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Necessity

Page 18

by Jo Walton


  “You’ll love the Enlightenment,” Pico said enthusiastically, waving his hand to shoo away flies.

  “Has Apollo been taking you on a tour of human history?”

  “No, I’ve been working with Athene, and she has taken me to places,” Pico explained.

  I took them out of time, and back in to the front lawn of the Chateau Cirey in May of 1750. My sun was pleasantly warm, the trees were in spring blossom, the birds were singing, and best of all they were all that remained of dinosaurs. I had never been here before. The Enlightenment was Athene’s territory, it had never been mine. “Cirey!” said Pico happily.

  “Both influenced by Greek originals and influential on buildings in the City, I think,” Sokrates said, looking at the chateau with his head on its side.

  “You’re absolutely right,” I said.

  “So why did Athene bring you here?” he asked Pico.

  I gave our clothes the illusion of eighteenth-century finery. It was one of the most gorgeous eras for men’s clothing. It amused me to dress Sokrates in peacock colors and put a huge curled and powdered wig on him. The same costume suited Pico ridiculously well, much better than the monk’s habit or even his kiton, as if this were the era where he should have lived. The books he still clutched under his arm didn’t even look incongruous.

  “To talk to Voltaire and Emilie. Voltaire is very like you,” Pico said to Sokrates. “Another marvelous gadfly. He wrote a play about you. Athene and I spent two wonderful days here. There was theater, there was science, there was debate, and they’re thinking such wonderful things—what time is it here, Pytheas? Can we get hold of a copy of the Encyclopédie while we’re here?”

  “The first volume doesn’t come out until next year,” I said. “Besides, it’s in French.”

  “I can speak French, though it’s changed a bit, and we sometimes needed to use Latin to be clear. But I can certainly read it reasonably well.”

  Sokrates was examining his clothes. “This is the future?” he asked.

  “Your future, yes, more than two thousand years after you were born.”

  “And after your time too?” he asked Ikaros.

  “Yes, about two hundred and fifty years after I was born. But a hundred years before Maia and Adeimantus were born, and three hundred years before Klio and Lysias.” Pico looked energized by the thought. “There’s so much history, so many places and times!”

  Sokrates smoothed the burgundy velvet of his sleeve. “What a strange place.”

  “I’m looking for Florent-Claude,” I said to Pico. “Do you know him? Athene describes him as Emilie’s widower.”

  “Emilie’s dead?” Pico looked sad. “She was so wonderful, a scientist and a philosopher in an age where it was so hard for women to be anything but hostesses at best. She should have been in the Republic.”

  “Do you know Florent-Claude?” I repeated.

  “Yes. I met him. She was with Voltaire when we visited, but Florent-Claude was happy with the situation. It was almost like being in the City of Amazons.”

  I knocked loudly on the door. “Why didn’t Athene leave it with Voltaire?” I grumbled. “He’s the one who’s her votary. It would have been interesting to meet him.”

  A servant opened the door, a flunkey in a wig. “We wish to see Florent-Claude,” I said.

  “The Marquis du Chastellet,” Pico added.

  “And your names?” the flunkey asked, superciliously.

  “The Comte de Mirandola, the Marquis de Delos and the Duc d’Athen,” Pico replied immediately, in Italianate French.

  The flunkey bowed and went back inside. “Marquis? Duke?” I asked. He really was the Count of Mirandola, or course, or he had been two hundred or so years before.

  “Did you want me to say god and philosopher on the doorstep?” Pico asked. “I’m sure there was a Duke of Athens.”

  “Not in 1750,” I said. “He told the servant you were a member of the high Athenian nobility,” I explained to Sokrates.

  “You’re mixing me up with Plato again,” Sokrates said. “He was descended from Solon on his mother’s side, and on his father’s side from the ancient kings of Attica. I was a simple stonemason before I became a philosopher, and my only illustrious ancestor was the artificer Daedalus.”

  The flunkey came back. “The marquis will see you.”

  He showed us into one of those uncomfortable eighteenth-century rooms, all spindly little chairs matching the gilt frames on all the paintings. Sokrates looked at all of it in wonder.

  “I’m afraid you’re not going to understand any of the conversation,” I said.

  “I’ve always been terrible at learning barbarian languages,” Sokrates said, almost as if this were a point of pride. “Do they have Workers here?”

  “No, we’re more than two centuries before the first Workers,” I said.

  “Then who wove this carpet so finely, and then put it on the floor?” he asked.

  Before I could respond, the flunkey opened the door again and announced his master. We all bowed, Sokrates very badly as he wasn’t familiar with the custom.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Florent-Claude said.

  “We met once, when I was here staying with Emilie,” Pico said. “Such a loss.” They bowed to each other.

  “Ah yes. The Comte de Mirandola. I recognize you now. The years haven’t touched you at all.”

  Pico looked uncomfortable at this compliment. He looked about thirty, but he had been over sixty and almost blind at the Relocation, before Father had restored his youth on Olympos so that he could work with Athene. He didn’t seem to have aged at all since then. He introduced us, Apollonaire de Delos and Socrate d’Athen, who unhappily knew no French. We sat down in the little uncomfortable chairs. “We’re passing by, we can’t stay,” he said, in response to Florent-Claude’s offer of hospitality for the night. The flunkey returned and gave us all sherry, in little glasses, and offered around a plate of petits fours. I neither ate nor drank, but it was almost worth the delay for the expression on Sokrates’s face when after turning the highly colored confection in his fingers he bit into the cloying marzipan.

  I wished Athene had given me more to go on. I didn’t know what she’d said when she asked Florent-Claude to keep the paper for him, or what name she’d been using or who he thought she was. Fortunately, Pico did. “You remember my friend Athenais de Minerve?”

  “Of course,” Florent-Claude said. “So beautiful, so wise.”

  “Did she by chance give you an incomprehensible paper to look after?” Pico asked.

  Sokrates was ignoring us all and pleating the lace of his undersleeve intently.

  “So, you are on her treasure hunt?” Florent-Claude smiled.

  I could not understand why Athene had gone through this elaborate charade and divided up her message. It was dangerous as well as unnecessary. Ordinary mortals involved this way could easily have lost the paper. Pico’s could have been stolen, and what Kebes might have done with it didn’t bear thinking about. He could have burned it for pure spite.

  “We are,” Pico said.

  “Then can you answer her riddle?”

  “We’ll have to see when you ask it,” Pico said, confidently.

  “Let me fetch it,” he said. “But first I should tell you that it’s in English, and if none of you speak that language you have leave to find another who does.”

  “English,” Pico said, dismayed. “I know many languages, but not that barbarous tongue.”

  “Barbarous? I think not, since I speak it,” I said. (You’re reading this. You already know I speak English.)

  Florent-Claude chortled, and went off to fetch the paper. I hoped he hadn’t lost it among his bibelots.

  “Who did she think would come who would need to find an English speaker?” Pico asked, in Greek.

  “Porphyry?” I suggested.

  “Old Porphyry’s still alive?” Sokrates asked, looking up from his sleeve, surprised.

 
; “No, he died. But Euridike named one of my sons after him, and that’s who we’re talking about. Ikaros was one of his teachers.”

  Sokrates seemed to accept that calmly. “Where did Florent-Claude go?”

  “He’s fetching Athene’s message,” I explained.

  “What is this made of?” he asked, picking up the drape of lace at his cuff again.

  “Silk, I think, though they sometimes make it from linen,” I said. “It’s called lace.”

  “And what is silk?” Sokrates asked, patiently.

  “It’s a thread spun by worms who eat mulberry leaves,” Pico explained. He twirled his wrists, making his own lace flare gorgeously. “It makes a cloth that’s cool to wear in hot weather and that’s gentle next to the skin, not scratchy. It originates in China, but in my time we make it in Italy. But lace came later.”

  “And this lace is made by humans?”

  “By women, mostly, using bobbins, which are things like little distaffs,” I said.

  “This is an incredibly unnecessary waste of human labor and human souls,” Sokrates pronounced. “Those women should be freed from their bobbins and taught reason. It would be a useless frivolity even if Workers made it as fast and unthinkingly as any cloth. Nobody needs dangling frills like this. Look at this incredible detail. It’s beautiful, in itself, but nonsensical as clothing.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Though it looks elegant on Ikaros.”

  “Don’t you think it’s unjust?”

  “What if it’s somebody’s vocation, to make lace?” Ikaros asked. “Their art?”

  “It is a normal part of these people’s clothing,” Sokrates said. “Far too much for it to be made as somebody’s art. Look at these paintings, everyone has it. If somebody wanted to make it as their art, it might be a harmless decoration, like the borders some people embroider on their kitons. It’s this volume of it that’s wrong. Close work like that? Women must be compelled to make it from economic necessity.”

  “Yes, that’s wrong,” Ikaros said, soberly. “When there’s so much injustice it becomes invisible.”

  “Is this silk also?” Sokrates asked, stroking his velvet sleeve.

  “I think so,” I said, not at all sure what velvet was made of. “You should ask Athene when we have her back, fabrics are one of her specialities.”

  “She would not approve of this lace,” Sokrates said, quite certain that whatever they might disagree about, they’d be as one on such fundamentals as that. “Not even Alkibiades would like lace. And think of the time it must take, every day, putting on all these ridiculous things. I sleep with my kiton over me as a covering, I wake up and shake it, I fold it and put it on and I am ready for the day. Putting on all these layers and choosing the colors to match must waste so much time, and worse, attention.”

  “In cold places people need more layers and thicker clothes,” I said.

  “Certainly. But it’s not cold here,” Sokrates said, which was inarguable that day.

  “What if wearing clothes and choosing colors is somebody’s art?” Pico asked.

  Florent-Claude came bustling back with a paper in his hand. “Very well. Now, in English if you will! Of what five things is St. Jathe patron?” He had a strong accent in English, but understood the pronunciation better than many Francophones.

  Pico looked at me, frowning. He must have understood the name. St. Jathe was clearly Jathery. I’d heard the list from Hilfa, such a strange set of things. And a riddle in English would need a rhyming answer. “Liberty and changing names, wisdom, tricks and riddle games,” I said. It seemed almost insultingly easy, but it could only be answered by somebody who spoke English and had talked to Saeli about religion—which meant me, or perhaps Hermes.

  “Well done! So here is your paper, but you will find in it another riddle, I think,” Florent-Claude said, handing it over. It had the same mix of characters as Pico’s. I tucked it away with the other.

  Saying goodbye took a long time, though we tried to hurry. We had to promise to give his love to Athene, and to call in if we were ever passing again. As we walked, Pico translated the conversation for Sokrates and then they both insisted that I explain the riddle. We had to walk all the way to the end of the lawn and wave and then make our way behind the screen of chestnuts, all with their spring candles, before we could step out of time and back to the Republic.

  15

  JASON

  Pytheas had got up from his chair and was looming over Jathery. He had grown so tall that his head almost touched the ceiling of Hilfa’s little house. “Was it you all the time?” he asked, and although his voice was quiet it made the hair stand up on my neck. “Was it you who came and interrupted me?”

  “Yes,” Jathery said, not sounding at all intimidated. Gla voice was clear and pure, like a child’s voice singing, but rich and full-bodied.

  “You lied to me about having a message from Father?”

  “Would you have left your new sun if I’d come to you as myself and told you Athene was missing?” Gla question sounded entirely reasonable, and made me wonder whether Pytheas would have.

  “Yes,” Pytheas said, emphatically but petulantly. He glared down at Jathery. “Why does nobody trust me to take any reasonable action without tricking me into it?”

  They both disappeared. I blinked.

  Ikaros was looking green, not the way Saeli are green, but the way pale-skinned humans turn green when they’re about to be sick. He walked rapidly into the fountain room, and I soon heard the sound of him tossing his guts up joining the familiar sound of Marsilia doing the same. Almost everyone gets queasy sometimes on boats and has to spew. I might have felt the same way if I’d found out somebody I’d been to bed with was actually Jathery in disguise. The thought of it was a bit stomach-churning.

  “I couldn’t tell you. Do you understand, Jason?” Hilfa asked quietly from beside me.

  “I understand,” I said. He started to rock to and fro again. I put my arms around him.

  Thetis picked up the papers Marsilia had dropped and sat down with them in Pytheas’s empty chair. She glanced towards the fountain room.

  “Joy to you, Sokrates, I’m delighted to meet you, I have heard so much about you,” Arete said.

  “I hear you’re Simmea’s daughter, and you see through falsehood. That must be useful in debate.”

  “Not as much as you might think,” Arete said.

  Sokrates laughed. “But you saw through Jathery pretending to be Hermes when he had fooled us all?”

  “It seems so,” Arete said.

  “How did none of us guess?” Sokrates asked.

  “Deception and name-changing are part of what gla is,” Hilfa said.

  “Even so, I’m surprised gla could fool Pytheas,” Sokrates said. “Hermes is his own brother.”

  Ikaros came back in. He smiled wanly, picked up his wine-beaker and drained it, then sat down in the other chair.

  “Where did Pytheas and Jathery go?” I asked.

  “To yell at each other outside time, I expect. It’s a thing gods do,” Ikaros said, shaking his head. “They’ll be back, for those if nothing else.” He gestured at the papers Thetis was holding. She offered them to him, and he took them, turning them over curiously. “There are at least four alphabets here, and I think there was a different one on the piece I had, Etruscan maybe.”

  Marsilia came back in, with the strands of her dark hair damp around her face where she must have dashed water on it. “Oh Marsilia, is there anything that could help?”

  She shook her head. I passed her my winecup and she took a sip. She sat down on the floor in front of us.

  Arete took the papers from Ikaros. “Oh, interesting, we need all of them together to be able to read them.”

  “Did finding out who Jathery was make you sick?” Hilfa asked Marsi.

  Marsilia nodded.

  “Me too,” Ikaros said, smiling companionably at her. “I think many people would throw up on learning that a lover was really an alien g
od.”

  She nodded again.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know what gla would have done to me,” Hilfa said. “I think gla made me, and could unmake me, to take back the part of gla power gla put into me.”

  “None of this is your fault,” Marsilia said.

  “We should not need to live in fear of the arbitrary power of the gods this way,” Sokrates said.

  “The Saeli always do, all of us, always,” Hilfa said.

  Marsilia took another swig of my wine. Thetis got up and stood behind Marsilia and started to rub her shoulders. Marsilia relaxed a little.

  “It means Alkippe and I are siblings,” Hilfa said, tentatively.

  “But that was always true,” Marsilia said. Hilfa stopped rocking entirely and sat up straight, staring at her.

  “You’re also one of Simmea’s granddaughters?” Sokrates asked Marsilia. “You remind me of her.”

  “Yes, I am,” Marsilia said. Thetis looked proudly down at her.

  “And Jathery took you off on a treasure hunt through time for Athene’s papers?” Sokrates went on.

  Marsilia gave him a small smile. “It was a bit like that, yes. But all the time I thought he was Hermes. Gla really is horribly good at deception. Even when I saw him changing between forms when we were outside time, I never questioned who he was.”

  “You should always question,” Sokrates said.

  Marsilia smiled up at him ruefully. “I’ll try harder to be a proper philosopher.”

  Arete passed the papers back to Ikaros. “I wonder sometimes if it is harder for women to be philosophers, even for the Golds here. Everything always seems to be stacked against it.”

  “Not always,” Ikaros said. “Did you ever know Lucrezia? She was in the City of Amazons by the time you were growing up, so maybe not. We lived together for a long time. She came from the Renaissance, from Rome. She and her brothers all had the same humanist education, all read Plato. But she was the only one to become a philosopher, and pray to Athene to come here. They had no time in their lives for it, after their education, none of them. But she did, being a woman, even though she was as much a political pawn as they were. For once the expectation of passivity and not being able to act was an advantage, it gave her time to study they couldn’t have.”

 

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