by Jo Walton
Jathery lowered his bright eyelids over his eyes. “Yes,” gla said.
“And Hermes will go in your place to conceive Alkippe. He will always have been her father.”
Even as relief washed through me, I wondered what Hermes would think about that particular command from Father.
“Yes,” Jathery said, sounding a little relieved.
“And you will spend ten years in service to me, as messenger.” As punishment for pretending to carry Father’s messages, he would really carry some. Ten years was a hard punishment, but not undeserved.
“Yes,” Jathery said again. “It is worth it. Platonism is good for the Saeli. It gives them new thoughts, new chances, a better future. It helps them to be free. And freedom is my greatest gift.”
“But Plato is all becoming so much more ordinary,” Athene protested. “So few of the Golds are really proper philosophers, whatever they call themselves.”
Father smiled to himself.
“We thought you might be angry,” I said. “I thought of coming to you, but Athene wrote that she thought you might be angry and even use the Darkness of the Oak. We were afraid. But then as soon as I was there I knew you wouldn’t be. We didn’t know what it was like, out there.”
“You understood,” he said. “And when you understand things, I understand them too. It saves me learning it all myself. I’m not likely to throw all this away and start again while you keep learning things for me. The same way you had to learn how to be a human, I have had to learn how to be a god.”
“When we learn things?” I asked. Even though learning to be human had been so hard, it was even harder to imagine him learning how to be a god, learning personal time and consequence after beginning out there. “And when we undertake projects towards better understanding?”
“Yes. All of you.”
“But some of us please you more than others because we learn more new things? And that’s why you always forgive Athene?”
“Yes.” Athene was staring straight ahead, but her owl was glaring at Jathery.
“And when I was there—I can’t remember properly, I drank from Lethe. But it seemed we were all there. Everyone. All gods of all pantheons, human, alien, everyone. All the souls. Mortals I have mourned,” I said. “All singing polyphonic harmonies.”
“The music is a metaphor. But you are there. You’re all my children.” He looked at Jathery, then back at me. “On all my worlds. You are there, were there, will be there. I nurture you with time, as plants in a sheltered garden.”
“So that you can understand, instead of knowing without understanding,” Athene said. “Comprehension.”
“And so excellence can keep on becoming more excellent,” I said. “Through choice and art.”
“I have been too content with tricks,” Jathery muttered. “I understand. I will do better.”
“We’ll see,” Father said. “Now go. Get on with it!”
21
JASON
It was another good haul, on a fine choppy day. The sun was too bright to make for really good fishing conditions, but we found the gloaters running deep off Thunder Point and followed them in the current, pulling them up as fast as we could heave until our tubs were full. Porphyry, for all that he was Dion’s age and a god, knew the work and put his back into it. The wind was coming up crossways as we came home, so we had to tack back, under a spectacular purple and gold sunset that meant some peak not too far off must have been pouring out dust and lava. We passed a flatboat scooping up kelp, and several other fishing boats on their way home—Moderation, West Wind, The Wise Lady—their sails reflecting the colors of the sky. Then, as I was congratulating myself on another successful day, Hilfa reported we’d sprung a leak. I went to look, and sure enough, water was seeping through between the planks amidships, where the caulking had worn thin. The weight of the full tubs was putting pressure on it. We weren’t in any danger, in sight of home and with so many other craft around, but nobody likes to see water coming through the bottom of a boat.
“Well, isn’t that always the way?” I said to myself.
“Caulk or bail or dump?” Porphyry asked from behind my shoulder, exactly as I’d have asked Dion if he’d been there and in charge. They were the only options.
“I hate to jettison, especially gloaters, and especially this close to home,” I said. “Letting them go to be caught another day is one thing, but these are dead already. And we can’t caulk properly, not down there, not without taking her out of the water. She probably needs new planking.”
“Bailing it is then,” he said, cheerfully, and he and Hilfa settled down to bail while I steered and Marsilia set the sails. I signalled to see if any of the other boats were close enough and with capacity enough to take our excess, but they were all close to full, except the flatboat, which had nowhere to put fish.
I took her in gently, making six tacks instead of two, to put as little pressure on her boards as we could. I really didn’t want to use the little solar motor. It was faster, but it put a lot of stress on the planking. I’d glance over from time to time and see that they were holding their own against the water, which they were. It took a while for me to see how crazy it was, a god and an alien squatting in the bilges bailing my boat. Pytheas had said Porphyry had a connection with what’s right in place and time, that he’d know when a problem was big enough to go to Zeus, and there he was bailing. It’s a strange world we live in.
I brought Phaenarete gently in to the quay and tied up. West Wind had been hanging back in case we needed assistance, and slid in beside us. Hilfa went off to get the cart, and Dion came back with him as usual. Little Dion was with him today, hopping about all over the cobbles like a wound-up spring. “We want to get the tubs emptied as quickly as possible,” I said, because we were still making water.
“Are you coming up to Thessaly after dinner?” Marsilia asked as we were tipping the first tub onto the cart. She was looking decidedly windblown but actually less tired than when we’d set off.
“Yes,” I said. “I want to know what happens when they come back. If they come back. I suppose it isn’t really my place. But I’ve seen this much of it and I’d like to see it out.”
I turned to heave the next tub onto the hoist. Porphyry was steadying it, and leaned his weight into it at the right moment to swing it forward. Dion and Hilfa were down at the cart. With this many competent people, we’d be done in no time, and I could take her round to the slips and get her out of the water.
“We’re a good team,” Marsilia said.
“Exactly what I was thinking,” I said, but then I blushed, remembering what Hilfa had said the night before.
When I turned to her, Marsilia had the strangest expression on her face. I’m fair skinned, so I always display my embarrassment for everyone to see. I decided I’d better tell her why I was red to the tips of my ears, because the truth was better than what she might be guessing. “Hilfa thinks that because we’re a good team we ought to form a pod,” I said quietly, as we lowered the next tub. “You and me and Thetis and oh, and him, of course.”
“Oh poor Hilfa,” Marsilia said at once. “I wonder how long he’s been imagining that?”
“I think he thinks we’re like family, and we are in a way, a crew.”
“But a pod—I suppose that made sense to him. The Saeli way. They do tend to work together. Poor Hilfa.” She sighed.
“He had it all worked out, said we could go to the City of Amazons where it’s allowed, except that you need to be here for work.”
“We wouldn’t have to, the law allows pods here. While it says for the benefit of the Saeli, it doesn’t say everyone involved has to be Saeli. Marriage is any two people who choose it, and a pod is any five.” She grinned at me, then joined Porphyry bringing the last tub across, while I brought up a bucket of water to rinse off the deck. My face had stopped feeling so hot by the time I’d finished that.
Dion and Hilfa rolled the cart off to take the catch over to Supply,
where the fish would be gutted and sorted and salted or frozen or, if we were lucky, shared out to be served up straight away.
“Was that an especially good haul, or is the fishing always better here than around Amazonia?” Porphyry asked.
“This is the best time of year,” I said. “In a month or so all the big fish will have gone north and we’ll be lucky if we’re filling two tubs all day.”
“Well, that was fun. Thank you for letting me work with you, Jason. Do you need help getting her across to the slips?”
“Marsilia and I can manage if you want to go back, but if you’d like to bail a bit more it would be handy,” I said.
“When I go back, everyone will want to argue with me or interrogate me,” he said, picking up the bailer again. “I’d much rather spend an hour bailing in the dusk.”
“Well it’s more my idea of fun too,” I said.
Porphyry, the most powerful god on Plato, settled down to bail. Marsilia took the tiller this time, and we sailed neatly across the harbor, the wind with us now and no difficulty except avoiding the boats as they came in and cut across our bows. Once there, a Worker called Barnacle came and helped haul her out.
Barnacle is named after barnacles, the little scale-like things that like to attach themselves to the bottom of boats and have to be scraped off. Dion says the barnacles on Plato are so different from Greek barnacles that we shouldn’t give them the same name, because they’re flat and symmetrical. But it doesn’t matter, because all the Platonic sea creatures we’ve identified have formal names, which are, for some bizarre reason, all in Latin. Then they have everyday names in Greek which are either descriptive or echo whatever Earth thing they’re most like, whether they’re exactly like it or not. So if barnacles and kelp on Earth were different from ours, it doesn’t matter very much, nobody is likely to confuse them, and if they do we have the long Latin names for disambiguation.
Barnacle fussed over the leak, and said, as I’d suspected, that we’d need some new planking. He promised to get to it right away, and got started hauling her out of the water and into the dry dock. Workers are really good at that kind of thing. So we left her there and walked all the way back around the harbor, talking on the way about boats and boat repair. It turned out Porphyry worked on a fishing boat called Daedalos with two of his nieces. “Why did you call her that?” I asked.
“Well I wanted to name her after Ikaros, but that seemed rather an unfortunate name for a boat,” he said. We laughed. “Ikaros is my sister’s father. He was family when I was growing up, always in and out, as well as being my teacher.”
“Is it strange to see him again?” I asked.
“I knew I would, though I didn’t know exactly when. I prefer not knowing too much.”
“Jathery says it’s uncomfortable being caught by Necessity,” Marsilia said.
Porphyry frowned. “No, Necessity’s wonderful. Necessity is what keeps everything from happening at the same time. My gifts—well, we take what we’re given. I wanted to be able to fly, like Arete.” He sounded wistful.
When we came to Samos I invited the others in for dinner, but they said they should go to Florentia and catch up with their family. “Dad will think we’ve drowned if I don’t show up,” Marsilia said.
“And that’s if Ikaros and Sokrates remember to tell him where we went,” Porphyry said.
“Will they show up to eat in Florentia like anyone else?” I asked, trying to picture it.
“Well I suppose they might go to their old halls, but I expect they’ll go to Florentia tonight,” Porphyry said.
“But they’re so recognizable!” I said.
“Yes, true, but they also like debating people. I can’t imagine either of them hiding,” Porphyry said.
“We should have thought of that and asked them to,” Marsilia said. “Oh well, too late now. Unless Dad thought of it.”
“Well, they’re here. I don’t know why, and I don’t know whether they mean to stay,” Porphyry said. “But you’re the one organizing the debate on whether we’re right to keep divine secrets.”
Marsilia looked surprised. “You’re right. It is the same kind of thing. And even though Sokrates was there this morning in Chamber, I was automatically assuming it was better to keep it quiet from everyone else, without examining it at all. Huh. That’s terrible of me!”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Marsi,” Porphyry said, and that was the first time I’d ever heard her called by that nickname. “You’ve thought of it now, and there’s plenty of time to examine it.”
“I’ll see you in Thessaly later,” I said.
I ate dinner in Samos with Dion and Hilfa and the kids, like every day. We talked mostly about the boat, and how long Barnacle thought it might be before she’d be seaworthy again. They had almost finished eating by the time I got there, but they stayed at the table nibbling on apples and nuts while I ate my ribber and noodles, to be friendly. Then Hilfa and I set off for Thessaly.
“Do you think they’ll have come back?” I asked as we walked up towards the city gate, the same route I’d taken with Thetis the day before.
“Yes.”
“Do you think Athene will be there?”
“Yes.”
“Are you basing this on logic, or is it only what you think?”
“But Jason, you asked me what I think!” He gave me his real smile, and I noticed his pink markings were standing out distinctly again. “I think They will come back because They are gods, and the world is still here, and there’s nothing to be done about it if They do not. And I think Athene will be there because She will come for Ikaros.”
Marsilia opened the door to us. “They’re here!” she said.
My knees sagged with relief. I hadn’t realized how worried I had been until the burden was lifted. “So Alkippe is all right?” I asked.
“Yes,” Marsilia said, her face going blank. “Gla said that had been taken care of, so now it’s out of the way.”
I put my arm around her, as I had supported Thetis in her weeping the day before. I didn’t normally do this kind of thing with Marsilia, but it didn’t normally seem as if it would be welcome. I never knew two such different sisters. Marsilia leaned into me for a grateful instant, then moved away to intervene in an argument between two of her uncles that was becoming heated.
As I looked around the room, which was only about half as full as the day before, I felt filled with social anxiety. Almost everyone in Thessaly was a god or a close connection of a god, and none of them were people I knew. Thetis was sitting laughing with her mother, she didn’t even glance at me. Why was I invited to this party? I accepted a cup of wine from Kallikles, Pytheas’s son who was in charge of lightning and electricity. “I recognize you now, you’re the fellow who works on the boat with Marsilia,” he said.
“Jason,” I said. “And this is Hilfa, who works with us too.”
Hilfa took his wine, and we escaped through the fountain room into the garden. It was cool out, but not bitingly chilly like the night before. Crocus was looming large in the corner, talking to Pytheas and Sokrates, who was waving his arms about. Over in the other corner, where there was a carved herm, Athene and Ikaros were deeply engaged in conversation with Neleus and a stranger, a beautiful woman with teased-up hair, dressed in a green and black stripy thing. She looked over at us, and I saw she had bright Saeli eyelids, and at once realized who she was.
Gla left the others and came towards us. As gla walked across the garden gla changed with each stride, growing taller, gla hair and clothes and female body fading away. As gla reached us gla had completely transformed and was entirely Jathery again: huge, naked, greenish-gold, with very distinct dark markings writhing across gla skin. Hilfa tried to hide behind me.
“Joy to you, Jathery,” I said, and tried to think how to follow this. “I see you’ve returned safely. And found Athene too.”
“I’d like to speak to Hilfa for a moment, if you’ll excuse us,” gla said.
“I don’t think Hilfa wants to speak to you,” I said, though it was difficult to refuse gla, especially as gla made gla request seem so reasonable. The best of their gods? I hated to think what the others must be like. “I think Hilfa’s terrified of you. I think all the Saeli are. How does a god of knowledge come to be so frightening to gla people?”
“Are you not afraid of Athene?” gla asked, gently.
I looked over at where Athene was standing listening to something Neleus was saying, and found courage in the sight of her, so like her statues. “A little awed, certainly. I’d be intimidated if she wanted to speak to me. I’m only a Silver. But I also love her. I would do the best I could.”
“And the Saeli also love me,” Jathery asserted. The markings on gla skin changed and shifted as gla spoke, making new patterns.
“You cheat us,” Hilfa said, from behind me, sounding panicked. “You take all and give nothing. We appease you and pray that you will pass us by.”
Sokrates, who was the only one facing us, noticed what was happening. He excused himself from his conversation and came over and heard Hilfa’s last words as he joined us. “Are you discussing what makes the Saeli gods different from our gods?” he asked. “I’m also interested to know the answer.”
“It is culture, and patterns of worship,” Jathery said, dismissively. “There are gods on Earth that are more like me than like your gods. And there are other Saeli pantheons that are perhaps more like yours. It is style.”
“But you’re the same kind of being as our gods?” Sokrates persisted.
“Yes.”
“And even among aliens that are much stranger than humans and Saeli, like the Amarathi, the gods are all the same kind of being?”
“Yes.” Jathery looked around, then resigned glaself to answering Sokrates. “Though the Amarathi evolved as tree-like beings whose language was chemical, they have souls like yours, and their gods are like all gods. We are all children of the One Parent.”
“Fascinating,” Sokrates said. “And do the Saeli gods take care of their worshippers?”
