David tried to grip tighter with his legs. The ground seemed an awfully long way down as they clopped along. "My instincts tell me to get off and hail an au- tocab," he muttered unhappily.
"P. J. picked a gentle horse, we won't go far, and you won't have to do anything extreme," Leif promised. "It's just to get you used to the saddle, in case this adventure takes us someplace the car can't go."
"Doesn't the programming give you any help?" P. J. asked.
"There's not even as much support as I got on swordsmanship," David said, trying to listen for any help routines. "And you might remember, that wasn't all that useful, either."
"You came through the first sword fight just fine." P. J. tried to sound encouraging.
"Sure, by accident, and except for wanting to lose my lunch," David pointed out.
"Well, if we're lucky, Slaney won't have programmed in saddle sores," Leif said. "How about once more around the stable yard? That way if you fall, you'll only land in mud."
"Great," David muttered as he led his horse into a turn. "Wonderful."
As the boys swung round, they caught an unexpected dash of color entering the stable yard. It was Roberta Hendry-Viola da Gamba-this time in a bright red riding habit.
The area near the gate was full of people. A large group of country types-peasants-were talking with the stable hands while hitching pairs of draft mules to crude two-wheeled wagons loaded with hay.
Roberta stepped decisively to an empty wagon and stepped up on the tongue of a wagon where the mules were about to be yoked, which rested down on the muddy ground. "Comrades!" she called out. "I would call you my friends, but I won't-not until I've proven my friendship. I call you comrades, because that is what we should be-comrades in a struggle against an unjust and arbitrary social system! A system which demands that you lie quietly while others stand upon your backs and press your faces into the mud!"
"Well, she picked a good place to talk about that,"
P J. said, looking at the brownish, mushy ground around them.
"Roberta always thought the peasants should be revolting." Leif shook his head. "Ask me, they already are! Have you taken a good whiff? Equal parts garlic breath and B. O."
"That was probably an old joke even in this era," David told him.
Roberta, meanwhile, was really getting into her speech. "The rich, the powerful, they'll say you can improve yourselves-work hard, and you'll become men of property.
"That, of course, is a lie. Not merely because they'll only let you have whatever property they don't want, but because all property is theft!"
She clambered onto one of the wagon's wheels so she could look down at her audience. "If you seek the comfort of religion-well, that comfort is only found in the next world, not in this one. 'The poor are always with us,' the churchmen say. And so it will be-so long as the rich continue to steal the wealth that belongs to all of us!"
Her eyes raked their way across the growing crowd of upturned faces. "And what of the powerful? What of those like your dear princess, who claims to be concerned for you all?" Roberta made the word sound like some sort of curse. "Oh, she and those like her will do all they can to help you-except get off your backs! What are the lives of a few-if the world is to be changed?"
"Great crib job," Leif said. "I think I detect quotes from everywhere-early socialists, anarchists, and that last one came from Mussolini, if I remember."
"What I don't understand is why she's wasting her time," David muttered. "Those folks all have to be nonrole-playing characters. Who'd sign up to come here and just shovel horse dooky?"
P. J. stared at the crowd, which was beginning to stir. "Maybe she knows something we don't about the programming here-or maybe she has a few friends in the crowd."
The stable hands and peasants did seem to be responding to Roberta's fire-eating speech.
"Now is the time to rise!" Roberta's voice was a clarion call. "Your so-called betters pretend to despise you, but in truth, that's really fear. They try to distract you with a pretty piece of cloth-a flag. They throw a few pennies at you, and expect you to be content. They build cannon to threaten you. But what good will those cannon be, if the cannoneers are on our side? Rise up, I say, rise! You have nothing to lose but your chains!"
Carried along by her own oratory, she leaped up onto the two-wheeled cart itself. The sudden shift of weight made the wagon abruptly tip. Roberta tumbled from her perch, her fall broken by a giant pile of mud behind the cart.
All three boys waved their hands before their faces in a fruitless attempt to ward off the sudden stink rushing toward them. That wasn't mud at all. Roberta had just discovered the location of the stable's muckheap the hard way.
"Whoof!" David managed, his eyes watering. "It seems they feed the horses well in these parts."
Roberta's former audience simply fell apart, roaring with laughter. The sudden movement and noise spooked David's mount, which broke into a nervous trot, moving through a lane appearing in the dispersing crowd.
"Whoa, horse," David said nervously, sawing on the reins in an effort to slow his mount down. The horse paid no attention to his efforts, beginning to buck a little as it came closer to the mound of horse flop from which a bemired Roberta was emerging.
Apparently, her appearance was the last straw for David's mount. It began making serious efforts to get its rider off its back.
David gave up all pretense of being in charge of things. "HELLLLLP!" he yelled.
Which would make for a softer landing? he wondered as he crouched low in the saddle, clinging as best he could. Should I aim for the mudf or for Mount Crapola over there?
He was barely aware of P. J. coming up from the side, swinging down from the saddle. The young Texan approached David's mount, who was showing a lot of white around the eyes. "Hey, big feller," P. J. said in a soft voice. "Simmer down, simmer down."
The horse shied, tossing its head, but before it could rear, P. J. got hold of the reins. "Nobody's gonna hurt you."
"I wouldn't mind getting off if that would make him happy," David said in a strangled voice.
"Shhhhh," P. J. said.
David wasn't sure if that comment was aimed at him or the horse P. J. was trying to gentle. At least the blasted animal wasn't trying to fling him off anymore.
P. J. finally indicated to David that it was safe to dismount. Luckily, he'd maneuvered them all into an area where the brown muck covering the ground really was mud, and not something worse.
"We'll have to try this again-real soon," David said, rubbing his aching muscles as P. J. began to lead both his own horse and David's former mount away. "I just can't remember when I've had this much fun."
Leif Anderson sat in his saddle, watching Roberta Hendry storm off, heedlessly squelching through mud puddles. Knowing Roberta, she'd probably synched out as soon as she realized what she'd landed in. If her simulacrum was that angry, how furious was the real-life original?
Looks like Latvinia is downright hostile to good old Roberta, Leif thought as the simulacrum vanished through the stable gates. Is she going to keep fighting… or will she just make good on her threats to get this place shut down?
Chapter 8
Megan did her best to hide a yawn, and then fought the impulse to reach up and scratch her head vigorously. This has to be a sim, she told herself. In real life her hair would have escaped even these tight braids surrounding the gold and diamond diadem at her brow.
She supposed she should enjoy the unfamiliar experience of having an orderly hairstyle. Instead, she felt as though the braids were squashing her brain. That didn't improve her mood-nor did sitting through a deadly boring afternoon in the throne room. Megan made a mental note to avoid these lesser courts as much as possible and let her simulacrum handle them. She probably should have been saving her energy for the royal ball this evening.