The Dragon Man - Brian Stableford [87]
While she was a child, Sara had never thought of Ms. Chatrian as anything less than the perfect embodiment of grace, deportment and fashionability, but she was close enough now to detect a certain stiffness of limb and awkwardness of gait that had to be symptoms of ageing, and it was all too obvious that the tailor’s sense of what was in vogue really had fallen behind the times. Sara knew now, because she had checked, that Linda Chatrian was more than two hundred years old—considerably older than any of her parents.
Sara had rejoined her Mothers and Fathers before she finally caught sight of Mike Rawlinson, who was similarly surrounded by his family. Although the two families had met up en masse in virtual space to discuss the stone-throwing incident, they were ostentatiously ignoring one another now—but that calculated ignorance extended as far as giving no sign that anyone in either party noticed the greetings that their children pantomimed to one another.
Ten days earlier, the fact that Sara was able to meet the eyes of an older boy so forthrightly, and exchange conspiratorial grimaces with him, would have seemed highly significant, if not utterly amazing. Now, though, it seemed entirely natural.
There were a dozen other boys close enough not to be obscured by the crowd, whose ages ranged from about twelve to seventeen. Sara knew that every one of them was aware of her presence, and that every single one of them would look longer and harder at her than at any of the other girls within their sight. Ten days earlier, that knowledge would have terrified her—but not now.
“How was the ceremony, Sara?” whispered Mother Verena. As well as the fixed screen on the outer wall of the Hall there was another on the top of the hill on which the memorial stones were ranked, so everyone in the larger crowd must have been able to see the eulogists in close-up and hear every word they had to say—but Sara knew that Mother Verena hadn’t asked the question because she wanted to know what had happened. She had asked the question because she wanted to give Sara the opportunity to give voice to her feelings.
“It was very moving,” Sara lied, as she felt obliged to do.
Linda Chatrian was still close enough to favor her with a sharp glance, but the tailor said nothing—as she, in her turn, doubtless felt obliged to do.
“They’re about to unveil the stone,” said Father Gustave. “What took you so long?”
“No they’re not,” said Father Lemuel. “It’ll take another ten minutes for all the people from the Hall to get into position.”
“The stewards are having a terrible time trying to distribute the newcomers,” Father Aubrey observed.
“I can’t think why they’re being so fussy,” Mother Quilla said. “Why does everything have to be just so?”
“It’s because they’re men,” Mother Jolene said. “Old men. Very hierarchical. Everyone wants the exact spot that was allocated to him. Men at the top of the hill, women at the bottom. The trouble with living so long is that attitudes no longer change at the same pace as technology.”
“They never did, Jo,” said Father Lemuel.
“Well, Lem, the gap’s getting wider every day,” Mother Jolene came back. “Let that be a lesson to you, Sara. You may be living in the twenty-fourth century, but all those old fogies elbowing one another out of the way on the crest of the hill will never get out of the twenty-first, even if they manage to live till the next double-zero year.”
Sara followed the direction of Mother Jolene’s disapproving gaze with her own eyes, to the place where a company of “old fogies” really did seem to be jockeying for position with undue haste and force. She recognized the president of the sublimate engineers’ trade association, who seemed to be trying to restore order. Fortunately, he seemed to be succeeding. Everyone lining the ridge of the sloping garden now seemed to be arranged, more or less, in some sort of pre-planned formation.
“They’re not all old,” Father Stephen