The Dragon Man - Brian Stableford [38]
Sara put on a show of listening politely, carefully keeping her face straight. She didn’t mind them arguing about the fine detail of Mother Verena’s apologetic case. The more they bickered about matters of mere detail, she figured, the more likely it was that they’d forget to dispute the basic principle. She watched the arguments fly back and forth, as if they were moves in some ultra-complicated virtual game. There had been a time when the combative aspect of house-meetings had alarmed her, when she had wondered whether her parents might split up—as so many households seemed to do—but the anxiety had passed. Then, for a while, she had tried hard to be amused, in order to avoid being totally bored. Now, she sometimes found it interesting, if only as an insight into the vast differences of temperament, sensibility and opinion manifest in the little community that had come together purely for the purpose of raising her from birth to early adulthood.
Now, Sara was sensitive to the wonder of the fact that these eight strikingly contrasted people had formed an alliance, which consciously embodied a wide spectrum of jobs, ages and interests, in order that she should have a rich mixture of formative influences. In a way, the fact that they were always arguing was a great compliment to her importance in their lives—although, in another way, it just reflected the fact that they were all just a little to pig-headed for their own good.
In the end, a typically clumsy motion was finally put to the vote. It proposed that Sara should be allowed to take a robocab into Blackburn unescorted, in order to commission the family’s tailor, Linda Chatrian, to augment her smartsuit with a discreet floral augmentation.
The result was a tie, four against four. Father Lemuel, Father Stephen, Mother Quilla and Mother Verena voted in favor, the others against. In theory, the casting vote was the prerogative of the chairperson—which was Father Aubrey, who had voted against—but Sara had a plan ready for this eventuality too.
“I think I ought to have a vote,” she said, raising her voice just a little, so as to be clearly hard without sounding shrill. “I’ll be fourteen by the time we meet again, and I think I ought to have a vote now.”
Not unnaturally, her parents split four against four on the matter of whether to let Sara vote—and this time, Father Lemuel pointed out that it would be unjust to let Father Aubrey have a casting vote on that issue, because it was Father Aubrey’s right to the casting vote that was in question.
Before Father Aubrey had time to point out that letting Sara decide would simply invert the problem by conceding the issue. Father Lemuel added: “The fact that we’re taking a vote at all is a commitment to democracy, so why not extend that commitment to Sara? It’s her life we’re talking about, and her smartsuit. Does anyone here really think that she’s too stupid to be allowed a voice in her own affairs?”
Two years before, or even one, someone would have been sure to bring up the matter of her climbing the hometree as an example of Sara’s irresponsibility, but time had healed that particular wound. It turned out that nobody wanted to take on Father Lemuel in an argument of this delicate kind.
“Well,” said Father Lemuel, “that’s settled. Everyone agreed?”
Everyone nodded, no one except Father Gustave with any manifest reluctance.
“Good,” said Father Lemuel. “By the way, Sara, what kind of flower did you have in mind?” He smiled mischievously as he said it, and Sara smiled back, because they both knew that the opposition had missed that particular trick.
“Wait and see,” Sara said, smugly. “You’ll love it—but you’ll have to wait and see.”
And so it was that Sara called her own robocab the following Tuesday, charging it to her own account, and rode in solitary splendor into the centre of Blackburn, where she presented herself at the establishment of Linda Chatrian, Couturier.
CHAPTER XI
Sara had made an appointment in advance, and she was dead on time, so she was whisked through