The Just City (28 page)

By the ninth month I was more than ready to give birth and get it over with. One afternoon I was sitting in the shade at Thessaly, drinking elderflower tisane and sucking a lemon. Aristomache was there—she had brought the basket of lemons. Sokrates and Pytheas were also sucking lemons while debating what it meant to make choices, and what constrained choices. Aristomache and I put in a word now and then, but largely it was a debate between the two of them.

“Apollo! What hyperbole!” Sokrates said. It always made Pytheas choke with laughter when Sokrates swore.

“But seriously, correct information,” Aristomache began, when Kebes came dashing in, looking as if he'd been chased by the Kindly Ones.

“What's the matter?” Sokrates asked, getting up at once and putting his arm around Kebes.

Kebes had been running so hard that he could hardly catch his breath for a moment. He leaned against Sokrates, and I could see that Sokrates, for all that he was old, had no trouble supporting him. “Workers. Message. Come and see!”

“A message?” Sokrates jumped, but to his credit he did not immediately drop Kebes.

“I can't read it. It's in that language.”

That proved that Kebes hadn't written it himself, I thought, except that it would be possible to argue that he was lying about not knowing English. Though if none of us knew English, that did change that. It could certainly be seen as suspicious that he was again the one to find the message.

Pytheas helped me to my feet. He had become quite expert at bracing himself so I could haul myself up, and did it automatically now. Since we had had the conversation about agape, nothing had changed and everything had changed. It was as if acknowledging it had made a difference, as if naming transmuted. I was sometimes a little shy with him now.

Aristomache folded a cloth over the lemons and set the basket in the shade. “I know English,” she said, getting up.

Kebes led the way. He didn't run, perhaps because he was winded or perhaps because he was aware that I could only waddle. Even so, his pace was too much for me and I trailed behind the others. Of course what Kebes had found was on the opposite side of the city—I could have guessed that. Even so, he must have sprinted all the way in the heat to have got so out of breath.

“My friend Herakles lives in Mulberry,” Kebes said as we walked. “The mulberries have been ripe, and the birds have been all over the tree, and the house. It happens every year. The workers clean the guano off afterwards, because it looks so awful. This year when it was clean there was also an inscription, but he couldn't read it. I came straight back here with him after he told me. I couldn't read it either, not even
no
.”

Mulberry was a perfectly ordinary seven-person sleeping house, down on the street of Artemis. The mulberry tree was splendid, one of the big ones with twisted branches. And indeed there was writing, in the Latin alphabet, inscribed neatly all around the eaves, where nobody except a worker could have reached without a ladder. I looked at it, assessing. Kebes could have done it on a ladder with a chisel, he'd had basic stone carving lessons at the same time I had. But it would have been a long job, and somebody would have been bound to notice.

Meanwhile, Aristomache was frowning. “I can't read it either,” she said. “It certainly isn't English.”

It wasn't Latin either. “What other language could it be?” I asked. “Klio said something about the workers speaking English or Chinese. Does anyone know Chinese? Does it use the Latin alphabet?”

“No, I don't know it, and it doesn't,” Aristomache said. “And I don't think anyone here knows it, not even Lysias. China's such a very different civilization.”

“But they use the Greek alphabet?” I asked.

“No, they have their own and I don't know it,” Aristomache said, astonishing me. I knew there were a multiplicity of languages, but two alphabets seemed more than enough! “It doesn't look like our letters at all. I suppose they might have transliterated it—” and then she laughed. “It's Greek!”

I looked at her in astonishment. “It's certainly not!”

“No, it is,” Pytheas said. “It's Greek spelled out in Latin letters.”

“What does it say?” Sokrates asked.

Kebes began to read it aloud, hesitating now and then when the worker had made some odd sound choice in using the wrong alphabet. “No, no, no, do not like work, do not like some work more, do not like feeding station, do not like, no, no, want to talk, want to make, do not want to work, do not want to animals, do not want to farms, do not want to build, not, not, do not want, no, no, no.” I could read it too, once I realized what I was looking at.

“Which worker wrote this?” Sokrates asked, looking wildly around as if he thought the worker would be waiting.

“No way to tell,” Aristomache said.

“There may be a record,” Kebes said. “Somebody may know which one they assigned to clean this house.” He didn't sound hopeful.

“If they can do this they can hold a dialogue,” Sokrates said, beaming. “I can speak and they can inscribe their answers! Want to talk! Wonderful!”

“Why did this one answer in this way now?” Pytheas asked. “And why up there?”

“It's where writing could be,” I suggested. “Lots of buildings have writing up there. They don't say this kind of thing; they have uplifting mottoes or the names of the buildings, but that's where inscriptions go. Perhaps it felt it could only write inside the lines?”

“Just like the bulbs,” Sokrates said. “I should have asked every one different questions so I'd know which one answered me.”

“Even you might have had trouble thinking of that many different questions,” Aristomache teased.

“I think that settles the question of whether the workers have free will and intelligence,” Pytheas said.

“Yes,” Kebes flashed at once. “Now you can stop thinking I did it.”

“Pytheas never thought you did it,” I said. “He argued persuasively that you wouldn't.”

Kebes stopped with his mouth open. “Really?” he asked, after a moment.

“Yes, really,” I said. “Ask Klio if you don't believe me.”

“I believe you. I'm just surprised.” He nodded at Pytheas, the closest he was likely to come to an apology.

“Pytheas avoids injustice,” Sokrates said.

Pytheas looked uncomfortable, though it was entirely true. Pytheas could sometimes be ignorant, but the only time I could think of he'd been unjust was that time with Klymene. Of course, he had been unjust to half the human race that time … “Lysias will have to believe you didn't do it,” he said to Kebes.

“I wonder what would happen if we gave them orders to write on the ground in the plaza of the garlands,” Aristomache said.

“Why there?” I asked. It was where the diagonal street of Athene intersected the straight streets of Dionysos and Hephaestus.

“It's big, and it isn't especially important, and it's near my house and Olympia,” she said. “It was just the first place I thought of.”

“Who can give them orders?” Sokrates asked.

Aristomache hesitated. “All the masters, but usually it's the ones who deal with them. If I wanted one to do something I wouldn't just tell it to, I'd check with somebody who knows. Someone on the Tech Committee. They might need to use a key.”

“Interesting,” Sokrates said.

“They're always saying we should only use them for important things. I don't need them often myself, except in the kitchens of course, and sometimes clearing the ground for mosaics. I usually just say in Chamber if I'm going to want one for that and somebody sorts it out so that I get the work done in a few days.” Aristomache was still staring up at the writing. “They are slaves, aren't they?”

“And they don't like it. Look how many times it says
no
,” I said.

“Of course, there was always slavery in antiquity,” Aristomache said, as if trying to convince herself of something.

“In most circumstances in Athens, the slaves could earn money and eventually buy themselves free,” Sokrates said. “Even from the mines sometimes. The status of
freedman
was as common, even more common, than slavery.”

“We fought a war to free the slaves,” Aristomache said. “It was the most—it was the defining act of my country in my century.”

“And which side did you take?” Kebes asked.

“Against slavery,” she said, taken aback. “Of course. But—”

“Then why did you agree to buy us?”

“You? What? We were rescuing you!” She put her hand to her head, sounding truly distressed.

“You must admit that you have not been used as slaves,” Sokrates said to Kebes. “The workers, on the other hand, have.”

“We will have to debate this in Chamber,” Aristomache said. “This is new evidence. I shall bring it up in the next meeting.”

“Meanwhile, can I give orders to the workers? Can the children?”

“You, I'm not sure. The children, definitely not. We decided that a long time ago. They were so young, and the workers are so powerful. Eventually, of course, they will be able to.”

“I thought we were considered adults now,” I said, patting my belly with one hand and putting my other on my gold pin.

“Yes, of course, but still in training for a while yet. You don't know everything you need to know.”

“And you do?” Sokrates asked. It was one of his deceptively gentle questions. I saw when it hit Aristomache. She turned to him.

“You're making it seem as if I took all these decisions on my own and approve of all of them, when you know I didn't. It was the consensus of the Chamber. You've been in Chamber, you know what it's like.”

“You have to take responsibility for decisions they made if you're remaining part of the Chamber,” Sokrates said.

“I do take responsibility. I just don't always agree with everything, and I did argue for devolving actual power to the children sooner.” She turned to me. “It will happen. We do know that we don't know everything either, and that you will understand the truth better than we do. Most of us know that, anyway. But you're eighteen years old. Give it time.”

“You make all the decisions and don't allow us any voice,” I said. “We respect you, but you underestimate us.”

“Some of us respect you,” Kebes amended.

“It seems neither the children nor the workers are as docile as you imagined,” Sokrates said.

“I'll bring the issue of the workers up in the next Chamber meeting,” Aristomache repeated.

“What about—” Sokrates began, and then I missed the rest of what he said because a pain the size of a library rammed into my belly, doubling me over. When I could hear again, Pytheas was holding both my hands and Sokrates was supporting me from behind.

“Ilythia be with you,” Sokrates said. “This is the baby's time.”

“Klymene said it hurt, but I hadn't imagined anything like that. Did I scream?”

“Anyone would,” Kebes said. He looked as if he felt sick. Pytheas too looked pale. He was clenching my hands tightly.

“You should get to the nursery before the next pain comes,” Aristomache said.

“There are more?” I asked. My teeth were chattering, even though it was a hot day.

“Oh you poor thing,” Aristomache said. She pushed Sokrates away and put her arm around me. “Let go,” she said to Pytheas. “We're going to the nursery. The rest of you should leave us. Birth is a women's mystery.”

“It is,” Pytheas said, as if he wanted to argue about that. He did not let go of my hands.

“Walk,” Aristomache said, and I began to walk. Pytheas came along, walking backwards, still holding my hands, Sokrates and Kebes stayed where they were. Aristomache's arm felt comforting and solid. Pytheas's hands felt as if strength was flowing from him into me.

“Have you done this?” I asked Aristomache.

“Never. But I have seen lots of women do it,” she said. “In my time it was a choice between a life of the mind, or love and babies. My mother chose the second. Most women did. Most women didn't even know they had the choice. I wanted—well, I couldn't have imagined shooing Sokrates away like that, or even having him dressing me down for sloppy argument, but that's what I wanted anyway. I wanted to have conversations with Sokrates more than I wanted anything. And I have that.”

“I want that too,” I said.

“And you have it,” Pytheas said.

Aristomache was steering me in the direction of the Florentine nursery. I wished it wasn't so far. “Are you two—no, I don't want to know.”

“We're friends in the finest Platonic tradition,” Pytheas said.

“Truly,” I confirmed. The strength that had seemed to come to me from Pytheas's hands finally reached my legs and I began to walk more steadily.

“Well that is the other thing I always wanted, and unlike you I never found it with anyone, man or woman,” Aristomache said.

The next pain came then, with no warning, catching me between steps. I managed to stay upright, holding onto Pytheas's hands and panting hard to avoid screaming again. It felt as if my lower belly were being wrung by a giant. “Ilithyia be with her, protect and defend her, aid her now,” Pytheas said, “Ilythia who brings the first light to new eyes, Ilythia who long ago Iris brought to floating Delos, Ilythia of the cavern, Ilythia the bringer forth, if ever I did anything for you, if ever I could do anything for you, hear me now, your suppliant. Hasten here and help Simmea.”

He sounded so sincere it was awe-inspiring. He didn't sound like somebody praying so much as somebody really having a conversation with a god. And the pain did seem to recede a little as he spoke. I could still feel it ripping through me but it didn't hurt as much. When it had gone and I could walk again I started forward.