Necessity (24 page)

“In cold places people need more layers and thicker clothes,” I said.

“Certainly. But it's not cold here,” Sokrates said, which was inarguable that day.

“What if wearing clothes and choosing colors is somebody's art?” Pico asked.

Florent-Claude came bustling back with a paper in his hand. “Very well. Now, in English if you will! Of what five things is St. Jathe patron?” He had a strong accent in English, but understood the pronunciation better than many Francophones.

Pico looked at me, frowning. He must have understood the name. St. Jathe was clearly Jathery. I'd heard the list from Hilfa, such a strange set of things. And a riddle in English would need a rhyming answer. “Liberty and changing names, wisdom, tricks and riddle games,” I said. It seemed almost insultingly easy, but it could only be answered by somebody who spoke English and had talked to Saeli about religion—which meant me, or perhaps Hermes.

“Well done! So here is your paper, but you will find in it another riddle, I think,” Florent-Claude said, handing it over. It had the same mix of characters as Pico's. I tucked it away with the other.

Saying goodbye took a long time, though we tried to hurry. We had to promise to give his love to Athene, and to call in if we were ever passing again. As we walked, Pico translated the conversation for Sokrates and then they both insisted that I explain the riddle. We had to walk all the way to the end of the lawn and wave and then make our way behind the screen of chestnuts, all with their spring candles, before we could step out of time and back to the Republic.

 

15

JASON

Pytheas had got up from his chair and was looming over Jathery. He had grown so tall that his head almost touched the ceiling of Hilfa's little house. “Was it you all the time?” he asked, and although his voice was quiet it made the hair stand up on my neck. “Was it you who came and interrupted me?”

“Yes,” Jathery said, not sounding at all intimidated. Gla voice was clear and pure, like a child's voice singing, but rich and full-bodied.

“You lied to me about having a message from Father?”

“Would you have left your new sun if I'd come to you as myself and told you Athene was missing?” Gla question sounded entirely reasonable, and made me wonder whether Pytheas would have.

“Yes,” Pytheas said, emphatically but petulantly. He glared down at Jathery. “Why does nobody trust me to take any reasonable action without tricking me into it?”

They both disappeared. I blinked.

Ikaros was looking green, not the way Saeli are green, but the way pale-skinned humans turn green when they're about to be sick. He walked rapidly into the fountain room, and I soon heard the sound of him tossing his guts up joining the familiar sound of Marsilia doing the same. Almost everyone gets queasy sometimes on boats and has to spew. I might have felt the same way if I'd found out somebody I'd been to bed with was actually Jathery in disguise. The thought of it was a bit stomach-churning.

“I couldn't tell you. Do you understand, Jason?” Hilfa asked quietly from beside me.

“I understand,” I said. He started to rock to and fro again. I put my arms around him.

Thetis picked up the papers Marsilia had dropped and sat down with them in Pytheas's empty chair. She glanced towards the fountain room.

“Joy to you, Sokrates, I'm delighted to meet you, I have heard so much about you,” Arete said.

“I hear you're Simmea's daughter, and you see through falsehood. That must be useful in debate.”

“Not as much as you might think,” Arete said.

Sokrates laughed. “But you saw through Jathery pretending to be Hermes when he had fooled us all?”

“It seems so,” Arete said.

“How did none of us guess?” Sokrates asked.

“Deception and name-changing are part of what gla is,” Hilfa said.

“Even so, I'm surprised gla could fool Pytheas,” Sokrates said. “Hermes is his own brother.”

Ikaros came back in. He smiled wanly, picked up his wine-beaker and drained it, then sat down in the other chair.

“Where did Pytheas and Jathery go?” I asked.

“To yell at each other outside time, I expect. It's a thing gods do,” Ikaros said, shaking his head. “They'll be back, for those if nothing else.” He gestured at the papers Thetis was holding. She offered them to him, and he took them, turning them over curiously. “There are at least four alphabets here, and I think there was a different one on the piece I had, Etruscan maybe.”

Marsilia came back in, with the strands of her dark hair damp around her face where she must have dashed water on it. “Oh Marsilia, is there anything that could help?”

She shook her head. I passed her my winecup and she took a sip. She sat down on the floor in front of us.

Arete took the papers from Ikaros. “Oh, interesting, we need all of them together to be able to read them.”

“Did finding out who Jathery was make you sick?” Hilfa asked Marsi.

Marsilia nodded.

“Me too,” Ikaros said, smiling companionably at her. “I think many people would throw up on learning that a lover was really an alien god.”

She nodded again.

“I'm sorry. I couldn't tell you. I don't know what gla would have done to me,” Hilfa said. “I think gla made me, and could unmake me, to take back the part of gla power gla put into me.”

“None of this is your fault,” Marsilia said.

“We should not need to live in fear of the arbitrary power of the gods this way,” Sokrates said.

“The Saeli always do, all of us, always,” Hilfa said.

Marsilia took another swig of my wine. Thetis got up and stood behind Marsilia and started to rub her shoulders. Marsilia relaxed a little.

“It means Alkippe and I are siblings,” Hilfa said, tentatively.

“But that was always true,” Marsilia said. Hilfa stopped rocking entirely and sat up straight, staring at her.

“You're also one of Simmea's granddaughters?” Sokrates asked Marsilia. “You remind me of her.”

“Yes, I am,” Marsilia said. Thetis looked proudly down at her.

“And Jathery took you off on a treasure hunt through time for Athene's papers?” Sokrates went on.

Marsilia gave him a small smile. “It was a bit like that, yes. But all the time I thought he was Hermes. Gla really is horribly good at deception. Even when I saw him changing between forms when we were outside time, I never questioned who he was.”

“You should always question,” Sokrates said.

Marsilia smiled up at him ruefully. “I'll try harder to be a proper philosopher.”

Arete passed the papers back to Ikaros. “I wonder sometimes if it is harder for women to be philosophers, even for the Golds here. Everything always seems to be stacked against it.”

“Not always,” Ikaros said. “Did you ever know Lucrezia? She was in the City of Amazons by the time you were growing up, so maybe not. We lived together for a long time. She came from the Renaissance, from Rome. She and her brothers all had the same humanist education, all read Plato. But she was the only one to become a philosopher, and pray to Athene to come here. They had no time in their lives for it, after their education, none of them. But she did, being a woman, even though she was as much a political pawn as they were. For once the expectation of passivity and not being able to act was an advantage, it gave her time to study they couldn't have.”

At that moment, the two gods reappeared, Pytheas restored to his usual size.

“Let's put it together right now,” Pytheas said. “Where—ah, thank you, Pico.” He took the papers from Ikaros and pulled two more out the fold of his kiton.

“But what—” Ikaros asked.

“We have decided to work on getting Athene back first, before addressing the issue of Jathery's imposture,” Pytheas said, with a glare at Jathery. He walked over to the table. Arete and Ikaros followed close behind. Pytheas set the papers down on top of the pile of books Ikaros had laid down there earlier. The four of them bent over the papers. Arete at once switched them into a different order.

Sokrates looked at me, and I jumped. “You've been very quiet. What's your connection with all this?”

“I'm here because I'm Hilfa's friend,” I said. Hilfa stopped rocking and nodded.

“An admirable reason,” he said. “Your name is Jason, Pytheas said. I see you're a Silver?”

“Yes,” I said, emboldened by his approval. “We work on a fishing boat with Marsilia.”

“Yes, I can read it,” Arete said, from across the room. “It's a technical description of how to get out into the primal Chaos and back. It sounds preposterously dangerous. There's no justification or explanation here of why she did it or why anyone would want to, or why she left it scattered in pieces.”

“But you can read it?” Pytheas asked. “Translate it!”

“I could,” Arete said. “But, Father, I'd need a good reason as to why I should. This is extremely dangerous information, and Athene didn't come back. I see no reason why it would be any less dangerous for you. If gods can get lost out there, it's bad enough to lose one, and much worse to lose two.”

“If you won't translate it, you'll force us to take it to Father,” Pytheas said. Now that they were standing nose to nose glaring at each other, I could see that they were exactly the same height.

“Explain to me why that is a bad thing?” Arete asked. I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable hearing them arguing about such things. But Hilfa was still shivering in my arms, so I stayed where I was and tried to be reassuring. Thetis smiled at me over Marsilia's head, and that in itself was reason enough to stay. “You should take it to Zeus,” Arete went on. “You said you wanted to see her explanation first—well, there isn't any, in the sense of justification for why she did it.”

“I told you why she did it.” Pytheas stalked back to his chair and flung himself down. “And I explained why I don't want to go to Father.”

“Do we have to take any action?” Arete asked.

Pytheas glowered at her. “You can read us the instructions and then we can attempt to rescue her. Or if you refuse, we can go to Father, though I fear the consequences. Those are our choices. We can't leave her stranded out there and do nothing, no. That's not an acceptable option.”

“I agree with that,” Jathery said. I looked over to where gla was still standing by the table, gla big hand splayed on Athene's notes. Gla looked like a big Sael with exceptionally clear skin patterns, except that gla had an arrogant confidence that was like no Sael I had ever seen. Gla voice sounded smooth and persuasive. And gla skin patterns changed as I watched. Hilfa's were more or less pronounced, but always the same pattern in the same place. Jathery's writhed and rewrote themselves constantly.

“We absolutely need to get her back. The world can't survive without wisdom,” Ikaros said, passionately.

“You of all people must understand that Athene is not the only source of wisdom in the universe,” Arete snapped.

“But she's our source of wisdom, our culture's source,” Ikaros said. “We wouldn't be the same with foreign wisdom.”

“We might be better,” Sokrates said, thoughtfully.

“I love her, and you know you do too,” Ikaros said.

“True. And I am her votary, hers and Apollo's.” He nodded to Pytheas where he sat. Pytheas, or maybe I should say Apollo, nodded back warily. “But loving her doesn't excuse us from seeing her very real faults. And considering those, who is to say we might not be better with Apollo taking charge of our wisdom, or perhaps Thoth or Anahita.”

Pytheas shuddered. “We wouldn't, not with any of those choices, believe me.” I knew nothing about Thoth except that he was an ibis-headed Egyptian god. I had never even heard of Anahita.

“Some other god of wisdom might better consider the will of thinking beings,” Sokrates said. “Athene has always been careless of it.”

“You're only saying that because you think it would be interesting to find out,” Ikaros said.

“Well, don't you?” asked Sokrates mildly.

“Yes, theoretically interesting, but in practice it would be terrible,” Ikaros said. “You're still angry with her because she turned you into a gadfly.”

Sokrates laughed. I stared at him, hardly able to believe he could find it funny. “It was interesting being a gadfly. The way they see is amazing. And I could fly! I'm not angry about that. It was a fascinating experience—a little frightening at first, yes, but I have endured far worse things, and there was a lot about it to enjoy. If I can't forgive her it's for not finishing the argument.”

“She behaved badly in the Last Debate,” Ikaros conceded. “But we should still rescue her!”

“I'm not saying Athene's not valuable or that we should abandon her,” Arete said. “I'm saying that Apollo is equally valuable, or more valuable right now because he hasn't gone haring out into Chaos. And I suppose the same applies to Jathery; the Saeli must need him for something.”

Jathery laughed, the patterns on his skin still changing every moment. Hearing it I realized what was wrong with Hilfa's laugh—it was always the same. Human laughter bubbles or barks and each laugh is different. Jathery's was different. When he'd been pretending to be Hermes it had sounded like normal laughter. Now it didn't sound at all human, and it sent shivers through me. Meanwhile, beside me, Hilfa shook his head. I looked at him. “No?” I whispered. “You don't need him?”

“I suppose we do,” he whispered back.

“But isn't gla your culture's source of wisdom?” I asked.

Hilfa didn't reply.

“I wonder what Athene has learned out there?” Ikaros mused.

“What did she hope to learn?” Arete asked. “How could it seem like a good idea to do such a thing?”