by Jo Walton
“Yes, precisely that,” Pytheas said, sitting down again in the chair where he had been before.
“Joy to you, Hilfa,” Sokrates said. “And what a joy to meet one of your kind and learn that you exist.”
“Joy to you,” Ikaros echoed.
Hilfa turned to me and Thetis where we sat on the bed. “How do I welcome them? Should I bring them wine?” he asked in a loud whisper, as if this were a real question of whether they should be extended hospitality, a question to which there could be possible negative answers. They politely looked away, pretending not to hear.
“Yes, I’m sure they’d enjoy wine. I’ll get cups,” Thetis said. She got up off the bed, picked up the empty water jug from the table, and went off to the little storeroom.
“But are they humans, or gods?” Hilfa asked me, still in the same tone. “Or heroes perhaps?”
Behind Hilfa, I could see Ikaros make an uncomfortable movement with his hands and open his mouth without speaking. What should I say? Some people said Ikaros was a god, a new and different kind of god. Even among Ikarians there wasn’t any consensus about what Ikaros was. “They were human when they were in the City before. I really don’t know what they might be now,” I said, quietly but making no attempt to hide my words from the others, which wouldn’t have been possible anyway. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know that everyone else in the room probably knew more about it than I did. Certainly Pytheas would have had a better answer than my fumbling one. But Hilfa had asked me because he trusted me, and I was here to help him as best I could.
To my great relief, Thetis came back in with beakers and water before Hilfa asked me any more difficult questions. She began to mix the wine at the table. Everyone turned to watch her.
Hilfa took the two full beakers from Thee, and handed one to Sokrates and the other to Ikaros, who smiled at Hilfa and set down a pile of books on the table so he could take it. Thetis went around with the jug refilling cups. Sokrates and Ikaros each took the first ritual sip of their wine, thus formally accepting Hilfa’s hospitality and becoming his guest-friends.
“Joy to you both, and be welcome to my home,” Hilfa said. “Will you answer my question? What are you?” I’d have thought he was being rude, except that Sokrates and Ikaros both responded to being addressed this way with an identical air of delighted alertness that reminded me of the way a boat sometimes, after handling sluggishly coming out of harbor, suddenly comes clear of the land and catches the wind and goes racing away. They looked at each other, and Ikaros spread his hand in the rhetorical gesture meaning that Sokrates should speak first. Sokrates smiled. Pytheas too had a smile playing around his lips. I realized that they were all looking forward to that most characteristic of all entertainments, a Socratic debate. I sipped my wine, which Thetis had mixed strong, and felt uncomfortably aware that it was getting late and I had missed my dinner. I felt out of my depth in this company. I was only a Silver.
“My name is Sokrates, the son of Sophronikos. As for what I am, that’s another matter. I have been human. I have been a fly. I appear to be a plaything of gods and time.”
“When did you stop being a fly?” Thetis asked. She was standing over by the table, holding the wine jug, looking like one of Hestia’s more radiant nymphs.
“Apollo was kind enough to turn me back an hour or so ago,” Sokrates said, turning to her for a second with a smile, and then back to Hilfa. “As for what else I am, I am a philosopher, that’s certain, a lover of wisdom and an inquirer after knowledge.”
“You do not wear a philosopher’s pin,” Hilfa said, in his usual earnest, slightly hesitant way.
“Ha! I am a philosopher without being part of the system of the Just City, or in any way endorsing that system,” Sokrates said, grinning, his head jutting forward, clearly looking forward to the response.
“They don’t wear pins in Sokratea,” Thetis pointed out.
Sokrates looked away from Hilfa, taken aback. “Sokratea?” he asked, warily. He had an exceedingly mobile face; his expression could change in an instant.
“There are twelve Platonic Cities now,” Pytheas said, grinning. “All different. Sokratea is the one Patroklus founded, on the principle of re-examining everything.”
“Patroklus? Not Kebes?” Sokrates asked at once.
“Kebes—” Pytheas stopped smiling. “Oh Sokrates, I’m sorry to bring this news. Kebes left, with some of the others. He founded eight cities of his own on other islands. We were out of contact with them for a long time. When we found them again, we discovered that they had set up a very unpleasant form of Christianity, and institutionalized torture.”
“I told you about Christianity,” Ikaros put in.
Sokrates looked sad. “Kebes had told me about it too, and his version was different from yours. Torture … yes, I can see how he might have come to it, from the anger and self-righteousness in his own soul. But I thought he had learned to question.”
“He learned to tear down other people’s arguments, but never to truly examine his own where it made him uncomfortable,” Pytheas said. He set down his almost full winecup at his feet.
“He always was too sure he was right,” Sokrates said, sadly. “I failed him. Where is he now? I should talk to him.”
“I killed him,” Pytheas said, calmly and quietly, looking up at Sokrates from where he sat. “I used his own judicial methods and flayed him alive.”
“What!?” the word exploded from Sokrates. Then he stopped and rocked back on his heels. “You did what? What did he—what could make you—where’s Simmea?” He looked around the room, as if expecting to see her hiding in a corner.
“She’s dead too,” I said quietly, after too long a silence when it seemed nobody else was capable of responding. Pytheas’s face looked like stone. Thetis had tears rolling down her cheeks.
Sokrates sighed. “Was Kebes involved in her death? Is that why you did that? Or did you need to kill him to help his cities change? But that way, Pytheas?”
“Good guesses, but no. I did think he might have been involved, but in the end her death wasn’t personal. There was a war.” Sokrates didn’t say anything but his eyebrows rose. “I stopped it, afterwards. Kebes—I do believe it was the best thing for his soul, to let it go on and have another chance. He was so set on everything, and so wrong. He did need to be removed to help the Lucian cities, and it did help them. They don’t torture people now, and most of them have become pretty good places to live. But that’s not really why I did it. I wanted to kill him because I found out he raped Simmea. At the Festival of Hera when they were matched together. I know she didn’t tell you, she didn’t tell me either. She wrote about it, and I read it after her death, when I was half-mad with missing her.” Sokrates started to say something, but Pytheas raised a hand and he stopped. “The real reason I killed Kebes with his own slow unpleasant justice was because he had cheated in a musical contest.”
“He must have been desperate to enter a musical contest with you,” Sokrates said.
“No, I think the idea of beating me that way must have been irresistible. He very nearly won,” Pytheas said. “He had a new instrument, and a really good song, though as it turned out not an original composition, a song from the twentieth century. We don’t know where he found either of them, he wouldn’t say.”
“I’m surprised he cheated in a contest. That’s not like him—though maybe he made himself feel that the song belonged to him and was therefore his. He was always deceiving himself that way. But for you to do that—” Sokrates shook his head. “I wish I could still believe the gods knew what they were doing.”
“You know what I am,” Pytheas said. “You know we’re not perfect.” He glanced at Ikaros as he said this, and Ikaros smiled back ruefully. “Kebes was never my friend, and he’d hurt Simmea. He deceived himself and deceived others and made everything worse. I have learned from it. I learned the futility of revenge, and about what things are worth fighting for. I wrote a song.”
“By th
e dog!” Sokrates said. “I’d prefer it if one of my friends didn’t have to die horribly so that another one can learn from it, even if the other one is you!”
“You’re not being fair. Kebes cheated twice,” Thetis put in, indignantly. “As well as plagiarizing, so that Pytheas had to turn his lyre upside-down to win, he arranged a treacherous attack on the ship and the crew, after they’d been given guest-friendship. People were killed.”
“It’s all right, Thee, I hold myself to higher standards too,” Pytheas said. Thetis shook her head.
“I saw him this morning. He was so eager for me to defeat Athene.” Sokrates shook his head. Then he looked at Thetis, who was wiping her eyes on the corner of her kiton. “You’re Simmea’s daughter?”
“Her granddaughter,” Thetis said. “My father is Neleus.”
“I’m glad she has descendants,” Sokrates said.
“She has lots of descendants,” Pytheas said.
“Also she wrote dialogues, which I and many people have read, and there are statues of her,” Hilfa put in.
“When did all this happen?” Sokrates asked.
“About forty years ago,” Thetis said.
“Forty years?” Ikaros echoed, sounding surprised. “So it’s been sixty years here since the Last Debate?”
“The Last Debate?” Sokrates asked, frowning.
“That’s what we call the time when Athene turned you into a fly,” Thetis explained. “We didn’t really stop debating after that.”
“No, good, I’m very glad you didn’t,” Sokrates said. “So everyone I knew here is dead, apart from you two?” He indicated Pytheas and Ikaros. “All my friends? Manlius and Aristomache and Klio and Ficino?”
“All the Masters are dead, and most of the Children too,” Pytheas confirmed.
Sokrates stared directly into his eyes. “And there’s some particularly good reason, which you’ll now explain, why you brought me to this particular point in time, and not earlier or later?”
“Crocus is still here,” Thetis put in. “And he’ll be so glad to see you. He often talks about you.”
“Crocus!” Sokrates said, swinging around, plainly delighted.
“He’s a real philosopher, and a sculptor,” Ikaros said. “I’m glad he’s still going strong. I’ve always felt the Workers were one of our most unexpected successes.”
“Good,” Sokrates said. “I’ll be glad to see him.” Then he turned back to Pytheas expectantly. “Well?”
“I told you. Athene’s lost. Also, I can’t be in the same time twice, so we couldn’t come here until after my mortal body died, which happened this afternoon.”
“Right.” Sokrates’s mobile face contorted as he assimilated that.
“And Hilfa is part of her message, so I needed to come here where he was,” Pytheas went on.
“I have given my part of the message,” Hilfa said. “I don’t know about anything more the gods need me to do.” He took a step backwards, towards me.
“I hope you can lead a happy and fulfilling life from now on, free from what she has done to you,” Pytheas said. “But I fear you may still be needed.”
“Did Athene … create Hilfa?” Ikaros asked.
“She and Jathery caused him to come into being in some way, yes,” Pytheas said. “She put him in a box and gave the box to Neleus’s daughters, to open in case she was lost. I’m not clear on the details of why this seemed like the best plan. I’m expecting an explanation when we decode her notes. Unless you know more about it?”
“I don’t know anything about her message, beyond the paper she left with me, which I can’t read either,” Ikaros said. “I don’t know why she didn’t tell you herself, or leave all her notes with me, or with some one person. That riddle … She and I and Jathery did talk about going into Chaos a great deal, about ways and means. She was excited about going. The only thing I know about any explanation is that she talked about needing to take proper precautions.”
“Who’s Jathery?” Sokrates asked.
“One of the Saeli gods,” Pytheas said. “He—”
“She,” Ikaros interrupted, and at the same moment, much more quietly, Hilfa said, “Gla.”
“Gla,” Pytheas corrected himself, “is a trickster god who has gone with Athene into the Chaos before and after time.”
“Why do we need to rescue her?” Sokrates asked.
“Are you still that angry with her?” Ikaros asked, sadly.
“How long did she leave you as a fly anyway?” Thetis asked, which was what I was also wondering.
“I didn’t mean to imply that we should abandon her out there, but rather to inquire why she is in need of our rescue, how can she be beyond her own resources,” Sokrates explained calmly. “And if she should be in such need, then what resources do we have that she does not, that we can help her if she has gone beyond them?”
As if on cue, Hermes and Marsilia reappeared at that moment. Hermes was grinning, and Marsilia was frowning. Marsilia seemed to have been frowning a lot since all this started, and it wasn’t characteristic. She’s a serious person, yes, but on a normal day on the boat her brows might not draw down at all. Now she looked as if she might never relax then again. She moved away from Hermes. I saw her eyes widen as she recognized Sokrates and Ikaros.
“Do you have Athene’s notes?” Pytheas asked Hermes.
“Marsilia has them,” Hermes said. He looked at her expectantly. She pulled three pieces of paper out of her inside pocket, put one of them back and held the others up.
“Here,” she said.
Hermes leaned against the wall, staring over at Pytheas. “Do you have yours?”
“Yes. But I can’t read them.”
“No more can I,” Hermes said. “They’re in some kind of code. Maybe with time I could figure it out.”
“It will be much faster if I get Arete,” Pytheas said, and vanished.
“This is my sister Marsilia,” Thetis said, moving around refilling winecups again. “Marsilia, Hermes, Ikaros and Sokrates.”
“You’re not a fly anymore,” Hermes said.
“Apollo was kind enough to turn me back,” Sokrates said, frowning at him. “Who’s Arete?”
“Pytheas and Simmea’s daughter,” Ikaros said. “She can fly. And detect falsehood. She’s wonderful. I expect she’s grown up by now. It’s hard to take in. Forty years.”
“Sixty years,” Sokrates said. “But it was thousands of years last time. At least it’s never boring being a plaything of the gods.”
“Why is Apollo taking so long?” Hermes asked.
“I expect he has to explain to Arete,” Thetis said. “What’s the hurry anyway?”
Marsilia, Ikaros and Hermes looked at her in astonishment.
“Thetis is right. Athene’s not even in the same time as us. Why does it matter how long it takes?” Sokrates asked.
“We don’t know whether there’s time where Athene is, or how time works there, so there may be time pressure on our need to find her,” Ikaros said.
“And I am bound by Necessity, which is becoming increasingly difficult as more time passes for me,” Hermes said.
“Also there’s a human spaceship up in orbit waiting for permission to land,” Marsilia said.
“A human spaceship?” Sokrates asked. “From where?”
“From Earth,” Marsilia said.
“We’re not on Earth?” Sokrates asked.
Everyone fell over themselves explaining the Relocation to him. “I wouldn’t have imagined I could be on a world circling another sun without knowing it, even inside, at night, with only little slit windows,” Sokrates said at last when he’d assimilated it. “And you called your new world Plato?”
“Yes,” Marsilia said.
“Of course they did,” Ikaros said.
“And why exactly did Athene bring you here from Greece?” Sokrates asked.
“Zeus brought them here, as I understand it,” Hermes said.
“Why did he do that?”
<
br /> “So we could have posterity, they say,” Marsilia said. “And this human spaceship that’s up there now is our first recontact with wider humanity, and it will give us that posterity.”
Pytheas reappeared with Arete. She immediately hugged Ikaros, who had leapt out of his chair as soon as he saw her.
“It’s so good to see you!”
“You look so young!” Arete said.
“Fascinating as this reunion is, can we get on and read Athene’s message?” Hermes asked.
Arete turned to Hermes, then stopped. She became completely expressionless for a moment, staring at him stone-faced, looking for that moment decidedly like her father. “Who in all the worlds of thinking souls are you?”
“Nobody asked,” he said. “I’m Jathery, of course. Not outside time with Athene, as you can see, but left behind as part of her precautionary system, like the rest of you.”
“Gla ordered me not to tell,” Hilfa said. He took another step back and sat beside me on the bed. I put a hand on his shoulder reassuringly.
Hermes bent forward from the waist with one hand extended and the other behind his back, and when gla straightened up again gla was a huge greenish-gold Saeli, dressed in a gold webbing vest like the red one Hilfa wore on the boat. The patterns on gla skin were a deep black and seemed to writhe and change as gla moved.
