The Dragon Man - Brian Stableford [56]
“No,” Sara said, not quite sure that it was true but wanting it to be. “I was startled, that’s all. You didn’t have to turn away like that. You could have said hello.”
“That’s good,” he said. “I wish I had said hello, now. Better late than never. Did you tell your parents that you were coming to see me?”
“I didn’t know myself,” she said. “Actually, I didn’t even tell them I was coming to see Ms. Chatrian. I have my own credit account now, so I didn’t have to.”
“They’ll haul you up in front of a committee of enquiry as soon as you get home, regardless,” the Dragon Man observed. “If there’s one thing parents hate, it’s not being kept informed.... I can even remember that, you see, even though it’s been more than a hundred years since I was a parent, and more than two hundred since...well, it’s probably best not go into that. You can tell them all that I’ve promised to look into your little mystery, and that I’ll do my very best to solve the problem. Just between you and me, it might not be easy, but I’ll try. I have to respect client confidentiality, you understand, but I’ll certainly try to figure out what’s happened, and what can be done about it. Will you trust me to take care of it?”
“I suppose so,” Sara said, lamely. She waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t. He was as still as a statue now, and she had the feeling that he wanted her to go.
She stood up, a little unsteadily. He remained silent.
“Well,” she said, “I suppose...goodbye, then. She turned towards the door, but she moved slowly, in case he called her back. He didn’t get up.
It wasn’t until the door slid open that he spoke again. “If ever you need a new suit, Miss Lindley,” the seated Dragon Man said, his tone barely above a whisper, “you might want to look further afield than Linda Chatrian. She’s a little behind the times. But the rose does suit you. You made a good choice.”
Sara paused on the threshold to look back over her shoulder. “Thanks” she said—but Frank Warburton was no longer looking in her direction. His face was still invisible, but his head had slumped forward, so that he seemed to be staring at the keypad on his desk.
It didn’t occur to her until the door had closed behind her that perhaps Frank Warburton hadn’t been quite ready to say goodbye either, but that he simply hadn’t felt capable of continuing the conversation as comfortably as he wished. For a moment or two she considered going back into the shop to ask if he was all right, but she guessed readily enough that if he really had wanted her to go, he certainly wouldn’t want her to return.
Sara realized, a trifle belatedly, that she had been telling the truth, even though politeness would have compelled her to lie. She hadn’t been frightened of the Dragon Man—not this time, at any rate. She hadn’t been frightened at all. She didn’t know him well enough to know whether she liked him, but she felt—however absurdly—that they had something in common. She and he were both exceptional. She and he were so exceptional that everybody knew their names, and recognized them whenever and wherever they happened to be.
She resolved to talk to the Dragon Man about that, when—not if—she saw him again.
Given that he was so much older than she was, she thought, he might be able to give her one or two pointers on being exceptional that even Father Lemuel hadn’t yet had occasion to master.
CHAPTER XVI
That night, Sara left her window wide open again. It was simple curiosity—or so she told herself. She wanted to make sure that what she’d told the tailor and the sublimate technologist was really true: that the shadowbats were indeed intoxicating themselves on the evaporating nectar of her rose. She also wanted to take a longer look at the shadowbats themselves, in order to appreciate the ingenuity and the workmanship that had gone into the new kind of life.
She didn’t have long to wait, and felt a thrill of pleasure when she saw them emerge from the night. They knew the way, now; they knew she had a rose, and what it could do for them.
There were six of them,