The Dragon Man - Brian Stableford [16]
“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,” 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 classroom 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