Arabella of Mars(14)

As she rushed along, her brains rattling in her head from each blow of her heels on the path in Earth’s heavy gravity, she saw the coach come to the inn, draw to a halt, and the guard at the rear of the carriage hand down a packet of mail to the innkeeper. The coach seemed to be just on the brink of departing.

But finally, stumbling, panting, and catching at her falling breeches, she leaned heavily against the side of the coach before it left. “I should like,” she gasped, pitching her voice as low as she could, “to take passage, to London.”

“You are in luck, my lad,” the driver said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “There’s one seat open inside.”

“Bless you, sir.” But as she reached for the door handle, the driver blocked the door with his hand.

“Seventeen shillings sixpence, sir.”

“Sev—!” Arabella’s mouth hung open at the shocking fare.

“Outside’s cheaper, but there’s none left.” The four dusty and miserable-looking men seated on the coach’s roof regarded Arabella with red-eyed indifference. “Or you could take the stage tomorrow for half the price. But this here’s the Royal Mail, and we waits for no man. So what’s it to be, lad, stay or go?”

Seventeen shillings sixpence was nearly all the money that remained in her pocket. But one day’s delay could make the difference between intercepting her cousin in London and watching in helpless despair as his ship sailed away into the interplanetary atmosphere. “I shall go,” she said, and counted out the coins.

Before she had even properly seated herself, the coach jolted into motion, slamming her into the wall on one side and her neighbor on the other in irregular alternation. She felt rather like a hat being rattled about in a hat-box, and the noise precluded all conversation.

It was not until the coach was halfway to Tetsworth that she realized she had successfully posed as a boy without being questioned.

*

The day passed as though in a fever. She slept fitfully as the coach jolted along, often waking with a fellow traveler’s elbow in her ribs or coat-button in her eye. She had no idea where they were; from where she sat she had only a sliver of a view through the tiny window. In the darkness and noise of the lurching coach, conversation was impossible even if she had desired it.

Her stolen clothing itched at her conscience as badly as the worn and rustic fabric itched at her body. For the hundredth time she told herself that she had had no choice—that, despite the great hardship she knew her theft would cause some unknown farmer, the risk to her brother’s life was greater still. Yet she knew her beloved Khema would be terribly disappointed in her.

She remembered the automaton dancer—a tiny doll, less than two feet tall, which had leapt and pirouetted most realistically when its key was wound. It had been her favorite of all her father’s automata, and very dear to him as well.

Until one day she had, in a foolish excess of enthusiasm, turned the key one too many times. The mainspring had snapped with a hideous metallic twang, leaving the dancer frozen in mid-leap.

She had been in the dunes behind the drying-sheds, desperately shoveling sand over the broken device, when Khema had found her. “What is this, tutukha?” she’d said.

“It’s my father’s automaton dancer,” Arabella had replied, her voice quavering. “It … it broke, and I thought that if I took it away and buried it he wouldn’t notice it was gone.”

Khema’s eye-stalks had curved back in skepticism. “It broke, did it? And I am sure that you had nothing to do with this?”

Exhausted and still all a-flutter from her frantic rush to conceal the damaged automaton, Arabella had been able to do nothing more than shake her head.

Khema had bent down to Arabella’s level, her black and subtly faceted eyes fixed on Arabella’s. “We Martians have a concept we call okhaya,” she had said. “In English you would say ‘personal responsibility,’ though that does not quite convey how very important okhaya is to us. We believe very strongly that if one does something wrong, one should immediately admit it and make amends. To conceal a bad action, or even worse to lie about it, brings very great dishonor.” She had sat back on her heels then, the sand crunching beneath the complex carapace of her knees. Silently waiting.

Arabella had withstood that calm, expectant gaze for no more than a few seconds before bursting into tears and admitting her crime.

The automaton had not been repairable, and she had had no desserts for a month. But, though he was terribly cross at the damage, her father had said he was proud of her for her confession.

Suddenly the coach halted and the door was flung open, making her blink in the unaccustomed light. “London!” cried the driver. “All out!”

*

Arabella stumbled out into a vast confusion. Horses, men, and ladies milled all about in a riot of gaudy colors, the noise of hoofbeats and shouted conversations adding to her bewilderment. Buildings of brick and stone towered three and four stories on every side. A terrific smell of soot and dust and offal assaulted her nostrils.

“Get out there, you!” someone shouted. She turned to see a coach-and-four thundering down upon her, and threw herself from its path only to collide with a woman in a fashionable green dress. “Take a care, you guttersnipe!” she cried, and shoved Arabella rudely away.

Heart pounding, Arabella scrambled to the nearest wall and pressed herself against it, trying her best not to be trampled.