The Dragon Man - Brian Stableford [23]
Sara nodded.
“Some of the younger ones think I’m not taking this parenting business as seriously as I should,” Father Lemuel observed. “They think I’m only doing it because it’s one more thing to tick off on my career list. They think that I think that the fact that I put in more money than anyone else entitles me to take things easy and leave the real parenting work to them. Well, they’re wrong. What I really think is that I’m a good deal older and wiser than they are, which might make me arrogant, but doesn’t necessarily make the judgment incorrect. Most of them will be applying for another license at some time in the future—maybe more than one, if things go well for the world and space colonization actually gets off the ground—but the chances are that you’re my one and only. I take it seriously, even if you think I’m just a boring old virtuality-addict.”
“I don’t,” Sara said. Sensing an opportunity, she said; “Can I ask you a favor, Father Lemuel?”
“Why?” he asked. “Do you think I owe you one?”
“No,” she said. “But I don’t think you think you owe me a no, if you see what I mean.”
“I think so,” Father Lemuel admitted, with a wry smile.
“I want to take a special state-of-the-art dragon ride, but I don’t have any credit...and my hood isn’t....” She trailed off, not wanting to say “good enough” in case she sounded horribly ungrateful.
“Why do you want to do it?” Father Lemuel wanted to know.
Sara didn’t know what sort of answer would be most acceptable, so it didn’t seem to be a good time to be economical with her explanation. “I don’t know,” she said. “But ever since I went to see the fire fountain when I was six, and saw the dragon in Mr. Warburton’s window, I’ve been...I mean, I know they were never real, like lions and camels, or even dinosaurs, but there’s something...well, I don’t suppose anyone ever went to Mr. Warburton and said draw a camel on my back, or even a Tyrannosaurus rex. But they did want dragons. Golden dragons with silver bellies. And it must have really hurt, to have needles pumping that much ink into their actual skin for hours on end. And he put one in his window, didn’t he? Out of all the things he’d ever drilled into anyone’s flesh, he chose to put the dragon in his window. So there must be something special about dragons...even if they’re all fantasy, all pretend. I want to find out what it is. I’ve ridden one in my hood, but that’s only pretend—I can float like that in school. I want to try the new Internal Technology that works in collaboration with a cocoon.”
Father Lemuel frowned when she mentioned the IT, but he didn’t react the way Father Gustave or Mother Maryelle would have, with automatic revulsion. Perhaps, Sara thought, he knew more about that sort of technology than she had assumed.
Father Lemuel wasn’t in any hurry to give her an answer, but he obviously didn’t want to keep her in suspense either. “It can probably be arranged, if it’s safe,” he said. “Let me look into it.”
“Thank you,” Sara said, warmly. She leapt off the swing and gave him a hug.
“But next time you take it into your head to do something silly,” he said. “I think you owe me a few moments’ thought and a no, don’t you?”
“I’ll try to remember,” she promised, that being all she could actually promise with any real hope of keeping her word.
Apparently, it was enough.
CHAPTER VII
Father Lemuel filled the syringe very carefully, then pointed the needle upwards and squeezed the plunger to expel