The Just City

by Jo Walton

  “The philosophy of the quotidian,” Ficino said, smiling.

  “I don’t know if what we have here is what Plato meant by The Good Life,” I said. “But it’s a good life.”

  36

  SIMMEA

  Sokrates had once asked Kebes how he would fight a god. I had done it without even thinking about what I was doing, and I had used weapons Sokrates and Ficino had put into my hands, rhetoric and truth. I did not even understand what I had done in facing down Athene until the day before the festival of Hera when Pytheas met me, by arrangement, at the Garden of Archimedes. It was a fine night and I’d been looking through the telescope at the moons of Jupiter, and amusing myself by calculating their orbits. It was two months since I had been healed. For most of that time, Pytheas and Sokrates and I had been investigating mysteries and workers, without advancing very far on either front.

  Pytheas looked angry. “She won’t do it,” he said, without any preliminaries. “She hasn’t calmed down at all. You can’t imagine how angry with us she still is.”

  “Even after all this time?” I asked. My heart sank. “She’s still angry? Really?”

  “Yes, well, you pushed her on her own ground. And I think she’s upset about something else as well. She was already very impatient even before that. She will get over it, but it’ll take time. Usually if I’d made her this angry I’d leave her alone for a decade or so.”

  “Time is so different for you,” I said.

  “Not any more,” he said, ruefully. “Or not for now, anyway. Now time is as urgent for me as it is for you, and she flat-out refuses to help. She was blisteringly sarcastic. She might even do something to make things worse.”

  “What could make it worse?” I asked, and then immediately realized. “Oh, pairing us with awful people?”

  “Klymene again,” he said, despondently.

  “She wouldn’t be so unjust,” I said.

  “You’re making Sokrates’s mistake of assuming the gods are good,” Pytheas said. He led the way over to the little stone bench in the corner where we usually sat when we met here. There was a big lilac bush there and it always smelled sweet. Now at the heart of spring it was just coming into flower, and smelled overwhelming. “The gods are as petty and childish as any of the awful stories about us Plato wanted to keep out of the city. Athene’s one of the best of us, but even she can be … spiteful when she’s angry. Vengeful.”

  “It would be horribly unfair to Klymene,” I said, sitting down beside him. “Klymene has done nothing. And all I did was explain that she could trust me to keep my word.”

  “She wouldn’t think about Klymene at all, if that’s what she wanted to do. Klymene barely exists to her. Athene has friends and favorites here, like Tullius and Ikaros, but she’s only theoretically granting equal significance to people like Klymene. It’s challenging. I have to really work at it.” He sighed.

  “Do you think she’ll do that?”

  “She’d be more likely to choose somebody really ugly for me. Or maybe—no, I don’t know. Anyway, it’s not so much me I’m worried about as you. You said—when we were talking on the beach about Daphne, you said you were afraid. And she could match you with somebody brutal.” He put his arm around my shoulders. I could feel the warmth of it through my kiton. I leaned back against him.

  “I don’t think there are any brutal golds,” I said, trying to be brave and face the worst. “Anyway, I’ve done it three times now, and Phoenix was pretty crass. It’s not so bad. I can do it again.”

  He kicked his legs against the stone. “I hate this. I hate feeling helpless. And I suppose it’s an essential human condition, and yes, even though I was so proud of myself doing this properly I was in fact cheating by knowing Athene was here and could fix things. I suppose in a way my coming here to the city was cheating, compared to going somewhere with poverty and dirt and all the terrible things of mortality seen close up. If I’d been a slave.”

  “Too late now,” I said. “Though I suppose you could do it again if you wanted to?”

  “I have never heard of anyone doing it again. And I don’t know whether I could make myself.”

  “I’m glad you came here.”

  “Oh yes.” He squeezed my shoulders. “I don’t want you to have another baby with somebody else.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to either. I’m not ready to have another baby. My body is. But what happens if I get like that again? Athene wouldn’t help us reach Asklepius again, and without that I might be in that horrible state for a year or even more.”

  “That’s a very good point. There are things that people think help, iron and so on. But you don’t want to risk it yet and I think that makes sense. When I’m back on good terms with Athene and we can fix it would be much better.”

  “You said a decade?”

  “In a decade you’ll only be twenty-eight, twenty-nine. There are eras when that would be considered quite young to be having a baby.”

  “I suppose.” It seemed to me quite a long time to wait.

  “But that isn’t the problem, the problem is that you’ll get pregnant at the festival, now, tomorrow, with somebody else. After Athene refused me, I came here with two potential solutions to that.”

  I twisted round so that I could see his face, tucking my knees up on the bench and putting my arms around them. “What are they?”

  He put his hand on my bare knee, where it felt warm and heavy and almost unbearably erotic. “One is that you and I could mate now, tonight. You’d still have to go through with it tomorrow, but you’d already be pregnant with my son.”

  “How is it you’re so sure I’d get pregnant, and that it would be a son?” I asked. It was hard to talk evenly because I was breathless at the thought.

  “I’m a god,” he said. “There are so many heroic souls, and so few chances for them to be born heroes.”

  “And that counts even though you’re incarnate?”

  “This is a soul thing, not a body thing,” he said.

  “And how do you know it wouldn’t be a daughter?”

  “It wouldn’t—” He stopped and raised his eyebrows. “Usually, it feels unkind to beget a daughter, because in most eras it’s so horrible to be a woman. But I suppose here and now is one of the few places it wouldn’t be. So yes, it could be a daughter. That would be interesting. Different. Fun.”

  I was still acutely aware of his hand on my knee. If I chose that option we could be sharing eros in a few moments. I was absolutely ready. We could stand up together there in the Garden of Archimedes, or off in the woods if we were afraid somebody else might come to look at the stars. That would be wonderful, I knew it would. I wanted it so much. It was what I had wanted for so long. But I couldn’t bear the thought of sinking down into that empty state of uncaring again. “What’s the other alternative?”

  “If you’re not ready to have another baby now, you could eat silphium, and you won’t get pregnant. Well, you probably would with me because the weight of heroic souls waiting would probably outweigh the power of the plant. But you would be very unlikely to with anyone else.”

  “What is it? I never heard of it.”

  “It’s a root. I have some. I went and dug some up earlier in case you wanted it.” He handed it to me from the fold in his kiton. It felt like a spring onion. “You would eat it now, and then tomorrow you go through with it, which you’ll have to anyway, but you won’t have a baby. Nobody will think anything is strange, because you did it twice without before.”

  “I might be safe anyway.” I thought about it. “One in three is not good odds.”

  “You’re slightly more likely to get pregnant again after being pregnant once,” he said. “It’s as if your body has to figure out how to do it.”

  Just then a worker came up and began to dismantle part of the wall around the garden. Pytheas took his hand off my knee. I decided to take that as a sign. I put the silphium in my mouth and crunched it up. It tasted like a green onion.

>   “Good,” Pytheas said. I couldn’t tell from his voice if he was disappointed or relieved. “Do you know that’s the first thing you’ve ever done that’s against Plato’s plan?”

  “Whichever I’d chosen it would have been against it,” I said. “Or does he say it’s all right to copulate with your friend on the night before the festival?”

  “He certainly does not. But I don’t think he was imagining the effect this would have on particular people at all. He knew about agape, but he didn’t think how it would mesh with these festivals. Or maybe he really couldn’t imagine agape between men and women, and he thought agape between men wouldn’t be affected by them going off to women at the festivals. Sokrates was married, and Aristotle, but never Plato.”

  There was a great clatter at that moment as the worker pulled out a stone and several others fell. Pytheas got up and went over to the worker. “Joy to you. What are you doing?” he asked.

  It wrote something on the path. “Making art,” Pytheas read aloud. “Good.” He patted it, then wandered back to me.

  “Can they tell when you pat them?” I asked as he settled down again.

  “I have no idea. But Sokrates does it, so I do it.”

  We watched it for a while, pulling stones out of the wall and rearranging them. I couldn’t see an intelligible pattern, but then you might not see one in the middle of a fresco either. Then I started to feel sleepy. “I should go to bed. I have to be up early to make garlands in the morning.”

  “Then we both have to mate with strangers in the afternoon.” Pytheas ground his teeth. “She’ll calm down. But she knows what I want now, and she has said no once, so it’ll be hard to ask her without reminding her why she refused. Maybe I could ask Ficino to cheat instead. He might be amenable to a eugenic argument if not a romantic one.”

  “Maia might be amenable to a romantic one,” I said. “Though maybe not. She was so strict on not knowing our babies. I don’t think Axiothea would.”

  “Eugenic,” Pytheas said at once. “And Atticus too. Funny how easy it is to tell. Too late for this festival tomorrow, but we can try that next time. We know they cheat. We can try to use that to our advantage.”

  “What is the eugenic argument?”

  “That any baby you and I had would clearly be superior in all ways and be a philosopher king, exactly as the city wants.” He hugged me suddenly. “It’s even true. She’d be a brilliant philosophical hero.”

  “I’d rather not wait ten years,” I admitted. “How long will the silphium keep working?”

  “This month, until you bleed again.”

  He stood. I followed him up and took his hand. We walked back through the streets together. It was late and they were quiet, but not deserted. We saw a master striding along, and couples slipping back from the woods. There were also workers here and there, some of them engaged in engraving dialogue, others going about usual worker tasks. One of them slid in front of us as we passed the temple of Hestia. We stopped. It carved something by our feet. I had to angle myself to see it in the dim light of the sconces. “How many stars?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Too many to count,” Pytheas said.

  It drew something else, something that looked like the number eight written sideways. “No,” Pytheas said. “A finite but very large number. And new ones are born all the time and old ones burn out, making them uncountable.”

  The worker rolled away. “They’re wonderful,” I said. “Now that they’re talking, they’re thinking about everything. They’re naturally philosophical. I couldn’t have answered that.”

  “Some of the masters could,” Pytheas said, absently. “Lysias knows that, I’m sure.”

  “New stars are being born?” I looked up, as if hoping to see some, but saw of course only the old familiar constellations.

  “Yes, very far away, in nebulae. They call them stellar nurseries. You can’t see them with the naked eye, and I’m not sure whether our telescopes are good enough. People will go out there and live among them—you will. Your soul, in whatever body it’s in at the time. I haven’t been out there yet, it’s a long way from home, and I know it’s silly, but I feel uncomfortable about leaving the sun. I will in time. One day, when people on new worlds call to me. Maybe you.”

  “I won’t be me. I won’t remember.” It was a strange thought, bittersweet.

  “No. But I will. You won’t remember, but you’ll call me and I’ll come.” He sounded very sure. I didn’t ask if it was foresight and an oracle. I just hugged him.

  We should have expected it if we’d been thinking clearly, but of course we didn’t. My name was the second to be drawn, and matched with me was Kebes. I went up among the usual jokes and congratulations to have the garland bound around our wrists. Kebes was beaming, and I tried to keep my face under control, to take this like a philosopher. Pytheas had been wrong, this wasn’t aimed at me. It was meant to wound him, and it would. Athene didn’t care much about me or anything at all about poor Kebes. I kept my head high and tried to look straight ahead. I knew Pytheas was there, but I didn’t want to have to meet his eyes. It would be bad enough afterwards.

  Once we were out of the square and the dancers I looked up at Kebes. “Who could have guessed?” he said. He was still smiling. “I haven’t been chosen at all since the first time, but I won the wrestling yesterday. I’m glad now that I did.”

  I knew I had to say something, but couldn’t imagine what I could possibly say. I had seen him win the wrestling, and congratulated him at the time.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “It’s a little awkward, that’s all.”

  “What is?” He looked alarmed.

  “Just it being you and knowing you so well. The others times it’s been people I barely knew.”

  We came to the street of Dionysos and turned towards the practice rooms. “I was chosen with Euridike,” he said. “I know her slightly.”

  “She’s very pretty,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, noncommittally.

  We went inside and took a room—all the doors but one were open, so we went down to the far end. Kebes closed the door and unwound the garland. I felt shy and awkward as I took my kiton off. “I haven’t done it since the baby was born,” I said.

  “But you’re all healed up?” Kebes asked. Then before I could answer, “You mean you haven’t done it with Pytheas?”

  “Pytheas and I don’t—I’ve told you before! We’re doing agape, not eros.” The memory of his hand on my knee the night before came back, and with it an erotic jolt that felt disloyal to both of them.

  “You don’t do that, maybe, but you’re doing something? He touches you? You suck his dick?”

  “I do not! I never do that for anyone. On the ship—you were there.”

  He looked blank. “On the Goodness?”

  “The slave ship.” I still hated to think of it.

  “I wasn’t on the same slave ship as you. I met you in the market.”

  “One of the sailors forced my mouth, that’s all.” I sat down on the bed, suddenly cold.

  “But you—Pytheas—you said he was your lover. Are you saying you don’t do anything at all?” He laughed. “I thought—”

  “We talk,” I said, with as much dignity as I could manage. “We care about each other. Agape. That’s what I’ve always said. I don’t know why you care anyway.”

  “Because as I was trying to say that day in Thessaly before Sokrates shut me up, you could do much better than him. You’re taken in by his pretty face and his fast talk, but he’s not genuine.” He dropped his kiton. His penis was awake, and as big as the rest of him. “I am. You’ll see now. Come on. I love you. I want you.” He took a step towards the bed.

  “I like to stand up,” I said, getting up.

  “Stand up?” He stopped, bemused.

  “Let me show you. I worked it out with Aischines. It’s much more comfortable.”

  “Euridike an
d I did it on the bed,” he said, shaking his head. “But this will make it different.”

  Unfortunately, Kebes was too tall for the position I had worked out with Aischines and repeated with the others. He was also very excited. “Just give me a moment to breathe,” I said, when I saw that wasn’t going to work.

  “Come on Simmea, it’s me, you’re ready,” he said. “I can see how to do it standing up.”

  Without any hesitation he lifted me up above him and lowered me onto his penis. I clutched his shoulders, afraid of falling, though I knew he was one of the strongest of us. Then he stepped forward until my back was against the wall and began to thrust, driving the breath out of me. “There,” he said.

  I started to struggle, trying to get down, because I felt trapped and squeezed. Even on the bed I would have had more freedom than this. He must have mistaken my movements for passion because he didn’t stop battering away at me. Maybe Athene had meant it as punishment for me after all. It wasn’t rape, for I had consented, but I certainly didn’t like it. “Wait,” I said. “No, Kebes, wait, please.”

  “You like it. There. You’re mine. You’re mine. I’ll show you. You’re mine, mine, you always were, you were meant to be, mine, my Lucia, mine.”

  “No!” I said, horrified at what he was saying. “Stop it! I’m here for the city. I’m not doing this for your fantasy!”

  “Say my name,” he said, not stopping or even slowing down. “Lucia. My Lucia. Say my name.”

  If I had hated him it would have been different. But he was my friend, even ramming me up against the wall and panting on my face. Maybe with his name I could reach that part of him. “Matthias,” I said. “No. Stop. Listen to me.”

  But as I said his name he spilled his seed inside me. I could feel his penis jerking away as it gushed out. He carried me over to the bed then and put me down. I rolled away from him, breathing deeply.

  “You liked it,” he said, less sure of himself now.

  “I’m not yours,” I said.