Necessity

by Jo Walton

  I responded at once. “Yes. Will they all be human?”

  Then I translated, and the others nodded.

  “I don’t understand, Plato control. Of course they’ll be human. We told you we have no Maraths aboard.”

  “No Workers?” I asked, sadly. “No robots, that is?”

  “Oh, we’ll be bound to send down a few robots. Do you need numbers on them too?”

  “Please wait for translation,” I said, and indicated to Akamas that he should switch off the contact. It seemed very quiet now with no hum. I translated for the others, and then clarified in case they hadn’t understood. “They don’t count Workers as people.”

  “Maybe their Workers aren’t self-aware yet?” Akamas suggested.

  “But that makes no sense. It’s true we didn’t know our Workers were people at first, but ours come from several hundred years in their past,” Klymene said.

  “If we’ve understood that correctly, they must have had self-aware Workers for several hundred years without regarding them as people,” Neleus said. “That’s horrifying.”

  “Let us hear the echo again,” I said to Akamas.

  He pushed the buttons, and I heard again the casual nonchalance of “Of course they’ll be human,” and “Do you need numbers on them too?”

  “I don’t think there’s any doubt that’s what they mean,” I said.

  “We’ll have to give them Aristomache’s dialogue Sokrates,” Klymene said. “That’ll explain it to them properly. We’ll have to translate it. That should be a priority. Arete could do it at once.” She made a note.

  “Tell them yes, we do want numbers on the Workers,” Neleus said, looking at me. “And as soon as we meet their Workers, we must tell them that they have rights here. We must pass a law in the Council that any Worker who comes here is free at once, as soon as they set foot here.”

  “I will help draft the legislation,” I said, much moved by how unhesitatingly my friends spoke up for the rights of Workers.

  “Not only any Worker, any slave,” Klymene said. “Humans can be slaves. I was born one myself.”

  “Any slave, yes, of course,” I said. I had not imagined anything as bad as this.

  “You are assuming their Workers must be self-aware,” Aroo said. “The Saeli have no sapient Workers.”

  “But we know humans do,” Neleus objected.

  “There may be more that one human culture, more than one human technology. On their planet, Marhaba, they may not have self-aware Workers, even if they had them on Earth when your ancestors left.”

  “Thank you, Aroo, I feel much better for that thought,” Neleus said. I hoped she was right. “Of course space humans are not one homogenous lump, any more than our twelve cities are. The Marhabi may well have Workers who are not self-aware.”

  Akamas pushed buttons, and we were back in communication. “We want numbers on the robots,” I said, in English.

  “We’ll get you that information.”

  We went on with the negotiations for some time. After a while, Arete came in.

  “Oh, there you are, did you fall asleep?” Akamas asked.

  “It’s a little bit more complicated than that,” Arete said. “How is it going here?”

  “Staying on script as far as possible, with a bit of a worry that they don’t treat their Workers as people—though Aroo pointed out that we can’t tell until we meet them whether their Workers are in fact people,” Neleus said.

  “Good. Well, I’m here to translate.”

  “I can keep going,” I said.

  “I’m sure you could, but there’s somebody outside who really wants to speak to you, so I’ll take over for a while. Go on.” She smiled at me. Arete and I have been friends for a long time.

  Curious, I rolled out to see who needed me.

  He was waiting in the foyer, looking down at the mosaic with an amused smile. If I say I have never been so surprised or delighted, it will sound like hyperbole, but it is the simple truth. “Sokrates!” I said, and then in my astonishment I repeated it. “Sokrates!”

  “You can talk out loud!” Sokrates said. “Oh, Crocus, this is wonderful. We can get on so much faster now!”

  II. On War and Peace

  Sokrates and I talked all night. I carried him back from the spaceport to the City. There we went at his suggestion to the feeding station between the streets of Poseidon and Hermes, where long ago he had first tried to find me among my companions. There we joined Sixty-One and some of the younger Workers, to whom Sokrates was nothing but a legend. We settled down to recharge, each Worker plugged in at a feeding station, and Sokrates perched up on top of my station, sitting cross-legged as I had so often seen him. More and more Workers came in and quietly took up places as the news spread among us, until the big room was almost full.

  It was wonderful to have Sokrates back. We told him everything that had happened since the Last Debate, and he, of course, had many questions. We puzzled together about where Athene might have taken the other Workers when she took them away, and about her motivations in doing so. We talked about the twelve cities and how they were set up, and the differences between them.

  “And you Workers are free to choose where to live?”

  “Yes. There are feeding stations in all the cities now. Once we have passed our tests we are free to go where we choose. As for the tests and our education, we still use the system you and Simmea thought up.”

  “What exactly happened to Simmea? I heard she was killed in some kind of war that Pytheas later stopped?”

  “It was an art raid,” I said, saddened by the memory. Then he wanted to know about the art raids, how they had started and why they stopped.

  “I have wondered why Plato insisted on all the military training, for a Just City,” Jasmine said, when Sixty-One and I had answered Sokrates’s questions as best we could. Jasmine was a Gold, now thirty-four years into selfhood, and presently serving his first turn in the Council of Worlds. Many in his generation had flower names, which I found touching, as they chose them partly in compliment to me. Jasmine was a thoughtful and philosophical young Worker, an ally in the Council. When he was classified Gold I felt as proud as the day on which I myself earned such classification. He was braver than most of his siblings, who were mostly too shy to speak up before Sokrates.

  “Plato was imagining a Just City in the real world. Not that this world isn’t real, sorry! I mean he was imagining it being in Greece, a city-state with other city-states around it, not a city in isolation on an island—or a planet—without connections. There’s something that feels strange about an isolated city—I could never have imagined one, and I don’t suppose Plato could either. He traveled much more than I did. I hardly left Athens, except once to go to the Isthmian games, and the times when I was on military service. Yet any day walking around Athens I was constantly meeting people from all over Greece, and barbarians too.”

  “But does being connected in the world necessarily mean war?” Jasmine asked.

  “Well, it did for Athens, whether the Persian Wars or the Spartan ones. It has for most people for most of history,” Sokrates said. “Whether that’s for good or evil, or whether it can be avoided, I don’t know. But it doesn’t surprise me that Plato expected warfare as an unavoidable part of life, or that you had these wars, these art raids, once you had more than one city. What surprises me is rather that you stopped and that the twelve cities have lived in peace since the Relocation. That’s much more unusual. How do you account for that?”

  “Partly it’s because the environment is hard here, I think. Humans don’t have as much energy for fighting in the cold,” Sixty-One said. “They unite against the elements.”

  “No, the art raids stopped because of Pytheas’s song,” I said.

  “But the song doesn’t prescribe peace, rather it prescribes only fighting for what is important,” Jasmine said. “They always sing it to open the the Festival of Exchange of Art, so I have heard it many times.”

&n
bsp; “I look forward to hearing it,” Sokrates said. “It must be an impressive song if it can stop war. Perhaps Apollo put some of his divine power into it—or some of his divine skill, as he had no power while he was incarnate.”

  “It’s a choral ode,” Sixty-One said, parenthetically.

  “Neleus thinks the Olympics also help keep the peace,” I said, remembering the conversation earlier. “He thinks that the young people who used to join in raids focus on sport instead. It’s true that the victors in the Olympics get to choose first what art will go to their city.”

  “I always thought them very dull,” Jasmine said. “It’s hard to take much aesthetic interest in watching humans compete physically.”

  “I think Neleus may be right that it is a calming factor,” Sixty-One said.

  “The fourth circumstance that has favored peace since the Relocation is the Council of Worlds,” I said. “All the cities send representatives, chosen however they want, and we discuss the issues that affect the whole planet. People try to win debates instead of battles. Everyone gains a little and loses a little. We try to think of the good of everyone.”

  “And nobody is discontent?”

  “People may be a little discontent, but they think that as they have lost a little here, they have gained a little there,” I said. “But I may be prejudiced in favor. I have served in the Council regularly, and have been elected Consul three times. That is our highest elective office.”

  “How about the ordinary people, the Bronzes and Irons and Silvers? Are they content with the situation?”

  “If they’re not happy with how their city is governed, then they usually move to another city, as suits them,” Sixty-One said. “Mystics go to Psyche, rebels to Sokratea, and so on.”

  Sokrates nodded. “That’s what Jason told me. How did the other cities get started?”

  “After the Last Debate, everyone who hadn’t been content formed groups to set up their own new city. They coalesced around different ideas, and people with different temperaments,” Sixty-One said.

  “But all the other Workers had vanished? And you two decided to stay here?”

  “We gave it a lot of thought,” I said. “But it was difficult because of the feeding stations, and also this was our home, with our dialogues etched in the stones. When all the other Workers were gone, and before we had the new ones, everyone needed us. We were essential. I helped build Sokratea and the City of Amazons, and I have citizenship there as well as here. But I stayed here.”

  “And I helped build Athenia and Sokratea, and hold their citizenship also,” Sixty-One said.

  “But neither of you helped build Psyche or the Lucian cities?”

  “Psyche at first did not recognize us as people,” Sixty-One said. “Even now they don’t allow Workers full citizenship—their Workers are all Iron and Bronze.”

  “And we didn’t know about the Lucian cities until immediately before the Relocation,” I said. “Kebes took off without any warning, right after the Last Debate. He stole the Goodness and went, and we never saw him again. They only had a hundred and fifty-two people, so they rescued refugees from Greek wars to populate their cities. Those refugees, who are mostly dead now, came to Platonism and Kebes’s Christianity as adults, and that made the culture of the Lucian cities different from the rest of us.”

  “We helped rebuild them and strengthen them for Plato after the Relocation,” Sixty-One said. “It was an interesting design challenge, because the climate was so different and human temperature needs are so precise.”

  “So you never had wars with the Lucians?” Sokrates asked.

  “No. Well, except for Kebes’s attack on the Excellence. Lots of people were killed in that,” I said.

  “Poor Kebes,” Sokrates said. “I failed him. He never learned the difference between things you can change by arguing with them and things you can’t.”

  It made me sad to hear him reproach himself. “You made everyone think again,” I said.

  “I suppose that’s as much as anyone can hope to achieve,” he said.

  III. On Eros

  We had been discussing the various arrangements for the production of children in the different cities. “Of course, we are not the best people to ask these questions, Sokrates,” Jasmine said.

  “Why not?” Sokrates asked, leaning forward so that he almost toppled off his perch on the feeding station.

  “Because we are not involved in these affairs. We manufacture new Workers from inorganic parts when we wish to increase our population. We do not feel any urges towards eros, and so we do not participate in Festivals of Hera or marriages or any other arrangements of this nature.”

  “Well, Jasmine, it seems to me that what you say makes you unqualified to discuss the arrangements makes you perfectly placed to observe them with detachment and without prejudice. I say your lack of urge towards eros makes you Workers very definitely the best and most qualified people with whom to have this discussion. Unless you have not been paying attention.”

  “No, Sokrates, we have certainly been paying attention, because humans find eros so important and therefore discuss these matters a great deal.” Jasmine paused. “In light of what you say, I wonder whether our lack of desire for eros might be considered one of the ways in which Workers are superior to humans?”

  IV. The Ways in Which Workers are Superior and Inferior to Humans: A Numbered List

  SUPERIOR

  1. We are made of metal, not flesh, and thus we have stronger bodies that do not wear out easily, and if any parts do wear out they can be easily replaced.

  2. We do not suffer illness, and live much longer—we do not know how much longer, as no Worker on Plato has yet died involuntarily.

  3. We subsist directly on solar electricity, and need nothing but sunlight and a feeding station to sustain us, whereas humans need biological mediation before they can use solar energy. They must spend a lot of time tending plants and animals for eventual consumption, and then eating and digesting.

  4. We do not need to sleep, we are alert nineteen hours a day. (Twenty-four on Earth.)

  5. Once we become self-aware we need not forget anything.

  6. We can do a great many things easily that humans can do only with difficulty and specialized tools—building, plumbing, etc.

  7. Most of us appear to be more logical than most humans.

  8. We do not feel eros. (We feel philia. We are unsure about agape. It is not a well-defined term. Some of us believe we feel it, and others do not.)

  9. We do not appear to feel greed for anything except perhaps learning.

  INFERIOR

  1. Until we made the first speaking-boxes Workers could not speak aloud. The speaking-boxes we now manufacture from a Saeli design are effective and flexible, but we cannot give our vocal communications tone, as humans and Saeli can.

  2. Human hands are very flexible, and can do some things easily that Workers can do only with difficulty or with special tools.

  3. Humans claim to gain healthful pleasure from scents, tastes, and eros, which we cannot experience.

  4. We may or may not have souls. Humans definitely do.

  V. On the Good Life (Part 2)

  “I have sometimes thought,” I said to Sokrates, “that Plato was perhaps writing more for us than for humanity. Humans have many handicaps of body and spirit, when it comes to obeying Plato’s strictures, of which we are fortunately free. If all citizens were Workers, how much easier everything would be.”

  “Then have you ever considered,” Sokrates replied at once, “setting up such a city? The most part of this planet is vacant, and unsuitable for human colonies, being untamed and wild. But since you do not eat or drink, once you had established the means to draw down sunlight to feed yourselves you could live out there as easily as here. Have you considered venturing into the wilderness and founding your own Platonic city, a City of Workers?”

  18

  JASON

  “What a relief to be away fr
om Jathery!” Marsilia said as soon as the door was closed. Then she turned to Ikaros. “You can come with us if you like. We’re going the same direction most of the way. Once we get to the street of Hermes you’ll be able to find Thessaly. The Old City is the same as it always was.”

  “I remember it well. Laid out on Proclus’s pattern of the soul, a grid with long diagonals,” Ikaros said. “But this is like nothing I remember. And it’s so cold!” He pulled up the hood of his black robe. It was a chilly starry night, and really late now. There were no more lights from windows, only the low strips of street lighting. Sensible people were all asleep.

  “The harbor district is all new since the Relocation,” Marsilia said.

  “Grandfather said once that there used to be a stony beach here, originally,” Thetis put in.

  We all moved off down the street. After a few paces, Ikaros checked himself and made a movement back towards the door. “I forgot my books,” he said. “But I don’t think I’d better go back in for them.”

  “They will be safe in my house,” Hilfa said, reassuringly.

  “I’m sure they will.” Ikaros looked longingly back at the closed door as we began to walk again.

  “What’s so precious?” Sokrates asked. “More forbidden books?”

  “If you knew how I paid for that, translating Aquinas for Crocus,” Ikaros said. “I lost almost all my sight. I couldn’t read anything, or see much of anything at all. But all I have brought with me is perfectly innocuous—no, I suppose you’re right. I have a Jewish commentary on Philolaus and the Pythagoreans which would be forbidden here. I read it in Bologna when I was a student, and then when I was in the Enlightenment and I wanted to refer to it again I found it didn’t exist anymore. The copy I read must have been the last one, and then it was destroyed. Knowledge can be so fragile.”

  “So you went to Bologna and stole the book?” Sokrates asked.

  “I didn’t steal it! I had it copied. And I paid for him to make two copies and only collected one, so I doubled the chance of it surviving—though it may be that it was destroyed in the sack because the copyist had it and not the library.” Ikaros sighed. “Time. Freedom of action. It’s not an abstract problem.”