The Philosopher Kings (15 page)

“Ficino noticed something, but he didn't say anything,” I said. “And maybe Klymene—she was looking at Kallikles in a funny way. But nobody said anything. Is it going to happen again?”

He spread his hands. “I don't know. If you go back to Delos, probably. And in Delphi, perhaps.”

“You said it marks us,” Phaedrus said, coming back to that. “Who does it mark us to?”

“The gods,” Father said, casually. “If you meet them, they will know what you are, now.”

“But not Porphyry and Alkibiades and Euklides back on Kallisti?” Phaedrus asked.

“I don't know. The gods might recognize them as my sons. But they'd definitely know you three now.” Father put his hand against an especially large pine, patted it, then turned and started walking back toward the shore.

“So we could have resisted it?” I asked, following, the pine must underfoot still resisting my every step. “What would have happened?”

“If you'd been strong enough, you wouldn't have gone through the ritual. If you'd tried to resist and not been strong enough, you'd have done it anyway. Why didn't you resist?”

“It felt so right,” I said, and my brothers nodded, though Kallikles was biting his lip.

“But it wasn't you,” Phaedrus said. “You're here, you were on the ship. It wasn't you making us do that.”

“It was my power. Things done with my power keep on working, even though I'm here. I can't intervene. But things that have been set up keep on working. Delos is full of my power.” He frowned. “I don't have any power right now, myself. So I couldn't give you any. But Delos could.”

“We have power?” Phaedrus squeaked. I didn't laugh at the way his voice came out because I felt the same myself.

“You said it marked us, you didn't say it gave us
power
,” Kallikles said, rolling his eyes, though you think he'd be used to Father by now. “What
kind
of power? Power to do what?”

“Power according to your souls,” Father said, in that infuriating way he had, as if it were the most intuitive thing in the world and everyone knew it already.

“To do what?” Phaedrus repeated.

“To do whatever you want to, under Fate and Necessity,” Father said.

“Heal people? Walk on lava?” I asked.

“Yes, those sorts of things,” he confirmed. “But feel confident in your power before you try walking on lava! I don't know how much power you have, I can't tell without my own power. It may not be enough.”

I looked at Phaedrus, who was the one who wanted to control volcanoes. He was staring at the backs of his hands as if he'd never seen them before.

“I don't know exactly how it works,” Father went on. “Whether Necessity woke up what was there already, or if some of my power from the island came into you. But right now you can do things I can't.”

“We could have healed Mother,” I said before I thought.

“Too late,” Father said. “If I'd taken you there years ago, perhaps.”

“Why didn't you?” Kallikles asked. “If you knew it would do this?”

“I didn't know. I thought it might. And you were all so young. And we wanted you to be your best selves. I didn't know what that would be. It wasn't until you said you wanted to come on this voyage that any of you said you wanted to be heroes.”

“So we could do the kind of thing gods do? Like transforming people into things?” Phaedrus said, pensively.

“Yes, but it's not usually a good idea,” Father said. I saw an expression on his face that I hadn't seen since before Mother died. He was worried. “You have power. You might be able to do that. But please don't!”

“How do we use it?” Kallikles asked.

Father's brow furrowed a little. “You just reach out and use it. You'll work it out. You've all learned logic and self-control.”

“Not like the gods,” Phaedrus said, and laughed.

“How about time travel?” I asked.

“Don't try that!” He looked really worried now. “That does take experience. It isn't time travel. You step outside time and then back in. Being outside time isn't like being in it. Look, please don't try that until after I have my own powers and I can show you how to do it. Terrible things could happen to you. You could get lost forever.” He laughed suddenly. “This reminds me of when the boys were all starting to walk at once! Suddenly nothing was safe, and we had no idea what you could get into or do. Simmea—am I ever going to stop missing Simmea?”

“Ever is a long time for a god,” I said. “Can we use this power to keep from dying?”

“Your body will have to die, eventually. But you can keep it healthy meanwhile. And you don't have to stay dead, if you choose to be a god.”

It was such a scary thought. “You'll help us?” Phaedrus asked.

“What, I have to run entry-level divinity classes now? Of course I will.” He hesitated. “You're heroes. In some ways, you have more ability to use your powers than I do mine, even when I have mine. Gods are bound by Fate and Necessity, of course, but we're also under the edicts of Zeus—we can't use our powers to interfere in human affairs unless we're asked. You can keep right on interfering as much as you want because you're still mortal for the time being.”

“What?” Phaedrus sounded affronted. “What about what Athene did setting up the Republic? Wasn't that interfering in human affairs?”

“The Masters prayed to her for help doing it,” Father said. “She could grant their prayers. She couldn't have done it alone.”

“And buying the Children?” I asked.

“The Masters decided to do it. She just chose to help. It was all human action and the consequences of human action.” He looked helpless.

“And what she did to Sokrates?” Kallikles asked.

“He was her votary. You can do whatever you want to your votaries. And no other gods can do anything to them.” He looked ashamed. “We don't always behave as well as we should.”

“And it'll be made into art?” I asked.

“Eventually, inevitably, yes,” he said. “Everything we do will be.”

“What?” Kallikles asked.

“I told Arete this. Our lives are art. It's part of being a god.”

“And for a hero?” he asked.

Father shrugged. “It depends on their deeds.”

The three of us looked at each other, and then back at Father. He shook his head. “Just be careful. And try to be careful what other people see. They'll react to you very differently if they know. Think carefully.”

“Rhea,” Kallikles said. Of course, she would be his first thought. “I'll have to tell her as soon as we get back.”

Father looked at him sympathetically. “Maybe she'll understand the way Simmea did.”

Erinna, I thought, sadly. There were already too many gulfs between us. My age, and Father's nature, and her silver rank, and now this.

Then Phaedrus gasped, and we turned to him. He was a little way behind, and he was walking a handspan or so above the pine must of the forest. It didn't seem strange, and then it did, to see my brother walking on air unsupported. Bold Kallikles took a leap and joined him. I hesitated, but Phaedrus put out his hands to me, grinning. I reached for his hand and took a step up onto nothing, and the nothing held me up, and we were all standing above the ground, walking on air. The strangest thing was that it didn't take any effort and didn't feel unnatural. It was as if I'd always been able to do it but had been shuffling away on the ground out of habit. I ran a few steps up the air, laughing, until my head was almost at the top of the pines. Then I saw Father, still scuffing his feet down in the must, and stopped.

“All right,” he said. “Now before you go any further up, show me how you're going to come down.”

Coming down was difficult, much harder than going up. We couldn't do it for a moment. I figured it out first—I took big exaggerated steps downward, as if descending an invisible staircase, and the boys copied me. When my feet touched the earth I felt unexpectedly heavy and almost fell. It reminded me of how walking on Amorgos felt strange after the motion of the ship. I took a cautious step, and then another. The boys were down now too, staggering and shaking their heads.

“What else?” Phaedrus asked. “What else can we do?”

“I really don't know,” Father said. “You'll have to find out for yourselves, find your limits. You should be looking for your domain, what you care about, where you have excellence. I told you about that. It's different for everyone. And go slowly, be careful. Test what you do. Think like philosophers. Pursue excellence, in this as in all things.”

I wanted to try things. But I was afraid, too. I wanted to be a god, or I had thought that I did. Now I wasn't sure. I could see a chasm opening between me and everyone but Father and my brothers. I didn't need the warning to hide my new powers from the others. It was the same way I felt about growing up. I wanted to be grown up, of course I did, to vote in the Assembly and be assigned a metal—gold, of course, and there wasn't much doubt I'd make it. At the same time I didn't want to stop being a child, secure, looked after. There were ways that was comfortable. I'd always been the youngest in the family, and there were advantages to that. There were advantages to being human. Not the only one Father ever talked about, dying and being reborn as a completely new person. I couldn't see that as an advantage at all! I liked being me, and I wanted to keep on doing it. The advantages I could see were more to do with being like everyone else, living the kind of life we all lived. Having somebody love me one day, even if it couldn't be somebody as wonderful as Erinna. Being excellent but still relatively normal. Like Mother, I thought, instead of like Father. But I had the power now. I couldn't pretend I didn't.

“I want to be free and choose for myself,” I said, as we came out of the trees again just above the beach. I hadn't disliked feeling in the hand of Fate. But the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to feel that again. Fate and Necessity are what binds the gods. I wasn't sure I wanted to be bound that way.

“Then keep away from gods,” Father said, looking over his shoulder at me, half-smiling. Then suddenly he looked serious. “One thing you will have enough power to do now, all of you, is reach the gods with your prayers. Be careful what you pray, and what you ask and whose attention you draw.”

On the beach some people were preparing food, and others were racing and wrestling on the sand as if they were in the palaestra. The
Excellence
was bobbing sedately at anchor. Clouds were blowing up out of the west and glowing rose and violet in the rays of the lowering sun. (Since I'd left home I seemed to spend a lot of time looking at the sky. It was always changing, yet it was the one thing that was the same everywhere.) Nobody took any notice of us coming back, except Erinna, who waved happily as she caught sight of us, and Neleus, who raked us with a dark-eyed glance before turning back to the fire he was building.

 

13

APOLLO

I had guessed that Delos might have an effect on my Young Ones, but had not quite thought through what that would mean. I knew it when I saw them coming back aboard to sleep that night. The three of them had a new look about them that I nevertheless recognized. They were always beautiful, and always moved well—everyone brought up in the City knew how to move well. But now there was something about them, a certain sleekness, a not-quite-hidden glitter, as of a scarf draped carelessly over treasure. They looked like Olympians in disguise.

After the Last Debate, Simmea and I set up housekeeping together in Thessaly, which had been Sokrates's house. We took all the children belonging to us—Neleus, and my three boys. I took Kallikles, Alkibiades and Phaedrus from the city crèches. Many people wanted their babies but couldn't identify them. There was no difficulty with mine. I'd have known them by their heroic souls, but anyone could tell at a glance from their eyes and bone structure. Phaedrus's blue eyes looked strange against his dark skin, especially then, when he was five months old. Alkibiades was nine months old, and Kallikles was just over a year.

We also collected Neleus, who was also five months old. Simmea frowned when I carried him into Thessaly. “I swore to Zeus and Demeter not to treat him differently from the others,” she said. “They're all my children.”

“They're all your children, and you won't be prejudiced in his favor in any way, but here he is,” I said. Then she took him and hugged him as if she'd never let him go.

It only took a couple of days for Simmea to decide that Plato was right, or at least that the two of us couldn't manage four lively boys all day and all night. We took to leaving them in the nursery for several hours in the day so that we could get things done. There they were being brought up according to the precepts of Plato, communally, by people trained in early infant care. It didn't hurt them, or at least I don't think it did.

I had always known all my children were mine, always known they were heroes, always been able to pick them out of a crowd. Power didn't make any difference to that. I looked at them across the deck, trying to see where it did make a difference. Arete met my eyes, and as I looked away I recognized and identified my emotion.

I was envious, something I had rarely experienced. Envy is like jealousy, but quite distinct. Envy is when somebody else has something and you wish you had it too. Jealousy is when they have something and you wish you had it
instead.
I have felt jealous of people, usually when the thing I wished I had was somebody's attention. It's hateful, far and away my least-favorite emotion, because it makes me less than I could be. I dislike feeling it, and try to avoid it. Envy has been much rarer for me, because apart from people's attention there's normally very little that I want that I can't just have, and very little of that is something anyone else could have anyway.