Arabella of Mars(2)

And then Khema appeared, slipping silently from the shadows, the subtle facets of her eyes reflecting in the starlight. She had, of course, been watching them all along, unobserved; her capabilities of tracking and concealment were far beyond any thing Arabella or Michael could even begin to approach. “You leapt too late, tutukha,” she said. A tutukha was a small inoffensive herbivore, and Khema often called her this as a pet name.

“I will do better next time, itkhalya,” Arabella replied through gritted teeth.

“I am certain you will.”

Michael looked up at Khema, his eyes shining. “It’s not stopping.”

Without a word Khema knelt and inspected the wound, her eye-stalks bending close and the hard cool carapace of her pointed fingertips delicately teasing the matted hair aside. Arabella bit her lip hard; she would not cry.

“This is beyond my skills,” Khema said at last, sitting back on her haunches. “You require a human physician.”

At that Arabella did cry out. “No!” she exclaimed, clutching at her itkhalya’s sleeve. “We cannot! Mother will be furious!”

“We will endeavor to keep this from her.”

*

The pain of Dr. Fellowes’s needle as it stitched the wound shut was no worse than the humiliation Arabella felt as she lay on a cot in her father’s office. From the shelf above Father’s desk, his collection of small automata looked down in judgement: the scribe, the glockenspiel player, and especially the dancer, still given pride of place though it no longer functioned, all seemed to regard her with disappointment in their painted eyes.

Her father too, she knew, must be horribly disappointed in her, though his face with its high forehead and shock of gray hair showed more concern than dissatisfaction. Though no tears had fallen, his eyes glimmered in the flickering lamplight, and when she considered how she had let him down Arabella felt a hot sting of shame in her own eyes.

Even the crude little drummer she herself had built, a simple clockwork with just one motion, seemed let down by its creator. She had been so proud when she had presented it to Father on his birthday last year and he had placed it on the shelf with his most treasured possessions; now, she felt sure, he would surely retire it to some dark corner.

Again and again the needle stabbed Arabella’s scalp; the repeated tug and soft hiss of the thread passing through her skin seemed to go on and on. “A little more light, please,” the doctor said, and Khema adjusted the wick on the lamp. “Not much longer.” The doctor’s clothing smelled of dust and leather, and the sweat of the huresh on which Michael had fetched him from his home. Michael himself looked on from behind him, his sandy hair and heart-shaped face so very like her own, his blue eyes filled with worry.

“There now,” said the doctor, clipping off the thread. “All finished.” Khema brought him a washbasin, and as he cleaned the blood from his hands he said, “Scalp wounds do bleed quite frightfully, but the actual danger is slight; if you keep the wound clean it should heal up nicely. And even if there should be a scar, it will be hidden by your hair.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Arabella said, sitting up and examining his work in the window-glass—the sun would rise soon, but the sky was still dark enough to give a good reflection. Her appearance, she was forced to acknowledge, was quite shocking, with dried blood everywhere, but she thought that once she had cleaned herself she might be able to arrange her hair so as to hide the stitches from her mother.

But that opportunity was denied her, for just at that moment the office door burst open and Mother charged in, still in her night-dress. “Arabella!” she cried. “What has happened to you?”

“She is quite well, Mother,” Michael said. “She only fell and hit her head.”

“She is not ‘well.’” Mother sat on the edge of the cot and held Arabella’s head in her hands. “She is covered in blood, and what on earth is this horrific garment you are wearing? It exposes your limbs quite shamefully.”

Arabella had been dreading this discovery. “It is called a thukhong, Mother, and it keeps me far warmer than any English-made dress.”

“An ugly Martian word for an ugly Martian garment, one entirely unsuitable for a proper English lady.” She glowered at Arabella’s father. “I thought we agreed when she turned twelve that there would be no more of … this.” She waved a disgusted hand, taking in the thukhong, the blood, the desert outside, and the planet Mars in general. Dr. Fellowes seemed to be trying to disappear into the wainscoting.

Father dropped his eyes from Mother’s withering gaze. “She is still only sixteen, dear, and she is a very … active girl. Surely she may be allowed a few more years of freedom before being compelled to settle down? She has kept up with her studies.…”

But even as he spoke, Mother’s lips went quite white from being pressed together, and finally she burst out, “I will have no more of your rationalizations!” She stood and paced briskly back and forth in front of Father’s broad khoresh-wood desk, her fury building still further as she warmed to her subject. “For years now I have struggled to bring Arabella up properly, despite the primitive conditions on this horrible planet, and now I find that she is risking her life traipsing around the trackless desert by night, wearing leather trousers no less!” She rounded on Arabella. “How long have you been engaging in this disgraceful behavior?”