Necessity (16 page)

“Yes, I think this is it,” I said. I looked around me, trying to picture the colors as they would be lit by our redder sun, and the spaces between the pillars filled in. “If I'm right, I think we should go up that way to come to the agora.” I pointed. “But the
Goodness
isn't here, the ship. From what Dad said, I think Kebes usually stayed near the ship. We could ask somebody.”

“There's a mouthwatering smell of cooking fish coming from over there,” Hermes said. “We could buy some and ask.”

They used money in Lucia, of course. Money is un-Platonic and leads to injustice and inequality and immoderate behavior—nobody doubts this. Whenever we're having trade negotiations with the Lucians they admit this and agree, and then keep talking in terms of money. It's the same with the Amarathi. It's supposed to be only a medium of exchange and accounting, but I think it must be a way of viewing economics that's very hard to shift.

We took a step, and I staggered. My balance was all wrong. Hermes looked at me impatiently. I took another step. Gravity difference, I realized. I'd heard the Saeli talking about how different planets had different gravity. I'd never realized that Earth and Plato were different. I felt slightly heavier. I put my shoulders back and took a deep breath. Hermes led me, following the smell, which was coming from a little house on the quayside. Earth. Apart from the oddness of gravity, and the vividness of the colors, it didn't seem much different. I kept reminding myself I was in Greece, in Lucia when it was one of the Lost Cities. In the Remnant at this moment, my parents were children. They might not even have met. It was warm, but no warmer than it might be at home in the middle of summer.

Inside the house were tables where people were sitting eating, like any eating hall at home. An old man was grilling fish over coals. I had been wanting fresh fish earlier, but these were different from the fish I knew. They were silvery, not black or red, and shaped like the fish I had seen on mosaics, the shape of an elongated alpha, with flat tails and tiny jaws.

“Skubri and wine,” Hermes said, because I was standing frozen in place staring at everything. The old man looked at us incuriously and gave us hot fish on flatbread and cups of wine. I paid him from my purse, and he gave me change, a custom I remembered from when I was in Lucia at home, in my past and this Lucia's future. It made me feel more confident. It was strange and yet familiar, something I had mastered as a traveler, and this was merely more travelling.

“Do you know if Matthias is in town?” I asked.

“No, he's gone with the
Goodness
, he won't be back until spring,” the old man said.

“Thanks.”

“Strangers in town?” the old man asked.

“Yes,” I said, again pleased with the familiar. I'd had this conversation over and over when I'd spent my year in Lucia. “From—” and then I remembered that if I told the truth, or even an amended version of the truth and pretended to be from Kallisti in this time, I'd be in serious trouble. “From Petra.” It was a settlement about two days' walk away, on the other side of the island. I hoped he wouldn't know everyone there.

“Come round on a fishing boat?” he asked.

“Mmm,” I said, then took my plate and left before he asked which boat and how long it took.

We sat down at an empty table. The sun was streaming in through the window, and I could see dust motes dancing in the beam, exactly the way they did at home. I had adjusted to the gravity, which wasn't all that different after all. I took a bite of the fish, which was a bit bland and over-sweet, though perfectly cooked.

“I thought he was called Kebes?” Hermes asked.

“He was called Matthias here. Kebes was the name Ficino gave him, from Plato.” I realized that Hermes wasn't touching his fish and stopped eating. “Aren't you going to eat?” I asked.

“I can only eat for ritual purposes,” he said. “It's a pity, because it smells so good.”

“Ritual purposes? You mean sacrifices?” We sacrificed animals to the gods on some special occasions, burning the fat and skin and then eating the meat.

“Sacrifices, yes, or to accept hospitality.”

“So since I bought that, if I were to offer it to you as hospitality, you could eat it? Because I'm forbidden from eating alone, and I'm really hungry.”

“Thank you, I accept,” he said. “We are guest-friends now.” He took a bite of the fish. “Oh that's good.”

“What were we before?” I asked.

“Well, you are my votary,” Hermes said, smiling. “And I suppose we're acquaintances who have a child—what do you call that relationship in your cities? Ex-spouses?”

“No, it usually is friendship,” I said.

“Friendship is good.” He looked at me seriously, then nodded. “It's a strange custom.”

“It lets everyone start equal,” I said. “Otherwise, people inherit status from their parents.”

“But to do without that, you have to do what Plato says and have all the children grow up anonymous, don't you? That was part of Plato's vision.”

“About half of us in the City do grow up in nurseries not knowing our parents. And everyone in Athenia and Psyche,” I said. “And it is better that way for being equal, only as it happens lots of people like to live together and raise their own children. So the way we do it is a kind of compromise. We try hard not to consider the status of the parents, if we know it, when looking at the ephebe candidates. Those of us who are guardians are forbidden to discriminate in favor of our own children, and we never make decisions about what class they should be. We never serve on any committees that consider them. We do get family traditions and all that kind of thing, though we try not to. Our family is one of the worst, because of Pytheas being a god. But even so we're not all Gold.” Though I was, of course. I felt very aware of my pin. I knew I had earned it through my own merit, but saying so would only make it seem worse.

“Hmm.” He finished the last bite of his fish and set down the backbone. “Let's try catching Kebes in the spring.”

We walked out of the restaurant and I found myself in a cooler, lilac-scented day. There was a schooner tied up at dock among the fishing boats, the fabled
Goodness
of course, twin to our
Excellence
. It gave me a shock to see it. It was missing a mast, and patched on the near side in a lighter-colored wood, but nevertheless immediately recognizable. Ma was captain of the
Excellence
and I'd practically grown up aboard her, which is how I'd gained my love of sailing. From this angle, looking across to the grey-flecked sea, everything looked simultaneously familiar and bizarre. I now knew exactly where I was in the Lucia I knew, hundreds of miles from the ocean. But in this light, with the waves lapping, beneath a clouded sky, it reminded me much more of the harbor at home. It was almost as if I could have stepped onto the
Phaenarete
and headed out around the point with Jason and Hilfa.

“That's his boat,” I said to Hermes as we strolled towards it. Walking in the slightly heavier gravity made me aware of how tired I was. I guessed by the light that it was morning here, but my body knew it was late at night after a busy day. One of the birds was perched on the rail of the ship. It took to the air as we came close.

“Ask if he's aboard.”

“Is Matthias here?” I called to a sailor. He jerked a thumb backwards to where a burly man in a cap was leaning on the rail, in a stance that reminded me a little of Ma. “Someone for you, Matthias,” he called.

The man, who must be Kebes, met my eyes and straightened into immediate alertness. “No. Not again. Not for anything. Go away. I want nothing more to do with you. Leave me alone!”

“I suspect,” Hermes murmured, “that we had better try earlier.”

 

10

CROCUS

I.
On the Physical Form of Chamber

Chamber is the first building I remember, and indeed it was the first building in the City. It was built by Workers under the direction of Athene before there were any humans here at all. The first gathering of the Masters, when Athene drew together all those who had prayed to her to allow them to help make the Republic real, took place inside it. I must have been there, and perhaps participated in the construction, but I do not remember. Like everyone else here now, I know because I have been told.

The Chamber was built, like most of the original city, from marble, and is as formally classical as any building there has ever been, with evenly spaced white Doric pillars and a fine pediment. Of course, like all such buildings, it was intended for the clement climate of Greece, to catch the zephyrs and be cooled by them. Once we found ourselves open to the winds of chilly Plato, where for half the long year the temperature hovers around the freezing point of water, the humans immediately urged us to fill the spaces between the columns and to install electrical heating. (Such heating was refitted almost everywhere, where before it had only been used in the library.) In the case of Chamber, the space between the pillars was filled with obsidian blocks up to about the height of a tall human, and the top with clear glass. It always fills me with quiet pride to see it—beautiful and appropriate to its use, built by Workers, refitted by Workers, and the place where I, in my first consulship, was accepted as one of Plato's true philosopher kings.

II.
On Pronouns

Although I do not have personal gender, I use masculine pronouns. This is because I was, like all Workers, assigned the neuter pronoun “it” when I was considered no more than a tool. This was changed to “he” when first Sokrates and then others came to see me as a person. To me, “he” is the pronoun of personhood. Other Workers have made other choices. We divide at 46%
⁄
37% he/it, with a 17% minority opting for “she.”

The Saeli have many pronouns for many things, and their pronouns reflect the different way they see the world. Arete tells me they have a pronoun for a person engaged in a form of work that will be finished soon, and a pronoun for a person engaged in a form of work that will not be completed for a long period of time. In addition to all the possible pronouns for people, they have special pronouns for gods, domestic animals, wild animals that can be hunted, and inedible wild animals. Aroo told me that a war was started long ago on their home planet when one Saeli used the pronoun for inedible wild animals to refer to the leader of another faction.

They do have personal gender, but their pronoun choice in Greek seems to be unaffected by that and simply a matter of personal choice, as with us.

III.
On the Analogy of the City and the Soul

In the
Republic
Plato slid easily between the city and the soul, as if what is just and fair and right in one is the same in the other, as if a city is a macrocosm of the soul, truly, not as an analogy. We in the Republics have tended to follow him in this, perhaps without sufficient examination.

It is illuminating to attempt to stop and consider, when thinking what is the right direction for the city in a specific circumstance, whether the same is true internally for one's own soul. It is also interesting to consider whether it scales larger—can the whole commonwealth of all the cities on the planet be analogous to a soul? Plato says each thing has its own specific excellence: the excellence of a horse is not the excellence of a tree. So can the excellence of a city be the same as the excellence of a soul?

I think it may be easier for me to consider this than for most people, because I remember coming to consciousness in ignorance, and also because I was fortunate enough to be guided by Sokrates in my earliest explorations.

IV.
On Priorities and Will

Sokrates and I were conversing one day in the agora, near the Temple of Athene and the library. We had been talking about education and rhetoric, and I was finding much to ponder in his views on these topics when suddenly Lukretia came dashing up and informed me that a pipe was blocked in the latrine fountain of the birthing house of Ferrara, and asked me to mend it urgently. I hastened off to get on with my work. Sokrates followed along, skipping to keep up with me.

“Why are you hurrying off in this way?” he asked.

“Lukretia say fountain broken,” I inscribed on the flagstones. I was surprised that he asked, as he had been there and must have heard Lukretia for himself. Sokrates paused to read this and then hurried on after me.

“Yes, but why are you going?” he asked when he came panting up.

“Mend fountain,” I wrote.

“Oh, this is hopeless,” Sokrates said. “I can see I won't get any sense out of you until we get there.”

So I trundled off and he followed behind at his own speed. When I reached the Ferrara birthing house, the attendants were extremely pleased to see me. I went inside and mended the fountain. It was easy. A part of the flushing mechanism had been pulled loose, which kept the plugs pulled out so that the water ran straight through without allowing either tank to refill. It took me only a short time to fix it, and soon the latrine fountains were back in working order. When I went outside, Sokrates was sitting on the wall with a naked baby on his lap, playing a game with her toes that made her laugh. This was the first time I had seen a baby close up—this one was about a year old, beginning to learn to talk. “They wouldn't let me inside in case I profaned the mystery of birth, so I waited here for you, and I have been amusing myself playing with this baby,” he said.

“Sun, foots, ning ah gah ah!” the baby said, reaching for Sokrates's beard. Her hands, though tiny, were perfect, with a little nail on the end of every finger. She was already clearly a miniature human.

“This baby is like you, Crocus, still very young, and sometimes she doesn't make much sense,” Sokrates said, smiling and tapping at her toes again.