The Dragon Man - Brian Stableford [32]
“Somatic conversion,” Sara put in, to show that no matter how smart her friend might pretend to be, she was the one had the more assured command of the jargon.
“Right,” Gennifer agreed. “But what I mean is, clothing is only one of the things our smartsuits have to be, and not the most important one while we’re growing up—at least the way our parents see it. There’s hygiene and protection and all kinds of other stuff to make sure we and the smartsuits grow properly. Adults don’t grow any more—unless they take up some kind of sport that needs longer legs or whatever—so their smartsuits don’t have so much other stuff to do, and they have metabolic capacity to spare for fancy decoration. We’re sort of half-way between, which is awkward. The opportunities are there, but we have to persuade our parents to let us take them. Have you seen Davy Bennett lately—out of school, I mean, on camera?”
“No,” Sara admitted. She rarely talked to any of her other classmates desktop-to-desktop.
“Well, he’s rigged his tag so that you can get a picture of his new outfit just by clicking. Spiders aren’t my thing at all, and I can’t imagine how he persuaded his parents to let him have them, but it’ll give you some idea of what’s possible.”
“Davy has spiders on his smartsuit?” Sara said, incredulously.
“Shadowspiders. Just an example. Margareta says she’s going to get a pair of doves, but she hasn’t got permission yet. Are any of your mothers into birds? Mother Jenna’s got bluebirds, and Mother Luisa’s thinking about hummingbirds. I told her hummingbirds would be great, but she doesn’t rate my opinion very highly, so maybe I should have said I hated them.”
As it happened, none of Sara’s mothers had yet been caught up by this particular wave of fashion, but she didn’t want to give Gennifer an opportunity to imply that the members of her family were country bumpkins, so she dodged the question.
“Does that mean that your mothers have to eat a lot more?” she said. “I mean, if their shoulder-pads and head-dresses are going to fly around when they’re out and about, they must soak up a lot of energy.”
“They don’t have to eat more unless they want to,” Gennifer said, “but they do have to eat slightly different things. The birds are designed to pick up some of their own nourishment, but I think that’s just an option—a gimmick.”
“You mean they eat flies?”
“I suppose they could,” Gennifer admitted. “Mother Jenna’s bluebirds are vegetarians, though. Hummingbirds live on nectar from flowers, so Mother Luisa asked the last house-meeting about the possibility of re-planting the garden with special roses. Mother Leanne’s all in favor, but Father Guy’s against it because of his herbs.”
“Our garden’s big enough for flowers and herbs, and a lot more besides,” Sara said, automatically taking the opportunity to score a point.
“So you’re always telling me,” Gennifer retorted. “I’ll have to come visit one day, so that I can get lost in it. When you come to see me, we can go to the lake. You haven’t got a lake, have you?”
“We’re not very far from the river,” Sara said, but she knew that it was a weak defense so she quickly changed tack. “Mother Verena wears flowers,” she said. “Only little ones. It’s more for the stem than the blooms, I think—it makes such a lovely pattern as it winds around her body. The flowers are like little blue stars. And she has leaves over her breasts. Mother Quilla and Mother Maryelle have shells, but Mother Jolene doesn’t have anything decorative at all—just her smartsuit, although it has to be a bit thicker in places to provide extra support. In a way, though, that’s more decorative. Mother Maryelle keeps looking at me and dropping hints about shells, but I don’t want shells, certainly not in all the other places Mother Maryelle