“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.