Necessity

by Jo Walton

  “No, it’s of vital importance,” Sokrates agreed. “How much can be changed and how much is fixed?”

  “Necessity prevents the gods from being in the same place twice, and it prevents a lot of change. Change is easiest where nobody is paying attention, no gods and nobody recording anything. It gets harder the more attention there is. And it gets harder the more significant it is.”

  “Who determines the significance?” Sokrates asked.

  “Necessity,” Ikaros said, shrugging.

  We came to the end of Hilfa’s street, where it crossed the road down to the harbor and up to the Old City. “We’re going this way now,” Marsilia said, gesturing uphill to where the bulk of the walls loomed. “Sleep well, everyone. I’ll see you tomorrow on the boat, Jason, Hilfa. I hope to see you again soon, Sokrates.”

  “Come to Thessaly tomorrow and we can talk more,” Ikaros said

  “Joy to you,” Sokrates said, and Hilfa and I echoed him. Standing on the corner we were in the full blast of the wind. But Thetis hesitated.

  “I’m sorry I was so emotional,” she said. “I know it’s un-Platonic giving way like that. But it was a shock, and today has been rough. I’m not a philosopher, after all, and—”

  “Not a philosopher!” Sokrates said, drawing himself up. “What nonsense. You were asking some of the best questions. It’s one of the silliest things about this ridiculous system, I’ve always said so, classifying people so young, trying to fix them unchangeably in place as if everyone is one thing and one thing only, Golds over here, Irons over there.”

  “But I love my work,” Thetis objected. “And I’d be terrible at running the city!”

  “Don’t you love wisdom too? Who said you had to be a philosopher full-time?” Sokrates demanded.

  “Plato,” we all said, almost in time, like a stuttering chorus.

  Sokrates shook his head and laughed.

  “I surrendered to emotion too, I rocked more than once,” Hilfa said to Thetis, consolingly.

  “It’s natural you were upset, Thee. I was upset when I first heard,” Marsilia said. “And when I found out who Jathery really was, I threw up.”

  “I did the same,” Ikaros said.

  “You’re shivering with cold. Would you all like to come and eat soup?” Hilfa asked.

  “No, I’m absolutely exhausted,” Marsilia said. “I want to sleep.”

  “Come on, then,” Thetis said. “Time for bed.”

  We all wished each other joy of the night for one last time, then the sisters put their arms around each other. It made me smile to see them supporting each other that way as they walked up the hill with Ikaros.

  “Are you coming, Jason?” Hilfa asked.

  I was tired too, but the Temple of Amphitrite was close, round the corner, down on the harbor. It was always open and always offering soup. It was supposed to be for people whose boats had come in late and who needed it, at times when the eating halls were closed. The thought of hot soup was enticing, and I knew they wouldn’t mind giving it to us now. Amphitrite is the goddess of the plenty of the ocean. “I’ll come,” I said.

  We started walking towards the water and the temple.

  “This is a cold world,” Sokrates said, clutching his kiton round himself as a gust caught it.

  “It can be warm in summer, but everyone who remembers Greece is always saying how much warmer it was there,” I said. “My friend Dion is always saying so. I’m used to it here.”

  “Is this winter?” Sokrates asked, as we came out onto the exposed quayside and the wind tried to blow the flesh off our bones.

  “This is autumn,” I said. The light from the temple shone out warm and friendly ahead.

  “This is as cold as it might ever be in Greece on the coldest winter night,” Sokrates said.

  “You need proper clothes. I can help you get some tomorrow if you like.” He was barefoot, which really wouldn’t do for Plato, he’d get frostbite once it really was winter. My friend Prodikos, who had lived in my sleeping house when we were ephebes, was a cobbler.

  “Your clothes seem very practical,” he said.

  Inside the temple was warm. I paused by the statue and murmured a prayer to Amphitrite for good catches and safety for everyone out on the water. Hilfa and Sokrates stood behind in polite silence. Then we went around to the side room, where a mother and daughter I knew slightly from the boats were drinking soup, and a pod of Saeli kelp-gatherers were eating oatmeal. A sleepy girl came and asked what we wanted. “Two soups and an oatmeal, and it’s so wonderful that you do this.”

  “Well, you keep us all fed, it’s the least we can do to see that you get fed when you need it,” she said. “I thought I saw the Phaenarete come in earlier?”

  “Yes, we made it in immediately before sunset, but between then and now I’ve been rushing about and haven’t had a minute,” I said, as she handed us big red Samian bowls for our soup, with a flatter oatmeal bowl for Hilfa.

  “It’s been a funny day, Pytheas dying and all the fuss with the human ship,” she said. “Everyone has been talking about it. It would happen on the day it was my turn to serve.”

  “So does everyone know now that Pytheas is Apollo?” Sokrates asked, as we filled our bowls together from the big soup urn. “I mean, do you all know that now?”

  “Yes, we’ve all known that since the Relocation. And his children are gods with powers. It would have been hard to hide.” I wasn’t sure how they had managed to hide it before. Surely people must have guessed? We sat down at one of the long tables, near the vent that blew warm air into the room.

  I picked up my soup and sipped it. It was a dark fish broth with onions and turnips and barley. I hadn’t realized I was so hungry until I’d swallowed half of it. Sokrates started asking Hilfa questions about the Saeli, and he explained patiently in response how they generally lived in pods of five, had three genders, nineteen settled planets including their original home and not including Plato, and how they’d been in contact with the Amarathi for a hundred and Plato for twenty years, and other humans only today. I ate without adding anything to the conversation.

  “And you like being here, and working on Jason’s boat?” Sokrates asked Hilfa.

  “Yes, I like that. I pursue excellence. I am happy to discharge my function. And now I know what I am. And that I belong to Plato,” Hilfa said, with the flicker of expression I thought was his real smile.

  “Do you want to stay here?”

  “Yes, to stay here and take oath and study the fish,” Hilfa said, giving me an odd sideways look across the table, an expression I had not seen before. His markings were standing out clearly, so I knew he was all right.

  “The fish is tasty,” Sokrates said. “Where did they come from?”

  “They’re native to this planet,” I said. “There aren’t any land animals or plants except what we brought with us, but the sea is full of life—there’s plenty of fish, and different kinds of edible seaweed.”

  “So people can’t go off into the wilderness and survive?” Sokrates asked.

  “Not for any longer than the food you’re carrying lasts,” I said. “People do go exploring. We put together expeditions from time to time.”

  “But they can’t live out there, away from the cities?”

  “No.” I took another gulp of my soup, finishing it. I put the empty bowl down. “I’d never thought of anyone wanting to try.”

  “The Saeli have not tried it either,” Hilfa said.

  Talking to Sokrates made me feel as if I should have been paying more attention to everything all along instead of only really thinking about my own life.

  “So, Jason, tell me about your revolutionaries.”

  “What revolutionaries?” I had no idea what he meant.

  “The malcontents, the people who don’t like the system and agitate against it,” Sokrates explained.

  I was still confused. “You mean Sokratea?”

  “You don’t have people like that here?”

>   “We have people who disagree about things, but they’re not revolutionaries,” I said. “They debate a lot. People who really disapprove fundamentally of how things work here tend to go off to Sokratea, the same as people who want to be really rigid and Platonic go off to Athenia. The twelve cities are all different, so people who are discontent with the way things are usually move around until they find one where they’re happier and things suit them better. People sort themselves out by temperament and what they like. People from the other cities come to the big festivals and tell you what it’s like there, sometimes trying to persuade people to move. I’ve never been tempted. I like it here.”

  “But you’re free to move around?”

  “Oh yes. That’s one point you made in the Last Debate that really bit hard.” I smiled at him.

  “So you know what I said about that to Athene?”

  “Are you joking? There are hundreds of books about the Last Debate.”

  “I have read some of them,” Hilfa said. “Everyone knows what you said at the Last Debate. And at your trial in Athens.”

  “I seem doomed to keep catching up to my own fame,” Sokrates said. “But I’m glad they didn’t try to conceal how it went. There was a lot of censorship here sixty years ago, and I was afraid the Masters might have kept that up. Twelve cities that are different and allow free movement sounds ever so much better than what I knew when I was here before.”

  “Oh yes. Even in Psyche these days they allow immigration and emigration,” I said.

  “What’s Psyche?” he asked, cautiously.

  “It’s a Neoplatonist city that’s obsessed with redefining the soul, and that doesn’t give women or Workers full citizenship. But they still have some women and Workers living there, amazingly enough. For a while they forced people to stay, but they ran away anyway when they wanted to, and eventually they agreed to let them go as part of the settlement when the Council of Worlds was set up. They’re the only city that ever tried to force people to stay, after the Last Debate.” I was amazed I could remember this. I’d had to study it for my citizenship exams, but I’d hardly thought about it since. “There used to be wars between the cities, back on Earth, but they stopped when we came here, after Pytheas pointed out there were only some things worth fighting for.”

  “So people have to choose one of the cities?” Sokrates asked.

  “Yes. Well, no. Most people do—it’s like you said in the Apology, or was it the Crito, about agreeing to be bound by the laws of a city? But there are metics, people who live in one city while having citizenship somewhere else. And a few people don’t like things anywhere and keep moving around without ever taking citizenship. There’s a joke about somebody who decided to live for ten years in each city before deciding where to settle down.”

  “But humans only live eighty or ninety years,” Hilfa objected.

  “That’s why it’s a joke,” I explained. “Seriously, there are people who don’t ever pick a city. There’s s theater troupe I know who do a circuit. They spend a couple of months at a time in each city and keep moving on, going everywhere in the course of a year or two.”

  “If the gods save reality and time goes on, perhaps I will try that,” Sokrates said. “Certainly I’d like to see all the cities. And perhaps other planets too.”

  “Some people have left with the Saeli on ships, though Marsilia was saying nothing like as many as Saeli have settled here,” I said.

  “Perhaps I will do that. Or perhaps on human ships, now they have contacted us, to visit human planets. But there’s certainly a lot on this planet to learn about, and I am seventy-five years old, so we’ll have to see.” He grinned. “I’m very interested to learn more about the Saeli. Tell me about your gods. You have more, not only Jathery?”

  The kelp-gatherers all looked up as Sokrates spoke gla name.

  “Yes,” Hilfa said. “We—”

  One of the kelp-pickers got up and came over to our table. “You shouldn’t talk about the gods,” he said to Hilfa. And to Sokrates, “And you shouldn’t ask, it’s not polite.”

  “I had no idea, I’m sorry to violate your custom,” Sokrates said. “Why is it impolite to inquire about your religion?”

  “Saeli religion is private,” the Saeli said. “Young Hilfa here was wrong to tell you the name of a god, and you shouldn’t go around saying it.”

  “Hilfa didn’t tell me about Jathery. Gla was here this evening, and I met gla,” Sokrates said.

  The kelp-gatherer said something in Saeli. “He says, see what harm it does speaking their names,” Hilfa translated. The other kelp-gatherers got up and came over to our table. They were all wearing silver pins.

  “Plato says, worship in the manner of the city,” one of the other kelp-gatherers said, in Greek. “We do that, those of us who have taken oath. We worship the Olympians, at the proper times, like all the other citizens. You can see us there in the temples with everyone else. We want to leave our old gods behind on our planet-of-origin.”

  “But you have a temple of your own, I’ve seen it,” I objected. The five of them were crowding round the three of us now. As I spoke and they all looked at me, I felt a definite sense of menace. Although I hadn’t felt anything like it since I was a kid in the palaestra, it was very familiar. They used to say in my sleeping house that it was Kebes who had taught big boys to pick on smaller boys and intimidate them physically, turning wrestling matches into serious fighting when the masters weren’t looking. Whether or not that was true, we certainly all learned the difference between sport and menace when we were young. I found myself calculating. Sokrates was old and would try to keep talking too long. The other three humans in the room would probably help if I called out to them. It would be quite a scrap, and we were in a temple. We’d all be brought up for brawling, and sentenced to spend all our evenings for months moving hives around and getting stung. I braced myself against the table, ready to push it back and be on my feet in an instant.

  “It’s a private temple,” the first one said.

  “Was gla really here?” another asked.

  “Gla was really here, and spoke to us, and may well be back tomorrow,” Sokrates said. “I think it would be better for us to deal with gla from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance. That’s why I was asking Hilfa.”

  The pod exchanged looks. I couldn’t read their faces at all. I kept myself ready for a sudden move. “We’re only Silvers. You should talk to Afial,” a greenish-grey one said.

  “And who are you to be asking?” the first one asked, glancing visibly from Sokrates’s pinless kiton to my own silver pin. I wished Marsilia were still with us to lend us some visible authority.

  “Surely anyone can make an enquiry?” Sokrates asked. “I’m a philosopher, but not a gold or even a citizen. My name is Sokrates.”

  Hilfa said something in Saeli, and the kelp-gatherers took a step back. The menace evaporated as if it had never been. I let go of the table and breathed freely again. The first one to approach us stepped forward again and sat down beside Hilfa, opposite me and Sokrates. “All right then, yes, since you are Plato’s Sokrates I’ll tell you. It is a Temple of Jathery that allows us to change our names and allegiances and be free to worship better gods.”

  “Better gods than Jathery?” Sokrates asked.

  “Jathery’s the best we have, from what I’ve heard.” He hesitated, the orange marks on his skin becoming clearer as he relaxed. “I’m space-born, and I’ve never been to our planet-of-origin, but they say that there are gods there, one set for each of our three continents, and they’re constantly meddling in everything and won’t leave us alone. We try to appease them, and sometimes it works. Our gods aren’t friendly like yours. They’re terrifying, in fact. There’s also another kind of religion that many of us practiced, at least until we came here and became Platonists. Maybe it’s not a religion, maybe it’s more of a philosophy. It has no gods and is a bit like your Stoicism, except not really, because there’s no question
that our gods are real and taking an interest. What it’s about is getting the gods to overlook us. That’s what we want. It was the followers of that philosophy who made it into space, and once we got out of our original solar system we found the gods didn’t follow us and intimidate us any more, and we liked it that way. Except Jathery, gla followed us all right. We belong to gla. Gla is the god of freedom of choice and knowledge—questions and answers and tricks.”

  “And name-changing?” Sokrates said.

  “Yes, that too,” the Sael said. “I mentioned that before. Name-changing. Gla charges a high price and sometimes cheats us, but that’s how we get free. Gla changes gla own name, and gla shape with it. Gla can be terrifying, but not as bad as the others, they say.”

  “We saw gla change shape,” Sokrates said.

  “Had gla taken a human disguise?” His tone was horrified and the patterns on his skin faded again.

  “Gla appeared as the god Hermes,” Sokrates said. The Saeli who were standing all sucked in their breath and rocked back on their heels in unison. The seated one shook his head slowly.

  “Gla gave no name but let them judge the seeming,” Hilfa said.

  “Isn’t that like gla,” the seated one said. The rest of the pod sighed and nodded in agreement. “Well, when we went into space, Jathery could follow along, and did, because it was with gla help that we’d got away, with wisdom and learning and tricks of technology and magic to reach between the stars. Some of us kept on calling on gla, so gla accompanied us to the new worlds. Sometimes gla helps. But there is always a high price. Gla is a trickster always. Most of us pray to be overlooked.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Sokrates said. “You speak of wisdom and tricks as if they’re connected.”

  “They are,” the kelp-gatherer said. “How to explain? Imagine a god standing on a mountain-top, on the edge of a cliff. Gla can see a long way, yes? But also, gla would fall if gla took a step forward. Maybe gla is paying attention to what’s right there, or maybe gla is looking way out ahead. And gla is laughing, and holding up a light, and however much gla tells us, gla never tells us everything. Gla calls us to follow. If we follow gla, well, maybe we fall off the cliff. Or maybe we learn to fly. Gla lures us forward, and gla laughs if we don’t learn fast enough and fall.”