Stross considered, rubbing his chin. “Some weeks, I should imagine.”
“I see.” Arabella’s heart grew heavy at this news. Any delay might allow that dastardly Simon to reach her brother before she could warn him. But she must not give up hope.
“You say you have some facility with the navigator,” Stross said, breaking into Arabella’s distressing train of thought. He grasped Aadim’s right hand and wrenched it toward the pin representing Diana, the sudden rough motion making the navigator’s gears shriek in protest. Arabella cringed as though she felt Aadim’s pain in her own shoulder. “I know how to plot a course from here to here”—he hauled the hand across to the pin representing Paeonia—“but not how to tell the d____d thing to use drogues.”
“I believe it is done thus,” Arabella said. She returned Aadim’s hand to Diana, moving it slowly and evenly to respect the gears and levers, then pressed down on the index finger to indicate the start point. A click sounded from within Aadim’s mechanism. Next she opened a panel on the side of the desk, where several brass levers were labeled with the letters of the Greek alphabet.
She paused for a moment in thought, then raised the beta lever and lowered the lambda lever. Then she contemplated the gamma lever. For a transit by drogue, should it be set up or down? Down, she thought. She laid her finger upon the lever and pressed it gently downward.
The lever seemed to resist her finger, quivering gently from the motion of the gears behind it. Aadim’s whole body joined in this motion, his head seeming to shift fractionally from side to side.
Curious, she thought, and tried raising the lever instead. This time it moved smoothly, locking into position with a soft click, and Aadim’s head remained still.
Upon reflection, this combination of settings made the most sense.
Arabella moved Aadim’s hand to the side current and pressed the index finger again to indicate the destination of the transit. Finally she returned the three levers to their initial positions and moved the hand to Paeonia, carefully setting the dial indicating displacement in the vertical dimension before pressing the index finger for a third time. Immediately a series of whirs and ratcheting sounds began to vibrate from inside Aadim’s desk. “It may take some time for the calculations to complete,” she said. “The use of drogues adds quite a bit of complication to the course.”
“A very tidy bit of work,” Stross said admiringly. “How many years did it take you to learn all that?”
“I’ve only been studying with the captain since I came on board,” she admitted. “But my father—” She stopped herself, wary of revealing too much about her past. “He owned a great many automata,” she concluded feebly.
“I must thank the man when we return to England! What might his name be, and where might I find him?”
Suddenly the nervousness which had vanished while Arabella was working with the automaton returned in full force. This line of questioning probed perilously close to secrets which must not be revealed. “My—my father has passed on,” she said, which had the benefit of being true. “I would prefer not to discuss him any further. It pains me to do so.” Which also, she realized, was true.
“I’m sorry, lad,” Stross said, and clapped her on the shoulder so hard that she began to tumble in the air. “Well, now. You stay here, look after the captain, and let me know straight away when the course is plotted. I’ll go see how Mr. Higgs fares with the construction of the drogues.” He paused in the doorway before departing. “I won’t lie to you, lad. This is as nasty a situation as any I’ve faced. But with your work on the navigator, I think we may have a chance.”
Arabella could only hope that his trust in her was well founded.
13
DROGUES
Arabella was giving the captain his water when a bell sounded, indicating that Aadim’s calculations were complete. She took a slate and chalk and recorded a series of numbers from the dials on the front of his cabinet, double-checking her work because there were many more figures than usual. She then consulted a book of tables—this part was something she knew the captain would have done from memory—and wrote down the sailing order and navigation points required to implement the course. When she was done with that she again double-checked her work, then copied it out quickly but neatly on a sheet of vellum.