Heris Serrano

by Elizabeth Moon

  "At sixteen? I spent all my time with horses," Cecelia said. Then she blushed, extensively, and Heris waited. "Of course, there was that one young man—"

  "Aha!"

  "But it didn't interfere with my riding—nothing did—and nothing came of it either." Heris couldn't tell from the tone whether Cecelia was glad or sad about that. "But Ronnie—" Cecelia came back to the point, as she always did, eventually. "He's got brains, and I don't really doubt his courage. He's just spoiled, and it's such a waste—"

  "It always is," Heris said. "What he needs is what neither of us can give him—a chance to find out that his own foolishness can get him in permanent trouble, and only his own abilities can give him the life he really wants. At his age, such tests tend to be dangerous—even fatal."

  "But you think you can do something?"

  "I think I can convince him to play no more tricks on me. That won't help overall, most likely; he'll blame me, or you, and not his own idiocy."

  "It's that crowd he hangs around with," Cecelia said. "Yes, his mother spoiled him, but so are they all spoiled."

  Heris did not argue; her own opinion was that the influence went both ways. Ronnie was as bad for the others as they were for him. But it wasn't her nephew, and she didn't have any remnant guilt feelings. She suspected Cecelia did. Cecelia had commented more than once on the family's attempts to make her perform in ways they thought important; some of that must have stuck, even if it didn't change her behavior.

  Cecelia ate another of the yellow fruits. Heris hadn't liked the first one well enough to pick another; she watched Cecelia poke about, prodding one plant and sniffing another. Finally she turned back to Heris. "All right. Do what you can; I won't expect miracles. And I won't sympathize if he comes crying to me."

  "I don't think he will," Heris said. "He has, as you said, some virtues."

  "Do you want to tell me what you're planning to do, or do you think I'll let something slip?"

  "No—you wouldn't, I'm sure. But my methods are, as before, not entirely amiable."

  "Go on, then. I won't ask. Just see that you're on time for your lesson—today you get higher jumps and more of them."

  Heris looked at her. "That's one I hadn't thought of . . . don't use the simulator until I've had a chance to check it, will you?"

  "Ronnie wouldn't touch it—he's being tiresome about horses."

  "No—not for himself or even you—but to get at me. I'll be on time—in fact, I'll be early, and I'll make sure it hasn't been tampered with."

  * * *

  Ronnie had never believed in premonition; he had known himself far too mature and sophisticated for any such superstitions. Thus the results of his first touch of the keyboard, after George left, came as a complete surprise. He had thought of another glorious lark, something harmless to baffle the little captain even further. She liked to go riding on Aunt Cecelia's simulator . . . well . . . what if it turned out to be under his control, and not Cecelia's? He had in mind a mad gallop across enormous fences that would surely have her squealing for mercy—and to Cecelia it could still appear that nothing was wrong and the captain's nerve had broken. He held out for some little time, letting himself imagine all the ramifications: his aunt's scorn of those who couldn't ride well, the captain's fear and then embarrassment, the confusion of both. They would never figure it out, he was sure.

  Then he reached for the console. He would just take a preparatory stroll around his battlements, so to speak, making sure that all his hooks were in place. . . . His fingers flicked through the sequence that should have laid all open before him, and the screen blanked.

  As anyone who has just entered a fatal command, he first thought it was a simple, reparable error. He reentered the sequence, muttering at himself for carelessness. Something clicked firmly, across his stateroom. It sounded like the door, but when he called, no one answered. Imagination. The screen was still blank. He thumbed Recall, and the screen stayed blank. Odd. Even if he'd hit the wrong sequence, the screen should have showed something. He hit every key on the board, in order, and the screen stayed blank. He felt hot suddenly. Surely not. Surely he hadn't done something as stupid as that—there were ways to wipe yourself out of a net, but his sequence had been far from any of the ones he knew.

  He stared at the screen, and worry began to nibble on the edge of his concentration. He didn't have to enter the commands here, of course—shifting control to the console in George's or Buttons's suite would do—but he hated to admit he'd been such a fool, whatever it was he'd done. But the screen stayed blank, not so much as a flicker, and he didn't want to lose his good idea. The captain would have her riding lesson not that many hours later, and he wanted to be sure he got the patches in first.

  With a final grunt of annoyance, he shut off his screen and went to the door. It didn't open. He yanked hard at the recessed pull, and broke a fingernail; the door didn't move at all. He thumped it with his fist, muttering, with the same effect as thumping a very large boulder: his fist hurt, and the door did not move.

  He had flicked the controls of the com to George's cabin when the realization first came. . . . This could not be an accident. The com was dead; no amount of shaking the unit or poking the controls made any sound whatever come out of the speakers. He flung himself at the terminal console again, determined to break through. The screen came on when he pressed the switch, but it responded to nothing he did. No text, no images, no . . . nothing.

  "Dammit!" He followed that with a string of everything he knew, and finished, some minutes later, with "It isn't fair!"

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the screen flicker. Only then did it occur to him that while he might be cut off from the outside, the outside might very well be watching him. He came closer.

  ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR. The screen's script even seemed to have a nasty expression. DON'T MESS WITH MY SHIP. The meaning was clear enough, though he was in no mood to give in. But the messages stayed, two clear lines, and again nothing he did changed them. Ronnie turned away, furious, and kicked the bulkhead between his room and his private bath. With a whoosh, the toilet flushed, and flushed again, and flushed again, three loud and unmistakable raspberries.

  "You can't do this to me!" he yelled at the ceiling. "This is my aunt's yacht!"

  The shower came on; the automatic doors that should have enclosed it had not budged, and he had to wrestle them into place. A dense steam filled his bathroom. He saw with horror that the drain hadn't opened; water rose rapidly, then trickled out between the doors. He yanked towels from the racks, from the cupboards, and threw them at the overflow. . . . If it got into the bedroom, it would stain the carpet. . . . His mother, not just Aunt Cecelia, would be furious if he stained new carpet. When every towel was soaked, the drain opened, as if it had eyes to see, the shower stopped, and the water drained peacefully away.

  The wet towels squished under his feet; his shoes were soaked, and his trousers to the knees. Ronnie felt the onslaught of a large headache, and glared at the mess. He wrung out the towels into the shower enclosure—better than walking on the wet mess—and hung as many as he could from the racks. The floor was slick; it could be dangerous. He grubbed into the back of the cupboard and found the cleaning equipment he had never used. A sponge—dry, for a wonder—a long-handled brush, a short-handled brush, and two bottles of cleaning solution, one blue and one green. The sponge eventually soaked up most of the damp on the floor, though it still felt clammy.

  He had only thought he'd been angry before. Now he experienced the full range of anger . . . anger he had not even suspected he could feel. He was so angry that for once in his life he did not strike out at walls or doors or furniture. Instead, he went back to the terminal and sat before it. As he had expected, the screen had another message line now: YOU ARE CONFINED TO QUARTERS. YOU WILL RECEIVE ADEQUATE RATIONS.

  He wasn't hungry; he didn't care about any blankety-blank rations. . . . He filled in all the blanks he usually did not allow himself to fill, f
orgetting none of the expressions he'd ever heard. But he did so silently. He was not going to give her the satisfaction.

  How had she done it? How had she figured it out? She wasn't that smart; she had to be nearly as old as Aunt Cecelia. He fumed, silently, staring at the screen. Suddenly it cleared, and after a moment of blankness, reappeared in almost normal configuration. Almost, because the usual communications icon had been replaced by a black diamond.

  Gingerly, as if the screen could bite him, he touched the service icon. A menu appeared: food, linens, clothing, air temperature, water, medical assistance. He thought it had had a few more items the last time he'd noticed it . . . but he hadn't paid much attention. The servants were usually hovering; he hadn't needed to call them. Now he touched linens. The screen blanked and displayed a flashing blue message: NOT IN SERVICE.

  "What d'you mean, not in service!" he growled. In the bathroom, the toilet burped: warning. He pressed his lips together, amazed that he could be even angrier than a moment before. He was stuck with wet towels . . . what a petty revenge. That captain must come from a very ill-bred family. When he did revenge, he did it with style. He poked the board again; it returned him to the service menu. He thought of trying every single choice, but decided against it. It would only make him angrier to know that the others didn't work either.

  He backed out of the service menu and looked at the main screen. Innocent, bland, it looked back. No communications, and missing functions on other icons, he didn't doubt. What else could he try? Information? He almost snarled at the little blue question mark, but controlled himself and put a finger on it.

  The screen blanked and gave him a solid ten seconds of GOOD CHOICE before turning up the information menu. He had never tried this one before, since he'd never thought a ship as small as his aunt's could hold serious surprises. Now, he found a choice of items he was sure had not been his aunt's idea.

  1. WHAT DID I DO WRONG?

  2. WHAT CAN I DO NOW?

  3. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?

  4. WHAT DO THE OTHERS KNOW ABOUT ALL THIS?

  It looked like someone's bad idea of a strategy game. He was going to have nothing to do with it. . . . It had to be a trap . . . but after sitting there for a long time he realized he was tired, stiff, and hungry. Food had been promised, though it hadn't arrived . . . and he did wonder just how much the little captain knew.

  He pressed the first choice. In a cheerful electronic voice, the monitor said, "Good choice." Ronnie jumped. He'd hated the more vocal teaching computers he'd happened across. This one had a particularly chirpy intonation. The screen blanked, then filled with a list which he supposed represented his errors. It was not framed in terms his Aunt Cecelia would use; what hurt particularly was the assumption that he and the captain shared a frame of reference . . . the military. In just the way that his instructors had dissected unfortunate actions of the past, she dissected his action against her. Without, it seemed, the least rancor. That hurt, too. She didn't think of him as a rich spoiled brat—but as an incompetent junior officer, one of many. He did not like being one of many.

  He was chagrined to learn that his hooks had been found and rebaited, so to speak; she had the entire conversation with George (it was played back for him) and from his own speech samples had produced com messages to the others telling them he felt like some time alone.

  "Of course," the computer voice said brightly, "they think you're in here plotting more mischief against the captain and crew."

  "But when am I—" He stopped when he heard the water start to run in the bathroom again. Evidently, he was not meant to do any talking.

  "If you have questions," the voice said, "you may choose them from the menu when they appear." As if that captain would know what questions he wanted to ask. But after another paragraph of careful explanation of his faults, he found a list of questions. He chose the one about the canisters, because he really couldn't understand why repainting them had been so bad. They were just disaster-drill fakes anyway. What did it matter if one of them turned out to have red smoke, blue smoke, or a bad smell?

  His comunit chimed. Ronnie leaped for it. This time the voice that came out was the captain's.

  "You asked about the canisters," she said. "Do you know the chemical compounds in each?"

  "You—no." He had caught his first angry response in mid-leap.

  "Then you are not aware that some of the compounds are toxic, and some are flammable?"

  "They are?" He could not have concealed his surprise if he'd tried. They were for drills—the label said so—and things used in drills were harmless, weren't they?

  She had a human chuckle, which he didn't want to admit was pleasant. "Tell you what—I'll put the contents up on your screen in detail. Did you have any system in mind when you repainted those canisters, or did you do it at random?"

  "Well . . ." Ronnie tried to remember. "Mostly I did them the color of the ones in the next box. That way I always knew which ones I'd done. There were a few, though, that were loose, and I just made 'em all orange with a brown stripe. Most of those were blue and . . . and two green stripes, but one was white and gray."

  "Then you switched the box labels?"

  "Yeah . . . how'd you know I'd repainted them?" He had been so careful; he could not believe she'd noticed.

  "How do you think I knew which storage bay you were in with George?" she asked. He had no idea. He'd assumed she'd messed with all the storage bays. "Think about it," she said. The com went dead. He didn't even bother to try calling out again.

  The screen had changed; now it was full of chemical formulas and reaction characteristics. Ronnie fought his way through it. He was actually supposed to know most of this; he remembered having seen it in class. But he had never had a good reason to put it together. He caught himself muttering aloud, and gave the bathroom a nervous look, but the toilet didn't burp. " . . . oxidizes the metallic powder and . . . gosh!" The stuff would really burn. Really burn. "I could have built a damn bomb!" he said, almost gleeful for a moment. Silence mocked him. He didn't need a warning roar from the plumbing or a smart remark from the computer to point out that setting off a bomb on a spaceship in deep space was not an intelligent thing to do, and setting one off without even knowing it was, if possible, stupider.

  He felt cold, almost as cold as he'd felt when he realized he'd intruded on the bridge during jump transition. If the captain had picked another canister—the gray and white one he'd painted orange and red, rather than the blue and gray he'd painted black and green—it could have been a real emergency. A real disaster. A real—another look at the screen to confirm it—end of the whole trip. For everyone.

  "I'm sorry," he said to the silent cabin. "I didn't mean to cause any real trouble."

  Instead of an answer, the screen changed yet again, to show a transcript of what he'd said to George, every word. It looked worse, far worse, in glowing script on the screen. It looked as if he had indeed wanted to cause trouble—to harrass and humiliate the captain, to frighten and divide the crew. "I didn't mean it that way," he said, but he knew he had meant it that way, back when he thought it was safe to mean it that way.

  The food, when it came, was bland and boring.

  * * *

  Heris climbed off the simulator after a vigorous ride across country on a large black hunter; every time she took the helmet off, the simulator startled her with its metal and plastic parts. Cecelia nodded at her.

  "Very good indeed. You'll certainly qualify for one of the mid-level hunts. Depending on who's here, you might even be with me for a run or two."

  "Are you sure you want to drag me along?" Heris asked. "I know it's not—"

  "It's not common, but it's not unheard of, and anyway I do as I like. It's one of the perks. Bunny won't mind, as long as you can ride decently and don't cause trouble, which you won't. I'll enjoy having you to talk with—there are few enough single women, and I'm past the point where the men want to talk to me."

  Heris was n
ot sure she liked the assumption that she herself was also past that point . . . but it was true, she wasn't on the prowl. She wasn't over losing her other ship yet—though she could now think of it as "the other ship" and not the only one—and she would have to get her crew—and certain members of it—out of her mind before she could respond to advances. If anyone made them.

  "What's the matter?" Cecelia asked. "Don't you want to go? Would you rather hang around Hospitality Bay with the other captains?"

  "No!" She said it more forcefully than she meant to. "I'm sorry—the thought of those other captains has haunted me all along. I hate that. And yes, I would love to see what an estate set up for fox hunting looks like. It's just—I didn't want you to think you had to do it, because you said it in front of Ronnie."

  "Nonsense. I said it because I wanted to; Ronnie's opinion is unimportant." Cecelia looked hard at her captain. "And by the way, how is that young man?"

  "Perfectly healthy." That was true, if incomplete. He wasn't even that bored, because she had him doing the work he should have done in his basic classes. Math, chemistry, biochemistry, ship systems, military history, tactics. . . . When he kept his mind on it, all his plumbing worked and his food arrived regularly, and the lights worked. When he threw a tantrum—and he hadn't thrown one in the last several days, was he learning?—he found himself dealing with other problems, and the work still to do afterwards. "He may be rejoining you shortly, if you've no objection."