Arabella of Mars

by David D. Levine

  “Very well,” the captain said, and straightened from the plan. “We require three volunteers,” he called. “Have we any one here who is a particularly good shot with a rifle?”

  Several of the gentlemen, and a few of the servants, raised their hands.

  The captain pointed to three of them. “Take the best pieces you can find, and a quantity of ammunition, to the top of that tower.” He pointed to the staircase. “Stay out of sight as much as you can, but keep an eye on the wall below those smashed windows. If you see Martians making any attempt to climb it, shoot them. If you see any other unusual activity, send one of your number down to report it.”

  As the men departed in search of rifles, another crash, this one considerably louder, echoed down the hall. “Damage report,” the captain called over his shoulder. No one moved. “You!” he snapped, pointing at a man standing near the door. “Go and find out what just happened.” The man stared, rabbit-like, at the captain for only a moment before bolting to comply.

  “I should go to the tower as well,” Arabella said, “as an observer. I am best equipped to understand what I see.”

  The captain relaxed from his attitude of stern command. “I thank you for volunteering, Miss Ashby,” he said gently, “but your services are required here, for possible negotiations with the Martians.”

  He is trying to keep me safe, she realized. But, as well, she understood that he was correct—they must negotiate with the Martians, and somehow bring the conflict to a close, or the house would eventually be battered to bits around them.

  But there was only one thing that she could think of that might pacify the Martians.

  Pray God it still existed.

  “Please excuse me,” she said to the captain, and went off to find Simon.

  * * *

  She found Simon in Michael’s bedchamber, whose location and thick walls made it one of the safest rooms in the house. Dr. Fellowes comforted Lady Corey at the side of the room, while Simon knelt at Michael’s bedside with apparent solicitude.

  Arabella knew not what scheme Simon might have in mind. Perhaps he intended to smother Michael at the first opportunity, though that opportunity seemed unlikely as Michael’s bedchamber also served Dr. Fellowes as a private room for examination and treatment of the injured. Or perhaps Simon’s attention to Michael was only an excuse for him to remain far from danger. In any case, she would have to keep a close eye upon him.

  When Simon realized she was standing behind him, he quickly straightened and turned to her. “He seems no better.”

  Arabella regarded him for a moment, filled with anger and scorn, then dropped her gaze to Michael’s face. Like the captain after Paeonia, he was unconscious, helpless, and surrounded by well-meaning simpletons.

  She could—she should—ask the captain for his advice. He was aware of Simon’s perfidy and would surely have some sage counsel to offer. But he was busy with the defense of the house, and her own knowledge of Martian culture was superior to his—superior even to Englishmen who had lived on Mars for decades, who saw only what their English eyes knew how to see. And it could only be an understanding of the Martians that would get them all out of this predicament, if such were even possible.

  “I know you stole the egg,” she said to Simon.

  Fear, panic, anger, and despair flashed across Simon’s face before he covered it with his hands. “I did,” he sobbed.

  Arabella had not, in fact, known with certainty that it had been Simon who had stolen the egg. But that part of Simon’s earlier confession had seemed even less sincere than the rest of it, and her guess that confronting him with his lie would cause him to break down had proven correct.

  “Your brother welcomed me into his household,” Simon continued, “and it is to my great shame that even while I enjoyed his hospitality I continually warred within myself as to whether and how I should attempt his murder. But no opportunity presented itself for weeks, and as my indecision and frustration grew…” He raised his face from his hands, and it was wet with tears. “I am afraid that the strain must have driven me somewhat mad. For after we visited the new queen to pay our respects to her upon the delivery of her egg, I conceived a scheme to steal the egg and lay the blame upon your brother.” He drew a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his eyes, and noisily blew his nose. “In this way I hoped to … remove him from the succession, so to speak, without taking direct action, and thus to salve my muddled conscience.”

  “But you underestimated the Martians’ reaction to the egg’s abduction.”

  “That is sadly true.” He hung his head. “And so appalled was I at the, the entirely unintended consequences of my imprudent action, that when Michael was injured I abandoned all thought of my own fortune and brought him here.”

  That Arabella’s suspicions were confirmed was satisfying, and that Simon had undergone a change of heart was gratifying. But she was still distrustful of him—indeed, she did not completely believe his tale even now—and of course her anger at him was redoubled.

  “Please tell me you did not destroy the egg.”

  “I did not,” he said, and looked to her with dawning understanding and desperate hope. “I hid it in a safe place.”

  For the first time that day she felt a faint stirring of hope in her own breast. “You must return it immediately,” she said.

  “I cannot,” he said, and dropped his gaze to the floor. “I buried it in the desert, miles from here.”

  “In that case,” she told him, in a firm yet gentle tone like the one her father had used after Arabella confessed to breaking the automaton dancer, “you must go up into the tower, tell the Martians that you were the one who abducted the egg, and tell them exactly where they can find it. If they recover it, and it yet lives, we may receive their clemency. Otherwise, we will all certainly perish beneath their catapult stones.” As if to reinforce her words, a rumbling crash sounded from the far side of the house.

  “Must I admit my complicity?” He looked up at her with an expression like a cornered khushera. “Is there no alternative?”

  She gave the question serious consideration. “Martians place great stock in personal responsibility, which they call okhaya. If you were, for example, to tell them that you do not know who had abducted the egg but that you know where it is hidden, they might be pleased at its recovery, but they would still be bent on the apprehension and punishment of the malefactor. Whereas if you yourself admit responsibility and offer the egg’s location in a gesture of sincere atonement, they will leave off their search for the culprit and they might—I must emphasize might—offer leniency to you for your admission of guilt.”

  Simon stared into the fireplace, as though seeking some other alternative there. But there was no alternative to be had. “Very well,” he said, and firmed up his chin. “I shall, like Daniel, offer up my confession for the sake of my people.” His eyes took on a calculating aspect. “But I must request that you, with your greater knowledge of Martian language and customs, accompany me to wherever the admission must be made.”

  Arabella regarded him with frank suspicion. But she could not in good conscience deny his request. “Very well,” she said, considering. “I will accompany you to the tower.” Others would be present there, and they would be far from the Martians and their nimble swords.

  Simon bowed deeply and proffered his elbow. But Arabella fixed him with a cold eye and gestured that he should instead precede her.

  He raised one eyebrow, then inclined his head and opened the door.

  They made their way down the hall toward the drawing-room in this way, with Arabella careful to keep Simon in sight at all times.

  * * *

  “Keep your head down, miss,” said one of the men on the parapet as Arabella followed Simon through the door. “They’ve lobbed a few arrows at us, and they usually go clean past, but you never can tell when they might get lucky.”

  The view from the tower’s top was as spectacular as it had ever been. The house, s
till grand despite the substantial damage it had sustained, spread out its roofs and corbels below them, and all around rose the craggy red-ochre magnificence of the Skatasho Hills. But the view to the east, once an appealing prospect on Fort Augusta and the pleasant town beneath it, now offered nothing but ruin, scattered with wrecked and abandoned buildings and smeared with columns of smoke. And the plain below the house was a shambles of angry, clattering Martians. At least five catapults seemed complete now, and more were rising at the back of the encampment.

  “We’ve shot a few of the buggers off the wall below the windows,” offered another man, pointing. “Not many so far.”

  “We think they might be massing for an assault, though,” said the first. “You can see there, where they’re building ladders. But when and if they do attack, you can be certain we will defend the house to the last.”

  “Thank you, sirs, for your service,” she said. But she observed to herself that these three men and their half dozen hunting rifles had no more chance against the thousands of Martians massed below than she herself, unaccompanied, would have had against the privateers who had nearly destroyed Diana.

  Simon merely stared down at the vast insurrection that he, however unintentionally, had provoked. “How will they even hear me?” he asked Arabella.

  “Their hearing is quite good. You should begin by calling ‘karaa, karaa’ to get their attention.”

  “Must I speak in Martian? I do not know the language.”

  “Most of them have at least a little English.”

  With Arabella’s encouragement he stepped up onto a box of cartridges, raising himself into the Martians’ view, where he called out a creditable “karaa, karaa” and waved his arms. Several of the nearer Martians paused in their work and pointed at him; soon a respectable crowd had turned their eye-stalks up to him. None, she noted, loosed an arrow at him, despite his vulnerable position above the crenellated battlements. She took this as a good sign for the potential success of their negotiations.

  “You have their attention,” she told Simon. “Begin by stating your name.”

  “My name is Simon Ashby,” he called, and though his voice trembled slightly it carried loud and clear across the roofs and rocks. He swallowed and closed his eyes. “I am here to confess that it is I who stole the egg.”

  A chuttering rattle of consternation greeted his words, though again Arabella was pleased to note that no Martian fired an arrow or even threw a rock.

  Simon opened his eyes and looked to Arabella for reassurance. She smiled encouragingly and whispered, “Go on.”

  “I am genuinely sorry for this … precipitate action,” he told the gathered Martians. “To demonstrate my sincerity, I reveal to you the location in which I have hidden the egg: It is buried in the sand beneath a rough outcropping of orange stone, one mile to the west of the Ashby plantation, not far from the path. The outcrop is conical in shape, and it is marked by a diagonal vein of black stone.” To Arabella he said, “Is that sufficient?”

  She hoped that it was. “The egg is of utmost importance to them. They will search until they find it.”

  He swallowed and turned again to the Martians. “Again, let me extend my sincerest apologies for my intemperate action. I … I did not realize the significance of the egg, and I pray that you will forgive me. And all of us.” He looked out over the Martians for a time, as though hoping for an enthusiastic response. Finding none, he simply stepped down from the box. “It is done,” he said.

  “You have carried that off creditably,” Arabella replied, and not entirely out of politeness. “Now we must wait. Once they have found the egg, I expect that they will send an emissary.”

  * * *

  All the rest of that day they waited. The catapults ceased their hammering of the house, but a brief essay out the gate resulted in a rain of arrows—though the Martians were no longer attempting to destroy the house, they nonetheless insisted that the Englishmen remain within it.

  During this respite from the catapults’ pounding, the captain directed the men in inspecting and repairing the house. The destruction was frightening—in several places bearing walls, some quite deep in the house, had been demolished by the stones, and sections of the roof had collapsed. Worse, the base of the tower from which they were observing and defending the house had taken serious damage.

  They did what they could to shore up the damaged sections, but it was plain that even their redoubt at the back of the manor would not survive long if the Martians resumed their assault. Either the walls and tower would fall, allowing armed Martians to enter, or the house would simply be brought down on top of them.

  While the captain and most of the men worked at reinforcing the house, Arabella sat with Michael in his bedchamber, spooning soup into his mouth as she had once done for the captain. But where the captain in his stupor had licked the soup off his lips when it was placed there, Michael seemed to actively fight it, spitting out soup and spoon and all as he thrashed in his fever.

  “He’s growing weaker, isn’t he?” she asked Dr. Fellowes in the kitchen.

  “I have seen men recover from more serious infections,” the doctor replied, but his expression was grave.

  Simon, too, continued to spend time at Michael’s bedside. “I am so very sorry, my dear cousin,” he said, though Michael showed no sign of understanding. “I hope that you can somehow find it in your heart to forgive me my trespasses. If there were any thing, any thing whatsoever, I could do to atone for my errors, please rest assured that I would do so.”

  Despite her deep-seated suspicions, Arabella wondered if Simon’s contrition might be more than mere pretense. She longed to denounce him as a worthless, foolish wastrel who had dissipated what little fortune he’d had, squandered what remained on a fantastical and murderous scheme to wrest the estate from Arabella’s branch of the family, and cost her brother his leg, his health, and possibly his life. But she could not condemn him, not entirely at least. For though he had begun the insurrection that had injured her brother and so many others, he had also saved her brother’s life. And now, at least, he seemed repentant, and had shown himself willing to take action, quite serious action, in an attempt to make amends.

  “My brother has a very gentle heart,” Arabella told Simon. Perhaps too gentle, she thought. “I am sure that if he could see how truly sorry you are, he would harbor no grudge against you.”

  At that Simon smiled, the first apparently genuine smile she could recall having seen from him since long before her father’s death. He opened his mouth to speak.

  But before any words could emerge, their conversation was interrupted by a horrific ululation from without—a great moaning, clattering cry from hundreds of Martian throats like nothing Arabella had ever heard before. And that dreadful wail was only the beginning; it grew and grew in depth and volume of sound until it seemed the entire planet Mars was crying out in anguish.

  Then the rising lament crescendoed with a tremendous crash, which was immediately echoed by another and another.

  The rain of catapult stones had resumed, with even greater ferocity.

  24

  THE LAST REDOUBT

  Arabella peered over the parapet, struggling to make some sense of what she saw and heard. The captain stood beside her, outwardly calm as ever, though she knew him well enough by now to tell his current rigid stance from his usual upright one.

  The crowd of Martians below seethed like a pot of water on a low boil, warriors running hither and yon, clattering and screaming and waving their spears. A knot of feverish activity surrounded each of the catapults—at least seven were now in operation—with chanting teams of Martians hauling back each deadly arm and loading huge, jagged boulders into each waiting basket. The nearest catapult let fly even as she watched, with a great cry from its crew, sending yet another stone crashing into the already thoroughly demolished dining-room. But though the added visible destruction was not large, she knew this was not just a futile exercise—the roo
m’s rear wall, a load-bearing wall, could not take much more damage, and when it collapsed it would take a goodly portion of the east wing’s roof with it.

  “Lookee there, sir,” said one of the riflemen, pointing. Arabella followed his outstretched finger to the distant town below Fort Augusta, which had suddenly spouted a huge, fresh gout of flames. A column of black, greasy smoke rose from the spot, soon joined in the air by several more such columns. The town, already heavily damaged, now seemed doomed to complete destruction.

  “What in God’s name has set them off like this?” fumed another rifleman, this one a well-fed older gentleman named Morrison, sighting along his weapon. With a hard, sharp crack he loosed another shot, sending a Martian tumbling down the craggy hill below the house. But others rushed forward to fill the void, jamming themselves into the crowd rushing to raise ladders beneath the gaping hole which had formerly been the dining-room windows.

  Arabella thought she knew, but she could not be certain—the tumult from the crowd below was so great that individual words could not be discerned, even if they were within her limited vocabulary. “I could attempt to ask them,” she said. “But you must lower your rifles.”

  Mr. Morrison glared at her, but put down his weapon. “Be quick about it,” he muttered.

  The captain dragged a cartridge box close to the parapet, and Arabella climbed up upon it—the slight additional elevation making her feel giddy and exposed—cupped her hands to her mouth, and called out “Karaa, karaa!” several times until she had the attention of a good number of the crowd. “Gentle neighbors!” she cried. “What is the cause of this new attack? We wish only peace!”

  This brought forth an angry, muddled shout from many Martian throats which completely failed to clarify the situation. But after a moment the crowd quieted itself as a gargantuan armored form moved up through the pressed bodies to the clearing at the base of the tower. An akhmok.