Arabella and the Battle of Venus

by David D. Levine

  “I do not argue his intelligence and sincerity, but—my dear, besotted child—consider his color! Surely you have already noted society’s disapproval of this match.”

  “I have not encountered any such,” Arabella shot back defensively—though the captain himself had nearly declined her proposal for that very reason, being dissuaded from his refusal only by Aadim’s intervention at the last moment.

  “Then you are more blind than I had thought,” Lady Corey sniffed. “Open your eyes, child, and your ears, and you will understand that by openly consorting with a person of his … kind, you are already bringing discredit to your family. Your brother has been entirely too forgiving of this. If you are so foolish as to carry through with this marriage the opprobrium will be inescapable. And your children—I beg of you, think of the children! They will be black!”

  Throughout this harangue Arabella had only listened, teeth clenched and anger rising, but now she was forced to reply. “I would rather they be black as coal than that they be as small and petty as you.” She gathered up her books and papers and prepared to depart the cabin. She had no idea where else she could go, or how she would endure the remaining months of the voyage in this woman’s inescapable company, but for now she could no longer remain here.

  But Lady Corey put out a hand and grasped Arabella’s sleeve. “Consider the children!” she repeated. “Can you imagine the suffering they will be forced to endure? They will never fit in any where, and will certainly never be accepted into polite society.”

  “A society which rejects children with a father as fine as Captain Prakash Singh cannot be described as polite, or even civil!” She paused in her preparations, a large chart-book stuffed with scraps of notes clutched to her bosom; her heart thudded against the leather cover. “My dear Lady Corey,” she said with icy politesse, “I may be a wild child—a provincial, unsophisticated colonial, raised in the desert and unsuitable for proper society—but my upbringing has given me a unique perspective.” With a slight tap of her toes upon the deck she propelled herself gently upward, until she seemed to be looking down upon the older woman from a considerable height. “I have lived among Martians, among airmen, and among the gentry, and of the three the gentry are those whose company, and whose favor, I crave the least. They have no sense of okhaya. They have no respect for hard work and skill. And those qualities they do respect amount to nothing more than inconsequential differences of breeding, manner, speech, and, yes, color, which in the larger world amount to nothing more than decorative frippery.” She bent at the waist, bringing her face to within inches of Lady Corey’s. “The solar system includes not just the several races of man, but many distinct tribes of Martians, a whole planet of Venusians, and the dear Lord knows how many other races in the chill regions beyond the asteroids. In a world of such grand variety, the tiny difference between a human man of one color and a human man of another is as nothing!” She straightened and opened the door, preparing to depart.

  But it was Lady Corey who had the last word. “Your ‘perspective,’ as you put it, is indeed … unique. But you will find, as you make your way in the world, that the favor and influence of society can either smooth or hinder your path. If you close that door”—she indicated the door upon whose handle Arabella’s hand rested—“you will be closing yourself off from opportunities you can ill afford to forego.”

  Arabella did not trust herself to frame a civil reply. She closed the door without a word.

  * * *

  Still clutching the chart-book, eyes blinded by tears, Arabella drifted up the companion ladder to the ward-room. There she was forced to confront the confusion she had left in her wake, with tools and papers and bits of clockwork scattered everywhere. She was amazed that the officers had never reproved her upon the disorder in which she had left their eating-area.

  But the disorder here was nothing compared to the horrific shambles she had just made of her life. Through willful obstinacy she had alienated her chaperone—the only other woman on the ship, and the one person here who was meant to be her ally and protector—and was now left without even a place to sleep.

  Where could she go now? Some instinct remaining from her days aboard Diana impelled her toward the captain’s cabin; but Fox was not Captain Singh, and if she were to go to him with her troubles, she would find in the end, she was sure, nothing but ruin. And though she cared little for the opinions of polite society—as she had just told Lady Corey in no uncertain terms—in this case she knew that ruin would cost her own self-respect as well.

  The other officers were, even after weeks in the air, an unknown quantity to her. She and Lady Corey had taken their meals in their cabin at first; later, though she had spent most of each day in the ward-room, she had been so thoroughly preoccupied by the work on her navigational mechanism that she had barely noticed the men who dined at the other end of the table. Liddon she knew slightly, but she considered him little more than an extension of his captain.

  That left the men, whom she knew even less well than the officers, but who counted among their number Gowse and Mills.

  At that thought she clutched the chart-book and cried still harder, for she felt she was in no position to call upon her former shipmates. After the incident with Mills and the drum she had held herself aloof from the crew, giving them only a polite nod when encountering them on deck. Lady Corey’s omnipresence had given her little choice in the matter, but after so long a time of enforced formality she had surely lost whatever fellow-feeling might once have existed between herself and the ship’s ordinary people.

  She had truly fallen between two stools—too lowly for her chaperone and too lofty for her shipmates.

  How she missed her captain!

  * * *

  Eventually a polite knock upon the door roused her from her self-absorbed misery. It was Brindle, the captain’s Negro steward. “Excuse me, miss,” he said, twisting his cap in his hands. “It’s past time for me to be settin’ up for the officers’ supper. I don’t mean to disturb you and all, but…”

  “No, no, that is quite all right,” Arabella said, sniffing and wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. “I will … I will move elsewhere.”

  She left the chart-book with her other papers. The officers had been stepping around them for weeks, and one more book, however large, would not make that situation any worse.

  Bereft of any plan, she drifted out on deck. The air was still, the ship being again well embedded in the Simpson Current, and already carried an oppressive warm dampness which would only grow worse as they drew nearer Venus. The sky in all directions was hazy and spotted with ill-defined clouds, with nary a bird, never mind a wind-whale, to distract the eye. Airmen drifted here and there in the rigging, no doubt inspecting and mending the sails and sheets.

  Arabella pushed off from the mainmast and caught herself on the larboard rail, looking over it and along the length of the larboard mast. Unlike three-masted Diana, whose starboard and larboard masts extended downward from her hull at an angle, four-masted Touchstone’s starboard and larboard masts extended directly out to either side, parallel with the deck. Here, too, airmen picked their way like spiders along the delicate tracery of the rigging.

  Somewhere below, obscured from Arabella by the bulk of the ship, lay the mizzen-mast, pointing straight down. This mast, which Diana lacked, was a mystery to Arabella—in all her weeks aboard, she had never even seen it.

  Arabella glanced to either side, finding no one paying any attention to her, then swung herself over the rail and pushed downward.

  Sailing down the ship’s side, scarred khoresh-wood drifting past her nose and nothing but air beside and behind her, felt familiar and yet strange—familiar from her time aboard Diana, and strange because of the many months that had passed since then, the skirts that ballooned about her lower half, and the knowledge that she was disobeying convention if not direct orders.

  She was taking a risk, she supposed, but it was one she had taken hundreds of tim
es during her service aboard Diana, and neither she nor any of her shipmates had suffered any harm. While embedded in a major current such as the Simpson, cross-currents were very rare, and for an airman to drift beyond the length of a thrown line before coming to the attention of the watch on deck was practically unheard-of.

  After a brief delicious free flight, she fetched up against the base of the larboard mast. Guiding herself along with brief touches on the mast and rigging, she made her way along the length of the mast to the larboard top-yard, or second horizontal spar—though, of course, relative to the ship, the larboard mast’s yards ran vertically. From here she could see Venus and Jupiter, lost below the ship’s hull from the deck, but more importantly she had a different view of the ship. Seen in profile, Touchstone seemed more handsome than she did from the deck, where her worn and much-varnished wood showed her age and the wooden pegs she used as cleats—by contrast with Diana’s polished brass—demonstrated her lack of quality. But as viewed from the larboard mast, with her mainmast standing proud and harlequin figurehead shining in the sun, she looked a noble vessel, a fighting ship well braced for any eventuality.

  Arabella turned her attention downward, where the furled mizzen-t’gallant had just come into view and a blue pennant swirled languidly from the mast-head. Tempting though it was to leap directly toward it, the swish of her dress about her lower limbs reminded her that her skills might have withered from months of disuse.

  Making her way cautiously from yard to mast to shroud to spar to halyard by short, yet exhilarating jumps, with one long brave spring from the lower larboard-shroud to the larboard mizzen-shroud, she soon attained the mizzen-top. There she paused to catch her breath, as her lungs were heaving from the unaccustomed exertion.

  The world seemed to have inverted itself. From this vantage the Southern Cross seemed overhead, and Polaris below her feet. This sense of inversion persisted despite her positioning; when she turned herself about so that her head was closer to the hull, she felt as though she were hanging by her heels with the body of the ship below her. A peculiar sensation, despite her experience with free descent. Perhaps the ship’s bulk exerted some influence upon the planet-bound experience of her mind.

  Looking upward, or perhaps downward, from the top, she saw the ship as a long smooth form, her copper bottom gleaming in the sun. From this viewpoint—lacking the complications of hatches, binnacles, cleats, and rails—the ship seemed almost a living thing, a creature born to the air, her sleek hull somewhat resembling the wind-whales’ muscular bodies.

  “Ashby!” came a call, and she glanced down, or perhaps up, toward the pennant at the mizzen-peak. It was a familiar form that flew toward her—a dark muscular body and smooth bald head, the face split with a shining white smile. Mills!

  Mills shot to her side with remarkable speed, bringing himself to an expert halt with one assured hand. She envied his ability—she had never been as accomplished even in her prime, and much of what skill she had once owned had evaporated from months of disuse—and also his shirtlessness, the sweat gleaming on the curves of his shoulders. Her own shoulders were already uncomfortable beneath clinging fabric, and she knew from her experience of an English summer that the discomfort would only grow worse as the heat increased.

  She had to check herself from gripping his hand as an old shipmate would. “Mills,” she said instead with a proper midair curtsey. “How delightful to see you again.”

  “The same,” he replied with an unpracticed but clearly sincerely-meant bow. “Would have hailed you on deck, but…” He shrugged and gestured downward meaningfully.

  “I know,” she said. “The deck is a different world from the tops, or even the waist.” She sighed. “My chaperone thought it improper for me to be seen conversing with ordinary airmen, even my own former shipmates.”

  He frowned. “Should not be here, miss.”

  Arabella felt her own face falling into a matching expression. “I should not be any where, it seems. I cannot be seen with the men, the ward-room is engaged, I will not consort with the captain, and I have argued with my chaperone.”

  “What about?”

  She sighed. “She thinks your Captain Fox would be a better match for me than Captain Singh.”

  At that Mills laughed aloud, a great booming “Ha ha ha!” that forced her to smile herself despite the gravity of her situation. “Oh, miss!” He wiped his eyes, then forced himself to seriousness. “Captain Fox … a good man. Fine pilot, strong fighter. But no Captain Singh.”

  “I am glad you agree.” But her pleasure at Mills’s reassurance was short-lived. “However, Lady Corey raises a point I fear may be correct. She says that society will never truly accept him, or any children we may have, on account of their color.” Even as she spoke the words she realized their impropriety. “Oh! I beg your pardon.”

  Mills waved her pardon aside. “It is hard, to be a black man.” He turned his shoulder to her, pointing to his back, and for the first time she saw the scars that crisscrossed it. Aboard Diana, Mills had always kept his shirt on, and now she knew why.

  “However can you serve with white crewmates?” she cried, shocked and appalled. “After white men did this to—”

  He held up one broad pink palm to stop her words. “Not only whites, miss.” The expression that came upon his face as he spoke those words was complex—troubled and regretful and bitter all at once—and though she longed to know more, the look in his eyes did not invite questions. “No race—no man—all good or all bad. A bad man … can be a good man.” At her confused expression he closed his eyes, shook his head, held up a hand again. “Sorry, sorry.” When his eyes reopened—dark, dark brown eyes with pale yellow whites—they fixed themselves on hers with deep sincerity. “What I mean … people is people. White, black—all people, with good and bad mixed in. Have to look for the good in every one.”

  “I … I see.” She looked past Mills toward the Sun—Venus, their destination, was lost in the glare—and considered his words. “You have given me much to think about. I thank you for your counsel, Mr. Mills.”

  “Just Mills,” he replied, deferring the title. Then he grinned. “Ashby.”

  Arabella returned the grin. “Mills.”

  They hung there in the air for a little while, admiring the view.

  8

  CROSSING THE LINE

  Thirteen days later, Arabella presented her course to Fox.

  Fox floated before the navigational desk in the great cabin, brow wrinkled in stern concentration as he read through the many sheets of Arabella’s sailing-plan, handing each page to Liddon after he had perused it. Heading, speed, timing, currents, pedaling, even the set of the sails—all were laid out in exquisite detail. She did not wish to permit him any leeway to either dismiss her course as insufficiently considered or to spoil its advantages through careless execution.

  Lady Corey was there as well, fulfilling the demands of propriety. The two of them had barely spoken since their argument, dining separately and sharing their tiny sleeping cabin in tense silence.

  Also occupying the cabin was Arabella’s mechanism, now complete, housed in a handsome case constructed from Venusian greenwood by the ship’s carpenter. The case’s four vertical corners were carved in imitation of Corinthian columns, with a decorative egg-and-dart border along the upper edge; all was carefully varnished, and embellished with tasteful touches of gold leaf. The overall effect was slightly spoiled by the several mismatched clock faces and hands, the best Arabella had been able to find among the French clockmaker’s stock, which dotted the sides and top at irregular spacing dictated by the underlying gears and cams. But each clock face and lever bore a tidily-lettered paper label, and—apart from an unfortunate tendency to jam—the device now functioned almost exactly as Arabella had hoped.

  “Well,” said Fox, breaking Arabella’s train of thought, “it certainly is … unusual.”

  “I acknowledge this,” Arabella replied with a modest declination of her head
. “But I am prepared to stake not merely my reputation as a navigator but my fiancé’s life upon it.”

  By the time Arabella’s device had been sufficiently complete to assist in the calculations, the Vanderveer Current was entirely beyond reach, and indeed it had seemed for some days that their current course in the Simpson could not be bettered. But a sudden insight late in the second dog watch one evening had been confirmed by the device: the parallel Edmonds Current, though slower than the Simpson, would carry them to a point where, with careful timing and determined pedaling, they could transfer to a particularly rapid stream of the northern solar trade winds. Even with not one but two time-consuming transfers between currents, this course would bring them to Venus a full eleven days earlier than their current one.

  If all went well.

  “This course calls for … a considerable amount of pedaling,” Fox said. “The men won’t like that.”

  “I acknowledge this as well. To show my sincere dedication to the course, and my appreciation for their efforts, I intend to take full part in that pedaling myself. I hope that will help them to accept it.”

  “Rather than be out-pedaled by a mere female?” Fox remarked. Then he shook his head. “I absolutely forbid it. It would be unseemly.”

  “Are you concerned for propriety? On my previous voyage, Captain Singh rigged up a screen, to shield the men’s eyes from any … indelicate exposure.” Wordlessly she gestured downward, to the hidden lower limbs which seemed to hold some unearthly power over men’s minds.

  Fox’s eyebrows shot up. “Captain Singh allowed you to pedal?”

  “He required it. It is his opinion, which I share, that the exertion of pedaling prevents the weakness of the limbs which affects so many passengers—and officers, if I may add—after a long aerial voyage.”

  “This supposed ‘weakness of the limbs,’” Fox harrumphed, “is nothing more than a demonstration of the heightened sensibilities of the more elevated classes.”

  “After my first voyage from Mars to Earth,” Arabella persisted, “I was required to be carried from the ship, and could not even walk for days thereafter. After my return voyage, during which I pedaled along with the men, I was able not merely to walk but … but to engage in quite strenuous activity.” A full account of the excitement during the Martian rebellion would have to wait for another time.