Arabella of Mars (7 page)

The very thought made her giddy.

This was not the first time she had been in London, of course; she had passed through the city when she had arrived on Earth last year. But on that occasion, weak and debilitated after a four-month aerial journey, she and her mother and sisters had been carried from the ship directly into a private carriage and conveyed immediately to Marlowe Hall. Too enervated to even raise her head, her impression of London had been little more than a blur.

And now she found herself in the thick of it. Lost, bewildered, friendless, nearly penniless, dressed as a boy in a suit of stolen clothes, she had to find her cousin Simon somewhere in this enormous crowd and stop him before he could take passage to Mars.

*   *   *

The coach had deposited her in front of an inn called The Navigator, whose sign showed a man seated at a writing-desk with a map spread out upon it. If the mail-coach from Oxford always arrived here, Simon might have spent the night here. He might even still be here, awaiting passage to Mars.

Arabella drew herself straight, pulled up her breeches, and took a deep breath before entering. Then she paused and adjusted her padding, which had slipped down to her knee. This business of being a boy was not easy.

The inn was as bustling with people within as the street had been without. Raucous conversation babbled at every table, adding up to a terrible din. Looking around, she identified a lean and unfriendly-looking fellow stacking dishes behind the bar as the likely proprietor.

“If you're looking for a room,” the barman said as she drew near, “we're full up.”

“No, I am looking for my cousin,” she said. It was difficult to pitch her voice low, like a boy's, while at the same time raising it to be heard above the tumult of the crowd. “Simon Ashby, from Oxford. He would have come in on the mail-coach yesterday.” She could only hope that Simon was not traveling under an assumed name; if he were, the chances of finding him were slim indeed.

With an annoyed sigh, the barman set down his dishes and shifted to the other end of the bar, where he drew out an account-book from a cupboard. “No one by that name,” he said after running his eye down the last page.

Arabella's heart fell, but only a little. It would have been unreasonably good fortune to have found Simon in the first place she looked. “Thank you for looking, anyway.”

The barman shrugged. “I hope you find him.” He stuck out his hand. “Best of luck, Master…?”

Awkwardly Arabella took the proffered hand, which gripped her own with crushing force. “Ashby,” she stammered as her hand was briskly pumped. “Ara …
Arthur
Ashby.”

*   *   *

Arabella spent the rest of that day calling at inn after inn looking for her cousin. Sometimes she received concerned, solicitous aid, other times a brusque rebuff, but no one admitted having seen any one by that name.

What would she do, she thought as she walked, if she did find him? She was smaller than he, and weaker, and he might be carrying his pistol, so she would be foolish to attack him physically. She could denounce him to all the people around when she found him, and importune them to assist her in detaining him. But all she had against him was an accusation—she held no proof that he had imprisoned her, nor that he planned to murder her brother.

But still … the accusation, together with the pistol, might carry some weight with the local magistrate. When she found Simon, she would have to make enough noise that the two of them would be detained by the constables; once she had explained herself, surely, as the Gospels promised, the truth would make her free.

As plans went, she had to confess, this was not much of one.

A merry sound of chimes distracted her from her concerns, and she looked up to find herself in front of a clockmaker's shop. A clockmaker's shop that also sold automata.

Prominently presented in the shop window was a fine specimen of an automaton—an artist seated at a drawing-desk, about three feet high. A display model, designed to demonstrate the maker's skills, only the right half of its body was clothed. The left half lay open to the air, displaying its gears and works.

But though the mechanism was impressively complex and finely made, it was flawed. The automaton bent and dipped its pen and scratched out its work with a cunning and lifelike motion, but the drawing that emerged—a ship at sea, its sails flying—had a long horizontal line drawn right through the middle of it. Several more copies of the same drawing were visible within the shop, on sale for a penny apiece, and each one was marred by the same error.

The fine automaton was damaged, just as her life had been damaged by Simon's perfidy.

With grim determination she turned from the shop window and continued to the next inn.

 

4

THE AERIAL DOCKS

Arabella awoke the next morning to a brusque kick and an order to “move along” from the keeper of the shop in whose alley she had spent the night. Stiff, cold, and miserable, she parceled out a few coins from her nearly empty purse for a stale bun and a drink from a shared water cup.

At some point to-day, she reflected as she gnawed on the tough bread, she would have to find some way to send word to her mother about what had occurred at Simon's. But her prime concern was to find and stop Simon.

*   *   *

Having finished her paltry breakfast, she determined that she would concentrate her attentions on the inns nearest the aerial ship docks. If Simon were still in London, she thought, he would no doubt have taken lodging there.

The docks were not difficult to find. With Mars in opposition, dozens of Mars-bound ships were departing each day, floating up into the sky like Newton's Bubble—the soap bubble in the great man's bath which had led him to the principle of aerial buoyancy. All she had to do was follow their path down to its origin.

The Mars Docks, once she arrived, proved to be a riot of clamor and noise that made the London streets on which she had spent the previous day seem bucolic by comparison. Men and beasts labored, hauling boxes and barrels to and from the docks; sweating stevedores walked in treadwheels, powering the cranes that lifted bales of cargo to the ships' decks; hawkers cried the virtues of their products, ships, and services; and under all rumbled the ever-present roar of the great furnaces.

But it was the Marsmen—the ships themselves—their masts swaying as they bobbed on the tide, that drew Arabella's attention. Smaller than the seagoing ships they resembled, they differentiated themselves by being constructed of honey-blond
khoresh
-wood, which gleamed like gold in the early morning sun.

Without
khoresh
-wood, or “Marswood” as the English styled it, Marsmen would be tiny ships like the fragile little
Mars Adventure
in which the brave Captain Kidd had been the first Englishman to reach Mars. Kidd had been very lucky to survive his arrival on Mars, and if not for his discovery of the
khoresh
-tree he would not have returned. Stronger than oak but lighter than wicker,
khoresh
-wood was now both the major item of Martian export and the material that made interplanetary travel practical.

And with that thought, the sough of wind in the spars and rigging made her ache with homesickness, reminding her as it did so painfully of the similar sound made by the Martian wind in the
khoresh
-trees of Woodthrush Woods. Perhaps some of these brave ships might be built of wood from her family plantation … the very plantation where, even now, Michael might be taking toast with
guroshkha
-jam and planning his day.

Her stomach clenching at the responsibility that had fallen to her, she continued down toward the docks, hoping against hope that she might not be too late.

*   *   *

The inns of the Mars Docks were mostly on Rotherhithe Street, grand imposing structures with names like The Asteroid, The
Khoresh
-Tree, and The Thork, whose sign depicted a Martian warrior, properly a
thorakh
, with the traditional oval shield and forked spear. The Martian shown on the sign had clearly not been drawn from life; though his spear and shield were reasonably authentic, his carapace—painted as a hard, unnatural red—was far shorter and wider than any actual Martian's, and his hands were simple two-pincered claws like those of an Earth crab. Also, he was naked as a savage, lacking the true
thorakh
's colorful battle dress.

Simon's purse, Arabella reflected, would be heavy with the money obtained from pawning his family silver, and he planned to return richer still, so she selected the largest and most luxurious inn of them all, The Martian King, to begin with. The inn's sign depicted a figure having a Martian's eye-stalks and mouth-parts, but otherwise human, in the garments of a Medieval English monarch; the wide and solid door was of
khoresh
-wood, a pointless luxury.

The keeper of the inn affected a buff coat, aping those of Company ships' captains, and a haughty attitude likewise. “We've no need of errand-boys today,” he said as Arabella approached.

“I am looking for my cousin,” she replied, undeterred. Dozens of similar encounters in the last day had inured her to any amount of hauteur. “Simon Ashby, from Oxford. Have you a guest by that name?”

The innkeeper's expression showed clearly that he did not believe any cousin of such a shoddy-looking figure as Arabella could possibly be a guest at his fine establishment, but he did consult his guest-book. “No, we have not…,” he said without looking up.

“Thank you anyway.” She turned to leave.

“He departed just this morning.”

That stopped Arabella where she stood. “What?”

“Are you deaf as well as ill-mannered, young man? I said that he departed this morning.”

Arabella's heart hammered in her chest. “Did he say where he was going? I have … I have some important news for him.”

The innkeeper peered at his guest-book. “It says here that he booked passage on the Marsman
Earl of Kent
.”

At this news Arabella's pounding heart seemed to stop cold.

*   *   *

“
Earl of Kent
!” Arabella shouted as she ran toward the docks, the cobbles slick under her feet. “
Earl of Kent
! Where is the Marsman
Earl of Kent
?”

Passerby after passerby gave her no reply save an annoyed or disdainful glance. On she rushed, dodging dray-carts and stevedores rolling heavy barrels. “Where is the
Earl of Kent
?” Finally one stranger pointed, saying something about the Heron Place dock.

But this new intelligence seemed only to make her search the harder, as she now sought two targets rather than one. Again and again she doubled back, chasing up and down the sea-wall, importuning strangers for directions and trying to sort out contradictory advice. No one seemed to know where the
Earl of Kent
might be found.

At last she found herself on a stinking, filthy wharf at the foot of Heron Place. Surely this was the dock the stranger had indicated, yet the ship that bobbed nearby was no Marsman at all, merely a nameless cargo barge, and the area was practically unpopulated.

“What might ye be seeking?” called out a one-legged airman, who sat at the base of a nearby wall with his hat upended on the cobbles before him.

“The Marsman
Earl of Kent
.” She sorted a farthing from her much diminished purse and tossed it into the unfortunate man's hat.

“I know her well,” the airman replied. “A fine ship, a soft berth. She were docked just here this very morning.”

Arabella swallowed. “And where is she now?”

An agony of waiting as the airman sucked his few remaining teeth, squinting and contemplating. “I calculate she'll be well above the falling-line now.”

“Which means?”

“Just furling her envelope and swaying out sidemasts.”

“Swaying out…?”

“Just so, sir. A soft berth, the old
Earl
, but no air-clipper. Now, you want a
fast
ship, there's better.
Royal York
, or
Diana
, she'd be halfway to the moon by now. Depending on the winds.”

“So the
Earl
is still nearby?”

“Nearby?” Again the old airman sucked his teeth. “Closer than the moon, aye, but above the falling-line.… Well, there's nothing between her and Mars now save clean air and sweet winds, the good Lord willing.”

“I see,” Arabella said, though in truth she understood little of what she had heard … save that the ship was well departed. “Is there any chance she might be forced to return to port? By storm or foul winds, perhaps?”

The old airman shook his head. “She'd never have taken to the air in such case.”

Arabella's shoulders slumped. “I see,” she repeated miserably, and gave the airman another farthing for his help.

“Thankee, mate,” he said, tucking the coin away in his pocket.

*   *   *

Stunned and dejected, Arabella wandered up from the docks, lacking any destination, letting the waves of humanity wash across her without feeling them. Her feet moved without volition, carrying her unseeing and uncaring though a dark fog of despair.

Simon had gone. Vanished into the air, Mars-bound, with his pistol and his envy and his greed. In two months he would arrive at Mars, meet with Michael, and find some way to work himself into his cousin's confidence. Plenty of time to work out a convincing story as to why.

Michael could be so trusting sometimes. He would never suspect, until some supposed hunting accident or other artificial tragedy had already befallen him. And then Simon, all feigned distress and forged tears, would inherit Marlowe Hall and all the rest, and Arabella and her mother and sisters would be tossed out onto the street.