Elizabeth Moon - Hunting Party

He reached up and stroked Bubbles’s arm, wondering if anything would come of it. He could not think of anything to say, though, and after a few seconds, she withdrew the arm and stretched herself on the couch across from him. The same couch where she had been so unfortunately sick. . . . He wondered if she remembered. She looked healthy enough now, though her expression of mild sulkiness fit his mood as well as hers.

“I suppose we should get into shape,” George said. “Your aunt has that handy little riding-thing. An hour a day, and none of us would have to worry about saddle sores.”

“Her simulator?” Ronnie asked. “Do what you like, George, but I have no intention of bouncing around on a mechanical horse. It’s bad enough to contemplate bouncing around on a real one. Do you know she had the gall to order me riding attire?”

“Well, you’ll need it.” Buttons had settled into a pose the male equivalent of Bubbles’s sprawl; together they took up both of the couches. Ronnie wondered why he’d thought exile would be more fun with these people than alone. They were looking at him as if he were responsible for entertaining them, when none of it was his fault. Buttons went on. “First of all, my father’s head instructor will check you out, before you’re assigned your mounts—”

“And he’s a terror,” Bubbles said. “So far as I know, there’s not a military unit in the known universe that still uses horses, but he acts like a cartoon drill instructor. You’ll spend at least two hours trotting before he decides what to give you.”

“I’d like to see him test Aunt Cecelia,” Ronnie said.

“Not her,” Buttons said, grinning. “She’s an old guest, and he’s more likely to ask her to test the horses. ‘Pick what you like, milady, not that there’s anything here worth your time,’ is what he’ll tell her.”

“Is she really that good?”

Buttons stared at him, eyes wide. “You haven’t ever seen her ride?”

“No. The family doesn’t think much of her hobby.” His father had said that, often enough, and he’d heard his mother talking to his other aunts about “poor dear Cecelia, what a shame she wasted her life on horses.”

“It was hardly a hobby, Ron. . . . The woman won the All-Union individual cross-country championship five times, and ranked in the top five for fifteen years.” Buttons turned to Bubbles. “Remember when we were just learning to ride, and old Abel was yelling at us, and she stopped him?”

“She got me over my first jump,” Bubbles said, sitting upright now. She looked less like a fluffhead than usual. Could she possibly enjoy hunting? Ronnie had a brief unpleasant view of himself married to a fox-hunting wife. No. It would not do. “I’d forgotten . . . that was that old gray pony, the one that seemed to like dumping us. She didn’t yell at me, just talked me through it.”

“Yes, and then she got on one of the good horses and showed us what we were supposed to be doing. Abel fairly purred.”

Ronnie felt a knot in his head tightening. It wasn’t fair that they knew more about his aunt than he did. That they admired his aunt for things he hadn’t known about, and that his family hadn’t respected. Things were not going the way he’d planned. He’d expected his friends to rally around him, support him, do what he wanted . . . and here they were swapping stories of his old maiden aunt.

“Does everyone hunt together?” he asked Buttons. If he couldn’t avoid the topic of horses, at least he could get the conversation away from his aunt. “How many horses does your father have, anyway?”

“To answer your first question, no. There are three hunts out of the main house, where we’ll be. Each has its own territory. We’ll each be assigned to one of them, depending on riding ability. As for horses . . . many thousands, I suppose, altogether. The main house stables will hold five hundred, though we won’t use that many. Hunters, hacks, young horses in training.” Ronnie tried to imagine five hundred horses in the same place, and failed. The Academy had had ten, for the training of its young officers, and he had no idea what a “hack” was. He was not about to ask.

“We don’t hunt every day,” Bubbles put in. “Some people do, but most ride out on alternate days. Particularly in the lower hunts, where they’re not as good and get really stiff.”

“I’ll get really stiff,” Raffa and Sarah said together, like a chorus.

“Isn’t there anything else but hunting?” Ronnie asked, hoping he didn’t sound as desperate as he felt.

“There are other kinds of hunting,” Buttons said. “Not all of it’s on horseback. You can shoot grouse and pheasant, that sort of thing. It’s the wrong season for fishing in the nearby streams. Indoors—well, the things my father assumes were normal indoor sports of the time: billiards, cards, amateur theatricals.”

“Oh . . . dear.” Worse then he’d imagined. Worse than his mother had imagined, he was sure. Traveling with a wealthy aunt on her private yacht had seemed like a good idea when his mother mentioned it. Perhaps he’d have been better off going to some dull assignment in an out-of—the-way base. At least it wouldn’t have had fox hunting, and his work might have kept him busy part of the time.

“There are other places on the planet,” Bubbles said. “But we can’t possibly get away more than once. We should save that for when you’re really desperate. Poor Ronnie.”

He wanted to snarl at her. Poor Ronnie, indeed. He needed real sympathy, not the mocking look Bubbles had given him. He needed them to understand that it wasn’t his fault—none of it. “I’m not desperate,” he said firmly. “For all you know, I may take to hunting as easily as any other sport. I may be leaping over fences and dashing along at a run—”

“Gallop,” put in Bubbles.

“Whatever. I mean, I’m naturally athletic, perfectly fit: how hard can it be?” He tried to say it with complete confidence; Bubbles, Buttons, and Raffaele burst into laughter. Raffaele? What did she know about riding? He tried to hide his irritation, and forced himself to laugh with them.

“Better try your aunt’s simulator,” Buttons said, still chuckling. “You may find a few muscles that aren’t quite perfectly fit.” Then he sobered. “You should do well, Ronnie, really. You’re right: you are a natural athlete; it’s quite possible that after a few lessons you’ll be up to riding in the field. But it’s not like anything else.”

Ronnie forced himself to smile, and wondered if he could hide in his stateroom all day and night, watching entertainment cubes, until they got to Buttons’s home planet. Probably not. He was going to have to think of something they could do . . . something fun, something to reestablish his leadership of the group. Something mischievous, perhaps. Play a harmless practical joke on the old lady, or the crew.

“You may be right,” he said, without meaning it. “I’ll see what you look like on the simulator first, and then . . . we’ll see.”

“We ought to see about some swimming, I think,” Raffaele said. “C’mon, girls. Let’s go play in the water.” Before he quite knew how it happened, the girls had vanished, and his two bosom friends were watching him, bright-eyed.

“Come on,” said George. “Tell us more about that opera singer. Is it true they have specially developed muscles?”

“I didn’t ask you if it was ‘going fine,’” Heris said. “I asked you what the sulfur extraction rate was. Do you know, or not?” With each day, her unease about the yacht’s basic fabric and systems had grown. Getting answers from the crew had turned out to be harder than she expected.