The Dragon Man - Brian Stableford [74]
Almost as soon as Sara was safely in her room, Gennifer called, madly impatient to hear “the whole story” of her adventure in the Dragon Man’s lair. It soon became obvious, however, that Gennifer’s idea of “the whole story” was rather less extensive than Sara’s; Gennifer had only the slightest interest in the underlying cause of the shadowbat’s distress, and even less in the Dragon Man’s accounts of the Crash, the Aftermath and the paradox of Achilles’ ship.
“That’s all ancient history,” was Gennifer’s peremptory verdict. “Whose shadowbats are they? Is it anybody we know? From school, I mean.”
Sara had to admit that she didn’t know, and hadn’t tried very hard to find out.
“You really should get your priorities in order,” Gennifer told her. “I’m sure you could have got it out of him if you’d gone about it the right way.”
“It’s not important,” Sara assured her. “Anyway, when the Dragon Man tells him what’s happened, he’ll probably come looking for me. I’ll have to explain why I trapped the shadowbat. I’m sorry, Gen, I really have to do my homework now—dinner will be awkward enough without giving them even more to complain about.”
This prophecy proved to be slightly less safe than it seemed. Only three of her parents put in an appearance in the communal dining-room, so Father Gustave, Mother Maryelle and Mother Quilla were able to take turns to lecture her in an unusually orderly fashion. Fortunately, they didn’t require any elaborate response from her, so it was a relatively simple matter to let it all wash over her, saving her best line for a parting shot.
“It was the right thing to do,” she said over her shoulder, as she returned to her room. “Mr. Warburton said so.”
“Well, maybe it was,” Father Gustave said, lamely, “but you didn’t know that at the time, did you?”
Before she went to the bed, Sara made sure that her bedroom window was closed and locked. She set it to display the star-filled skies of night on the dragonworld where she’d taken her maiden flight, but she didn’t linger there to watch out for the shadows of flying dragons moving amid the moonlit clouds.
She was still restless, but her Internal Technology helped her to calm her mind. She had descended through all the usual phases of relaxation, and had just lapsed into a peaceful oblivion, when she was summoned back by a peculiar noise.
At first she didn’t realize what it was. She wasn’t used to hearing sounds in the night, because the hometree’s walls were smart enough to deaden the rattle of the wind in its own branches and the sounds of traffic on the road. No soundproof wall could have suppressed this racket, though. Small stones were being hurled at her window, one by one at three-second intervals. The impacts made the plastic fabric reverberate like a sullen drum.
Sara lay dazedly in bed, counting the blows, expecting all the while that the house’s resident AI would take whatever action might be necessary to relieve the disturbance. When she had counted seven, though, curiosity took over. She got up, and went to the window.
The dragonworld was perfectly peaceful, but the dragonworld wasn’t really there. It only required a single instruction to make the window revert to transparency.
The dazzling flood of unexpected light made her blink furiously, and she had to step back and rub her eyes before she could look out into the garden. The hometree’s security lights were on, but the resident AI obviously hadn’t yet registered an emergency of sufficient magnitude to warrant waking up her parents. Their windows must all have been tuned to pleasantly dim virtual spaces, so that the glaring light was as invisible to them as it had been to her.
The stone-thrower was shadowed by the garden hedge, and his smartsuit