Heris Serrano

by Elizabeth Moon

  "Yes—it really does look like a horse." Of course, the simulator for a cruiser really did look like a cruiser, and the simulator for a Station tug really did look like a Station tug. That's what simulators were supposed to do, but maybe Cecelia didn't know that.

  "Like any horse," Cecelia said, and into the helmet appeared a dizzying array of horse necks and ears: black, brown, white, gray, short, long, thick, thin, with and without manes. Heris blinked.

  "I can see that." But after all, how hard could it be to change colors and lengths of neck? It wasn't like going from, say, the bridge of a flagship like Descant to the bridge of a tug, or a shuttle. All horses were basically alike, large smelly four-legged mammals that would carry you around if you had no better transportation. The visual settled back to the original neck and ears—light brownish yellow.

  "Now—you're going to reverse." Heris expected to halt and back up, but reverse in this case meant making an egg-shaped turn and beginning to circle in the opposite direction, once more facing forward. Different terminology: she filed it away. Next time she would be properly braced for the turn, rather than the halt.

  By the end of that first hour, she had walked virtual circles in both directions, halted, reversed, and even done enough trotting to make her thighs ache. She remembered this from her Academy days. There, too, they had walked and trotted back and forth until their legs hurt. It seemed pointless, but harmless, and it might even be good exercise. When she lifted off the helmet, Cecelia smiled up at her.

  "And did you find it as bad as you expected?"

  "No . . . but is that all there is?"

  Cecelia's grin might have warned her, she thought later. "Not at all—I go faster."

  "You . . . race?"

  "Not racing. Eventing. Do you know what that is?"

  Heris racked her memory, and came up with nothing. Event—had to be a sporting event of some kind, she presumed. But what?

  "Would you like to see?" Cecelia asked.

  "Yes. Of course." Anything her employer cared about that much ought to be important to her.

  She had not expected anything like the cube Cecelia showed her, and came up from it breathless. "You—did that? That was you on that yellow horse?"

  "Chestnut. Yes. That was my last championship ride."

  "But those . . . those—obstacles?—were so big. And the horse was running so fast."

  Cecelia grinned at her, clearly delighted at her surprise. "I thought you didn't understand. That's what's different about this simulator. You can do all that on it . . . well, all but falling in the actual water, or getting stepped on by the actual horse."

  "You mean I could learn to do that—to jump over things like that?"

  "Probably not, but you could come close." Cecelia extracted the first cube and fed in another. "This is what fox hunting is like—in fact, this is a cube I made three years ago."

  "You made—?"

  "Well, I used to be under contract with Yohsi Sports. They'd mount the sim-cam in my helmet, and I wore the wires as well. . . ."

  Heris felt that she'd fallen into another layer of mystery. What, she wondered, was "wearing the wires" and what did it have to do with a sports network? But she was tired of asking questions that must sound stupid, so she simply nodded. This time the cube was not of Cecelia riding, but from the rider's viewpoint. . . . She saw the green grass blur between the horse's ears, saw a stone wall approaching far too fast . . . and then it was left behind, and another appeared. Little brown and black and white things were running ahead, yelping, and other horses and riders were all around.

  "Those are the foxes you're chasing?" she asked finally, as field and wall followed wall and field, apparently without end. There were variations, as some fields were grassy and others muddy, and some walls were taller or had ditches on one side, but it seemed fairly monotonous. Not nearly as interesting as the varied challenges of the cross-country. Cecelia choked, then laughed until she was breathless.

  "Those are hounds! The fox is ahead of the dogs; the dogs find the scent and trail the fox, and the horses follow the hounds." Then she quit laughing. "I'm sorry. It's not fair, if you've never been exposed to it, but I thought everyone knew about foxes and hounds."

  "No," Heris said, between gritted teeth. Some of us, she wanted to say, had better things to do with our time. Some of us were off fighting wars so that people like you could bounce around making entertainment cubes for each other. But that was not entirely fair and she knew it. It probably did take skill to ride like that, although what the use of that skill was, once you'd gained it, she still could not figure out.

  "Here." Cecelia handed her yet another cube. "This is the text of an old book on the subject, and since it's one of the few left, you might want to look at it. Bunny's designed his entire hunt around it, even though we know that it predates the twentieth century, Old Earth, and things must have changed afterwards."

  Heris looked at the cube file labelled "Surtees" with suspicion. Apparently she would be expected to watch it on her own time. Historical nonsense about horses struck her as even more useless than current nonsense about horses.

  "And to be fair, I think it's time I schedule my first lesson in shipboard knowledge, or whatever you want to call it. Do you have time for a student later today?"

  Cecelia was, after all, her employer, and she was making an effort to share an enthusiasm. Heris thought of all the things she'd rather do, but nodded. "Of course. When would you like to start?"

  "Well . . . after lunch?"

  "Fine." Food always came first. But then, it should.

  "You could eat with me," Cecelia said, "and give me a head start. I don't even know what you want me to learn."

  Meals with the owner. Heris started to grumble internally, then remembered that she'd already had meals with the owner . . . and it hadn't been that bad. "Thank you," she said. "I am at your service."

  * * *

  Heris had no equivalent of the riding simulator to help Cecelia, but she used the next best: the computer's three-dimensional visuals.

  "This is a very nice hull," she said. Always start with the positive. "You've got a fair balance of capacity and speed—"

  "But my captains always said it was a slow old barge, compared to other ships," Cecelia said. "A luxury yacht can't be expected to compete—"

  "You and I both know your former captains had other reasons," Heris said. "It may be a luxury yacht, but we use a very similar hull for—" She stopped herself in time from saying for what, exactly, and managed to finish. "For missions that require a fair turn of speed. And you've got the right power ratio for it; whoever designed this adaptation chose well. Now—let me highlight each system in color, and you can begin to learn how it works."

  Cecelia, Heris found, was an apt pupil. She had a surprising ability to grasp 3-D structures, and spotted several features Heris had meant to mention before she could bring them up.

  "Yes—you do have waste space there; that's a design compromise, but it's not a bad one. Look at the alternatives. If you ran the coolant this way—see—you get this undesirable cluster of conduits here—"

  "Oh . . . and that's supposed to be at a constant temperature—"

  "Yes. Now, let's add the electricals."

  They both lost track of time, and Cecelia's deskunit finally beeped with a reminder about dinner. She looked surprised. "I didn't—this isn't really dull at all. I could learn this."

  "So you could. I'm glad I didn't bore you." Heris stood, and stretched. She would need a hot bath, to get the kinks out this time. "I'll be going—I've got some crew business to take care of."

  "Well . . . thank you. Tomorrow, then?"

  "I'll look forward to it," Heris said, hoping that could be taken for both sessions, though she was not in fact looking forward to more riding. But fair was fair, and Cecelia was as diligent a pupil as she could wish.

  After a few days, Heris found herself enjoying the riding instruction more than she'd expected. The soreness
wore off; she had good natural balance, and a lot of experience with simulators. It was less monotonous than the usual exercise apparatus in the crew gym, or swimming against the current in the pool. And she could not have asked for a more attentive owner. Cecelia had her own way of thinking about the various systems, relating them more often to equestrian matters than Heris thought necessary, but if she could understand better that way, why not? At least she was learning, paying attention . . . and in the future that might save her life.

  Still, Heris had not forgotten the need for emergency drills. She herself gave a training session to the house staff and a separate one to Cecelia. Cecelia suggested letting Bates hand out the assignments to the young people, and Heris agreed. She had managed to avoid young Ronnie successfully so far.

  That first unannounced shipwide drill would have made a good comedy cube, Heris thought later. She had entered the specs into the main computer the night before, using an event function that kept the time from her as well. It should have been simple: a single small fire, in one of the fire-prone areas. But very little went as planned. The alarm went off at 0400, ship's time. Heris, fairly sure what it was, nonetheless responded as she would to any emergency. Those crew members she thought of as the best arrived at their emergency stations within the time limit; the others straggled in late, in one case three minutes late. ("I was in the head," mumbled the guilty party. "Havin' a bit of a problem, I was.")

  Cecelia logged in within the limit, as did Bates and the cook (who, spotting the faked "fire," promptly put an upturned garbage container on it: the right decision). Four of the young people sauntered in to their assigned stations late (but flustered) and two did not appear at all.

  "They have to be somewhere," Cecelia said, when Heris told her.

  "Oh, they are. They're in the number five storage bay, ignoring the whole thing."

  "But they can't—who is it?"

  "Ronnie and George," Heris said, having no more patience with them. "Since you gave them their assignments, via Bates—"

  "I'll be glad to ream them out, but are you sure they heard the alarm in there?"

  "All compartments have a bell. No, they're hiding out, for purposes of their own. One thing I could do is put a scare into them. They think this is just a stupid drill . . . but they don't know what the supposed emergency is. If I dump power in there . . . take off the AG, or lose a little pressure . . ."

  "Do it," Cecelia said. Red patches marred her cheeks again. Heris thought to herself that one of the advantages of darker skin was that blushes didn't show. Much. "Do you have sensors in there?"

  "Oh, yes." Heris called up the compartment specs. "You have a pretty fair internal security system, probably to let your staff monitor offship loading . . . see?" There were Ronnie and George, looking stubborn, hunched over a hard copy of something. She did not wait to hear what they were saying, but her fingers flicked over the screen controls. The young men suddenly stopped talking, and stared at each other.

  "She wouldn't!" George said in a tinny voice.

  "Why's he sound like that?"

  "Air pressure," Heris said. "Their ears just popped, I'll bet." Her fingers moved again, and both of them looked pale and ill at ease. "You'd better go," Heris said to Cecelia. "You want to be properly angry and upset, and you don't want to know what happened to them . . . not until they tell you. I won't hurt them."

  "I know that," Cecelia said, but she left reluctantly.

  * * *

  "If you get into the computer, then you can pull drills on her," George said. "She won't know—" He lounged against a burlap sack marked "Fertile seeds: contains mercury: do not use for food."

  "Neither will we," Ronnie said. "I don't want to be up all night every night."

  "You don't have to be. That's the beauty of it. You just set them up, but cut our bells out of it."

  "She'll know who did it," Ronnie said. "I still think I should start with the internal monitors. She's spending a lot of time with Aunt Cecelia now; she's bound to say something I can use." They had a hard copy of the communications board specs, left in an unsecured file from one of Cecelia's training sessions. Getting into the secured files would be harder. Ronnie had the feeling that Captain damn-her-backbone Serrano would not leave her files unsecured.

  "Yes, but what can she do? You're the owner's nephew—she can hardly throw you out in the void."

  "Maybe." Ronnie stared at the specs, trying to remember all that stuff he had had in class. This little squiggle was supposed to mean something about the way that channel and this other channel interacted . . . wasn't it? He put his thumb firmly on the line that came from Cecelia's sitting room, and a finger on the one that came from the gym. He really needed a tap in both. If only Skunkcat had been along. . . . Scatty was the best for this sort of thing.

  "Here's the captain's direct line to the bridge," George said, trying to be helpful. George had good ideas, but always managed to get the wrong slant on them. Ronnie did not want to interfere with the captain's communication to the bridge; he wanted them to know how ineffectual she was going to be once he figured out how to sabotage her.

  Suddenly his ears popped, then popped again. He saw from George's face that the same unsettling shudder was going through his stomach, too. George said something; he paid no attention. Lower air pressure . . . shifts in the artificial gravity . . . could it have been a real emergency? He was suddenly sweaty, and as suddenly cold, the sweat drying on him. No. It had taken too long. That bitch of a captain was doing something to him, doing it on purpose.

  "Out!" he said, across the middle of something George was trying to say. "Before the pressure locks engage."

  But they had. He could not wrestle the hatch open against the safety locks; he would not call for help. His stomach protested, as another shift of AG squashed him, then released . . . and the air pressure dropped again, to another painful pop of his ears.

  George looked green. "I . . . I'm going to—"

  "Not in variable G—hold it, George." There was nothing to use for a spew-bag. Every storage container in there—bags, boxes, tubes—had a lock-down seal on it. A surge of AG crushed him to the deck, then let up slowly. Air pressure returned; his ears popped just as many times on the way back to ship normal. His stomach tried to crawl out his mouth; George looked as bad as he felt, but had managed not to spew. He swallowed the vile taste in his mouth and rolled over onto his back. He had a sudden pounding headache.

  Something banged on the closed hatch. "Anyone inside?"

  George croaked, and the hatch opened. A crewman, someone Ronnie did not recognize, in full emergency gear. "My—you weren't in here for the drill, were you?" Without awaiting the obvious answer, the man went on, "It's not anyone's assigned station—you're lucky I found you. We're doing a pressure check on all compartments—"

  "Just get us out of here," Ronnie said, staggering to his feet. "That miserable captain—"

  "Wasn't her fault," the crewman said, as if surprised at his words. "It's a computer-generated emergency; they all are, you know. Didn't you get your handouts?"

  "Yes," George said. "We got our handouts. Thank you. Just let me pass, please." He shoved past and shambled down the passage to the nearest toilet, where Ronnie could hear him being very thoroughly sick.

  Ronnie himself hoped to sneak back to his own stateroom, but in the lounge he found a very angry Aunt Cecelia. She said all the things he expected, and didn't want to hear, and he managed not to listen. She had said them all before, and so had others, and it was not really his fault anyway. It was that captain. That arrogant, stiff-necked, conniving bitch of a captain, and he was going to get even with her. If Aunt Cecelia didn't want to see his face for two days, that was fine. He could eat in his room; he would be glad to eat in his room. All the more time to figure out how to do what he was going to do. Still, an attempt at patching things up never hurt. He did his best at a contrite apology, but she turned away, ignoring him. Ignoring him. No one ignored him.

 
* * *

  By the time he reappeared in the dining room, several days later, to all appearances chastened and determined to be a good boy, Ronnie had figured it out. At least the beginning of it. It had been easy, using the specs he had, to get a tap into his aunt's sitting room. And into the gym. He hadn't yet dared try the captain's cabin, but he was hearing a lot as it was. That fool captain actually liked his ridiculous aunt, he'd discovered. Enjoyed the riding lessons, enjoyed explaining to Cecelia how her ship worked, enjoyed the relaxed conversations in the evenings, when they explored each others' backgrounds.

  A lot of it bored him silly: talk about books he'd never read, and art he'd never seen, and music he avoided. (Opera! He had liked the opera singer's body, and the competition with the prince, but not the music she sang onstage. It was hard to believe even someone like his aunt actually liked all that screeching.) No juicy gossip, no political arguments—it was almost like hearing an educational tape, the way they discussed the topics and deferred courteously to each other.