Necessity (36 page)

“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?”

“Yes,” Jathery said, flatly, like Hilfa.

“And you're in charge of wisdom, is that right?” Sokrates asked. I took a cautious step away, drawing Hilfa with me. “What responsibilities do you have?”

“We each have responsibility in certain spheres.” I took another step back.

“But I believe they are divided up differently among your pantheon? How did that come to be?” Sokrates looked politely interested. Jathery's face was unreadable.

“We each have five things,” Jathery said.

“And is five a significant number among the Saeli?”

“Yes.”

“And how is it that you are the only Saeli god to have left the Saeli planet?” Sokrates asked, persistently.

Hilfa and I retreated back into the fountain room. The black and white tiles and shining silver faucets seemed very welcoming. I swallowed all the wine in my cup in one gulp and set it down on the window sill. “Sokrates is wonderful,” I said.

“It is only a respite,” Hilfa said. His markings had faded to almost nothing and he was rocking a little.

“Jathery is incredibly intimidating even when gla doesn't do anything but stand there, and gla voice is very persuasive. But you said yesterday that gla wasn't too bad. What specifically are you afraid of?” I asked.

“That gla will get me alone and unmake me. Gla is one of my parents, Arete said. I think gla could do that, now that gla and Athene don't need me as an anchor anymore,” Hilfa said, looking down so I could not see his eyes but only the turquoise and orange of the lids. “I thought now that my purpose was fulfilled I could be free. But Jathery put power into me, and now I think instead gla will take gla part of me back, to be stronger.”

“Kill you?”

“Worse than kill me. I do not want to cease to be me, but I could bear it. I am afraid gla will unbind my soul. Gla and Athene made my soul. Gla could take back what gla put into it.” He rocked once and then back, then looked up at me. “Don't leave me alone with gla, Jason. Please.”

“No way. But I don't think gods can make souls. I think it was your body Arete was talking about. And she said you're part human too, remember, and belong to Plato. You're a child of gods. You must have a heroic soul.” I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Arete did say I belong here,” Hilfa said, tentatively, as if testing a proposition.

Marsilia stepped from the main room into the fountain room as he was saying this. “Of course you do, Hilfa. I've been enquiring, and Dad says if you enroll in classes now, you can take oath in the spring.”

“I want to take oath right now. Then I'd belong to Plato and not to Jathery. You're consul. You could hear it.” There was a note of panic in his tone.

Marsilia shook her head. “It has to be done at the altar before the archons. And it can't be rushed, because you have to be classified, and that takes a lot of thought.”

“Pah. I am Silver, like Jason and Dion. I work on the boat.”

“But I work on the boat too, and perhaps you should be Gold like me,” Marsilia said. “It's not easy or quick, making that decision for anyone. And why are you in a hurry anyway?”

As she asked, Jathery came into the fountain room, with Sokrates in hot pursuit.

“I want to speak to Hilfa, before I answer any more of your enquiries,” gla said. Sokrates shrugged and caught my eye, as if to say he had done his best.

“Then speak to him,” I said. “He's here.”

“We need to speak alone.” Again, gla made it seem like such a reasonable request that it was hard to protest.

I went on and protested anyway. “Why? You can have privacy simply by speaking in Saeli. Arete's the only other person here who speaks it and she's in there.” I gestured to the main room of the sleeping house, where the sounds of the party could be heard.

“It's a Saeli matter, you wouldn't understand,” Jathery said.

“Please explain it to us,” Sokrates said, in his usual tone of enthusiastic enquiry.

Hilfa was rocking again. I put a hand on his arm. “I'm Hilfa's friend, and I'm not leaving him unless he wants me to.”

Then as Jathery opened gla mouth to respond, Marsilia jumped in. “We're his pod,” she said. “Surely there isn't anything you need to say to a Sael without their podmembers. Indeed, by our law any Sael can specifically request the presence of podmembers even when accused of a crime.”

Sokrates opened his mouth, clearly dying to ask something about this, but managed for once to keep quiet.

“All podmembers,” Jathery said. Gla had his eyes fixed on Marsilia's as if they were children in a staring contest. “You are only three.”

“Get Thetis,” Marsilia said to me, without looking away from Jathery's gaze.

Sokrates stepped forward and took one of Hilfa's hands. Marsilia took the other. I turned and went into the main room. Everyone there was drinking wine and talking loudly. Thetis was still with her mother, deep in conversation.

“Thee, you have to come,” I said.

“What?”

“It's really important. Marsilia sent me.” She looked impatient. “Hilfa needs you.”

“I'll be back soon,” she said to Erinna, who was frowning, and followed me. “What is it?”

“Jathery's trying to bully Hilfa, and Hilfa's afraid gla wants to kill him, or worse, and Marsilia has told him that we're Hilfa's pod,” I explained as succinctly as possible as we crossed the crowded room.

“His pod?” she asked, astonished. Then we stepped into the fountain room. “His pod,” she confirmed with a brisk nod at the alien god. “Don't you dare think you can do anything to Hilfa without our consent.”

“That is still only four,” Jathery said.

“I'd be honored to make the fifth,” Sokrates said.

“Pods are not a joke, or an arrangement to be hastily put together and hastily abandoned,” Jathery said.

“Are they your sphere of patronage?” Sokrates asked, in his best tone of interested enquiry.

Jathery snarled at him. Sokrates was famously good at making gods lose their tempers. Perhaps he had got the better of gla in their debate outside.

“Here in the City, they have to be registered before a magistrate,” Marsilia said. “I am such a magistrate. So is my father, and so is Crocus. We also have any number of gods here who would be delighted to give their blessing if that's necessary or useful. We're perfectly serious, and we're not about to yield Hilfa to you.”

“I need to speak to him.”

Marsilia's face was set. “I think you mean to hurt him. And I won't let you. We're guest-friends, Jathery. You won't hurt me, and I won't let you hurt Hilfa. And I think you owe me this for the help I gave you.”

Marsilia took my hand, and I took Thetis's hand in my other hand, so we were all standing there in a line with linked hands, the latrine-fountain closets behind us and Jathery between us and the door to the garden.

“If you want to talk to Hilfa, go ahead,” Thetis said.

There was a long moment of silence. “Very well, you are a pod, and I wish you all joy of it,” Jathery said. Gla bowed the sideways Saeli head bow, and we all solemnly echoed gla. Then gla spat out a long string of Saeli to Hilfa, who nodded at the end of it but did not reply.

Then Jathery turned to look at Marsilia. “You may be a pod, but Hilfa still belongs to me,” gla said.

“Then I'll buy him from you,” Marsilia said. She let go of my hand and pulled out a little leather purse and drew out a coin from it. “Here. Is he free now?”

Jathery took the coin and turned it between gla fingers. “Hilfa is,” gla said.

“And freedom is one of your attributes,” she said.

“You're consul,” gla responded.

“Then I will buy from you the freedom of all the Saeli on Plato, and all those who are hatched here or come here and choose to take oath.” She drew out another coin and handed it to Jathery.

“Yes,” gla said.

Then Marsilia deliberately shook out the purse. As she did, gla vanished on the instant, leaving us staring at the bare tiles where gla had been standing.

“Well, that was odd,” Marsilia said, with a quaver in her voice that had been absent the whole time she was standing up to Jathery. She stuffed the empty purse back into the fold of her kiton.

“I find I grow older but I learn nothing,” Sokrates said, ruefully.

“You mean being turned into a fly didn't stop you going head to head against gods?” Marsilia asked.

“Oh, that? But the unexamined life isn't worth living, you know. No, I was thinking of the wisdom of entering into marriage once again at my time of life.”

 

22

MARSILIA'S POD

I.
Marsilia

And there it was, the great achievement of my political career, in haste, in the fountain room of Thessaly. Platonic Saeli didn't need to ransom themselves individually from Jathery anymore. I had freed them all with a coin he had given me.

I don't know how I sounded, but I was frightened inside the whole time. I'd spent all that time with Jathery, thinking gla was Hermes, but seeing gla in gla real form threatening Hilfa was terrifying. If I hadn't spent that time with gla in disguise, and especially if I hadn't known that we were guest-friends, I doubt I'd have been able to stand up to gla. I think it was what gla wanted, though. Gla wasn't pretending. Gla would have liked to take back the power gla put into Hilfa. But gla was also tricking us, tricking me. Gla really wanted the Saeli to be free and equipped with Platonic ideas. Why else had gla given me the purse? It was one of gla riddles, and I think I guessed right.

I was focused on that, and it wasn't until Sokrates used the word marriage that I fully realized what I'd done to my friends.

“Marriage!” Thetis said, pulling her hand away from Jason's. I couldn't look at Jason, so I looked at Hilfa. His expressionless face was soothing.

“A pod isn't exactly a marriage,” I said. I was exhausted. The need to save Alkippe and then Hilfa had buoyed me up, and now that I had done it and they were both safe the relief came with a wave of tiredness and a familiar cramping in my belly that meant my bleeding would likely start the next morning.

“It's the Saeli way of forming a family,” Jason said, speaking gently and looking at Thetis in that way nobody ever looked at me. “Hilfa was talking about it last night after you left.”

“But I—” Thee's expression was comical as she looked from Sokrates to Hilfa to me and then back at Jason, who was standing there, solid and warm and reliable. You could always count on him to have your back.

“This is merely an expression of our intent to form a pod. We haven't gone to a magistrate or asked a god for blessing, only said we could,” I said. Jason had taken my hand again, and Hilfa was still clinging to the other. Jason's was warm, and Hilfa's was slightly cold, as was normal for him. “Hilfa's free now whatever we do, and so are the other Saeli. And anyway, nobody is trapped. Pods can be dissolved here. It takes the consent of all members, and the magistrate has to be satisfied by the arrangement for the care of children. Nobody who has been part of a pod dissolution may enter into any form of marriage for a year, including marriage at the Festival of Hera.”

Thetis sighed, and I thought she was going to accuse me of knowing too much law and not enough about people, the way she always used to. “It's really only that it's so unexpected,” she said. “Jason said Hilfa needed me, and then suddenly that.”

“He did need you,” I said.

“Yes, I saw. Jathery was so menacing. But a pod!” Thetis took a step backwards on the black and white tiled floor, and almost fell into the drain recess. She caught herself with a hand to the wall, laughing.