Hunting Party

by Elizabeth Moon

  Heris glanced around; the entire crew was listening. “It might have been,” she said. “But when you find out suppose you tell me, not the whole world.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  * * *

  Ronnie threw himself back in the heavily padded teal chair in his stateroom and stretched luxuriously. George, in the purple chair, looked ready to burst with curiosity.

  “So?”

  “So . . .” Ronnie tried to preserve the facade of cool sophistication, but the expression on George’s face made him laugh. “All right. I did it, and did it right. You should have seen them, trying to turn off a fan that wouldn’t turn off.”

  “A fan.” George was not impressed, and since he’d been decanted looking cool and contained, he could do that look better than Ronnie. The only thing, Ronnie maintained, which he did better.

  “Let me explain,” Ronnie said, taking a superior tone. That came easily. “The little captain had scheduled another emergency drill, this one for the crew alone. I’d already put my hook into the system—remember?—and had a line out for just this sort of thing. I reeled it in and rewrote it—actually, all I had to do was put a loop in it—and sent it on its way.”

  “So the fan kept turning back on,” George said. “And they couldn’t stop it. . . .” A slow grin spread across his face. “How unlike you—it’s so gentle. . . .”

  “Well,” Ronnie said, examining his fingernails, “except for the stink bomb.”

  “Stink bomb?”

  “Didn’t I mention? The little captain had put three scenarios in the computer; it would generate one of them, using her parameters. I sort of . . . mixed two. One was a contamination drill . . . and it wasn’t that hard to change a canister which would have released colored smoke for one releasing stinks.” Ronnie smirked, satisfied with the look on George’s face as well as his own brilliance. “The little captain was most upset.”

  “When she figures it out . . .” George went from gleeful to worried in that phrase.

  “She’ll never figure it out. She’ll think it’s her own problem set—even if she calls it up, she’ll see that loop. Everyone makes mistakes that way sometimes.”

  “But that canister?”

  “George, I am not stupid. I spent an entire day repainting the drill canisters so they have the wrong color codes. All of them. She’ll assume it’s something left over from the previous captain—like that great mysterious whatever that held us up at Takomin Roads. That’s the first thing I did, right after we decided to scrag her. She can look for prints or whatever as much as she likes: she picked that canister up herself, and put it where it went off.” Ronnie stretched again. Sometimes he could hardly believe himself just how brilliant he was. “Besides—she thinks I’m a callow foolish youth—that’s what Aunt Cecelia keeps telling her—and she won’t believe a spoiled young idiot—my dear aunt’s favorite terms—could fish in her stream and catch anything.” As George continued to look doubtful, Ronnie leaned forward and tried earnestness. If George got nervy, his next intervention would be much harder. “We’re safe, I promise you. She can’t twig. She can’t possibly twig, and if she even thinks of it, Aunt Cecelia’s blather will unconvince her.”

  Chapter Eight

  “We have a slight problem,” Heris said to Cecelia. It had not been easy to spirit her employer away along paths she knew were safe, but she managed. They were now in the ’ponics section reserved for fancy gardening. Cecelia had banished the gardeners.

  “Again?” But Cecelia said it with a smile.

  “Your nephew,” Heris said. “I can deal with him, but he may come running to you, if I do. Or I can try to ignore him out of existence, but he may cause the crew some inconvenience.”

  “Somehow when you say ‘inconvenience,’ what I hear is much worse.” Cecelia looked down her nose as if she were wearing spectacles and had to peer over them. She reminded Heris of one of the portraits of her ancestress.

  “Well . . . I can probably keep it to inconvenience.” Heris reached out to feel the furry leaf of a plant she didn’t recognize. It had odd lavender flowers, and it gave off a sharp fragrance as she touched it.

  “I hope you’re not allergic to that,” Cecelia said. “It makes some people itch for days.”

  “Sorry.” Heris looked at her fingers, which did not seem to be turning any odd color or itching.

  “It’s got an edible tuber, quite a nice flavor.” Cecelia looked at the row of plants as if blessing them with her gaze. “I hope Bunny will trade for this cultivar; that’s why we’re growing it now. We had to replant, of course, after the . . . mmm . . . problem.”

  Heris had not considered what, besides convenience, might have been sacrificed. “Did you lose all the garden crops?” she asked. “I thought they’d be unharmed.” She also wondered what this had to do with Ronnie, and hoped it meant Cecelia was thinking on two levels at once.

  “We lost some . . .” Cecelia’s voice trailed away; she was staring at another row of plants, these covered with little yellow fruits. “I don’t know what they’re thinking of; half those are overripe. And they’re not fertile; there’s no sense wasting them. . . .” She picked one, sampled it, and picked another for Heris. “You’re asking about Ronnie. I’ve told you before—I’m sick of that boy. If he’s done something that deserves response, do what you will, short of permanent injury. I do have to answer to Berenice and his father later; it would be awkward to admit that I sanctioned his death. But aside from that—” She made a chopping motion at her own neck.

  Heris ate the yellow fruit, a relative of the tomato, she thought, and watched Cecelia’s face. “You’re not really happy about that,” she observed. “What else?”

  “Oh . . . I think what makes me so furious is that he’s not all bad. He may seem it to you—”

  “Not really,” Heris said. “Remember, I told you before that I’ve seen a lot of young officers, including very wild ones. For that matter, I was a wild one.”

  “You?” That deflected her a moment.

  “What—you really thought I was born at attention, with my infant fist on my forehead?” It was so close to what Cecelia had thought, that the expression crossed her face, and Heris laughed, not unkindly. “You should have seen me at sixteen . . . and will you try to tell me you were completely tame?”

  “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, pro
dding 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, forgetting 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.”