Necessity (23 page)

Taking him with me, I stepped out of time, and back in at Athene's precise coordinates of time and place. Red rocks stuck out of dense green swampland vegetation. It was warm and humid, and there were many flies. Pico, still clutching his books, looked around delightedly. For an instant I thought I could never identify Sokrates among the other flies, and that this must be an impossible test Athene had set me for reasons of her own. But he was my votary and my friend. He flew to me at once, and as soon as I saw him I knew his soul, even as a fly, as he had recognized me incarnate. Tears sprang to my eyes. At once I changed him back to his proper form, and there he was, exactly the same as he had been when I had last seen him in the Last Debate, in the same plain white kiton that was slightly frayed at the hem.

“Apollo!” he said, smiling at me. It was always his joke, to name me and pretend he was swearing. He looked around. “Ikaros!”

“Sokrates, I am so glad to see you!” We hugged each other, and then he hugged Ikaros.

“I'm very glad to see you too. Speaking of seeing, did you know that vision is entirely different when you're a fly? Where in the world are we?” He looked around at the lush bushes and ferns all around us.

“Unless you know different, where we are doesn't matter. It's some remote spot where Athene thought you'd enjoy being a fly for a little while.” If you liked nature in the Romantic mode, it was beautiful. As we looked around, I heard a sound that reminded me of charging elephants, and a huge pink-and-green allosaur dashed past us, easily twice the length of an elephant but shorter and much less bulky, with small arms, an enormous head, and serrated teeth as long as my arm.

“Look, a big scary lizard!” Sokrates said, peering after it cheerfully. “What was it?”

“Maybe a wyvern?” Ikaros suggested.

“It's not a lizard at all,” I said.

“Is it one of the creatures Lucretius talks about that wasn't fitted for survival?” Ikaros asked, taking a step in the direction in which it had disappeared. “Or were they all hunted down in the age of heroes?”

“The former,” I said. “And they used to hunt in packs. Let's go.”

Sokrates nodded after it thoughtfully, then turned back to me. “Where is Athene?” he asked. “We have unfinished business.”

I understood then what Pico had meant about why she hadn't changed him back. Sokrates wanted to continue the Last Debate, even in a Jurassic swamp full of rampaging dinosaurs. Of course he did. If anyone was a perfect example of themselves, he was. And the reason Athene had changed him into a fly in the first place was because she had lost her temper and couldn't bear to be defeated in a logical argument.

“She's lost,” I said. Before he had time to respond, I went on. “Now I'm going to France in the Enlightenment to collect part of the message she sent about how we can rescue her. Do you two want to come, or should I take you to the Just City first?”

“Is that where we'll be going afterwards?” Sokrates asked.

“Yes. Or rather, it's where I'll be going. If you want me to leave you somewhere else, I can do that. With some restrictions. And not here.” I was suddenly unsure. Volition really did mean letting them choose, whether I wanted to or not, and however terrible their choices might be. “Where do you want to be?”

“I asked Krito what I'd do in Thessaly, but he didn't listen,” Sokrates said, still looking around him at the swamp. “I don't know what France or the Enlightenment are, so let's illuminate my ignorance a little by exploring them. And after that, the Just City by all means. I can do my work there.”

“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.”