Hunting Party

by Elizabeth Moon

  Another shared glance. One of the girls might have been more tactful, but Ronnie burst out first. “That’s what you do—and that’s why you never married and live by yourself in a miserable little ship!”

  Cecelia stared him down. “That’s why I have the money and position I do—independent of any alliance—to do what I want—and that’s why I was available to help you when you got yourself into this mess. Or perhaps you don’t know that the first suggestion given your father was that you be packed off on an ore-hauler to Versteen?”

  “They wouldn’t have!” Ronnie looked almost horrified enough.

  Cecelia shrugged. “They didn’t, but largely because I was available, and could be talked into it. If your mother—well, never mind. But my point is, that if I had been a conventional member of this family, and married to some appropriate spouse, I would hardly have been free to take you on. You persist in regarding this as some kind of lark, but I assure you that most men—grown men, such as your father and his friends—consider your breach of the lady’s confidence a disgrace, even apart from its political implications.” Ronnie reddened. “Now,” she went on. “Go make yourself fit for civilized company at dinner, all of you. That includes you young women. I do not consider the sort of clothes you wear to parties with your own set adequate.” She actually had very little idea what kind of clothes they wore to parties with their own set, but had a clear memory of herself at nineteen to twenty-three.

  When they had left, Cecelia felt the cushions of the massage lounger and shuddered. Entirely too clammy; she aimed a blow-dryer at it, and decided on a short swim. The pool’s privacy screen, a liquid crystal switchable only from within, closed her into a frosted dome, onto which she projected a visual of overhanging forest. She set the pool’s sound system, and eased over the edge to the opening bars of Delisande’s Moon Tide. A choice others would consider trite, but she needed those long rolling phrases, those delicate shadings of strings to ease her tension. The water enfolded her; she let her body and mind merge with water and music, swimming languidly to the music’s rhythm, just enough to counter the gentle current.

  Just as she felt herself relaxing, the pool’s timer beeped, and Myrtis’s voice reminded her that it was time to dress.

  “Bad words, bad words, bad words.” She had gotten away with that in childhood, even before she learned any. Her stomach burned. . . . If it hadn’t been for Ronnie and his gang, she could have had dinner held until she was ready—and she’d have been ready, because she wouldn’t have been interrupted. And her massage lounger wouldn’t have been sweaty. She hauled herself out of the pool with a great splash, hit the privacy control without thinking—and only then realized that with guests aboard she would have to be more careful. Luckily they were all off dressing—none of them had straggled back to ask a stupid question. Not that they didn’t swim bare, but she had no desire to have them compare her body to their young ones.

  She walked into the warmed towelling robe that Myrtis held, and stood still while Myrtis rubbed her hair almost dry. Then she stepped into the warm fleece slippers, took another warmed towel, and headed for her own suite still rubbing at her damp hair. It dried faster these days, being thinner; she hated the blow-dryers and would rather go to dinner a bit damp than use one.

  In her cabin, Myrtis had laid out her favorite dinner dress, a rich golden-brown shi-silk accented with ivory lace. Cecelia let herself be dried, oiled, powdered, and helped into the clothes without thinking about it. Myrtis, unlike Aublice, her first maid, had never seen her young body; she treated Cecelia with professional correctness and the mild affection of someone who has worked for the same employer fifteen years and hopes to retire in the same position. Cecelia sat, allowed Myrtis to fluff her short hair, with its odd spatchings of red and gray, and fastened on the elaborate necklace of amber and enamelled copper that made the lace look even more delicate. Those girls might be fifty years younger, but they would know a Marice Limited design when they saw it, and it would have its effect. They would not know it had been designed for her, by the original Marice, or why—but that didn’t matter.

  * * *

  The plump roast fowl sent up a fragrance that made Cecelia’s stomach subside from its tension. She glanced around the table and nodded to Bates. Service proceeded, a blend of human and robotic. A human handed her breast slices of roast, and the gravy boat, but crumbs vanished without the need of a crumb-brush.

  “Do you eat like this all the time, Lady Cecelia?” asked Bubbles. Sober, cured of her hangover, she was reasonably pretty, Cecelia thought, except that her gown looked as if it would burst with her next mouthful. She was not so plump; the gown was that tight. She wore a warm bright green; it showed off her white skin and blonde curls although it clashed with the dark Raffaele’s red dress. The other girl, Sarah, wore a blue that would have been plain had it not been silk brocade, a design of fishes: d’Albinian work.

  “Yes,” said Cecelia. “Why not? Cook is a genius, and I can afford it, so . . .”

  “Tell us about your new captain. Why’d you choose a spacefleet officer?”

  “Why was she available?” added the odious George. Less handsome than Ronnie, which Cecelia might have approved, but he had the sort of gloss she distrusted, as if he’d been coated with varnish.

  “I wasn’t satisfied with my former captain’s performance,” Cecelia said, as if they had a right to ask. She knew she mellowed with good food; it was one reason she made sure to have it. She wasn’t going to admit that if Captain Olin had held to her schedule, she’d have been safely distant and unavailable when Ronnie was exiled. Why waste good ammunition? “I wanted more efficiency,” she said between bites, making them wait for it. “Better leadership. Before, they were always coming to me complaining about this and that, or getting crossways with staff. I thought an officer from the Regular Space Service”—she made the emphasis very distinct—“would know how to maintain discipline and follow my orders.”

  “The Regs are crazy for discipline,” George said, in the tone of someone who found that ridiculous. “Remember when Currier transferred, Ronnie? He didn’t last six weeks. It was all nonsense—it’s not as if all that spit and polish and saluting accomplishes anything.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Buttons, Bunny’s middle son, looked surprisingly like his father as he ran a thumb down the side of his nose. Gesture, decided Cecelia, and not features; he had his mother’s narrow beaky nose and her caramel-colored hair. “You can’t get along with no discipline. . . .” And his mother’s penchant for taking the other side of any argument, Cecelia told herself. In the girl, it had been fun to watch, but as Bunny’s wife she had caused any number of social ruptures by choosing exactly the wrong moment to point out that not everyone agreed. The incident of the fish knives still rankled in Cecelia’s memory. She wondered which parent Bubbles took after.

  “We’re not talking about no discipline.” George interrupted as if he had the right, and Buttons shrugged as if he were used to it. “We’re talking about the ridiculous iron-fisted excuse for discipline in the Regs. I don’t mind fitness tests and qualifying exams—even with modern techniques, the best family can throw an occasional brainless wonder.” Cecelia thought that he himself could furnish proof of that. “But,” George went on, in blissful ignorance of his hostess’ opinion, she being too polite to express it, “I really do not see any reason for archaic forms of military courtesy that have no relevance to modern warfare.”

  This time Buttons shrugged without looking up from his food. He had the blissful expression most of Cecelia’s guests wore when they first encountered the products of Cook’s genius. George looked around for another source of conversation, and found the others all engaged in their meal; with the faintest echo of Buttons’s shrug, he too began to eat.

  The rest of the meal passed in relative silence. The roast fowl had been followed by a salad of fresh diced vegetables in an iced sauce strongly flavored with parsley: Cecelia’s favorite eccentricity, and o
ne which never failed to startle guests. It awoke, she contended, the sleepy palates which the roast had soothed and satisfied. Crisp rounds of a distant descendant of potato followed, each centered with a rosette of pureed prawns. The trick, which no one but her own cook seemed to manage, was to have the slices of potato boiled slightly before roasting, so that the outer surfaces were almost crunchy but the inside mealy. The young people, she noted, took additional servings of potato as they had of the roast fowl. Finally, Bates brought in tiny flaky pastries stuffed with finely diced fruit in chocolate and cinnamon sauce. One each, although Cecelia knew that a few would be waiting for her later, safely hidden from the young people.

  Satiety slowed them down, she noticed, nibbling her own pastry with deliberate care. They looked as if they wanted to throw themselves back in deep chairs and lounge. Not in my dining room, she thought, and smiled. The elegant but uncomfortable chairs that Berenice’s designer had foisted on her had their purpose after all.

  Cecelia neither knew nor cared about the current social fashions of the young. In her young days, the great families had revived (or continued) the custom of a separate withdrawal of each sex with itself for a time after dinner, the women moving to one room and the men to another. She had resented it, and in her own yacht ignored it; either she invited guests (all of them) to continue their discussion in the lounge, or she excused herself and let them do what they would.

  Tonight, with a good meal behind her, she felt mellow enough to grant them more of her time. Perhaps well fed, with hangovers behind them, they would be amusing; at least she might hear some interesting gossip, since none of them seemed to have the slightest reticence. “Let’s move to the lounge,” she said, rising. The young people stood, as they ought, but Ronnie frowned.

  “If it’s all the same to you, Aunt Cece, I’d rather watch a show. We brought our own cubes.” The dark girl, Raffaele, opened her mouth as if to protest, but then shut it.

  “Very well.” Cecelia could hear the ice in her own voice. Snub her, would they? On her own yacht? She would not stoop to equal their discourtesy, but she would not forget it, either. Buttons again tried to intervene.

  “Wait, Ronnie . . . we really should—”

  “Never mind,” Cecelia said, with a flip of her hand. The quick temper that she’d always blamed on her red hair slipped control. “I’m sure you’re quite right, you would only be bored talking with an old lady.” She turned on her heel and stalked out, leaving them to find their own way. At least she didn’t have to spend more time in that disgusting lavender and teal lounge the designer had left her. She toyed with the idea of having the yacht redone, and charging it to her sister, but the quick humor that always followed her quick temper reminded her how ridiculous that would be. Like the time she and Berenice had quarrelled, only to discover that her brothers had taped the row for the amusement of an entire gang of little boys. A snort escaped her, and she shook her head. This time she was justified in her anger; she wasn’t ready to laugh.

  Myrtis, recognizing storm signals, had her favorite music playing and stood ready to remove her jewels. Cecelia smiled at her in the mirror as the deft fingers unhooked the necklace. “The young people prefer to watch entertainment cubes,” she said. “I’ll be reading late, I expect.” What she really wanted to do was hook up the system and take a long, strenuous ride, but that would mean another swim to cool off, and she suspected the young people would keep late hours. When Myrtis handed her the brocade robe, she slipped it on and went back to her study. Here, with the door closed, and the evening lights on in the solarium, she could lie back in her favorite chair and watch the nightlife. Two fan-lizards twined around a fern-frond, their erectile fans quivering and shimmering with delicate colors. At the sculpted water fountain, two fine-boned miniature horses dipped their heads to drink. They were not, of course, real horses; other small species had gone into their bioengineering specs. But in the dusky light, they looked real, or magical, depending on her mood.

  Something flickered along the shadowy floor of the tiny forest, and a sere-owl swooped. Then it stood, talons clubbed on its prey, and stared at her with silver eyes. Not really at her, of course; it saw the windows farside illusion, a net of silvery strands that even an owl would not dare. The little horses had thrown up their heads, muzzles dripping, when the action began; they had shied, but returned to the water as the owl began to feed. Kass and Vikka, Cecelia thought. Her favorite of the little mares, and her yearling. In daytime lighting, the mare was honey-gold dappled with brown on top, with a white belly and striped mane of dark and cream. It was as close as Cecelia had ever found in the miniatures to her performance horse. . . . Most breeders of the tiny animals liked the exotic colors the non-equine species introduced.

  When the mare led the young one back into the undergrowth, Cecelia sighed and blanked the window. Now she had the view that in all her memory made her happiest: her study at Orchard Hall, with the window overlooking the stableyard. Across the yard, the open top doors of a dozen stalls, and the horses looking out eagerly for morning feed. If she wanted, she could set the view into motion, in a long loop that covered the entire day’s activities. She could include sounds, and even the smell (although Myrtis would sniff, afterwards, and spray everything with mint). But she could not walk out the door over there, the one with the comfortable old-fashioned handle, and step into her former life. She shrugged, angry at herself for indulging even this much self-pity, and called up a new view, a seascape out a lighthouse window. She added the audible and olfactory inputs, and made herself breathe deeply of the salt-tang in the air. She had told Myrtis she would read late: she would read. And not a cube, but a real book, which enforced concentration far better. She allowed herself the indulgence of choosing an old favorite, The Family of Dialan Seluun, a wickedly witty attack on the pomposity of noble families four generations past.

  “Her sweet young breast roused against the foe, Marilisa noted that it had not hands nor tentacles with which to wield the appropriate weaponry. . . .” As always, it made her laugh. Knowing it was coming, it still made her laugh. By the end of the first chapter, she had finally quit grumbling inside about Ronnie and his friends. She could always hide out in her cabin reading; they would think she was sulking miserably and never know that her sides ached from laughing.

  Chapter Three

  Heris had had no idea a yacht could be this complicated. It was so small, after all, with so few people aboard . . . but rich civilians did nothing efficiently. As she worked her way through the manuals, the schematics, the overlays, she wished she’d had weeks aboard before the first voyage. Hours were not enough. She wrinkled her nose at the desk screen, muttering. The owner’s quarters separate from the household staff’s quarters, and both separate from crew quarters. Four complete and separate hydroponics systems: crew support, household support, food, and flowers. Flowers? She pushed that aside, to consider later. Ship’s crew, her people, were responsible for all life support, but not for the household food and flowers. Ship’s crew maintained all the physical plant, the wiring, the com connections; in one of the few duties that did overlap, the household kitchen supplied the crew. Not madam’s own cook, of course, but her assistants.

  Eventually she went in search of further enlightenment, and chose the most senior employee aboard: Bates. She had stayed out of his path, which seemed to be what he expected, but no captain could command without knowledge.

  “Who does this in a planetside house?” asked Heris. Bates folded his lip under. She waited him out. He might be a butler, but she was a captain.

  “It . . . varies,” he said finally. “More than it used to; more than it should, some say. Originally, household staff did it all, unless a wall fell in or something. Then as houses became more technically oriented—plumbing inside, gas laid on, electricity—” Heris had never considered that having indoor plumbing meant someone was technically oriented. “Then,” Bates went on, “owners had to resort to outside expertise. Calling in the pl
umber or the electrician when something went wrong. Some found staff members who could do it, but most of those trades thought themselves too good to be in service. . . .”

  “So . . . usually . . . it’s outsiders?”

  “Mostly, except in the really big households. Where we’re going, of course, the staff does it all, but they’ve a whole planet of homes to care for.”

  “The whole planet is one household?”

  “Yes—I thought you understood. Lord Thornbuckle’s estate is the planet.”

  She had known it, in an intellectual way, but she had not ever dealt with its implications. Of course the super-rich owned whole planets . . . but not as pleasure-grounds. She had thought of them as owning the land, perhaps—but never as owning everything on the planet—the infrastructure, the houses, the staff to manage it. But it wasn’t that impossible, she reminded herself. The R.S.S. owned several planets as well: one for resources, and one for a training base. This would be like a large military installation. At once her first frantic concerns—where do they buy groceries? Where do they educate the kids?—vanished.

  “So Lord . . . er . . . Thornbuckle has all the support staff on hand already,” she said. “Technicians, moles, all the rest?”

  “Yes, Captain. In the off-season, the planet’s population is less than two hundred thousand; in the main season, he’ll have at least two thousand guests—which means, of course, another ten to twenty thousand of their ships’ crews, and ships’ staff all rummocking about the Stations or off at Hospitality Bay.”

  Hospitality Bay sounded like the sort of place Fleet marines went to gamble, wench, and pillage. From Bates’s explanation, it was designed as a low-cost recreational base for ships’ crews and off-duty house staff . . . in other words, a place to gamble, wench, and pillage. Most of the wealthy guests who arrived in their own yachts left them docked “blind” at one of the Stations (which one depended on the guests’ rank). It had proved cheaper and more pleasant, Bates said, for the crews and staff to vacation planetside than to enlarge the Stations enough to hold and entertain idle servants. A largish island, complete with a variety of accommodations, automated service, recreational facilities, and the chance to meet crew and staff from the other yachts. Clubs, bars, entertainment booths, and halls—everything the vacationing staff might want.