In Hesperia (here I set down his words as best I remember them) the canals run deep and wide, and straight as death. The dirt, thick and heavy and scarlet, makes the water the color of blood. Some canals in less blessed regions have run dry, but in Hesperia green grows thick and lush thirty miles on either side of the broad waterways that criss-cross the land.
The canal called Fortunae does not run through Hesperia proper, but it is important nonetheless. It runs northward from the southern ice to a series of falls that cascade down into the Lake of the Sun, which is nearly a sea, wide and shallow. In unimaginably ancient times it was believed that on the day of creation the sun itself rose from that lake. It was the site of a tremendous temple complex, nearly all of which has disappeared without a trace after so many thousands of years. But one part of the temple still stands: the Wheel of Heaven, six hundred sixty-nine chambers, each built side to side in a great circle under the lake. The ring turns by the width of a chamber each day, and there being only one entrance a single room is accessible each day, and that same room, once its day has passed, cannot be entered again until the six hundred and sixty-nine days, which is the length of the Martian year, pass once more. The entrance is reached through a cave behind the falls.
The Fortunae comes out again at the western shore, at a headland called the Cape of Dawn. On this headland is one of the many pumping stations that send the water of the Fortunae on to where it meets the canals of Hesperia proper, in mountains to the west. Near the station is a town, and this is the administrative center of the province, which is, of course, governed by Hesperia.
It was there that I had been sent by my father, and there that my brother Asery came to me nearly a year ago as I sat in my chair on the steps of the governor’s palace, my counselors beside me. Before me was a great plaza, paved with the local brown stone in various shades, depicting a coiled serpent surrounded by a border of alternating jasper and copper in which the artist had cunningly concealed the drainage grates so necessary for a large, flat surface near so much water. Across the plaza, to the north, was the canal come again out of the lake. On the east was the lake itself, and to the west a barracks, and the town beyond. The air there is always filled with the sound of rushing water, and the rumble of the great pumping station.
Some of my soldiers were playing a ball game in the square in front of us, and I was proposing a wager on the outcome with my vice-governor when the voice of the crier interrupted us and Asery came before me. He is a tall man, nearly as tall as I am, with dark hair and gray eyes inherited from his father, and he carries himself with the same arrogance. On this day he was dressed in plain garments, covered with red-brown dust, as though he were some homeless wanderer just come off the road, not a gentleman seeking audience with the governor of the province, and a prince.
“Welcome brother,” I said. “Please sit with us.”
“I will not sit,” he said.
This sort of disrespect was like Asery, but I am a patient man. “Couldn’t you even bathe between here and... wherever it is you’ve come from? Our mother would be shocked to see you.”
“Our mother is not easily shocked,” he answered. “After all, she bore you without any noticeable display of shame.”
My counselors, who had been whispering among themselves, fell silent. Even the ballplayers stopped, and the ball bounced away and then rolled to the edge of the plaza, stopping and spinning on a grate. They moved together, closer to where I sat, and where my brother stood before me. Asery did not move, nor did he look behind him where they gathered.
“I hope you’ve not been thinking of taking up your father’s ambitions,” I said.
“I have not come to take up any ambition. I only wish to speak with you.”
“You’ve made a bad start of it,” I told him. “But then, your family’s arrogance is famous.”
“The contrast with the habitual modesty and diffidence of the house of Jor is marked,” he said, with the slightest of bows. “I stand reprimanded.
That was better. “What can I do for you?”
“You can restore the Fortunae to its original course.” Now, this had been the pretext for his father’s rebellion. At one time another canal had flowed north from the upper shore of the lake, and from there into Tharsis. “A hundred years ago Hesperia annexed this province and turned its waters westward. Now the lakes and rivers of Tharsis are dry, and its fields are desert.”
“Nothing stops them from building another canal. Or buying the water they require. Isn’t Tharsis famous for its silver mines? Aren’t their artisans the most marvelous workers of metal on Mars?”
He exhaled sharply, derisively. I couldn’t read the expression in his gray eyes. “I wish I could make you see what Mars is really like, away from the canals, away from your palace.”
I realized then what he had come to do. I stood and signaled the soldiers, and with a cry Asery pulled a sword from under his dusty shirt and sprang forward. I stood to face him and drew my dagger.
Our blades met, and over his shoulder I saw the soldiers turn as the grates around the court lifted and fell clanging to the stones, and up out of the drains came men in dusty red-brown, swords raised. In a moment they had ringed the plaza, even in front of where I stood on the palace steps.
Asery was a wily and treacherous swordsman, and I had to fight with all my attention. I did not have time to look over the plaza, or think of my counselors who had been next to me, but it was evident that the soldiers from the barracks had joined us, because from time to time I heard their voices raised in the battle cry of Hesperia: For Hesperia, and glory! And though he had a sword and I had only my dagger, we fought until each of us was exhausted, and I, anticipating his feint, disarmed him and sent his sword spinning across the stones of the plaza.
It was then that I looked up from the fight and saw that the battle was lost. My own soldiers lay dead or bound, and my vice-governor was held by two rebels.
I turned and ran up the palace steps.
Atkins paused, and before he could continue I asked why he had not merely thought Asery dead on the spot? Or willed his enemies’ swords to turn into flowers?
“You don’t believe me,” he accused.
“On the contrary. I’m just trying to understand.”
For a few moments the only sound was the night insects, and the soft sighing of a breeze in the tree leaves. “They would never have believed that their swords would suddenly turn to flowers.”
“So they all have to believe?”
“Not all,” he said. “Just most. If someone more powerful has some other vision, or if everyone around you remains unconvinced, your efforts will come to nothing. You see how important it is, the right kind of thinking.” He sat up straight, and brought his feet down off the chair in front of him. “You see how malicious it was, for Asery to suggest that Tharsis was badly off.”
I allowed that I did.
“The discipline is not only in bringing one’s will to bear, but in keeping in mind the proper order of things.”
I had no reply, and in a moment Atkins continued his story.
I fled through the palace to the stables (he said), where I mounted a raptodont, a stallion with splendid black feathers. These are nothing like your Earth horses. They are two-legged, nearly six feet from clawed foot to powerful shoulder, and nearly twice that from dagger-toothed snout to the tip of the long, muscular tail.
I rode away from the palace, safely past the town and away into the countryside. I might have followed the canal west, but I would be too easily caught. The lake lay to the east, and north was Tharsis—I could expect no help there. South then.