that compliment, and by the fact that in the hectic discussion that followed the original motion was eventually forgotten, and never even put to the vote. After two or three hours, however, she realized that no privilege came without penalties, and that that the privilege of listening to her parents argue about what they should and shouldn’t say and do in front of her—especially while she was alert to every word—was a very dubious one indeed.
Eventually, Sara decided that Father Lemuel hadn’t said the half of it when he’d observed that they were a boring bunch on the whole. Individually, there were only one or two who could have bored for England, but collectively.…
The meeting went on for a very long time, and got nowhere. By the time Sara did get to her room, free to collapse on her bed, she felt that she had been more thoroughly and more imaginatively punished for her reckless adventure than she could ever have imagined possible. But that too, she eventually realized, was a far-from-insignificant milestone in her increasingly complicated life.
CHAPTER V
Although no punishment had actually been agreed by the committee of her parents once Father Lemuel had sown the seeds of deep dissent, Sara still expected to be put under house arrest for at least a month after the hometree-climbing incident. She was somewhat surprised, therefore, to be invited to accompany Father Stephen and Mother Quilla on a junkie expedition to Old Manchester on the following Sunday. It wasn’t until she mentioned the fact to Gennifer during Friday’s school break that the reason became clear to her.
“It’s not a treat,” Gennifer told her. “It’s what everybody’s parents always do. If the whole lot of them can’t stop arguing among themselves long enough to tell you off they delegate someone—or some two—to whisk you off somewhere quiet where the rest of them can’t get in the way, so that they can give you a good talking to.”
“They could do that in my room,” Sara objected, even though what Gennifer had said had a suspicious ring of truth about it. “They often come in one at a time for little chats—except for Father Lemuel.”
“It’s not the same,” Gennifer told her, shaking her head to emphasize the point. “Mine always do the most serious tellings off outside the house, on neutral ground. Davy said the same when I mentioned it to him, and Luke and Margareta confirmed it. I think it must be in the parents’ instruction pack.”
“Oh,” Sara said. She considered the implications of this statement for a few moments before saying: “Well, at least I get a trip to Old Manchester out of it.”
“I’ve never been there,” Gennifer admitted. “Is it nice?”
“It’s not nice,” Sara said, smiling wryly at the thought. “But it is interesting. People come to the junk swaps from all over the country, and the ruins are…well, I’m not sure what they are, but they’re not like Blackburn, or anything else around here. Father Gustave says they’ve been allowed to rot for far too long, and it’s about time the reconstruction crews got busy, but Father Stephen says that the junkies need at least another fifty years to sort through the rubble if we’re to save the Legacy of the Lost World.”
“You’re lucky to be near enough to go,” Gennifer said. “We live in a town, but we’re further away from civilization than you are.”
“You can look at Old Manchester any time you want,” Sara pointed out. You can set your bedroom window to look out on it. You can probably watch me at the junk swap if you want—I’ll wave to a flying eye if I see one hovering. I wouldn’t call it civilization, though. It’s mostly just a mess. Anyway, Father Gustave says that civilization was what they had before the Crash—what caused the Crash. He says what we have now ought to have a new name.”
Gennifer shrugged her shoulders, having no interest at all in Father Gustave’s opinion on such abstruse matters, but she didn’t have time to change the subject because break was over and their hoods had automatically tuned into the virtual classroom again—and not for anything as relaxing as a history lesson. Sara found elementary biochemistry extremely hard going, although she knew it had to be done. It was, after all, the stuff of life itself.
Gennifer turned out to be right about Father Stephen and Mother Quilla having been delegated to have a serious word with Sara about the climbing incident, but Sara was glad to discover that they were in no hurry to get on with it. Indeed, when they all climbed into the robocab clutching their lunchboxes and bags of junk, Father Stephen and Mother Quilla seemed even more enthusiastic than Sara to stare out of the window and pretend to be interested in the scenery. It wasn’t until they were on the Old Roman Road that either of them took the opportunity to speak.
“This road is two thousand years old,” Mother Quilla told her. “Well, not the road, but the route it follows. It’s a lot straighter than many that were built after it.”
“I know,” Sara said. “I’ve been on it before.”
“I only had six parents myself,” Mother Quilla went on, without the least hint of a mental gear-change. “Father Stephen had four. Father Lemuel had to make do with two, just like the days before the Crash.”
“Not exactly like,” Father Stephen pointed out. “He wasn’t biologically related to them—and his mother certainly didn’t have to give birth to him.”
“Details”, said Mother Quilla, dismissively. “The point is, there were only two of them. Not four, or six… and certainly not eight. Two’s a pair, eight’s a committee. Have you ever seen a picture of a camel, Sara?”
“Yes,” said Sara.
“Well, before they became extinct, people used to say that a camel was a horse designed by a committee. They didn’t say how many people there were on the committee, but if it wasn’t eight it might have been. The point I’m trying to make is that it’s difficult enough for two people to agree, or compromise, it’s more than twice as difficult for four, and more than twice as difficult as that for eight. There are people who think that eight people is too many to parent a child, and there’s a real possibility that the Population Bureau will change policy if things don’t seem to be going very well. Everyone’s on trial, you see—the whole system as well as individual households. But if the new Internal Technologies do work as well as the manufacturers say, and the human lifespan really will extend to a thousand years as from today or tomorrow…well, you can do arithmetic. If anyone is ever to have the chance again of parenting more than one child—and if they don’t, then how will they benefit from the practice?—they’re going to have to form even bigger households than ours. So.…”
“I only climbed the hometree,” Sara pointed out.
“Yes, I know,” said Mother Quilla. “It’s not the climbing we’re worried about—not any more. It’s not being able to decide how to cope with it.”
“I only wanted to see what I could see,” Sara said, defensively. “I promise I won’t do it again.”
“It’s not that, Sara,” Father Stephen chipped in. “The point is, it won’t be the last time that you do something that worries us—and in a way, it would be a great pity if it were. If you only ever did what we told you, you wouldn’t be able to develop the independence you’ll need to organize your own life when you go your own way. We just want you to understand what happened the other night. We feel that we let you down, you see, by not being able to form a united front and give you clear guidance. It couldn’t be good for you to see us fall out like that.”
“Oh,” said Sara, unable to think of anything else to say.
