Arabella of Mars (34 page)

Richardson seemed about to burst, but Stross laid a hand on the first mate's elbow. “We'll do well enough without him for a few days, sir.”

At that Richardson sputtered and deflated, then finally said to the captain, “Very well, sir, if you must.”

“I must,” said the captain, looking to Arabella, who was so overwhelmed that she could do no more than drop a curtsey in acknowledgement of his generosity. She hoped she was not blushing, but feared that she was.

Richardson took the captain's hand. “Take care, sir, and return safe. The ship needs you.”

“I will do my best.”

Then Richardson bowed to Arabella, swallowed, and said, “Best of luck, miss.” A small smile then appeared upon his usually serious face. “Take care of our captain.”

Arabella, too, smiled in her nervousness. “I will endeavor to do so.”

Khema then clapped her hands together, with a noise like two sacks of coal colliding. “Very well, then.” She put her hands to her mouth-parts, then touched Arabella and the captain on the forehead. A cool moist sensation quickly dissipated into Mars's dry air, leaving behind a strong scent reminiscent of cinnamon and horses. “This
storek
marks you as my emissary and should prevent you from harm by any Martian of sound mind. Do not wash or rub the spot.”

“Thank you,
itkhalya
,” Arabella said, and she and the captain bowed to her in the Martian fashion. “I will do every thing I can to resolve this conflict with honor for all.”

“I have every confidence you will,
tutukha
,” she replied, returning the bow. “You have already made me very proud.”

*   *   *

Arabella and the captain returned to the ship, where each of them packed a ditty bag with the necessities for a trip of some days' duration. After one final exchange of instructions and best wishes with the officers and crew, they set off on
huresh
-back for Corey House, accompanied by three of Khema's people.

But the captain's inexperience at
huresh
-riding slowed them considerably, and by the time they drew within sight of the house—the lights in its windows far outnumbered by the fires of the Martians camped all around it—full dark had descended. Arabella's escort halted their progress at a sheltered canyon just outside the encampment. “It would be foolish to approach an armed camp in the dark,” said the escort leader. “They might loose their arrows before we are close enough for the
storek
to be smelled. We should make camp for the night here, and proceed at first light.”

Not having come prepared for camping, they gathered and roasted
hoktheth
-roots over an open fire for their dinner, then lay themselves down on the
huresh
-blankets under the Martian stars.

Arabella lay awake for quite some time, staring up at the bright unwinking stars and worrying about what the morrow might bring. Tiny creatures chittered in the darkness; the fire crackled as it burned down; their escort, those who were not on watch, shifted and clattered in their sleep.

But the captain, she noted, was not snoring. She turned her head to where he lay nearby … and saw him sitting up on one elbow, looking at her, his dark eyes reflecting the fire's embers.

“I have not slept,” he confessed.

“Nor I. I am too concerned about my brother.”

“All will be well, I am sure.”

“I wish I shared your confidence.”

He blinked, the two stars of his eyes vanishing for a moment, then said, “May I entrust you with a secret, regarding confidence?”

“Of course.”

“Bravery, as I am sure you are well aware, consists not of the absence of fear but in the taking of action
as though
the fear were not felt. Confidence, likewise, consists of the presentation of assurance
as though
there were no doubt as to a successful outcome. Such presentation, however false its origin, is remarkably efficacious in its effect both on others and on oneself.”

She smiled in the darkness. “Is this, then, the secret to a successful captaincy? Pretense?”

“It is perhaps the only such secret.” He sighed. “Far too much of my captaincy, I fear, has been rooted in deception.”

“How can you say that, sir? You are one of the most honest men I have ever met!”

“I do strive to be, when I can.”

The silence stretched out, then, punctuated by the cry of a night-hunting
shoshok
. Arabella waited, feeling that if the captain were to speak about whatever might be troubling him, he should be allowed to do so in his own time.

“I am not,” he said at last, “the man I present myself to be. My full name and title is Farzand-i-Khas-i-Daulat-i-Inglishia Mansur-i-Zaman Amir-ul-Umra Maharaja Dhiraj Rajeshwar Sir Sri Maharaja-i-Rajgan Bhupendra Prakash Singh Mahendra Bahadur. Or was. Or would have been.”

Arabella blinked. Somewhere in that stream of syllables she thought she had heard a word from her childhood storybooks. “Did you say …
Maharaja
?”

“Yes. I was born to be a prince of India.”

This, Arabella thought, explained his regal bearing and almost inhuman poise, yet it raised far more questions than it answered. “So … so what occurred to change your estate?”

He sighed deeply. “When I was a young man, I had every advantage. Fine clothes, expansive hunting grounds, beautiful women … all were mine for the taking. Yet the one thing I desired more than any thing else was to waste my time tinkering with automata.”

“You should not disparage automata so, sir. They may be, I believe, instrumental to the future perfection of humanity.”

“My opinion today is much the same as yours, yet in my youth I was even more certain of it, to such a degree that I neglected my other duties. I avoided meals with my family, went days without sleep … all in pursuit of my notion that an automaton navigator could be built that would reduce the lengthy and hazardous voyage to Mars to something as simple as a stroll in the park.”

“And from this ‘notion,' as you put it, Aadim was born.”

“Aadim, in his current form, was yet many years in the future. Yet so dedicated was I to his conception that, when presented with my bride-to-be, I callously dismissed her.” The twin stars of the captain's eyes shimmered, then vanished. “I called her stupid and dull, only because she did not share my passion for automata. She went away in tears.”

Arabella listened in silence, wanting to reach out to this intelligent, gentle man whose memories brought him such pain.

“This insult,” he continued, “to the girl, to her family, and to my own father's judgement in selecting her, was too great to be tolerated. He disinherited me immediately, and cast me out of the palace with only the clothes on my back.”

“How horrible that must have been,” Arabella breathed.

“I was unthinking and cruel, and received no worse in return.”

“But how could you be expected to survive under such circumstances?”

“I had friends, other enthusiasts of automata, who provided me with room and board for a time. But their lodgings were not large, and this arrangement soon made all of us uncomfortable, so I sought gainful employment. A learned man of my acquaintance, familiar with my theories regarding the potential of an automaton navigator, encouraged me to offer my services to the Honorable Mars Company. But upon my approach to the company's grand and palatial offices, I suffered a crisis of confidence and decided, unwisely, to present my understanding of aerial navigation—which was, in truth, entirely abstract—as actual airship experience.” Again he sighed heavily. “I will never know how I was able to talk my way into that, my first commission as navigator. I certainly hope that, as captain, I would be able to take the true measure of such a charlatan as my own younger self. Perhaps my father, regretting his decision to disinherit me but unable to take me back without losing face, exerted some influence on my behalf. In any case, I was taken aboard—under the name Prakash Singh, the very simplest form of my own name, which is as common among my people as John Smith is with yours—and somehow managed to bring the ship to Fort Augusta without disaster.”

Though the captain had obtained his first posting by deceit, Arabella could not help but sympathize with his predicament, and even admired his pluck and determination in doing so.

He continued his tale. “Using the funds obtained from that successful voyage, I began to rebuild my prototype navigator. Then, after several more such journeys, I was able to put him into practice—in parallel with traditional navigation, at first. But as his theoretical advantages rapidly proved themselves practical, and in fact highly efficacious, he and I rapidly rose in prominence. After only eight years I found myself captain of my own ship. With the considerable wealth that attends that position I have continued Aadim's development, extending his instruments throughout
Diana
so that he and the ship are, in effect, a single highly efficient mechanism of commerce. Yet my tinkering continues, for I am still not satisfied.”

“But he is already so successful, sir! I have never even heard of any automaton of any variety that is capable of such complexity of calculation, such subtlety of action … dare I say, sir, such a close approximation to human thought and feeling. Sometimes I would swear he seems nearly alive.”

He tutted. “You are too kind.”

“Sir, I do not exaggerate.” She hesitated, for what she was about to admit seemed highly implausible even to her. Yet the intimacy of this moment, and her uncertainty of what the morrow might bring, brought the words to her lips almost involuntarily. “From time to time, sir, Aadim seems to … to offer suggestions. Sometimes he seems to resist certain settings of his controls; at other times he encourages them.”

The captain shifted suddenly on his blanket, causing the sands beneath to respond with a hissing crunch. “You have experienced this phenomenon yourself?”

“I have, sir. It does not happen frequently, but when it does, the impression is quite distinct. I would swear that it was he, not I, who calculated the successful approach to my family plantation.”

He turned away from her then, his broad back in its buff uniform coat a slightly paler smudge against the black of the sky.

For a long time he did not utter a word. Then he took in a breath, as though about to speak, but still made no sound. Then he drew in another sharp breath, and let it out with a long, shuddering sigh.

The captain was … crying.

She longed to take him in her arms—to offer comfort to this brave, distant, complex man—but propriety restrained her.

“I…,” he began, but choked off with a liquid sob. He composed himself, then began again. “I had thought that I was only deluding myself. That my desire for Aadim's perfection was causing me to imagine his actions as more intelligent, more conscious, than they could possibly be in reality. You are the first to offer any confirmation of this impression.”

“I do not pretend to understand how gears and levers can bring forth consciousness, sir, but it certainly appears that somehow they have.”

He turned back to her then, the blanket rustling beneath him, and moved toward her until they were nearly touching. “If any other person had offered me this assurance,” he whispered, “I would think that they were indulging me, or mocking me, or perhaps that they were merely as self-deceiving as I. But you, my dear, I know to be too intelligent to be mistaken, too forthright for flattery, and too kind for mockery. With your knowledge of automata in general, and of Aadim's inner workings in particular, I am sure that you would not make such a statement in any thing other than dead earnest.”

“Indeed, sir, I would not.” Her voice came out as a whisper.

He swallowed, and the two shining stars of the reflected fire in his eyes shimmered. “Thank you, my dear Miss Ashby,” he said, “from the bottom of my heart.”

For a long moment they remained thus, their faces mere inches apart, and Arabella's heart raced as she reflected that their only chaperones were three Martian warriors, who cared nothing for human proprieties, and in any case two of them were asleep.

But then the captain cleared his throat and sat up straight on his blanket, taking himself away from her. “We should take our rest while we can,” he said, his voice slightly hoarse. “Tomorrow may be a very busy day.”

“Indeed,” she sighed, as the reality of the situation came crashing down upon her mind. “Still, though, I am glad to have had this conversation, and honored that you have shared your story with me. I assure you most sincerely that you may depend on me to keep your secrets safe within my breast.”

“From you, I would expect nothing less. Good night, Miss Ashby.”

Good night, my maharaja
, she thought, but what she said aloud was, “Good night, Captain Singh.”

 

21

COREY HOUSE

Dawn revealed Corey House in all its dour magnificence. It had been built in the earliest days of Martian colonization by a Scottish family—many of the first settlers had been Scots—and it bore the heavy, martial mien characteristic of that people's architecture: all thick walls, square towers, and fortified parapets. But unlike the gray castles of Scotland, which she had seen in colored plates, this one was built of native Martian stone, and the light of the rising sun brought out the warmth in the rock's butterscotch-orange and rust-red tones. The house was set firmly into the slope of a small mountain, and the crags all around it displayed similar colors.

But despite the warmth of the scene's color scheme, the overall sight that greeted Arabella's eyes brought a chill to her bones. For the daylight also revealed the full extent of the army of angry Martians that surrounded the house. Rank on rank of tents and huts stretched for what seemed like miles across the plain below the house, lapping like a wave on the lower reaches of the prominence upon which the house was constructed, and reaching right up to the bases of the nearest towers. The encampment seethed with Martians in their bright clan colors, their swords and forked spears glittering in the sunlight.