“What did you fall into, the pigpen?” asked George. Ronnie was glad to note that Raffaele did not smirk. She was dry and clean and lovely but she did not smirk.
“Just a muddy ditch,” Ronnie said. He hoped it sounded casual, the way he’d heard others speak lightly of problems in the field.
“I haven’t fallen off in a week,” George said. “Even though it really rained hard during my second lesson today.”
“It’s different out there.” Ronnie shot a glance at Raffaele. She wasn’t even smiling; she looked as if she knew that his shoulder and hip hurt, and was sorry.
“I’ll bet Bubbles and Raffa didn’t fall,” George went on. “Did you?”
Raffa turned an enchanting shade of pink; Ronnie had never thought how lovely a blush could look against dark hair. “Almost,” she said. “My horse stumbled on landing over a big drop, and I was right up on her neck. . . .”
“But you didn’t fall,” George brayed. “Now if that had been Ronnie, he’d have gone splat, right?”
“Excuse me,” said Ronnie, trying for coolness and achieving only the very tone of wounded dignity he least wanted. “I’d like to take a bath before dinner.”
“I should hope so,” George said. “You certainly need one.”
Ronnie fumed his way to his room. Bad enough to have to spend a wet cold day riding a clumsy horse over mud and rock. Bad enough to fall off and be bruised from head to heel. But to meet the impossibly dapper George on the way back—to be twitted about his muddy state—that was too much. People that thought this was fun must be completely insane . . . except maybe Raffa, because after all women were different.
He simply could not spend the entire winter at this ridiculous sport. He had to get away, somehow, and do something where he didn’t feel a complete fool.
Chapter Eleven
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Ronnie said.
“Do you really want to spend another day bouncing around on that horse?” asked George. Of course he didn’t; that was the point. It had been bad enough before George got into the hunt, and worse afterwards. But sneaking off like this? George went on, “You look ridiculous—”
“I do not.” Ronnie glared at his friend. George had not fallen off in his first time in the field, and it had gone to his head. He seemed to think a successful maiden appearance made up for later runaways, buckings off, and an inability to keep up with the field on a slow day. “I ride better than you—”
“And not nearly so well as your aged aunt or that demon captain of hers. Honestly, I had no idea the Regs went in for horse riding; I thought they spent all their time polishing weapons and doing drills.”
Ronnie snorted. “They do love drills, don’t they? At least down here Captain Serrano can’t interrupt our sleep.”
“No. That’s the purview of your aunt, waking us up before daylight to gobble a disgusting breakfast and clamber onto great clumsy, smelly animals. . . .”
Ronnie felt a perverse desire to insist that it wasn’t that bad, but Bubbles had already started laughing.
“And you did look so funny, lamb, when you were stuck in that hedge, all red-faced and blubbering.” She patted him on the shoulder as she clambered past him. He could see by the dome-light that Raffa was trying to smother her giggles and shush Bubbles.
“Fine.” Ronnie slid the canopy forward; the others were still giggling and stowing their supplies in the lockers. He was beginning to wish he hadn’t agreed to this, but how could he back out now? He called up the preflight checklist on the display and started down it. The computer would have done everything, of course, but he was not as careless as his aunt thought.
“Come on, Ron,” George said. “Get this thing off the ground.”
“Preflight,” Ronnie said. George should know that—or was he so involved with Bubbles that he’d lost the rest of his wits? George heaved a dramatic sigh, which Ronnie ignored. He worked his way down the rest of the preflight list in silence; as usual, everything seemed to be in order. Ronnie inserted the cube and checked the readout: it had accepted his course programming, and calculated fuel consumption based on satellite weather information. “Refuel once,” he said. “Anyone care if it’s Bandon or Calloo?”
A ragged chorus, which sounded louder for Bandon; Ronnie entered that with the touchpad, cast a glance back to make sure all the loose items were stowed, and pressed the green button. The engines caught, and the computer took over the final preflight power checks. At least he knew what the readouts meant, though he could not, from this point on, override the computer’s decisions. Not much like a Royal trainer; these civilian models would fly themselves, given the chance. He laid his hands lightly on the yoke anyway, and punched for manual takeoff. He felt the yoke quiver, and the computer displayed his options. If he stayed within these margins, he could have control—and within those, he could control one axis. For a moment it amused him—for a human to be allowed to fly the machine, he had to fly like a machine.
It would be practice, and he had always enjoyed flying. He flicked his fingers over the yoke studs—power, directional focus, attitude—and the computer agreed that he knew what he was doing. He didn’t know if the others noticed, but he had manual control until he chose to relinquish it, when the craft was at 5,000 meters and on course to Bandon.
“It’s dark outside,” Raffaele commented as the craft leveled. “There’s nothing but—” She peered back. “Nothing but the House lights. . . .”
“We had to leave before daylight,” George pointed out. “Or Ronnie’s aunt would have stopped us.”
Ronnie tried to see past the reflections on the canopy. Nothing but darkness. . . . He flicked off the interior lights, and looked harder. Nothing ahead but darkness, nothing to either side but darkness. He’d never seen anything quite so black in his life.
“It’ll be dawn soon,” he said. “And the computer doesn’t need daylight.” As it came out of his mouth he realized that they knew that—he was comforting himself. Darkness hid his blush. Behind him, ostentatious yawns indicated that the others would pretend to sleep. Someone turned on one of the tiny reading lights, a soft glow in the rear of the cabin; Ronnie left the main cabin lights off.
He found that he kept looking to the right, hoping to see some glimmer of dawn. Just when he had given up hope, and convinced himself that he would have to endure flying down a black drainpipe forever, a sullen glow lit the horizon, more feeling than color. Soon he was sure of it; a dim redness blotched with black—clouds, he realized—and then a curious fuzzy quality to the outside. Still dark, still impenetrable, but somehow seeming larger than it had. As the light strengthened, he saw the sea beneath, oddly brighter than the sky. Away toward sunrise it stretched, and the clouds hung over it in dark columns, their tops flushed pink now with the coming light.
Ronnie had never flown along a coast at sunrise; he had not imagined the impossible combinations of green and blue and purple, the piles of pink and gold, which clouds and sea and sunrise make. He looked down on the dark land slowly coming out of the dark haze of night, the shoreline edged with ruffles of colorless surf that would soon be silver and blue. His quick memory for maps told him they were almost a third of the way to Bandon; the computer would soon change their course away from sunrise, across the narrowing belt of land and out across the ocean to that cluster of islands. He hoped it would not change before he could see the sun lift out of the sea.
“There’s nothing down there at all,” Raffaele said, in a voice that began sleepy and ended worried. “Where are we?”
“This is the Bottleneck,” Bubbles said, yawning. “Gorgeous morning, especially since I don’t have to climb on a horse. Don’t worry, Raffa, we can’t get lost. The computer on this thing has a direct line to the navsats. If we went down, someone would be there in no time.”