The Just City (32 page)

“No,” he wrote.

“What name do they call you?”

“Call?”

“To address you, or talk about you when you're not there,” Sokrates said, stuffing the notebook and pencil back into his kiton. “Watch how we use names. Joy to you, Maia. How are you, Maia?”

“Joy to you Sokrates. I am well. How are you, Sokrates?” It felt very unnatural, and he laughed at my wooden delivery.

“I am very well. How is Simmea?”

I forgot what we were supposed to be doing and spoke normally. “Simmea is a little better, I think, but she's still very low and bleeding a great deal, and she keeps fainting. Charmides says she'll get over it, but I'm worried about her.”

Sokrates frowned. “Tell her I miss her,” he said.

The worker was writing something. We bent over to read it.

“Workers do not call names,” the worker had written.

“How about what the masters call you when they want you to do something?” Sokrates asked.

“Do not call name.”

“I don't think Lysias and Klio distinguish between them very much,” I said. “Lysias never seems to when he's talking about them. He thinks of them as interchangeable, except when they break down.”

“They're not interchangeable, they're definitely individuals and different from each other,” Sokrates said. “They've all been given permission to talk, but only some of them do.”

“Only-me,” the worker carved. “Individual. No name.”

“You should have a name,” I said. “A proper name, not a number.”

“What name only-me?” he asked.

I looked at Sokrates, and he shrugged. “How do you usually choose names?”

“From Plato's dialogues, or from mythology,” I said. “And we keep names unique. I don't know all the ones that have been used already. Ficino would know. He chooses the names for Florentia.”

“It's easy enough to think of appropriate mythological names,” Sokrates said, patting the worker. “But what kind of name would you like?”

He didn't answer, and then he inscribed a circle, twice. Then underneath he neatly inscribed the word “Write.”

“You can't be called Write,” Sokrates said. “A name can have meaning, but that's too confusing.”

“Learn?” he suggested.

I looked at Sokrates. “Does he really want to be called write, or learn?”

“He's just learning what names are, you can't expect him to understand at once what kind of things work for them,” Sokrates said.

“I understand that. But that those are the things he wants to be called speaks very well of him.” I was impressed.

“He has come to understanding in your city; naturally he is a philosopher,” Sokrates said.

“Give name?” the worker inscribed.

“You want me to give you a name?” Sokrates asked.

“Want Sokrates give name means only-me.”

I was moved, and Sokrates plainly was too. “You are the worker who answered me with the bulbs,” he said.

“Yes,” he wrote.

“Then I will call you Crocus,” Sokrates said. “Crocus is the name of that spring flower you planted. And that was the first action of any worker that replied to me, that showed what you were. I'll name you for your deeds. And nobody else in the city will have that name.”

“Worker Crocus,” he wrote, and then repeated the long serial number. “Only-me,” he added.

Then, without a word of farewell he trundled off up the street and began to rake the palaestra. I stared after him. “That is unquestionably a person,” I said.

“Now if only I can persuade him to give three hundred such demonstrations to each of the masters individually,” Sokrates said, smiling. “Sometimes they're not as clear as that,” he went on. “My dialogues with them can be very frustrating sometimes when I can't explain what things mean.”

“Well, that was clear to me. He's a person and a philosopher,” I said.

“A lover of wisdom and learning, certainly. If that is what makes a philosopher.”

“Plato said they had to have that and also be just and gentle, retentive, clever, liberal, brave, temperate, and have a sense of order and proportion.” Then I looked at Sokrates. “But you must know that. You said it yourself.”

“Nothing in the
Republic
is anything I ever said, or thought, or dreamed. The
Apology
is fairly accurate, as is the account of the drinking party after Agathon's first victory at the Dionysia. But even there Plato was inclined to let his imagination get the better of him.”

I wasn't exactly shocked, because I'd heard it before, though never so directly. “He just used your name when he wanted to express the wisest views.”

“Yes, that's the kind way of thinking about it. And I was dead and couldn't be harmed by it.” He sighed. “Not until I came here, anyway.”

“He was trying to write the truth, to discover the truth, even if he put his own words into your mouth,” I said.

“And do you think he found the truth?” he asked.

I paused, looking back at Crocus, still raking the sand. “I think he often did, and more important, I think he invited us all into the inquiry. Nobody reads Plato and agrees with everything. But nobody reads any of the dialogues without wanting to be there joining in. Everybody reads it and is drawn into the argument and the search for the truth. We're always arguing here about what he meant and what we should do. Plato laid down the framework for us to carry on with. He showed us—and this I believe he did get from you—he showed us how to inquire into the nature of the world and ourselves, and examine our lives, and know ourselves. Whether you really had the particular conversations he wrote down or not, by writing them he invited us all into the great conversation.”

“Yes, he did get that from me,” Sokrates said. “And he did pass that down to you. And, as I understand it, the world would certainly have been different and less good without that spirit of inquiry.”

“It must be so strange to see your own legacy,” I said.

“Strange and in many ways humbling,” Sokrates said. He patted my arm. “You should go, or your weaving students will be wondering where you are. Don't forget to tell Simmea I miss her and hope to see her soon.”

He walked off up the street and I went on to my own work.

 

30

S
IMMEA

“Are you all right? Say something,” Pytheas said after I'd been staring at them for a long moment.

“I'm all right. I'm cured,” I said. “But I—. You. How, why?”

They looked at each other for an instant, and then back at me. There might be gods who couldn't have deduced what I meant from that, but these two were not among them. “Asklepius told her?” Septima asked. “Why?”

“Nobody told me. I worked it out. It was obvious. I turned around and saw you and I knew.”

“Half the masters know about you anyway,” Pytheas said. “And Simmea won't tell anyone.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“You knew I helped to set up the city. Now I'm living in it for a little while, and still helping. It needs my help.” Septima frowned. “Is my brother right? Will you keep this secret?”

“Why is it a secret?” I asked.

“So I can live here quietly, without any fuss, and experience it normally,” she said.

I thought about Septima, about her strange halfway status in the library. Was she experiencing it normally? It didn't seem so, especially if half the masters knew who she was. Yet anyone would naturally want to live in the city, and without undue attention. “I won't tell the children who you are,” I said.

“Good enough,” Pytheas said.

Septima—Pallas Athene—turned to him. “That's not your decision.”

“Yes it is,” he said.

“Why?” She seemed to get taller as she spoke.

“Simmea's my votary. I take full responsibility for her. You can trust me that she'll keep her word.” All this time Pytheas kept his eyes on his sister and did not even glance at me.

“You are behaving irresponsibly and taking stupid risks,” Athene snapped. “I was against this intervention from the start, but you couldn't wait. Your votary. Is she now? Ask her if she is. You're besotted with her. It's Daphne all over again.”

“I am,” I said, full of my new-found clarity, and not considering whether it was a good idea to intervene.

“You are?” She towered above me now. She had a great helmet and a shield on her arm. “Do you even know what it means?”

“If he's Pytheas, I'm his friend. Since he's the god Apollo, I'm his votary. But you can trust me to keep my word without his guarantee. You know me well enough for that. I have always served you well. And I am a gold of the Just City. You helped to set it up. If you can't trust my word, what have we been doing here?”

Pytheas laughed. Athene turned on him angrily, then shook her head and shrank back down into her Septima form. “I'll trust your word,” she said. “As a gold of this city and my brother's votary.” She stalked off down the street, her hair flying behind her in the breeze.

I looked at Pytheas. “You're the god Apollo? You told me we were doing agape! You said you needed me.”

He blinked. His expression was surprisingly reminiscent of the moment in the palaestra when I'd beaten him up. “It's because I'm Apollo that I need you,” he said. “You help me so much.”

I took a step towards him. “And you didn't tell me because?”

“Because I didn't want to have this conversation?” He tried a smile. “Because I really am trying mortality and to live here and experience the city?”

“You're the god Apollo,” I repeated. It was strange, simultaneously surprising and inevitable. “Of course you are. I'm an idiot. I don't know why I didn't figure it out before.”

“I'm Pytheas,” he said. “That's real too.”

I took another step forward. “Can you turn back into a god at any moment, like Athene just did?”

“No.” He looked awkward. “I wanted the authentic experience. The only way I can take my powers up again is by dying. I'm here for the long haul. And you've really helped me understand so much about how it works.”

“She said you were taking stupid risks. Did she mean your becoming incarnate, or did she mean healing me?”

He nodded. “Healing you. But that as well, because I had to ask her for help, without my own powers. You were trapped in your body, in your sickness. It was horrible. I couldn't leave you like that for months or years.”

“It really was horrible,” I agreed. “I didn't care about anything. That was the worst. Worse than fainting all the time. Thank you for helping me.”

“But you're all right now?”

“I'm starving, but I feel as good as I ever did. But I've had an awful shock.” He hadn't moved, but I had closed the space between us and stood close in front of him. “You were taking stupid risks for me?”

“It wasn't all that—all right, yes, I suppose I was.” He met my eyes.

“You're a
god
.” A god. He was thousands of years old. He had unimaginable powers. And he was just standing there.

“That doesn't stop me being confused and wanting to learn things.”

“Evidently not.”

“Or truly liking you.” The strange thing was how little it changed the way I felt about him. I felt unworthy of him. But I had always felt unworthy of him. And there was still a vulnerability in his eyes. “Are you going to hit me?”

I reached out and tapped his chest lightly. “If I'm going to hit you we should go to the palaestra. There are people passing, and this temple is open all around. They'd see us wrestling in here.” It wasn't wrestling I wanted to do with him. It never had been. “But I think we should go to Thessaly.”

“Good idea,” he said. “For one thing, it's close. For another, Sokrates has been missing you. And thirdly, Sokrates knows. He's the only one. I didn't tell him. He recognized me.”

“Of course he did. I was there. And that's why he immediately started off on whether we can trust the gods.” I felt stupid for not understanding at the time.

Pytheas took my hand. His hand didn't feel any different from the way it always did—always when I was myself and cared about it, that is. “He can trust me,” he said. “And so can you.”

I looked at him sideways. “Those the gods love … tend to come to terrible ends.”

“That's Father. And … some of the others, I suppose. But I do my best for my friends. I can't do anything about Fate or Necessity, or directly against the will of other gods, but so far as I can, I always do my best for them.”

We started walking together towards Thessaly. I thought through all the stories I knew about Apollo. “What about Niobe?”

“She badmouthed my mother. Besides, I didn't say I didn't punish my enemies.” He was looking at me sideways, awkwardly.

“Well, being a god explains why you're so hopeless at being a human being sometimes,” I said.

He laughed. “I was so worried about you finding out. I can't believe you know and it doesn't make any difference.”

“It makes a difference,” I said.

“But you're talking to me the same way?” He seemed tentative.

“You're still you.” That was what I felt very strongly. Pytheas was still Pytheas, the way he always had been. I just understood him better now. It was like the thing with Klymene. I didn't feel that he'd been deceiving me, just that this was the thing he had kept quiet, a thing that helped me make sense of him. But the implications were still slowly sinking in. Maybe it was because my mind had been wrapped in wool for so long.

“And what you said to Athene?” he asked.

“That I'm a gold of this city and she'd better trust my word if she hasn't been wasting her time here for eight years?”