Hunting Party

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” But George’s eyes had lit up. He loved intrigue, especially vengeance. George had engineered some of their best escapades in school, including the ripely dead rat appearing on the service platter at a banquet for school governors.

  “Of course,” Ronnie said. “She has other duties; we have nothing to do between here and Bunny’s place but get bored and crabby with each other.” He felt much better, now that he’d decided. “First thing is, we’ll get into the computer and find out more about her.”

  “You could always give a little kick to one of her drills,” George said.

  “Exactly.” Ronnie grinned. Much better. A good attack beats defense every time; he’d read that someplace.

  Chapter Seven

  Heris could have believed the Sweet Delight knew it smelled sweeter—or perhaps it responded to the change in the attitude of its crew. Without the sour-faced pilot, and the inept moles, with the addition of two eager, hardworking newcomers, crew alliances shifted and solidified around a new axis. A healthier one, to Heris’s mind. They were not yet what she would call sharp, but they were trying, now. No one complained about the emergency drills. No one slouched around with the listless expression that had so worried her before. Perhaps it was only fear of losing their jobs, but she hoped it was something better.

  It had been unfortunate that she’d hit the owner’s nephew. She knew that; she knew it was her fault from start to finish. She had let them leave the hatch to the bridge open. . . . On such a small ship, with a small crew, where the owner never ventured into the working compartments, it had seemed safe. She had not noticed when he came, and when he startled her she had silenced him in a way that might have been hazardous—would have been, with some people. She was ashamed of herself, even though they’d made it through a fairly tricky set of transition points safely.

  She called Cecelia as soon as they were through, and explained. “It was my fault for not securing the bridge—”

  “Never mind. He’s been insufferable this whole trip; his mother spoiled him rotten.”

  “But I should have—”

  Cecelia interrupted her again. “It’s not a problem, I assure you. If you want to feel chastened, schedule your first riding lesson today.”

  Heris had to laugh at that. “All right. Two hours from now?”

  “I’ll be there. Regular gymsuit will do for now.”

  Heris finished the necessary documentation of jump point transition, completed a few more minor chores, and left the bridge to Mr. Gavin.

  * * *

  “This,” said Cecelia cheerfully, “is your practice mount.” Heris had expected something like a metal or plastic horse shape on some kind of spring arrangement, but the complicated machine in front of her looked nothing at all like a real horse. Except for the saddle—a traditional leather saddle—on a cylindrical section that might have been plastic, it could have been an industrial robot of some sort, with its jointed appendages, power cable connectors, sockets, and dangling wires with ominous little clips. Heris had seen something vaguely like it in one of the wilder bars on Durango. . . . Only that had been, she thought, a mechanical bucking bull.

  The jointed extension in the front, Cecelia explained, acted as the horse’s neck and head, allowing the rider to use real reins. At the moment, the real reins were looped neatly from a hook on one side. “There are sensors in the head,” Cecelia said, “which record how much rein pressure you’re using, and feed back to the software. Yank the reins, and this thing will respond very much like a real horse. You’ll also get an audible tone, to let you know when your rein pressure is uneven.” The VR helmet rose from a cantilevered extension behind the saddle. “It’s set now at beginner level,” Cecelia said. “I’ll control pace and direction; you’ll just feel the gaits at first.” She stood near a waist-high control panel, which Heris noted had several sockets for plug-in modules as well as the usual array of touchplates.

  Heris stared at the thing. She had not enjoyed the obligatory riding lessons at the Academy that much, and this looked like the perfect apparatus for making someone look stupid and clumsy. But a bet was a bet, and she owed Cecelia ten hours. The sooner she mounted, the sooner it would be over.

  “You don’t have to use the VR helmet at first,” Cecelia said. “Why not just get on and off a few times, and let me start it walking?”

  “Fine.” Heris tried to remember just how mounting went. Left foot in the stirrup, but her hands . . . ? On the real horse they’d been taught to grip the reins and put a hand on the neck in front of the saddle; here that would have meant on a pair of gray cylinders like slim pipes. She put both hands on the front of the saddle and hauled herself upward. The machine lurched sideways, with a faint hiss of hydraulics, and she slipped back to the deck.

  “Sorry,” Cecelia said, trying to hide a grin. “I wasn’t ready to correct for that kind of mount. You need to be closer, and push off more strongly with your right leg. Straight up, then swing your leg over. If you hang off the side of a real horse like that, it’s likely to unbalance, reach out a leg, and step on you.”

  Heris tried again, this time successfully. She felt around with her right foot until she got the stirrup on. Cecelia came over and moved her feet slightly. “Weight on the balls of your feet, for now. We’re going to start with a simple all-around seat. And no reins for now, until you’ve got the seat right. Just clasp your wrists in front of you. Let me connect the other sensors . . .” This meant clipping a dozen dangling wires to Heris’s clothing; she felt she was being restrained by gnats. Cecelia retreated to the control column and touched something. The machine lurched; Heris wondered if she was about to be thrown off, but it settled down to a rhythmic roll and pitch. Her body remembered that it felt quite a bit like riding a real horse.

  “It’s—strange,” she said. She might have to take riding lessons, but she didn’t have to refrain from comment.

  “It’s expensive,” Cecelia said. “Most riding sims are limited to three gaits, one speed at each gait, and all you can do is go in a circle or straight. This one can keep me in shape.” Heris did not say what she thought this time: keeping one old woman in shape hardly suggested that the simulator had great powers. She didn’t have to refrain from comment, but she didn’t have to be rude, either.

  “Let me try the helmet now,” she said instead. If her face was covered by that mass of instrumentation, no sudden expression could give her away.

  “Go ahead,” Cecelia said. “I think you’ll be surprised.”

  The helmet had all the usual attachments and adjustments; Heris got it on as the sim kept up its movement. As her eyes adapted to the new visual field, she saw in front of her a horse’s neck swinging slightly up and down, with two ears . . . and reins lying on that neck, and a long line from the horse’s head to someone standing in the center of a white-railed ring. “It doesn’t look like you,” she said. “Who’s the brown-haired man with his arm in a sling?”

  “Sorry.” Cecelia’s voice in the helmet sounded masculine for a moment, then changed. “Someone I used to train with—is that better?” Now it was Cecelia, but a younger Cecelia—her hair flaming red-gold, her tall body dressed in sweater and riding breeches. She looked vibrant and happy and far more attractive than Heris had imagined her.

  “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 smel
ly 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 attenti
on . . . 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 . . .”