The Just City

by Jo Walton

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there should already be a system in place for them to communicate with each other, but I’m not sure how it works.”

  Lysias began to try to explain this to Sokrates and we came up to the workers, who had not moved or written anything since we had left. “I saw a note one had written near Florentia saying they want to make art,” Ficino said.

  “I saw that too,” I said. “And build.”

  “I think we’re going to have to let them, if they want to. I mean, make art!” Ficino glowed. “I was talking to Lysias about that when Pytheas came to find him.”

  “You can talk to each other,” Lysias said.

  They didn’t move. “Do you want to talk to workers?” Sokrates asked.

  “Yes,” they both wrote.

  “You can talk to workers,” Lysias said. There was no response.

  “And another thing: though they’ll answer questions from them, are they still forbidden to take orders from the children?” Sokrates asked Lysias.

  “Yes,” Lysias said. “I can change that, but I think it should be debated in Chamber. Perhaps the golds only?”

  “I think they should be considered children, to be educated,” I said. “They say that’s what they want.”

  “Educated in music and mathematics,” Kebes added.

  “They already know mathematics,” Lysias said. “Music, perhaps. You mean they should be educated to become citizens of the Republic?”

  “The problem is that we can’t educate them all, as only some of them are interested in having a dialogue,” Sokrates said.

  “Talk. Want talk. Educated. Want,” Sixty-one wrote.

  “It seems clear that only some of them are aware,” Lysias said. He read the incised words, moving back down the street. “Command language. Yes. It’s hard for language to be something else for them. What’s this about power?”

  “Electricity, as it turns out,” Kebes said.

  Lysias laughed. “Of course.”

  “If only some of them are aware, do only those workers have souls?” Sokrates asked.

  “And of what nature are their souls, the same as those of people and animals or different?” Pytheas asked.

  “People and animals have different kinds of souls,” Ficino corrected him kindly. “Plato meant animal-like, not that human souls passed into animals.”

  Pytheas raised his eyebrows and didn’t contradict him. “How about workers, though?”

  “Those who are aware can choose the good, and therefore they have souls,” Sokrates said. “Whether they are of the same kind I do not know.”

  “But when did they get them, if the others do not?” Kebes asked.

  “They each have a number. The number corresponds to their soul. As they become aware, the soul with that number crosses Lethe and enters into them,” Ficino said. “I wonder if one could see it?”

  “It seems very unlikely,” Lysias said.

  “Why?” Pytheas asked.

  “I only half believe in souls anyway,” Lysias said, shrugging. “Even for us, let alone for workers. And they’re not visible.”

  “Athene confirmed that we have souls,” Ficino said. “On the first day, in Chamber.”

  “Well then, we should ask her whether the workers do, and when they got them,” Lysias said. “I’m sorry, Sokrates, I’m going to have to prepare a key before they’re going to believe they can talk to each other. I’ll do that now.”

  “Joy to you, Lysias, thank you for coming,” Sokrates said.

  “Do you want to make art?” Ficino asked the workers.

  “Yes,” they both wrote.

  “I would like to see your art,” I said. “I can’t imagine what it would be like.”

  35

  MAIA

  It was a rainy evening in early spring, and I was trying to organize the names for the next festival of Hera, when Klio came to tell me that Tullius had died. “Charmides was with him. Apparently at the last moment he just completely disappeared—the same as with Plotinus. His death was pretty well documented. It must be so strange. From the assassin’s point of view, he’d suddenly have looked fifteen years older just before they stuck the knife in.”

  “It’ll happen to all of us,” I said. “Well, not with assassins. I expect I’ll just seem to have aged terribly and fallen dead at my aunt’s feet in the Pantheon.”

  “And I in my office. I can’t imagine how they’ll explain it. At least I was alone.” Klio picked up the paper on my table and glanced idly at it.

  “I’ll miss old Tullius,” I said. “He never wanted to take any notice of me, but his speeches were always wonderful.”

  “I suppose Porphyry will be the President of the Chamber now,” Klio said. “Or Krito?”

  “It’ll be so much easier when the children are grown. None of this wrangling. All of them seeing clearly the best way ahead and doing it.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “… No. I’d like to. But some of them are very smart, and they’ve been brought up the right way, and maybe by the time they’re fifty? Who knows.”

  Klio put the paper down. “I must get on and do my own list. It’s so difficult to decide which of the boys are the most deserving.”

  “It is. I think we should space the festivals out more, have them every six months, or even just once a year. Once we take out all the girls who are pregnant and those who are still feeding, the numbers are getting smaller and smaller. And we don’t need all that many babies. Maybe we should time the festivals for just after the dark of the moon, to reduce fertility, instead of at the full to maximize it.”

  “That’s a good idea. Cutting down the frequency would make everyone upset, but nobody would take any notice of changing the timing, and having fewer births would be much easier on us. You should bring that up in Chamber.”

  “If we ever get on to any subject that isn’t workers.” I sighed. “It might be better to suggest it to Ardeia and Adeimantus and whoever else is on the Baby Committee.”

  There was a knock on my door. Klio opened it, and Ficino came in. “I came to tell you about Tullius, but I see Klio was before me,” he said.

  “I was very sorry to hear about it,” I said. “And I expect you are more sorry, as you were friends.”

  “I had that privilege,” Ficino said. He sat down on the bed. “It was a privilege. I thank Athene every day for the privilege of being here and knowing these people—men from the past whose work I revered.”

  “And men and women from your future who revere your own work,” Klio said.

  I gave up on the thought of getting any more work done and got up and began to mix wine.

  “My work was as an intermediary, a translator, a librarian, more than as an original thinker,” he said, taking a wine cup and nodding.

  “You always say that,” I said, taking wine to Klio, who was pacing. “But you underestimate your importance to the Renaissance and everything that came after.”

  “Your commentaries on Plato—” Klio started.

  “I know I can’t compare to Cicero,” he said.

  “But who can? I can’t compare to you,” I said. “It’s not a contest.”

  Ficino sipped his wine. “I wonder sometimes whether Plato imagined this city. Not the Republic he wrote about, but our imperfect attempt to create it now. And if so, and knowing what we would need, whether that might have been why he wrote about the female guardians as equals, to draw all of you young women towards us because we would need you so much.”

  “No, that’s nonsense,” Klio said, stopping and turning to him. “Because he could have written about women as slaves and animals as Aristotle did, and you wouldn’t have needed us then, if there was no need to train women in philosophy. You could have managed with workers, or buying female slaves to help with childbirth and childrearing.”

  “It’s a privilege to debate with philosophical women too,” Ficino said.

  “Two sips and you’re drunk a
lready?” I asked.

  “I’m sad because of Tullius, that’s all. Death makes me think about mortality. Even though I know our souls will go on. Even though in one sense Tullius’s soul has already gone on through many lives and I might even have known him by another name, death is sad because it is a parting.”

  “We were contemplating what it would be like for our bodies to reappear at the moment of our disappearance,” I said. “Suddenly older. Suddenly dead.”

  “I had decided to die at sixty-six, because it was the best number. Ninety-nine seemed difficult to accomplish.” We all laughed.

  “When did you pray to be here?” I asked.

  “Oh, all the time.” He shook his head. “When I first translated the Republic. And thereafter every time something went wrong politically in Florence, which was often, I assure you!”

  “And you prayed to Athene,” Klio said, leaning back against the edge of my table.

  “Often. But I’d pray to the Archangel Gabriel for it too, and to St. John and the Virgin.” He smiled wryly. “Have you heard Ikaros’s interesting explanation that Athene is an angel?”

  “He did mention it,” I said. “I’m more than a little conflicted about it.”

  “He is the ultimate synthesist. He always was. I remember when he first came to Florence—he had everything going for him. He was so young, so good-looking, and a count! What he wanted was philosophy—he was in love with philosophy. Literally in love with it. He wanted a Socratic frenzy, that was his term. He sent me such letters! He had read everything in the world, in every language, and he was desperate for people to debate him. So he came, trailing young women he had seduced and sparkling with new ideas. I was so sad when he took up with Savonarola and then died. I was delighted to meet him again here.” Ficino sipped his wine then turned the wine cup in his fingers. “Do you remember that night at the beginning, when the three of us had no wine and pretended we did? I’m sorry you’re not his friend any more.”

  “Sometimes it’s hard to be one of the women,” I said.

  “You should have stuck to Plato,” Ficino said.

  “I did. It’s he who should have.”

  “I think it’s nonsense,” Klio said, getting up again. I stared at her. “Not that. Saying Athene’s an angel. You two, and Ikaros as well, sort of want that to be true because you were Christians. I was never a Christian, though I lived in a country where most people were. She’s not an angel. She’s something from a different universe entirely. She’s herself, the way Homer wrote about her. I don’t see how Ikaros can deny that. He didn’t think that at first. It’s only since he hasn’t seen her every day, hasn’t been face to face with the reality of what she is, that he’s been able to come up with this … comfortable explanation. Angels! I wonder what she thinks of it? It’s a betrayal of her.”

  “What’s wrong with angels?” I asked.

  “Angels are fluffy woolly nonsense. Guarding your bed while you sleep. Free of will, nothing but winged messengers in nightgowns, coming to tell us not to be afraid? Tame agents of an all-knowing creator God whom we’re supposed to believe is good even though the world is so flawed?”

  Ficino looked at her, amazed. “What? Fluffy? Guarding your bed? However could your age have come to believe that? They are the operators of the universe, divine messengers, full of awe and light. Athene could fit within my beliefs about angels. And I remember very well what she was.”

  “I shouldn’t have this, but look at it,” I said, reaching up to the high shelf and taking down the Botticelli book Ikaros had brought me. “Look at these angels. They’re not tame, and they have agency.”

  Klio looked at the angels for a long moment. “Not that Botticelli was painting from life, but I do see what you mean,” she admitted.

  “Where did that come from?” Ficino asked.

  “Ikaros brought it back from one of his art expeditions,” I said.

  “You shouldn’t have it. But I suppose it isn’t doing any harm. As long as you haven’t shown it to the children?”

  “I showed Simmea the Primavera once, and the Birth of Venus.” She’d glimpsed the cover too, but she’d never mentioned it again. “And I showed it to Auge when she was just starting sculpting—and she’s getting really good now. But I’m very careful with it.”

  “I’m sure Ikaros is saying Athene was just doing what God told her to,” Klio said.

  “That’s nonsense,” I said. “She was unquestionably acting for herself. Goddess or angel, she wasn’t just a mouthpiece.”

  “If God exists and gave us free will, then he wanted us to use it,” Ficino said. “So she could be doing as he wanted and also acting freely.”

  “If Athene was an angel, what would it change?” Klio asked, putting her fingertip on one of Botticelli’s angels’ faces.

  “Perhaps how we worship,” I said.

  “How would it change that?” she asked.

  “Sokrates said in the Apology that you should worship in the manner of the city in which you live. Plato said in the Laws that they should send to Delphi to ask how to worship,” Ficino answered.

  “What does Sokrates say now?” Klio asked, looking up from the book.

  “He says Providence is a very interesting idea,” Ficino said. “But he’s so obsessed with the workers at the moment that it’s hard to get him to focus on anything else.”

  “I don’t know how we’d manage without the workers,” Klio said. “They do so much. They let us lead philosphical lives because they’re doing all the hard work—all the farming and building and everything. We’re comfortable because of them.”

  “We’re rich because of them,” Ficino said. “We have no poverty here, because of them.”

  “The idea was always that they were here to help us at the beginning, while the children were growing, and that in future generations the irons would replace them. Then we will have poverty, or at least some of us will live less comfortable lives.”

  “Not poverty,” I said, remembering poverty in my own time. “Well, in some ways we are all poor. We live with very few possessions. But nobody will be in want. Nobody will feast while others starve.”

  “That would be unjust indeed,” Ficino said. “Are we going to lose the workers?”

  Klio stopped and sat down. “Eventually, we’ll lose them no matter what, unless Athene brings us more, and spare parts. They’ll wear out. And if the city can only keep going by constant divine intervention then we’re not doing very well, are we?”

  “Having it to start us off—” Ficino said.

  “Yes, but we had the workers to start us off too. After that, what? And it could be quite abrupt if we give them rights and then they stop working. At the moment it’s only some of them, and they are working voluntarily, but who knows what will happen? Aristomache made a powerfully moving speech about slavery, but when it comes to it they are machines and all our comfort rests on them.” She held up her wine cup. “Who planted these vines, and pruned them? Who trod the grapes and added the yeast and bottled the vintage?”

  “The children of Ferrara made these cups,” I said. “We’re starting to replace what the workers do.”

  “But we’re only starting. It will take a long time before we have everything smooth. If they suddenly refused to help it would be a disaster. And even with them slowly failing, it’s difficult. There are a lot of things they do that we can’t teach the children because we don’t know how to do them. Do you know how to make wine?”

  “We have a number of skills between us,” Ficino said.

  “Come and tell the Tech Committee that, and the Committee on Iron Work,” Klio said. “We have an odd number of skills between us, and we’re very lacking in practical physical skills. I’m not sure we have three people who know how to fix the plumbing.”

  “I’ve got much better at midwifery than I ever imagined I would,” I said. “I wanted the life of the mind, but here I am delivering babies and teaching girls how to breast feed.”

  �
��On the whole, the women are better on practical skills than the men,” Klio said. “Which makes sense, really, when you think about it. Most of the men come from eras where they had slaves or servants to do the physical work. Even though some of the women did as well, they were still expected to do more of the hands-on things.”

  “To my mother, the word work meant sewing,” I said.

  “And if you’d stayed in your time, you’d have had to make most of your clothes,” Klio said. “Not so for your brother.”

  “I’d have made most of his clothes as well,” I said. “My aunt did have some dresses made for me, but I made all my own underthings. Underthings! How very little I miss them!”

  “Do you miss anything?” Klio asked.

  “About the nineteenth century?” She nodded. “I miss my father. I wish so much he could have been here. He’d have loved it so much. Apart from that—no. Nothing. Everything here is so much better. I have books and companionship and work that’s worth doing. Even when everything isn’t perfect and ideal and as one would wish Plato could have had it, even when I have to do terrible things,” and here I was thinking of the baby with the hare lip that I had exposed, “It’s still real work that’s worthy of me. Nothing in my own time could have offered me that.”

  “I miss recorded music,” Klio said. “Being able to listen to it whenever I wanted. Apart from that, nothing. But sometimes I wonder if we should have stayed in our own times and fought for the Republic there. If we should have tried to make our own cities more just.”

  “That’s what I did, for the first sixty-six years of my life,” Ficino said. “That gives me a different perspective. I did that, and I am remembered. We had a rebirth of the ancient world, and everyone acknowledges that my efforts made a contribution. But that was the most I could possibly do towards that, alone, in the company I had, without Athene. Without all of you. She brought us together here because we were so few, scattered throughout time.”

  “We know we wouldn’t have achieved anything further in our lives, or else we wouldn’t have been brought here when we were,” I pointed out.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Klio said. She drained her wine and set down the cup. “I should get back to the practical tasks at hand that help make the city work.”