She paused at her desk. Inlaid wood made a pattern of vines and flowers; until she pressed the central blossom, it could have passed for an antique of Old Earth. The desktop cleared, showing the floorplan of that deck, with ghostly shadows of the others. A cluster of dots showed Ronnie and friends, back in the lounge. A dot in her bedroom; that would be Myrtis, her maid. A dot for the captain, in her quarters; a moving dot that must be Bates, coming back. She touched her finger to that one, and his voice came out of the desk speaker.
“Yes, madam?”
“Have Cook check the quantities Ronnie and his friends consumed last night; they seem to eat quite a lot. . . .”
“Cook has estimated an additional fifteen percent over your orders yesterday, madam, and has the purchase order ready for your stamp.”
“Thank you, Bates.” She might have known. They were usually two steps ahead of her—but that was their duty. She flicked up the lower service deck on the display, found Cook’s dot, and touched it. Cook transferred the purchase order to her desktop, and she looked at it. Even with six additional people aboard, it looked like enough to feed them all three times over. It would serve them right, she thought, if she made them eat survival rations until they got to Bunny’s. Certainly it would cost less and take up less room. Cook had pointed out that they’d need to air up two more refrigeration units and set out another full section of ’ponics.
That would start another argument between crewside and staffside. The environmental techs were ship’s crew, under the captain’s command; Cecelia knew better than to interfere with her captain’s crew. But that part of ’ponics devoted to the kitchen came under the heading of “gardening,” which meant staff—her staff. Felix, head gardener, and two boys (one female), kept her private solarium in fresh flowers and Cook supplied with fresh vegetables. Felix and the environmental techs always got into some hassle which required her decision—one of the things she had not liked about her former captain was his tendency to let things slide until she had to quell an incipient riot in staff.
She found Felix’s icon, touched it, and told him about the ’ponics section. He wanted to use half of it for a new set of exotics he’d bought seedstock for; the pictures of the so-called vegetables didn’t impress her. Felix insisted, though, that if he could have seed available when they arrived at Bunny’s, he could trade with Bunny’s ferocious head gardener for her favorite (and rarest) mushrooms. Cecelia shrugged; Ronnie and his pals could eat the things she didn’t like.
“And what you tell the moles, eh?” he said finally, having won his main point. “You got to let them know it’s okay, whatever I grow.”
“I will tell Captain Serrano, our new captain, that I’ve approved your use of an additional ’ponics section for fresh produce.”
“They bother me, I’ll send ’em the halobeets,” Felix said. He would, too. He had done it before, when displeased with someone. A genius of his type—but like most such geniuses, a trifle tempery. She put up with him for the luscious fruits and fresh vegetables, the abundant flowers, which so amazed those who came to dinner. . . . No other yacht she knew of was completely self-sufficient in fresh produce.
She looked again for the captain’s icon, and found it moving toward the bridge. Best not interrupt her now; she would have had the crew assembled. Cecelia’s finger hovered over the control. . . . She could easily listen in on the captain’s first briefing . . . but she decided against it. Instead, she routed a message to the captain’s desk about the ’ponics, and called up a credit status.
The figures meant little to her; the reality was that she could afford to buy anything for sale on Rockhouse two or three times over. The desktop offered a bright-colored graphic which showed how much more she was spending to transport herself and six young people compared to herself alone. It didn’t matter, and Berenice had transferred stock to cover it anyway. She called up Ronnie’s status, and pursed her lips. Berenice had put him on the silver family line, and he had already used it. Hardin’s Clothiers, Vetris Accessories, Spaulding . . . Cecelia whistled. He had started with two cubes of storage, and at this rate would need another two.
Her desk chimed. “Aunt Cecelia?” came the plaintive voice. “Please—I need to talk to you.”
Hardly, she thought. He needed to listen to her. “Ah, Ronnie. Very good—I meant to ask you, did you bring your hunting tackle?”
“My . . . uh . . . what?”
“Your riding clothes, your saddles—”
“I—no! Of course not. Aunt Cecelia, just because you’re crazy enough to ride big stupid animals across rocks and mud—”
“I presumed,” said Cecelia, overriding his voice with a surge of glee, “that that was your rather large order at Hardin’s and Vetris’s and Spaulding’s. But since it wasn’t, perhaps you’d return some of that foppery, whatever it was, and get yourself some decent riding kit. We are going to Bunny’s, as you know, for the season, and since I’m saddled with you, you might as well saddle a horse and learn something useful.” She felt good about the pun; puns usually came to her four hours too late, if at all.
The fashion in invective, she was happy to discover, had swung once more from the rough crudities copied from the lower classes to an entertaining polysyllabic baroque style. When Ronnie ran out of breath (which happened more quickly, she noted, with the longer words and phrases), she interrupted again, before he could start another rampage.
“I do not care that you do not like horses, or riding, or that none of your set consider hunting a reasonable or enjoyable pastime. I do not care if you are miserable for the entire year of your exile. You may sulk in your cabin if you like—you will certainly not sulk in mine, or interfere with my pleasure one bit more than I can help. And if you do not order yourself the proper clothes, saddles, and so on, I shall do it for you and charge it to your account.” Although it would really make sense to wait until they were at Bunny’s—all the really good saddlers came there for the season. But her blood was up. So, it seemed, was his. She could order what she liked, he said angrily, but he was not about to pretend to copy the amusements of a horse-faced old spinster with more money than sense, and he would be damned if she ever found him on a horse chasing some innocent helpless animal across the dripping fields.
“If you think the fox is either innocent or helpless, young Ronald, you are more foolish than I think.” She was not sure which of them broke the connection. She did not care. She called her personal assistant at Spaulding’s and arranged everything as she wished—of course they knew all his measurements already, and of course they were happy to help a wealthy aunt surprise an almost-as-wealthy nephew. In a final burst of pique, she put the bill on her own account, and not Berenice’s. . . . She wanted no questions from the doting mother who had let the brat become so useless.
Chapter Two
Heris led the way into her cabin, wondering if civilians had any concept of shipboard courtesy. Would they know enough to stay on their side of the office? Sirkin did; she stood across the desk as Heris called up the files on the desk display, looking young and earnest.
She looked at the course Sirkin had originally planned. Direct, reasonable flux levels, no abrupt course changes, adequate clearance of the mapped obstacles. It was close to the course she would have selected, although R.S.S. ships could and did shave the clearance margins in the interest of speed.
“And Captain Olin disapproved this course? Why?”
“He said it was too risky. Here—” Sirkin laid her finger on the display, and it enlarged to show finer detail. “He claimed that coming this close to T-77 with a flux of 0.06 was suicidal. I asked him why, and he said he was captain and I’d learn better in time.”