Ann Leckie - Hesperia and Glory

Dear Mr. Stephens,

It is entirely understandable that you should wish a full accounting of the events of the last week of August of this year. If nothing else, your position as Mr. John Atkins’ only living relative entitles you to an explanation.

I must begin by making two points perfectly clear. The first is quite simple. The account you have read in the papers, and no doubt also received from the chief of police of this town, is entirely false.

My second point is this: there is not now, nor has there ever been, a well in my cellar.

It is true that ever since my return from the war I have walked with a cane, and stairs are difficult for me. But the house was my great-aunt’s, and my parents and I often spent summers here when I was a boy. In those days I marshaled my leaden armies across the packed dirt floor of the cellar, destroying and resurrecting whole battalions by the hour. I know every inch of that cellar floor. I wish to be quite particular about the matter.

Your cousin Mr. Atkins came to my house with Mr. Edgar Stark. I’ve known Mr. Stark since college, and he is a frequent visitor at my house. I live a quiet life, and am, I admit, somewhat prone to melancholy. Mr. Stark’s lively humor and good spirits are a dependable restorative, and for this and many other reasons I value his friendship. It is not unusual for him to bring a friend or two on his visits, so I was not at all surprised when he arrived in company with another man, whom he introduced as John Atkins, an old school friend of his.

To be entirely honest, I found Atkins unprepossessing. His suit was gray with dust and his collar wilted and dirty. As I shook his hand I could not help but notice his listless grip and slightly petulant expression. All of this I put down to a long drive in the heat, but upon further acquaintance it was clear that the expression, at least, was habitual.

Each morning he spent at my home he was up early, before the heat made his room unbearable. After a quick breakfast of bread and jam and cold coffee he would take his place in the living-room on the couch, stretched out, his feet on the cushions, eyes closed, brow knitted in concentration. He arose only briefly in the afternoon to plug in the electric fan and bring the ice bucket from the dining-room to the couch. After supper he went directly to his room, but he slept poorly, if at all; each night I heard his step overhead, pacing back and forth.

Stark did his best to stir his friend, with no success. Atkins did not like music, either from the piano or the Victrola—the noise distracted him. Books were out of the question, as, he informed us, reading only put other people’s ideas into his head. “Well, then, Atkins,” I said on the third morning, after another attempt to find something that would entice him off the couch, “what do you like?”

“I like to be left alone,” he snapped.

We were only too happy to grant his wish, and went out onto the terrace to sit in a couple of dusty wrought-iron chairs in the shade of an old sycamore. Quite naturally, I asked Mr. Stark for an explanation. He told me that John Atkins was mad. Or rather, that he purported to be mad. He had avoided college, work, enlistment, any sort of responsibility, by pretending insanity. He had deceived various doctors and had spent much of the past year in isolation at the latest doctor’s orders. Stark believed Atkins was not truly mad, because the mad did not merely lie about all day. “If you’re mad, you should be... mad,” he said. The doctor had approved Atkins’ departure from the sanatorium and advised that his surroundings for the moment should be peaceful and calm. So naturally Mr. Stark had thought of my house. “I thought you could only be good for him. And he was quite interested in your house, when I described it to him. Particularly the well in your cellar. It’s the first time in ages he’s shown any sort of interest in anything.”

“There’s no well in my cellar.”

“John and I were good friends at school, before college. Something happened, I don’t know.”

“There’s no well in my cellar,” I said again. It disturbed me that he had not seemed to hear what I had said.

“I need another drink,” he said, and that was the end of the matter.

You may wonder that I did not take offense at your cousin’s behavior. The truth of the matter is, I had seen something like it before. Some doctors called it “funk” and some “neurasthenia.” I called it perfectly natural, if you’d been at the front long enough. Atkins had never enlisted, but whatever his problem, I didn’t doubt that it was real enough.

That evening, when I heard Atkins’ step, I determined to speak with him, so I rose and took my stick, meaning to make my slow way up the stairs. Instead I heard Atkins come down, and walk through the dining room out onto the terrace. I followed him.

The night was cool and cloudless, but not silent. Crickets chirruped, and other night insects shrilled and chorused. All the colors were gone out of the bricks, the grass, the leaves of the trees; everything was shades of black and gray. Atkins was still in his shirtsleeves, and he stood on the grass with his face turned up to the sky. He was there long enough for my leg to grow tired, and I seated myself in one of the chairs and waited.

After a while he turned, and as though he’d known I was there all the time he came and sat in another of the chairs. In the dark his face was shadowed oddly, his glasses dark circles where his eyes should be. “Edgar thinks I’m mad,” he said, conversationally, as though he’d offered me a cigarette.

“You’re not mad.”

“Of course not.”

“Have a drink?”

“No,” he said, and hooked one of the chairs with his foot and dragged it closer with a shriek of iron against brick. “You can bring me some ice.” He put his feet up on the chair.

“All out, old man.” Actually the ice man had been just that morning, and I’d taken more than usual, because of my guests. “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

He made a slight movement that might have been a shrug. “I’m not like just anyone else,” he said after some minutes had passed. “I matter .”

“Ah,” I said.

“Things have gone terribly wrong, and only I can fix them. It’s all my brother’s fault. My half-brother, really. Asery.” The last word was drawn out, filled with hate. “His father led a rebellion against the king of Hesperia—my father, Cthonin VI. He failed, of course. His head rolled down the palace stairs and into the square in the capital, and the body was buried under the steps, so that every day Hesperians would have him underfoot. I’ll never understand why his son didn’t join him, infant or not.”

“And where is Hesperia?” I asked.

“On Mars, of course.”

“Of course,” I said. “How foolish of me.”

He told me then of the antiquity and superiority of Martian civilization, and of Hesperia, which was the greatest of Martian nations. Each Hesperian learned, from his mother’s knee and throughout his schooling, the importance of right thinking. “On Mars,” he said, “we understand that what one thinks makes the world.”

“Do you mean to say that each of us makes our own world with his thoughts?” I’d heard the idea before, usually at two in the morning from young men drunk with a heady mix of champagne and philosophy, and whose lives had yet to run up very hard against reality.

“No, no,” said Atkins testily. “Nothing so trivial. There’s only one universe. But that universe is formed by thought. If it were left to undisciplined minds, the world would be chaos.”

“Your mind is disciplined,” I ventured.