Arabella of Mars(41)
This company was not unusual; the space could accommodate as many as five, in a pinch. Nor was it strange that, the head being so dark, she had no idea of their identities. What was unusual was that they were conversing in the head—unlike women, men generally did their business in silence—in voices so low they no doubt thought themselves inaudible. But, after many years of gunnery drill, many airmen were somewhat deaf, and often spoke more loudly than they knew.
“So,” rasped one, “are you with us?” His voice was low and grating, quite distinctive, but not one she recognized. Perhaps, she thought, he was deliberately disguising it.
“Maybe,” came the response. This voice was not familiar either. “All I know is, I’d rather see a white face on the quarterdeck.”
“John Company does love our Captain Singh,” the first man replied with hard irony. “He makes the owners a tidy profit, him and that witchy machine of his, so they put up with his heathen ways. But there’s plenty of good English airmen on this ship, and officers too, who agree with you.”
A pause. “I’m in.”
“Good man.” There was a rustle of cloth—the sound of a handshake? “We’ll contact you again when we’re just about ready to move. Until then, just do your duties, and don’t tell a soul. But be warned—there’s no changing your mind now. We’re watching you, we’re everywhere, and if you even try to tell an officer we’ll slit your throat in your hammock, and don’t think we won’t.”
“Mum’s the word.” The sound of a hand clapping another man’s shoulder, and then the door opened and closed as the two men slipped out. Try as she might, Arabella could still not discern who they were.
She floated, trembling, for a long time in the stinking darkness before she returned to her hammock. And then, despite her exhaustion, it was yet a longer time before she slept.
11
SAIL HO
Weeks passed, and the work grew routine. Arabella learned her duties well, became conversant with the strange terminology used by airmen, and developed cordial relations with the men in her mess.
She overheard no further conversations in the head, nor were there any rumblings of mutiny among the crew on deck. Even the conversation she had heard might be no more than dissatisfied grumbling. Yet she feared that insurrection was brewing, and viewed every man with suspicion. She never found herself alone with the captain, and with no knowledge of which officers or men might be involved in the plot, she dared not share her worries with any one else.
Despite her caution and concerns, she gradually became more comfortable with her tasks and the other members of the crew. From time to time she was given new duties, which kept her on her toes.
The one aspect of airmanship she could not seem to master was that of tying knots, which for all its seeming simplicity proved far more complex in execution than her mind was capable of encompassing. She had never dreamed there were so many ways of tying two ropes together! But one day, as she struggled in vain to fix a loop in the middle of a line, her messmate Mills floated up to her with a raised eyebrow, his pink palms raised in a clear offer of assistance.
The man spoke little—his native language was some West African tongue he shared with no one else on the ship—but Arabella was sure he understood English as well as any man aboard. When he did speak, his words, though not always grammatical, were carefully chosen and to the point.
“I am to tie a bowline here,” she confessed, “but I simply cannot fathom how to do it when both ends of the line are secured.”
“Bowline on bight,” he said. With clear deliberate gestures he demonstrated the knot, his pale yellow eyes firm and kind upon hers as he made certain she understood the process.
She tried it herself then, and though the resulting knot was far more untidy than his, his bright white smile showed that she had tied it correctly.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, and with an amiable salute he returned to his duties.
*
The most interesting part of her day was the time she spent in the captain’s cabin, learning about navigation and the use and maintenance of Aadim the clockwork navigator. These lessons were nominally for the benefit of Binion and the other midshipmen, with herself as only a guest, but it soon became abundantly clear to all that she was by far the most adept student of the lot. Even Binion, resent the situation though he might, plainly could not deny its truth.
Though the lessons were hard—the trigonometry of sextant and compass was a particular challenge—Arabella applied herself to them with vigor and joy. Here she could exercise her mind in a way her mother, indeed all of English society, would never tolerate in a girl or even a grown woman. In these moments all shame at her continued deception fell away, replaced by anger at the opportunities denied her by her sex.
As the captain lectured patiently, Arabella could not fail to be reminded of her father, and she often reflected that he would have very much admired the captain if they had met. The two men shared a keen interest in automata, of course, but the affinity ran deeper than that—both had an actively curious intelligence, a tenacious persistence when confronted with a difficult puzzle, and a warm heart beneath a sometimes gruff exterior. But the most complex automaton in her father’s collection was a mere toy by comparison with Aadim. The more she worked with the navigator, the more impressed she became with the many clockmakers who’d designed and built his workings.