of course; the sensation of having a real secret, much more personal and profound than the secret of her experiment in dragonflight, was far too precious. In time, though, when Mr. Warburton had found a solution to the puzzle and a means of tackling the problem, it might be enjoyable to talk the whole thing over with Father Lemuel....

Sara suddenly realized that the flight of the shadows was become ever more rapid, and their turns ever more hectic-and that as they gave themselves up to sheer madness, their uncertain shapes were becoming even more uncertain, less obviously bat-like.

It was as if the sublimate creatures were attempting some strange metamorphosis that they were not yet able to contrive; as if they were no longer content to be shadowbats, but wanted to be shadow-caterpillars, or shadow-tadpoles, on their way to becoming shadow-b.u.t.terflies or shadow-frogs.

The limits of absurdity seemed to stretch then, as Sara found it abruptly possible to believe what she had not been able to believe before, to accept as an evident fact what had seemed a ridiculous fancy only a few moments ago.

Now, she was almost ready to be convinced that the vaporous creatures really did nurture a primitive hope that drinking their fill of volatilized colibri might actually turn them into hummingbirds, endowing them with marvelous brightness and color instead of their fugitive mock-darkness. What was actually happening to them, though, was that they were beginning to break up under the strain-to dissipate like curls of smoke.

If they continued, Sara felt sure that their "skins" would disintegrate, and whatever internal organization they had would decay into chaos.

Sara became suddenly anxious. She did not want the shadowbats to come to any harm-and even if they succeeded in re-forming, in transforming themselves into something else, that was surely a far more dangerous business than merely "getting drunk". Her desire to know and understand what was happening was still increasing, but so was her fear that something bad might be happening, and that it would be her fault.

Acting on an urgent impulse, Sara sat up on the bed and swung her legs over the side. Her abrupt movement sent the invaders scattering in every direction.

She leapt to the floor and ran to her cupboard. As soon as the door slid sideways she rummaged among the clutter that had acc.u.mulated on the cupboard's narrow floor, until she found an ancient screw-topped jar in which her younger self-who seemed by now to have been a very different person-had stored her kaleidobubbles.

The gelatin spheres had become sticky with age. When she tried to pour them out they resisted, clinging together in a stubborn adhesive ma.s.s, but Sara poked her forefinger into the jar to break up the ma.s.s, and shook the inverted jar as hard as she could. She persisted until she had dislodged them all, pouring them out into the shower-nook.

When the jar was empty, except for a few smears of translucent color on the inner surface of the clear plastic, she started chasing the shadowbats with the empty jar.

The dark phantoms evaded her amateurish scooping without the slightest difficulty, even though they were still confused and over-excited. They no longer seemed to be disintegrating, now that the flow of nectar had been interrupted, but the perfume of the flower was still diffusing into the air, and Sara had to suppose that the process had only been slowed down.

Realizing that she was going about her task in the wrong way, Sara lay down on the bed again and stretched herself out in a supine position. She lay quite still, and waited for the shadowbats to begin moving more purposefully again.

Gradually, she eased the open neck of the jar closer and closer to the rim of the rose's ring of petals. She only needed to adjust its position two or three times before the momentum of a giddy dive sent one of the shadow-creatures straight into the trap. She had the lid in place within half a second, and screwed down it tight. She jumped down off the bed again, delighted with her success.

The captive shadowbat only needed a couple of minutes to measure out the dimensions of its cell, and to discover that there was no escape therefrom. Then it settled on the gla.s.s, positioned over one of the translucent smears as if it were a paint-daubed image. It did not move again.

The five remaining fliers seemed to realize that something was amiss. They fluttered around the nightlight as if they were taking account of their number and fretting over its inadequacy. Then, very suddenly, they shot out of the window into the night, and were gone.

Sara followed them, but they were invisible in the darkness. She had no idea which way they had gone.

"Is there anyone there?" she called, tentatively. She did not dare to shout, in case her parents heard her-although she realized soon enough that there was little prospect of that, given that the hometree was carefully designed to protect its residents from extraneous and unwelcome noises. She filled her lungs again, ready to repeat the question, but then she thought better of it, and let her breath out silently.

It was too silly. If someone were were there, lurking behind the garden hedge, they would not reply to her call. Nor was there any real reason to expect that anyone there, lurking behind the garden hedge, they would not reply to her call. Nor was there any real reason to expect that anyone would would be there. The shadowbats might have flown for a kilometer or more, from any direction. be there. The shadowbats might have flown for a kilometer or more, from any direction.

She stared out into the darkness for half a minute, pensively weighing the jar in her left hand. Then she closed the window, gently.

She went to her desktop and called up the local directory. When she had found the number she wanted she typed out a text message, taking care to avoid using conventional abbreviations or making any spelling mistakes. MR WARBURTON, the message read, I'VE CAPTURED ONE OF THE DRUNKEN SHADOWBATS. I'LL BRING IT TO YOU IN THE MORNING, SO THAT YOU CAN EXAMINE IT. SARA LINDLEY. After a moment's hesitation, she pressed the SEND b.u.t.ton.

She hesitated for several seconds more, her fingers hovering uncertainly above the keypad as she wondered what to do for the best.

The spirit of far play eventually moved her to log on to the local noticeboard and post a hastily-typed public message, which read: IF 1 OF 6 SHADOWBATS MISSING, DON'T WORRY. IS SAFE. NOT STOLEN. WILL RELEASE, OR TELL U WHERE U CAN COLLECT, SOON AS CHECK OUT ANOMALY IN ITS BEHAVIOUR. She knew that she ought to amend the final sentence in the interests of clarity, but eventually decided that it would serve its purpose. She also thought about signing the message, but decided not to. After all, she didn't know who she was writing to, so why should he-or she-know who the message was coming from?

Satisfied, in the end, that she had done everything she needed to do, for the time being, Sara left the jar on her desk and went back to bed. She carefully smoothed her rose flat so that she could sleep unhindered by any further inconvenience.

CHAPTER XVII.

When Sara got up the next morning and wandered absent-mindedly into the communal dining room she found all of her parents waiting for her-even Father Lemuel. She knew as soon as she stepped through the door that she was in trouble.

"What did I do?" she asked, although she knew well enough that trapping the shadowbat was likely to be the last straw that had broken the proverbial camel's back. She was quick to add: "How did you know? Is my room being monitored? Or are you just keeping track of my mail?"

"The resident AI is programmed to take note of anything...unusual," Father Gustave told her, having the grace to look slightly shamefaced about it.

"We already knew about your visit to the astral tattooist, of course," Mother Maryelle put in.

"How?" Sara waned to know, having decided that she had a right to be annoyed. "Did he tell you-or Ms. Chatrian? What happened to client confidentiality?"

"It wasn't either of them," Father Stephen a.s.sured her. "We didn't need any human informants, although...well, perhaps you didn't realize how much notice people would take of your movements if they saw you without us. Not just people we know, or other parents-everybody."

Sara was speechless, but she knew that her expression must speak volumes.

"It's not that they're spying spying," Mother Verena said, defensively.

"People talk, you see," Father Gustave said, hastening to take up the burden of explanation, "and they need things to talk about. After the weather, politics and the march of technology, children are a favorite topic. Anybody's children."

"It's perfectly understandable," Mother Maryelle added. "Now that people are directly involved in parenting for such a tiny fraction of their adult lifespan, it's only natural that they take a greater interest in children they're only indirectly involved with."

"'Indirectly' meaning any that they see, even on an occasional basis, or any whose existence they know anything at all about," Father Stephen put in, presumably intending to be helpful-although the way that Father Gustave scowled suggested that he wasn't at all grateful for the pedantic definition.

Sara remembered what the Dragon Man had said about it taking a whole city to raise a child nowadays. She realized, belatedly, that he hadn't meant to imply that the child needed the city, but rather that the city needed the child. Ms. Mapledean and Father Lemuel had both taken the trouble to explain to her that the Population Bureau was reluctant to grant child-rearing licenses to more than eight co-parents, partly because larger groups were notoriously p.r.o.ne to premature disintegration and partly because of the supposed limitation of a child's primary-bonding capacity. Until this moment, she had left the fact unconsidered, like the vast majority of the facts her teachers and parents rained ceaselessly down upon her, but now she found herself rudely confronted with one of the more obvious implications of the policy.

"You mean," she said, as the prospect became clear to her for the first time, "that wherever I go, and whatever I do, people won't be content just to watch me go by... they'll report it all back to you."

"It's not a matter of reporting back reporting back," Father Stephen said. "Not in a sneaky way...."

"It's more a matter of wanting to ask questions...," Mother Jolene put in, before she was interrupted in her turn.

"In any case, it's not something to worry about," Mother Quilla took over. "It's discreet, and it won't last forever. In three or four years time-sooner if you grow as fast as I did-you'll be indistinguishable from an adult by sight alone. You'll become far less visible, or at least far less noticeable. You're entering a difficult phase just now. Perhaps we should have warned...."

"Perhaps we should at least have talked to you about it," Mother Verena said, effortlessly taking up the relay baton despite Mother Quilla's obvious reluctance to relinquish it, "but we thought it would make you more self-conscious if it were actually pointed out, so we...."

"None of which is relevant to the matter in hand," Father Gustave broke in, testily. "Which is that you you should be keeping us informed, so we wouldn't have to rely on second hand information." should be keeping us informed, so we wouldn't have to rely on second hand information."

"We gave you every chance to tell us," Father Aubrey pointed out. "We didn't say anything at all yesterday, thinking that you'd probably feel able to tell us everything today, when you'd had a chance to sleep on it...."

"But this is simply too much," Father Stephen said. "You can't go around setting traps for other people's bodywear. It's not even legal, let alone moral."

Sara was still trying to work out who might have said what to whom, and when, but the change of subject forced her to abandon that train of thought and deflect her attention to the question of why, if her parents knew about the captured shadowbat, they hadn't taken the trouble to interfere at the time. If, as Father Gustave said, the hometree's Artificial Intelligence was programmed to take note of anything unusual, it was presumably also programmed only to wake them up in case of emergency. If this didn't qualify as an emergency, at least by the programmed standards of the resident AI, the trouble she was in couldn't be very bad.

"I can explain...," she began-but her parents were too anxious to get their own thoughts on record to allow her to complete the statement. Even though she was used to it, the interruption annoyed her. If her parents weren't even going to listen to her explanation, she thought, what was the point of the hastily-convened meeting? Were they just taking the opportunity to let off steam themselves?

"Actually, Steve," Mother Maryelle said, "we're perfectly ent.i.tled, in law, to capture any stray creature that wanders into our house, and I really don't think that Sara's action can be cla.s.sified as immoral immoral...."

Sara watched the expressions on her other parents' faces change as they realized that Mother Maryelle was playing the lawyer yet again-but she was careful to keep her own face straight.

"This isn't about the legality of catching the shadowbat, Maryelle," Mother Quilla interrupted, recklessly. "It's about trust. It's about Sara keeping us informed of what she's doing...."

"It isn't about that either," Mother Jolene put in. "The real issue, to my mind, is the matter of recklessly posting notices on the public boards...."

"To my mind...," Father Aubrey began-but he didn't have time to finish before Father Gustave used the power of his baritone voice to shout for quiet.

"This is not the way to go about things," Father Gustave said, when he finally had everyone's grudging attention. "Sara, would you like to tell us what's going on?"

It's about time, Sara thought, all apologetic impulses having evaporated like the scent from her rose. "You all seem to know far more about what's going on than I do," she said, not quite succeeding in ridding her tone of sarcasm. "I didn't know that I had to call a house-meeting before leaving the hometree, and I thought you might be pleased that I was using my initiative instead of asking one of you to sort out a problem with a rose that I chose and paid for. It's no big thing. Shadowbats aren't supposed to be attracted by my rose, and they certainly aren't supposed to be getting high on its nectar, so I thought I'd better grab one while I could so that the Drag-I mean, Mr. Warburton-could check it out and report back to the manufacturer. It's not exactly kidnapping, is it?"

She counted five deep frowns, but no one took her to task for her combative att.i.tude.

"No," said Father Gustave, who still had the floor, "it's not kidnapping. I a.s.sume that we can take Maryelle's word that it's not a crime at all, in spite of Steve's anxieties. The whole thing is just a slight failure of diplomacy. Do you know whose shadowbats they are?"

"No," Sara retorted. "Do you?"

"Not yet," Father Gustave admitted. "I dare say that we can find out easily enough. Has the Drag-I mean, Mr. Warburton-replied to your message yet?"

Sara checked her wristpad, then said; "No. There's no response to the message on the board, either. But it's early-and it's Sunday."

"Then you'd better give the jar to me," Father Gustave said. "I'll take it from here."

"It's Sunday," Sara repeated.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Father Gustave demanded. He was obviously making heroic efforts to hold his irritation in check; having seized control of the argument, he was under an obligation to handle it responsibly.

"There's no school today," Sara said. "I can take it to the Dragon Man myself. He'll know what to do with it."

Father Gustave opened his mouth to reply, but was overtaken by a sudden fit of doubt. His eyes flickered from side to side-not so much in search of support, Sara guessed, as to make sure that he still had a license to speak for everyone. The moment he surrendered the conversational initiative, though, he was swamped. "No, you can't," said Mother Quilla and Father Aubrey, in unison, while Father Stephen was saying "I don't think that's a good idea," Mother Jolene "Shouldn't one of us go with you?" and Father Lemuel "Well I'm glad that's settled."

Sara saw Mother Maryelle waiting patiently for the cacophony to decay into muttering chaos, choosing exactly the right moment to raise her own voice above the fading hubbub to say: "Your credit won't stretch to another two-way cab ride to Blackburn, Sara. I'm surprised it stretched to one, after what you paid for that rose."

Sara had momentarily forgotten her budget problems. She had already realized that her newly-granted freedom to handle her own finances had its downside, but she hadn't expected to hit the rocks quite so soon. "These are special circ.u.mstances," she said, rallying her argumentative reserves. "I mean, this is a new technology displaying an unexpected side-effect. I'm the one who discovered it. It could be news. National news, even."

"As we've been trying to explain, Sara," Mother Quilla said, with an affected world-weariness that didn't suit her at all, "everything you do that's at all out of the ordinary is news, at least locally-and not in a good way."

"Not necessarily in a bad way, though," Mother Jolene was quick to put in.

"Exactly," said Sara, seeing an opportunity and moving swiftly to seize it. "Don't you think it would reflect better on you, as parents, if I...."

"Don't you dare take that tone...," Father Aubrey began, at exactly the same time as Mother Quilla said "That's not your...," and Father Stephen said "That's not the point at...."

None of them got to finish, because Father Gustave was lying in wait for another opportunity to play the tyrant; he shouted for quiet again.

"Oh, shut up yourself, Gus," Father Lemuel said, brutally. "She's right, d.a.m.n it. Nothing's likely to win us prizes from the self-appointed jury of our peeping peers that pa.s.ses judgment on our every move, but we can at least try not to look stupid. I'll pay for the cab if Sara wants to take the thing to Frank's shop by herself-the important thing is to get it out of our cabbage-patch and make it someone else's problem. Is everybody okay with that?"

Mother Quilla began to say "I don't think...," but it was her eyes that were flickering from side to side now. The words died on her lips as she found no conspicuous support for a tough line.

"Lem's right," said Mother Verena, although Sara guessed that she said it as much to get in a dig at Father Gustave as for any other reason.

"Well, all right," said Father Aubrey. "Jo has a point when she says that not all news is bad, and Sara has a point about showing initiative. And we did all agree that it was time she took a little responsibility for herself. Let's not get hung up about a cab fare to town. Gus?"

"If you think so," Father Gustave said, stiffly.

"Well," Father Lemuel repeated, with grim determination, "I'm glad that's settled."

"But we still need...," Mother Maryelle began.

"Save it for the regular meeting," Father Lemuel said. "Give my regards to Frank, Sara. Tell him it's been far too long-my fault entirely. I'll drop in on him one of these days, when I'm not too busy."

Sara observed several sneers forming in response to Father Lemuel's remark about being too busy, but all of them were politely suppressed before flowering into expressions of open contempt. "I'll have my breakfast first," she said. "In my room, if that's okay." In the absence of any manifest dispute, she a.s.sumed that she was free to go, and she wasted no time at all in turning on her heel.

While she ate her breakfast she called Gennifer. Their conversation about the total unreasonableness of parents far outlasted the meal, and might have gone on for a great deal longer if Sara's desktop hadn't posted a flag telling her that she had a message from Frank Warburton waiting to be read.

Sara pasted the message into a window and reported its contents to Gennifer. "You shouldn't have done that," she read aloud, "but since you have, you'd better bring it in as soon as you can. Text me an ETA. Give my regards to Lem, Gus and the others and say 'long time no see'. See you soon. Frank Warburton."

"Very Frank," Gennifer observed. "Fancy your Fathers and Mothers knowing a tattooist. If it's been a long time, they must have known him when he really was a tattooist, working on skin instead of smartsuit flesh."

"I don't think they can have known him that that long ago," Sara said, wishing that she'd done some research into the likely sequence of Mr. Warburton's artistic technologies. "Before all this sublimate stuff, obviously-but there must have been lots of other things between that and using needles to drill ink into long ago," Sara said, wishing that she'd done some research into the likely sequence of Mr. Warburton's artistic technologies. "Before all this sublimate stuff, obviously-but there must have been lots of other things between that and using needles to drill ink into naked flesh naked flesh. Smart cellulite, migratory chromocytes, lepidopteran alate scaling...."

"Bioluminescent auras," Gennifer added, not wanting to be left out of the list-making, "metaspectral melanin, dermal ivory inlays...."

Sara knew that Gennifer's suggestions must have been plucked almost at random from ads on the more exotic shopping channels-the ones she and Gennifer supposedly weren't allowed to watch-because that was where she'd borrowed a couple of her examples from, but she daren't challenge Gennifer to tell her what any of the terms meant for fear of instant retaliation.

"I don't have time to gossip, Gen," Sara said, imperiously. "I have important things to do." It seemed like something she had been waiting all her life to say-or, at least, to say with real meaning.

CHAPTER XVIII.