The Dragon Man - Brian Stableford [52]
The four hummingbirds followed her, fluttering around her head as if in panic. It was obvious that that none of them was ever going to be able to find time and space enough to hover before her rose and sip its lovely nectar, unless she intervened in their contest. For ten or fifteen paces she refused to do that, intending to hurry as quickly as she could to the door of the Dragon Man’s shop—but then she remembered the pang of regret that had afflicted her when she heard Linda Chatrian’s door close behind her.
What a fool the watching crowds would think her, to have fitted a rose with colibri perfume, and then to think that questing hummingbirds were a nuisance to be avoided.
She slowed down as she crossed the square, until she finally came to a halt beside the fire fountain. There were parents with little children ringed around it, posed in attitudes of dutiful awe—but the parents were already glancing surreptitiously in Sara’s direction, and some few of the children had already tired of the rain of shimmering sparks.
When she first reached out with her hands Sara felt very awkward, and was afraid of seeming as awkward as she felt, but the hummingbirds’ tiny brains were programmed to expect and respect human guidance. She had no difficulty at all in waving three of the birds away, so that they paused in patient expectation while the fourth took up a position at the mouth of her rose, and politely extended its beak. Then, as easily as if she were a practiced expert—although the skill was all to the birds’ credit—she let the others descend, one by one, to take their turns.
Because she was in a place where everyone routinely stopped to stand and stare, there seemed nothing particularly unusual in the fact that she was surrounded by curious gazes.
Why shouldn’t they watch? she said to herself, silently. Why shouldn’t they enjoy it, given that it’s there to be enjoyed?
A few cool sparks from the over-energetic fire-fountain drifted sideways in the breeze, falling upon and around her, extinguished as soon as they made contact with the flesh of her smartsuit. She couldn’t tell whether the adults watching her were admiring her flower or secretly condemning her as a pathetic show-off who ought to be old enough by now to be less avid for adult attention, but she was confident that the rapt attention of the little children was honest. After all, she had once been a child herself
Ten minutes later, the hummingbirds were sated and Sara had more than enough courage in reserve to step up to the Dragon Man’s shadowed door. She passed through it as soon as it opened to her touch.
CHAPTER XV
Unlike Ms. Chatrian, the sublimate technologist manned his own reception desk—which was situated in a room as different from Ms. Chatrian’s tastefully sterile, user-friendly, pastel-shaded antechamber as anyone could imagine.
The Dragon Man’s shop was dingy and dusty, and the walls were covered in dead pictures rather than window-screens. So far as Sara could tell, the only screen in the room was the one on the desk on which the proprietor was currently resting the absurdly boot-like soles of his smartsuit. The lamp on his desk was placed so that it illuminated the chair on which clients might sit; his own face was in shadow.
Sara knew that the Dragon Man looked older than anyone else she had ever seen in the flesh, but, even though she was standing much closer to him now than she had been when they had exchanged a single speculative glance four years before, she couldn’t she him clearly enough to make out the details of his remarkable face. What she could see clearly, though, was that there wasn’t anything remotely like the image of a dragon on his delicately-patterned smartsuit. His nickname suddenly seemed woefully ill-fitting. There didn’t seem to be as much of him within his extra skin as there was of most people, and Sara was slightly embarrassed to be reminded of Father Stephen