Arabella of Mars(15)

It was the most people she had ever seen in one place in her entire life. The whole population of Shktetha Station, a small town north of Woodthrush Woods, could have fit into this one street without crowding, but this mob of people filled the street and the next one and the one after that … on and on to the limits of the vast metropolis.

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.