“You said you had been chasing me for an hour?” Arabella said to Captain Singh as they walked down the street toward the docks, leaving the ranting lieutenant behind.
“Indeed I have, sir,” the captain replied, stepping around barrel-toting stevedores as neatly as a debutante at a ball. “Ever since you left Clarkson’s Clockworks. And quite a merry chase you led me, sir. If I had not by chance encountered a man with a very long scarf, of whom, as it happens, you had asked directions, I would have lost you completely.” His head waggled from side to side on his neck, neither rotating nor tilting … a rather disturbing motion that Arabella had never seen any one perform before, and whose meaning she did not know. “That man Clarkson is an ignoramus. All the automata in his shop are built by others; he himself understands only how profitably they may be sold. You are not the first to identify the flaw in the automaton artist’s work, and receive nothing but scorn for your sharp eye.” The captain stopped walking, and perforce Arabella did as well, not knowing where she was being led. The captain looked down at her with a steady gaze. “You are, however, the first I have seen to identify the source of the problem and suggest a solution.”
His deep brown eyes were so filled with intense intelligence that Arabella had to drop her gaze. “It was obvious, sir.”
“And there we have it,” the captain replied, and set off again. Arabella had to hurry to keep up with his long-legged stride. “This ragged boy who sees so easily what others not only miss, but deny.” He contemplated Arabella for a moment. “Where is it that you were educated? I cannot place your accent.”
“My father has a plantation in … in the country, sir, quite far from town. He taught me himself, mostly.” In point of fact, Father had shared with her only his interest in automata. As far as formal schooling, Father had taught only Michael, leaving Arabella to be educated by her mother. But her itkhalya, Khema, had taught her much on the subject of Mars and Martians, constantly questioning and prodding her to greater comprehension. “I also had a … tutor.”
“I myself, despite the many tutors provided by my own father, am mostly self-taught in all areas of significance.” Again he waggled his head in that unusual way. “In any case, after you departed, I paused and inspected the malfunctioning device, and satisfied myself that you were correct. So I said to myself, this is exactly the man I need for my crew, and I sought you out.”
Arabella could barely believe her luck. “You would take me on as a member of your crew? To Mars?”
“Subject to certain qualifications,” he replied.
Arabella swallowed. “I must confess, sir, that I can neither reef nor hand nor steer, whatever those things may be.”
“These things can be learned. However, the Company imposes strict standards for its airmen, so I may not bring you aboard with that status. Would you object to the title of captain’s boy?”
Arabella was keenly aware just how much she did not know about naval titles and the running of a Mars-bound merchant ship. “I suppose not.”
“In any case, those are not the qualifications to which I referred. Ah, here we are.”
They rounded a corner. There, floating serenely in the Thames beneath three enormous white balloons, lay the largest and most beautiful airship Arabella had ever seen.
On her stern was painted and gold-leafed the name Diana.
*
On several occasions Arabella had visited the shipyards at Fort Augusta on Mars with her father, to observe at first hand the construction and fitting-out of airships built from the wood of his plantation. This Diana was at least a third again longer and broader than any she had seen there; her single visible mast towered more than a hundred feet in the air, and each of her three globular balloons loomed at least as large. Tiny airmen swarmed over the gleaming white balloons, clinging to the netting stretched taut over each one.
The ship’s lacquered khoresh-wood gleamed honey-blond in the afternoon sun. Beneath the quarterdeck at the stern end, closest to Arabella, a broad, paned window spanned the width of the ship; behind this window, she knew, lay the captain’s cabin. The wood of the stern to either side of this window was fancifully and dramatically carved with allegorical figures: on one side the goddess Diana, of course, with her quiver of arrows and her dog, and on the other side a leaping stag. These were tastefully accented with gold leaf and highlights of red and black paint, which only served to emphasize the natural beauty of the wood.