Arabella the Traitor of Mars
Page 30
“Your rescue of the Isambard-handlers played a large part in that,” Fox replied. “But I must also acknowledge my dear wife.” He gave Lady Corey a squeeze which was just barely within the boundaries of propriety. “Though she was not present, her example was constantly on my mind during my talks with the Venusians. And, of course, her role in negotiating the treaty just concluded with England is known to all.”
“The meeting of the mutual admiration society,” Lady Corey said, chuckling modestly, “will now come to order. But it was primarily Miss Khema”—she pronounced the kh perfectly—“whose combination of firmness and flexibility permitted the success of those negotiations. Have you met her?” Several of those present had not, so Lady Corey called Khema over for introductions. “It is truly you, not I,” she said to Khema, “who should be the hostess of this event.”
“This Victory Ball is your affair,” Khema replied modestly, “as the khapla lokhno was mine, and I am happy to attend it as your guest. In any case, I believe that one of the primary duties of the hostess of an English ball is to lead the dances, and this is an area in which I am sadly ignorant.”
As it happened, the band leader then announced that the dancing would shortly commence, and Arabella glanced about for her husband … only to see him just entering the room. “So good of you to join us,” she said as he took up and kissed her hand.
“I would not miss this for all the worlds,” he replied, and led her into the dance.
EPILOGUE
MARS, 1828
AN EXPECTED PACKAGE
“Devi!” Arabella cried. “Be careful!”
“Oh, Mother! Do not be such a fidget!”
Devi, her long brown arms thrown wide for balance, was walking atop the fence surrounding the manor house at Woodthrush Woods, which divided it from the khoresh-tree plantation. That fence, Arabella reflected, was almost exactly the same age as Devi herself.
How on Mars could she be eight years old already?
And how could Arabella be thirty-three?
“Mummy?”
Arabella looked down, concerned that little Gonekh might have found some poisonous creature, as she so often did. But no, she was merely holding out her chubby little arms for a hug. Those arms were not merely shorter and plumper than her elder sister’s, but far paler … for some reason her color favored her mother more than her father. Or perhaps it was merely that she spent less time in the sun, as for some reason she generally preferred indoor pursuits more than her sister did. How different two siblings could be!
Arabella picked Gonekh up, snuggled her, and then settled her on one hip, where she toyed contentedly with the hem of her mother’s sleeve. Devi clambered down from the top of the fence, to Arabella’s quiet relief, and proceeded to dig for gethown in the sand at the base of it instead.
It was such a delight, Arabella thought, to have a moment of peace. Between Captain Singh’s negotiations with the Company and the Martian and English governments, Arabella’s work at the Institute, and the never-ending small crises of any household with two children, such moments were exceedingly rare.
And, true to form, this scene of quiet domesticity was interrupted by a voice from the front gate. “Mrs. Singh!” cried Gowse, excitedly. “It’s here!”
“I shall be there momentarily,” Arabella called back.
Setting Gonekh down, Arabella took both her daughters’ hands and ran with them back to the manor house. It was rather smaller than it had been in her own childhood, and that was not merely because she herself had grown larger … they had torn down an entire wing, most of which was dedicated to the processing of khoresh-wood, after Michael had ordered the construction of a new drying-shed and offices in the north field. The two sides of the property—Arabella’s residence and Michael’s plantation—were growing more and more separate from each other with time, even as Mars and England were also settling into a more independent relationship.
She found Captain Singh in the parlor, eagerly prying with a crow-bar at the lid of the large crate which had just arrived. Even as she entered the room, the lid came up. And beneath it, peering up at them from a nest of wood shavings, lay a very familiar face.
Aadim.
Arabella seized a claw-hammer and joined her husband in removing the rest of the crate.
They had boxed him up themselves three days earlier. Due to the great complexity of Aadim’s connections with the ship, the process of separating him from Diana had taken more than a week—a week full of memories and tears, both joyous and sad—but the three endless and unexpected days it had taken to locate, hire, and await the arrival of a suitable wagon after that job was done had been far worse. Now, at last, he was here.
When Captain Singh had finally presented Diana to the Museum of the Martian Resistance, after years of polite but persistent requests, the curators had been greatly disappointed to be deprived of this most significant part of the donation. But Arabella and Captain Singh had both been quite insistent: you will get him only after we have both passed on. Until then, a wax-work dummy would occupy his place in the great cabin, along with wax-works of Captain Singh and Arabella.
They had met with the wax artists several times already. Arabella looked forward to meeting her own wax twin with a mixture of amusement and dread.
Soon they had torn away the planks, paper, and wood shavings and Aadim stood completely revealed. The girls, uncharacteristically shy, stood back and stared at him from the far side of the room, Gonekh sucking her thumb nervously. “There is nothing to fear,” Captain Singh told them, folding his considerable length down to their eye level. “He is your brother, in some ways. You will like him, I assure you.”
With the help of Gowse and several other members of the household staff they moved him to the space before the front window which they had selected and prepared for him even before Captain Singh had signed the donation papers.
They set him up facing the window. “The view is not so changeable as aboard Diana,” Arabella told him, “but the weather is generally pleasant, and rarely includes bullets or cannon-balls.”
“Never,” amended Captain Singh, forcefully.
“There have been a few occasions in the past,” Arabella admitted. “But we can hope that these are not repeated.” She brushed a bit of wood shaving from Aadim’s cheek.
The paint on the automaton’s face was rather scuffed and chipped, but they had no intention of renovating him. All of those marks were very familiar to Arabella—she had been there when most of them had occurred, and in several memorable cases she had inflicted them herself, through accident or annoyance—and to remove them would be as unreasonable and inappropriate as to remove the wrinkles from Captain Singh’s face. He might, just perhaps, be more conventionally attractive without them, but they were well-earned, distinctive, and essential to his personality.
It took some hours to get Aadim properly settled in his new home. Although they had taken as much care as they could when they had disconnected him and boxed him up, his mechanisms were so complicated that a certain amount of disruption had been inevitable. But soon, just before sunset in fact, they inserted his mainspring key and, with both their hands on the key, wound it together to just the proper point of tension.
The mechanisms within Aadim’s desk and torso began to tick and whir, a sound foreign to this place and yet delightfully familiar and homey. And his green glass eyes, although impassive as ever, filled once more with vibrating near-life. The golden light of the setting Sun refracted through the green glass.
“Welcome home,” Arabella told him.
“Aadim?” asked Gonekh, clambering up on the automaton’s desk and extending one plump little hand to touch his nose.
“Aadim,” Captain Singh acknowledged.
“He live here?”
“He has come to live here, yes,” Arabella said.
Gonekh’s smooth, translucent brow furrowed then, and her dark eyes turned to her parents with concern. “Is he alive?”
Arabella smiled and turned to Captain Singh to see his reaction, but was surprised to see his eyes widen as though in shock. Immediately she turned back, following his gaze.
Perhaps it was only some minor misadjustment in the automaton’s recently-disrupted mechanisms.
Perhaps it was something Gonekh had done while Arabella’s back was turned.
Perhaps it was a trick of the light, which was just fading as the Sun slipped below the horizon.
But it certainly seemed as though Aadim were nodding.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This novel was written under difficult circumstances. Although grieving a dead spouse is not as much work as caring for a dying one, it is still very hard, and if it were not for the support of my family and community there is no way I would have been able to finish this book.
I would like to thank everyone who sat and wrote with me in coffee shops, living rooms, libraries, and airports, including but not limited to K. Tempest Bradford, Robin Catesby, Sara Mueller, Mary Hobson, Felicity Shoulders, Mark Ferrari, Lucy Bellwood, Rachel Swirsky, Aimee Amodio, Alex C. Renwick, Tina Connolly, Grá Linnea, Thorn Coyle, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Mary Robinette Kowal, and most especially Shannon Page. Also the whole Portland NaNoWriMo crew and everyone on the 2017 Writing Excuses Cruise.
I would like to thank everyone who offered moral support, provided a shoulder to cry on, went to a show, or shared a meal, including but not limited to Michelle Franz, Sue Yule, Marc Wells, Patty Wells, Wendy Ice, Teresa Enigma, Jacob Engstrom, Mark Stein, Tim Learmont, Amanda Clark, Kate Schaefer, Glenn Hackney, Bo O’Dell, Don Hicks, Debbie Notkin, Alberto Yáñez, Debbie Cross, Paul Wrigley, Andrine de la Rocha, Howard Patterson, Diane Chaplin, David de la Rocha, Rhiannon Marie Louve, Goldeen Ogawa, Lee Moyer, Venetia Charles, Allan Hurst, Will Martin, Ellen Klages, Elf Sternberg, D. Omaha Sternberg, Eleri Hamilton, Carmen Risken, Gina McCarrig, Alisa Wood-Walters, and especially Cynthia Nalbach. Special thanks to Clare Katner, Daniel MacLeod, and Kay Gage for service and friendship.
I would like to thank—seriously!—Liz Bourke and Sylvus Tarn for their critical comments on colonialism in Arabella and the Battle of Venus, and Aliette de Bodard and Grace Fong for their similar critiques on an unpublished Arabella short story. It’s never fun to receive a negative review or critique, and I must admit that at first I didn’t want to hear it, but in the end I came around to understanding and appreciating the issues they raised. I have attempted to address their concerns in this volume; whether or not I succeeded is not up to me to determine, but I thank them for taking the work seriously enough to critique it.
And last but definitely not least, I would like to thank my editor, Christopher Morgan, whose efforts improved this volume immeasurably; my agent, Paul Lucas of Janklow & Nesbit; and the team at Tor: head of publicity Patty Garcia, art director Irene Gallo, and publicist Desirae Friesen. It’s been an amazing journey and I’m proud and pleased to have taken it with you all.
TOR BOOKS BY DAVID D. LEVINE
Arabella of Mars
Arabella and the Battle of Venus
Arabella the Traitor of Mars
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID D. LEVINE is the author of the Andre Norton Award–winning novel Arabella of Mars and more than fifty science fiction and fantasy stories. His story “Tk’Tk’Tk” won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 2006, and he has been short-listed for others, as well as the Nebula, Campbell, and Sturgeon. His stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, numerous Year’s Best anthologies, and his award-winning collection, Space Magic. He lives in a hundred-year-old bungalow in Portland, Oregon. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
1. Earth, 1816
1. The Victory Jubilee
2. Snow
3. Difficult Decisions
4. Treason
5. The Swenson Current
2. In Transit, 1816
6. Crossing Venus
7. Rounding Mercury’s Horn
8. Reunited
3. Mars, 1817–1819
9. Mars
10. Tekhmet
11. Blockade
12. Evacuation
13. In the Horn
14. Phobos
15. The Final Assault
16. Victory
Epilogue: Mars, 1828
An Expected Package
Acknowledgments
Tor Books by David D. Levine
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ARABELLA THE TRAITOR OF MARS
Copyright © 2018 by David D. Levine
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Stephan Martiniere
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-8283-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-8951-4 (ebook)
eISBN 9781466889514
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First Edition: July 2018