The Dragon Man - Brian Stableford [43]
“Photosynthesize,” Sara supplied, automatically.
Father Gustave had told her, almost with nostalgia, that when he had been Sara’s age almost everyone had worn their smartsuits black because the suits themselves had been able to fix solar energy just as plants did—or, to be strictly accurate, just as SAP-systems did. SAP—which stood for Solid Artificial Photosynthesis—was even more efficient than Mother Nature’s chlorophyll, because it absorbed all the light falling upon it instead of reflecting the green part of the spectrum back again. Father Gustave had been trying to imply that he and Father Stephen had good reasons for continuing to wear black, but Sara knew that modern smartsuits were too complicated to get all the energy they needed from sunlight, even in places where it rained a lot less often than it did in Blackburn. Even so, she knew that he did have a point. All smartsuits might be parasitic nowadays, but some were undoubtedly more parasitic than others, and the energy supporting her suit’s further decoration would have to come out of her own metabolism.
Gennifer had used the phrase “eating for two” in order to echo another taboo of pre-Crash times, before artificial wombs had replaced the inefficient ones provided by Mother Nature, but even its literal meaning was not completely free from macabre undertones. The larger Sara’s new implant grew—whether it put out more flowers or not—the more support it would need. Quantity wouldn’t be a problem, but Linda Chatrian had warned her that she would have to make sure that the rose’s additional dietary requirements were met if she wanted the flower to reach it full potential. The kinds of whole-diet manna with which the hometree’s pantry was abundantly stocked had no special supplements for the manufacture of nectar or the pigments in rose petals, and the supposed luxuries in which her various parents routinely indulged were similarly underequipped. Sara was already paying more attention to the fine details of her diet than she ever had before.
“You’re right, of course,” she said, to Gennifer. “It’s a big responsibility. But I’m ready for it. So are you. Your parents will understand that—they’re a lot more fashion-conscious than mine.”
“I hope so,” Gennifer said, with a sigh. “I certainly hope so.”
CHAPTER XII
It would have been nice, Sara thought, once her own birthday party was over, if there had been a particular day on which her flower was due to open out—a sort of birthday of its own, which could be celebrated by a suitable invented ritual. Her party had been as much of a success as could be expected, given that all eight of her parents had been involved from start to finish. The virtual world in which it had been held had not only been selected but custom-designed by Father Lemuel, so it had been carefully tailored to her interests, but the great majority of the participants—parents as well as guests—had been using their hoods, so it had been little more than a light show. There had been dragons—not to mention roses and hummingbirds—but there had not been any real intensity, nor any particular sense of companionship...and nothing special, in any intimately personal sense.
Unfortunately, the flower’s expansion was too gradual to permit the identification of any unique moment of achievement. Thirteen days elapsed between the bud’s first tentative opening and the full display of the flower, which still had to acquire its final conformation and polish—a process which took a further week.
Sara’s eagerness to see the process through to its conclusion sometimes seemed almost unbearable. She was so obviously impatient that her edginess brought forth a veritable flood of thorn jokes, not just from Father Aubrey but from everyone else—except Father Lemuel, who had not been seen in the communal area of the house since graciously accepting everyone’s thanks for arranging her birthday extravaganza. He attended two house-meetings on camera, even though he would only have had to walk thirty metres to come to the