The Dragon Man - Brian Stableford [80]
When Sara finally put the hood aside for the last time there was an almost immediate knock at her door. She guessed that the resident AI had been commanded to notify her parents—or one of them, at least—that she was free. She was expecting one of her Mothers, but it was actually Father Lemuel. He came in and sat down in her armchair, leaving her to remain perched on the swivel-chair at the desk.
“I tried to see Frank,” he told her. “Not possible. Stupid, isn’t it? I haven’t seen him for...I don’t know, twenty years at least, and never even realized we were out of touch. Now....” He didn’t attempt to finish the sentence.
“He’s going to die.” Sara said.
Father Lemuel eyed her warily. “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid he is.”
“He knew that,” Sara said. “He as good as told me, only I wasn’t quick enough on the uptake. Not that he expected it as soon as last night—but soon enough. He asked me to give you his regards, and to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me take the shadowbat to him. For not taking over.”
“I only paid the cab fare,” Father Lemuel told her. “You were the one who insisted.”
“You know what I mean,” she told him. “Mike said they’d be bound to switch him off. Do you know when they’ll do it?”
“Mike?” Father Lemuel queried.
“Rawlinson. Hasn’t Father Aubrey contacted the chairperson of his parental committee yet?”
“Oh, that Mike,” Father Lemuel said, with a faint grin. “You know, Sara, there’s only one thing in the world worse than a meeting of eight disgruntled parents, and that’s a meeting of two sets of eight disgruntled parents. I’d give anything to miss that one, but I suppose I have to put in an appearance.”
“If you didn’t,” Sara pointed out, “our side would be outnumbered. When will they do it, Father Lemuel—turn Mr. Warburton’s life-support off, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” Father Lemuel told her. “They’ll want to make sure that they’ve explored every possibility. Dying’s such a rare event these days that the doctors are reluctant to let anyone go—even people as old as Frank.”
“They can’t replace his brain,” Sara told him. “He told me that. Did he ever mention Achilles’ ship to you?”
Father Lemuel shook his had, but said: “I know the story, though. Actually, his brain’s in good shape, all things considered. Twenty-second-century neuronal renewal technologies might have been primitive by today’s standards, but Frank always had a good brain—never a trace of senility. It was his body let him down, then and now. A person isn’t just a brain, you know—even leaving the brain out of it, you can’t just keep switching bits of body like the spars and rigging of Achilles’ ship. A whole person is a lot more than the sum of his parts.”
“He tried to explain that to me,” Sara admitted. “He couldn’t quite find words that he was sure I’d understand.”
“I know the problem,” Father Lemuel said. “I’m only a hundred and forty-nine, but it still seems a long time since I was a child. Modern parenting requires us to build some strange and difficult bridges.”
“I think I understand, though,” Sara said. “He was glad to have the chance to do one more thing, solve one last puzzle....”
“Slay one last dragon,” Father Lemuel supplied.
“No,” Sara said. “He was a dragon-maker, not a dragon-slayer.”
“Right,” said Father Lemuel, accepting the correction. “He was an artist. Nobody ever reckoned him a great artist, because he was content to stay in his own corner doing his own thing for year after year after year, never clamoring for attention or attracting much...but no one who didn’t live through the Crash and the Aftermath has any right to criticize a man who knew the real value of simply being alive. There’s no one else like him you know. There are older people, even in Lancashire—maybe hundreds in the country, tens of thousands in the world—but they’ll all be gone soon enough, and every one of them is unique. They’re all dragon people, in a way: fabulous creatures, born