Arabella of Mars (12 page)

Finally she found herself, fully clothed, settled and stable in the hammock's tight embrace, and tried to sleep. But, tired though she was, the sound and movement of so many men sleeping nearby, not to mention their warmth and smell and the rocking motion of the ship, were too unfamiliar and sleep refused to come.

Had it really been just five weeks since that horrible black-bordered letter had arrived? The time since then seemed an eternity crowded with dreadful people, hideous food, filth, stink, and endless wearying labor.

And she would never see her beloved father again.

Lying in the swaying, odorous darkness, Arabella wept.

 

2

IN TRANSIT,
1813

 

8

DEPARTURE

The next thing Arabella knew, she was being roughly shaken awake. Heart pounding, she immediately sat up, determined to get the better of her assailant.

But it was her hammock that got the better of her. As soon as she sat up, it turned over and dumped her unceremoniously on the hard and filthy deck.

Shaking her head, spitting out sawdust, she struggled to her feet and raised her fists. But there was no assailant. Instead, the pitch-dark deck was crowded with airmen, yawning, stretching, and scratching themselves with vigor.

“Out or down, lads!” came an enthusiastic cry. “Rise and shine! Cosmic tide waits for no man!”

Lamps guttered to life down the length of the hold, helping every one to find his way as he took his hammock down and rolled it into a tight little bundle. Arabella, blinking, did her best to follow their example, but her hammock wound up little more than an untidy tangle of rope and fabric.

Once the hammocks were stowed on deck—it was a chill morning, the sun not yet risen and the city lights mostly extinguished—and most every man had taken his turn at the head, they all returned below and divided into their messes for a breakfast of porridge oats and good strong tea. Famished, Arabella shoveled more than half of her oats into her stomach before she realized they were actually quite tasty.

Arabella again drew clean-up duty in the galley. Though the one enormous pot was heavily encrusted with oats, cleaning it or “hogging it out” was not nearly as bad as the previous night's cabbage and horsemeat. And the cook let her have a small portion of raisins left over from the officers' breakfast.

As she came out on deck, munching her raisins and watching the eastern horizon begin to lighten, Arabella mused that perhaps this life was not as bad as all that.

*   *   *

“Ahoy the boat!” came a cry to Arabella's left. From across the water came the reply, “Furnace-men!” She turned to see, making its way across the Thames in the pale light of the rising sun, a most extraordinary sight.

A huge boat, very wide and shallow, was being rowed toward
Diana
from the riverbank by two dozen grunting, heaving men. At the center of the boat, swiveling atop a sort of plinth, was a barrel the size of a hogshead, closed with a lid at one end, and at the other …

An enormous canvas tube, three or four feet in diameter, stretched from the bottom of the barrel down to the water on the far side of the boat. From that point the tube, bulging and trembling as though it were stuffed with fidgeting mice, floated on the Thames from the boat all the way back to the bank, where it entered a gaping door in the sea-wall. Above that door loomed a square brick building, atop which four huge chimneys belched out vast quantities of smoke.

Arabella gaped at the extraordinary craft. The laboring oarsmen were all black with coal-dust, and the grime on their faces was streaked with sweat though the morning air was quite chill.

She understood why as the boat drew alongside and was made fast to
Diana
with stout cables. Once the boat was secured, the oarsmen unscrewed the lid from the barrel … and a great wind, hotter than the sultriest August day and smelling of coal-smoke, roared from it with tremendous force. The canvas tube wilted slightly, yet so great was the rush of air that it remained mostly inflated. Arabella, fifty feet or more away, had to hold her cap on to her head with both hands.

Two men leapt down from
Diana
, bearing a similar canvas tube with them, and attached it to the open end of the barrel. At once the tube from the ship snapped taut, and the roar of wind from the open barrel was replaced by a thrumming through the deck beneath Arabella's feet.

A rough hand smacked Arabella's shoulder. It was Faunt, his expression stern. “Bear a hand, man!” he said.

“Aye, aye, sir!” she said without thinking.

The enormous box, the size of a carriage, into which the balloon envelopes had been stowed the previous day had been opened again, and from its top emerged a gradually inflating mass of Venusian silk. Glowing in the light of the rising sun, the three huge balloons resembled white fluffy clouds drifting in over some far horizon.

But they were not clouds, they were not fluffy, and they were not far. They were gigantic masses of fabric, as huge and ungainly as a thousand wet bed-sheets, and as the furnace-hot air began to fill them it took every bit of the entire crew's strength and skill to keep them from tangling with each other and with the net of silk ropes that caged them and tethered them to the ship. Light and smooth though the Venusian silk was, tugging and hauling on it soon left Arabella's hands red and sore and blistered.

*   *   *

An hour later, Arabella lay panting on the deck, watching the balloons as they firmed up and grew taut so high above her. The sun was well up now, and the bright white Venusian silk gleamed like a trio of full moons brought down to Earth. Unlike the previous day—when, she knew now, they had been filled only with cold air, to test for leaks—the balloons not only swelled against the constraining nets, but strained upwards as though desperate to reach the sky. The ship, too, seemed to feel the upward pull, riding high in the water and rocking in a new and unsteady motion bearing more kinship to the wind than the wave.

“Trim ballast and prepare to cast off!” came a command from the quarterdeck. It was Kerrigan, the chief mate, and was echoed, reechoed, and amplified down the length of the ship. Airmen sprang into action, many hurrying below, others hauling on ropes. Arabella had no idea what to do, but her messmate Young sat unmoving on the deck, so she did the same.

The ship began to shudder and lurch as Kerrigan called out command after incomprehensible command. Each one was repeated, or expanded into a series of other commands, by lesser officers, who relayed it to the airmen designated “captains” of the waist, the fo'c'sle, and other parts of the ship, who in turn directed their men to perform whatever task was desired. This Arabella knew in theory … in practice, it meant that she did whatever Faunt, the captain of the waist, told her to. And when, as was so often the case, she had no idea what his aerial gibberish meant, she could only watch the other members of her mess and try to do the same.

The captain stood beside Kerrigan, arms folded behind his back, the calm in the center of the storm of activity. He watched every thing, though, and from time to time he would mutter softly to Kerrigan, a word or two immediately translated into a fusillade of shouted commands.

He had not spoken to Arabella once after handing her off to Kerrigan. She hoped he had not forgotten her.

Now Kerrigan cried “Cast off the furnace-gut!” and the already feverish activity of the men grew still more agitated. Young poked her elbow. “This'll be a sight,” he said, and moved to the rail. She followed, and with him she looked down at the gray Thames where it lapped
Diana
's hull. The ship was riding much higher now, five feet or more of dripping
khoresh
-wood showing above the waterline.

The furnace-men now unfastened
Diana
's tube from their barrel, blasting Arabella with a gust of hot smoky air that rippled the balloons high above, and put their oars in the water, backing away from the ship with what seemed considerable haste. Two of
Diana
's airmen hauled the sagging tube from the water and out of sight below the curve of her hull.

The ship seemed to pause. Arabella looked to the captain, whose eyes scanned the length of the ship, seeking any fault or error or she knew not what. Then he nodded briskly and spoke one word to Kerrigan.

“Ballast away, fore and aft!” Kerrigan cried.

With a creak of wood and a great rumbling rush that made the rail vibrate against Arabella's chest, several small ports opened in the hull below her, each discharging a square column of frothing, filthy water.

The whole ship trembled.

Then, suddenly, she burst aloft.

Arabella's stomach seemed to drop below her rope belt as the ship flung herself into the air, and she found herself whooping with surprise and excitement. So did all the other crew, a great wild “Hurrah!” that echoed off the Thames rapidly receding below.

Arabella leaned as far as she could over the rail. The river immediately below churned, a great ship-shaped roiling welt in the water showing the space
Diana
had just vacated. Water continued to pour from the ballast-ports; more water ran down the ship's sides, flowed along the keel, and fell in a great stream from the rudder.

In moments the ship rose as high as a tall house, as a church-steeple, as a soaring bird, giving Arabella a view she had never before even contemplated. The whole dockside area spread out below her like some huge and complex toy, the river crowded with boats and ships and barges. Nearby another airship was just filling its envelopes, the great tube running to the furnace-house on the shore seeming little larger than a shoelace.

Threads of smoke rose into the air—rose up
below
her!—from a hundred chimneys. A few early-morning promenaders and milkmen with their carts trod the streets, the horses looking absurdly like mice when seen from above. Some of the people waved hands or hats at the rising ship, and Arabella waved her hat at them in turn. Others ignored the miracle above them, plodding along head-down and oblivious. One fellow shouted and gestured rudely as a trickle of falling water cut across his courtyard.

As
Diana
rose higher, Arabella's view expanded. Now she could make out the great double curve of the Thames, as plain as any map. From here she could see not just the dockyards, but the crowded center of London: rank on rank of houses, shops, and great public buildings. That pencil laid across the Thames must be London Bridge! And the large building and park just to its north, Bedlam Hospital.

Diana
's shadow sailed across Arabella's view. She followed it with her eyes, watching as it skimmed silently across streets, parks, and rooftops. Immediately surrounding it, panes of glass and puddles of water glinted the rising sun back into her eyes, ringing the airship's silhouette with a glittering halo of light.

The whole teeming metropolis was visible now, seething with the motion of ten thousand early risers … maybe even a million. A great human anthill filled with busy workers.

A hand clapped onto her shoulder. “Impressive view, eh lads?”

Arabella looked back to see Faunt, his hands on her shoulder and Young's. Young stood at stiff attention, eyes staring rigidly ahead, and Arabella realized she might be in trouble. “Aye,” she said in a neutral tone.

“Well, if
somebody
don't start shoveling coal pretty soon, we won't have that pretty view very much longer.” Young seemed to wilt under Faunt's hand.

“I suppose that would be us, then?” Arabella asked.

“It would indeed. Now get below.”

*   *   *

Although the great blast of hot air provided by the furnace-gut had gotten
Diana
started, the air in the envelopes was already cooling, and a great quantity of coal had to be burned to keep the ship aloft. By the time their relief arrived, Arabella and Young were as grimy as the furnace-men and bone-weary from endless shoveling.

Arabella came out on deck after her mid-day meal, still sneezing and blowing black coal-dust from her nose, to find the world had fallen away from
Diana
, the ship hanging suspended in blue air scattered with white, fluffy clouds. The air around the ship lay still and clear, with a clean dry scent that brought to mind the high plateaus of the Kthansha region. A few birds flapped lazily nearby.

But when she peered over the rail, expecting an infinity of blue, her stomach dropped. The Earth lay far below, her curvature plainly visible.

Arabella had expected the planet to resemble a map, with continents and oceans easily distinguished, though she knew not to expect to see national boundaries. What she saw instead looked more like a huge, rounded globe of decorative glass, the blue of oceans swirled with white sweeps and streaks of cloud, the sun's light winking brightly off the clouds and sea so very far below. “Where's England?” she asked Young, who leaned exhausted on the rail beside her.

“My eyes ain't what they once was,” he said, shading them as he peered downward. A moment later he pointed. “Y'see that big shiny white patch? That'll be the North Pole. And the terminator?”

“Which would be?”

“The line 'twixt dark and light. It's just past one bell, so you should look for England in the middle of the lit part, 'bout halfway down from the pole.”

She peered and searched, but though she made out the shining threads of rivers and some areas of cloudless light brown that she thought must be deserts, she could not puzzle out the continents and countries.

Her failure disappointed and worried her. If she could not even find England with the globe spread out below her, how could she expect to understand aerial navigation? And if she failed at that, what would the captain do with her?

*   *   *