A long, creaking moment later Binion called, “By the left!” and struck the drum again. Arabella and all the others leaned to the right as they pressed with their left feet, the awkward protesting pedals moving slowly in a circle beneath each man, returning to the point where they’d started. “Right!” and another drumbeat began the cycle again.
Before the pedals had gone around ten times Arabella was already streaming with sweat—sweat that in the close warm dark of belowdecks refused to evaporate, and which in a state of free descent did not even have the decency to run down her face. Instead, it clung to her forehead and temples and cheeks, stinging and blinding her eyes no matter how much she blinked and shook it away. Not that there was any thing to see here in any case. Grimly she set her jaw and pedaled, pedaled, pedaled to the incessant beat of the drum.
Beneath the deck, she knew, a series of creaking shafts and belts transmitted the force of the men’s pedaling feet to the propulsive sails, or “pulsers,” at the ship’s extreme aft. These five triangular sails, unlike any others on the ship, turned in a circle like a windmill’s blades, and somehow—Arabella didn’t quite grasp the philosophical principle—rather than catching the wind that usually pushed the ship forward, they actually created a wind where no natural wind existed.
But the pulsers’ wind, the product of mere human effort, was but a pale imitation of God’s own wind, and for all the men’s labor it pushed the ship at a comparative snail’s pace. But still, from what Arabella had learned, it was better than drifting hopelessly, and after some hours or days of work might serve to move the ship from an area of calm into a favorable wind.
At least, that was the men’s hope. Arabella had heard tales of ships thoroughly becalmed, crews pedaling day upon day for weeks, men dying of thirst and of cramp while fruitlessly praying for the faintest breath of breeze.
On and on the drum pounded, the men grunted, the pedals creaked, the belts wailed like tortured cats. The carpenter and his men were kept busy anointing the many moving parts with grease, and from time to time a halt was called so that a broken or misaligned part could be repaired. The complex mechanism that transmitted the men’s effort to the pulsers was balky and unreliable but, again, better than drifting hopelessly. Arabella gritted her teeth and tried to ignore the burning in her upper thighs.
And then—oh, God be praised!—a new sound intruded upon the dark and groaning space between decks, a faint whispering rush, and Arabella felt the ship shift with a new and tentative life that issued from a source other than her and the other men’s pedaling efforts. A weak cheer sprang up at that, and a few men slacked off their labors, but Binion cursed them and pounded his drum still more insistently. “You’ll pedal till I tell you to stop!” he said, and so weary were the men that none could spare even a mutter of complaint at that.
Finally, as the whisper of wind grew to a constant, comforting waft accompanied by a gentle yet insistent pressure, one of the other officers appeared and whispered in Binion’s ear. “Leave off pedaling!” Binion called, and with a great sigh the men obeyed.
Arabella floated, gasping, in her seat, her burning legs twitching like a pond full of agitated frogs. Sweat stung her eyes and pooled beneath her arms. The smell was of the Augean stables.
“Stow pedals!” Binion shouted then. Wearily, with fingers numb from hours of gripping the rod before her, Arabella began to untie the cord that bound her to the hateful seat.
10
LIFE IN MIDAIR
“You wanted to see me, sir?”
Captain Singh turned from where he sat staring out the wide, paned window. The roiling gray clouds of the Horn lay well abaft now, and the sun streamed in from a clear blue sky. The ship’s constant shifting and jerking had been replaced by a smooth, imperceptible drift that felt like no movement at all, though the other members of Arabella’s watch assured her that the mass of air in which Diana was embedded was moving at some thousands of miles per hour, carrying the ship along with it.
“Yes, Ashby.” The captain swiveled himself about, his body twisting in the air to face her, though he did not touch the wall or deck with either hands or feet. Arabella had grown far more comfortable with weightlessness, but this elegant demonstration of experience and skill brought home just how much more she had to learn. She hoped that some day she might move as handsomely as he. “Now that we have rounded the Horn, I have time and attention to devote to the education of the ship’s young gentlemen. And in that number, for certain purposes, I include yourself.”
“Thank you, sir.” She bowed in the air, which caused her to begin a tumble which she checked with a hand to the door frame.