Across the Zodiac (22 page)

"Because," he said, "the means of vengeance are not corporeal; the
agency does not in the least resemble any with which our countrymen,
or apparently your race on Earth, are acquainted. A traitor would be
found dead with no sign of suffering or injury, and the physician
would pronounce that he had died of apoplexy or heart disease. A
persecutor, or one who had unpardonably wronged any of the Children of
the Star, might go mad, might fling himself from a precipice, might be
visited with the most terrible series of calamities, all natural in
their character, all distinctly traceable to natural causes, but
astonishing and even apparently supernatural in their accumulation,
and often in their immediate appropriateness to the character of his
offence. Our neighbours would, of course, destroy the avenger, if they
could find him out—would attempt to exterminate our society, could
they prove its agency."

"But surely your countrymen must either disbelieve in such agency, in
which case they can hardly fear your vengeance, or they must believe
it, and then would deem it just and necessary to retaliate."

"No," he said. "They disbelieve in the possibility while they are
forced to see the fact. It is impossible, they would say, that a man
should be injured in mind or body, reputation or estate, that the
forces of Nature or the feelings of men should be directed against
him, without the intervention of any material agent, by the mere will
of those who take no traceable means to give that will effect. At the
same time, tradition and even authentic history record, what
experience confirms, that every one who has wronged us deeply has come
to some terrible, awe-striking end. Each man would ridicule heartily a
neighbour who should allege such a ground for fearing to injure one of
us; but there is none who is so true to his own unbelief as to do that
which, in every instance, has been followed by signal and awful
disaster. Moreover, we do by visible symbols suggest a relation
between the vengeance and the crime. Over the heart of criminals who
have paid with their lives, no matter by what immediate agency, for
wrong to us, is found after death the image of a small blood-red star;
the only case in which any of our sacred symbols are exposed to
profane eyes."

"Surely," I said, "in the course of generations, and with your
numbers, you must be often watched and traced; and some one spy, on
one out of a million occasions, must have found access to your
meetings and heard and seen all that passed."

"Our meetings," he said, "are held where no human eye can possibly
see, no human ear hear what passes. The Chambers meet in apartments
concealed within the dwellings of individual members. When we meet the
doors are guarded, and can be passed only by those who give a token
and a password. And if these could become known to an enemy, the
appearance of a stranger would lead to questions that would at once
expose his ignorance of our simplest secrets. He would learn nothing,
and would never tell his story to the outer world." ...

Opening the door, or rather window, of his private chamber, Esmo
directed our eyes to a portrait sunk in the wall, and usually
concealed by a screen which fitted exactly the level and the patterns
of the general surface. It displayed, in a green vesture not unlike
his own, but with a gold ribbon and emerald symbol like the cross of
an European knighthood over the right shoulder, a spare soldierly
form, with the most striking countenance I have ever seen; one which,
once seen, none could forget. The white long hair and beard, the
former reaching the shoulders, the latter falling to the belt, were
not only unlike the fashion of this generation, but gave tokens of age
never discerned in Mars for the last three or four thousand years. The
form, though erect and even stately, was that of one who had felt the
long since abolished infirmity of advancing years. The countenance
alone bore no marks of old age. It was full, unwrinkled, firm in
physical as in moral character; calm in the unresisted power of
intellect and will over the passions, serene in a dignity too absolute
and self-contained for pride, but expressing a consciousness of
command over others as evident as the unconscious, effortless command
of self to which it owed its supreme and sublime quietude. The lips
were not set as with a habit of reserve or self-restraint, but close
and even as in the repose to which restraint had never been necessary.
The features were large, clearly defined, and perfect in shape,
proportion, and outline. The brow was massive and broad, but strangely
smooth and even; the head had no single marked development or
deficiency that could have enlightened a phrenologist, as the face
told no tale that a physiognomist could read. The dark deep eyes were
unescapable; while in presence of the portrait you could not for a
moment avoid or forget their living, fixed, direct look into your own.
Even in the painted representation of that gaze, almost too calm in
its absolute mastery to be called searching or scrutinising, yet
seeming to look through the eyes into the soul, there was an almost
mesmeric influence; as if, across the abyss of ten thousand years, the
Master could still control the wills and draw forth the inner thoughts
of the living, as he had dominated the spirits of their remotest
ancestors.

Next morning Esmo asked me to accompany him on a visit to the seaport
I have mentioned. In the course of this journey I had opportunities of
learning many things respecting the social and practical conditions of
human life and industry on Mars that had hitherto been unknown to me,
and to appreciate the enormous advance in material civilisation which
has accompanied what seems to me, as it would probably seem to any
other Earth-dweller, a terrible moral degeneration. Most of these
things I learned partly from my own observation, partly from the
explanations of my companion; some exclusively from what he told me.
We passed a house in process of building, and here I learned the
manner in which the wonders of domestic architecture, which had so
surprised me by their perfection and beauty, are accomplished. The
material employed in all buildings is originally liquid, or rather
viscous. In the first place, the foundation is excavated to a depth of
two or three feet, the ground beaten hard, and the liquid concrete
poured into the level tank thus formed. When this has hardened
sufficiently to admit of their erection, thin frames of metal are
erected, enclosing the spaces to be occupied by the several outer and
interior walls.

These spaces are filled with the concrete at a temperature of about
80° C. The tracery and the bas-reliefs impressed on the walls are
obtained by means of patterns embossed or marked upon thinner sheets
placed inside the metallic frames. The hardening is effected partly by
sudden cooling, partly by the application of electricity under great
hydraulic pressure. The flat roof is constructed in the same manner,
the whole mass, when the fluid concrete is solidified, being simply
one continuous stone, as hard and cohesive as granite. Where a flat
roof would be liable to give way or break from its own weight, the
arch or dome is employed to give the required strength, and
consequently all the largest Martial buildings are constructed in the
form of vaults or domes. As regards the form of the building,
individual or public taste is absolutely free, it being just as easy
to construct a circular or octagonal as a rectangular house or
chamber; but the latter form is almost exclusively employed for
private dwellings. The jewel-like lustre and brilliancy I have
described are given to the surfaces of the walls by the simultaneous
action of cold, electricity, and pressure, the principle of which Esmo
could not so explain as to render it intelligible to me. Almost the
whole physical labour is done by machinery, from the digging and
mixing of the materials to their conveyance and delivery into the
place prepared for them by the erection of the metallic frames, and
from the erection to the removal of the latter. The translucent
material for the windows I have described is prepared by a separate
process, and in distinct factories, and, ready hardened and cut into
sheets of the required size, is brought to the building and fixed in
its place by machinery. It can be tinted to the taste of the
purchaser; but, as a rule, a tintless crystal is preferred. The entire
work of building a large house, from the foundation to the finishing
and removal of the metallic frames, occupies from half-a-dozen to
eighteen workmen from four to eight days. This, like most other labour
in Mars, goes on continuously; the electric lamps, raised to a great
height on hollow metallic poles, affording by night a very sufficient
substitute for the light of the sun. All work is done by three relays
of artisans; the first set working from noon till evening, the next
from evening till morning, and the third from morning to noon. The
Martial day, which consists of about twenty-four hours forty minutes
of our time, is divided in a somewhat peculiar manner. The two-hour
periods, of which "mean" sunrise and sunset are severally the middle
points, are respectively called the morning and evening
zydau
. Two
periods of the same length before and after noon and midnight are
distinguished as the first and second dark, the first and second
mid-day zyda. There remain four intervals of three hours each,
popularly described as the sleeping, waking, after-sunrise, and
fore-sunset zyda respectively. This is the popular reckoning, and that
marked upon the instruments which record time for ordinary purposes,
and by these the meals and other industrial and domestic epochs are
fixed. But for purposes of exact calculation, the day, beginning an
hour before mean sunrise, is distributed into twelve periods, or
antoi, of a little more than two terrestrial hours each. These again
are subdivided by twelve into periods of a little more than 10m.,
50s., 2-1/2s., and 5/24s respectively; but of these the second and
last are alone employed in common speech. The uniform employment of
twelve as the divisor and multiplier in tables of weight, distance,
time, and space, as well as in arithmetical notation, has all the
conveniences of the decimal system of France, and some others besides
due to the greater convenience of twelve as a base. But as regards the
larger divisions of time, the Martials are placed at a great
disadvantage by the absence of any such intermediate divisions as the
Moon has suggested to Terrestrials. The revolutions of the satellites
are too rapid and their periods too brief to be of service in dividing
their year of 668-2/3 solar days. Martial civilisation having taken
its rise within the tropics—indeed the equatorial continents, which
only here and there extend far into the temperate zone, and two minor
continents in the southern ocean, are the only well-peopled portions
of the planet—the demarcation of the seasons afforded by the
solstices have been comparatively disregarded. The year is divided
into winter and summer, each beginning with the Equinox, and
distinguished as the North and South summer respectively. But these
being exceedingly different in duration—the Northern half of the
planet having a summer exceeding by seventy-six days that of the
Southern hemisphere—are of no use as accurate divisions of time. Time
is reckoned, accordingly, from the first day of the year; the 669th
day being incomplete, and the new year beginning at the moment of the
Equinox with the 0th day. In remote ages the lapse of time was marked
by festivals and holidays occurring at fixed periods; but the
principle of utility has long since abolished all anniversaries,
except those fixed by Nature, and these pass without public observance
and almost without notice.

The climate is comparatively equable in the Northern hemisphere, the
summer of the South being hotter and the winter colder, as the planet
is much nearer the Sun during the former. On an average, the solar
disc seems about half as large as to eyes on Earth; but the continents
lying in a belt around the middle of the planet, nearly the whole of
its population enjoy the advantages of tropical regularity. There are
two brief rainy seasons on the Equator and in its neighbourhood, and
one at each of the tropics. Outside these the cold of winter is
aggravated by cloud and mist. The barometer records from 20 inches to
21 inches at the sea-level. Storms are slight, brief, and infrequent;
the tides are insignificant; and sea-voyages were safe and easy even
before Martial ingenuity devised vessels which are almost independent
of weather. During the greater part of the year a clear sky from the
morning to the evening zyda may be reckoned upon with almost absolute
confidence. A heavy dew, thoroughly watering the whole surface,
rendering the rarity of rain no inconvenience to agriculture, falls
during the earlier hours of the night, which nevertheless remains
cloudy; while the periods of sunset and sunrise are, as I have already
said, marked almost invariably by dense mist, extending from one to
four thousand feet above the sea-level, according to latitude and
season. From the dissipation of the morning to the fall of the evening
mist, the tropical temperature ranges, according to the time of the
day and year, from 24° to 35° C. A very sudden change takes place at
sunset. Except within 28° of the Equator, night frosts prevail during
no small part of the year. Fine nights are at all times chilly, and
men employed out of doors from the fall of the evening to the
dispersal of the morning mists rely on an unusually warm under-dress
of soft leather, as flexible as kid, but thicker, which is said to
keep in the warmth of the body far better than any woven material.
Women who, from whatever reason, venture out at night, wear the
warmest cloaks they can procure. Those of limited means wear a loosely
woven hair or woollen over-robe in lieu of their usual outdoor
garment, resembling tufted cotton. Those who can afford them
substitute for the envelope of down, described a while back, warm skin
or fur overgarments, obtained from the sub-arctic lands and seas, and
furnished sometimes by a creature not very unlike our Polar bear, but
passing half his time in the water and living on fish; sometimes by a
mammal more resembling something intermediate between the mammoth and
the walrus, with the habits of the hippopotamus and a fur not unlike
the sealskin so much affected in Europe.