The Philosopher Kings (2 page)

It's easy to be adored when you're a god. Worship comes naturally to people. What I'd had with Simmea was a decades-long conversation.

I briefly considered killing myself and going back to Olympos anyway. But her last words and deed had been to stop me—she'd have figured out exactly what I was doing and why. She was extremely smart, and she knew me very well. She probably had some really good reason why I shouldn't do that, which she'd have explained at length and with truly Socratic clarity, if only she'd had time. I might even have agreed. I tried to think what it might have been. My mind was completely blank.

As I couldn't imagine why she'd stopped me killing myself and saving her life, I naturally began to think about vengeance.

“Who was it?” I asked Klymene. “Did we get any of them?”

Klymene has never liked me, and for extremely good reasons. Nevertheless, she is the mother of my son Kallikles. Her expression now was unreadable. Pity? Or did she perhaps despise me? Plato did not approve of giving way to strong emotion, especially grief, and at that moment I was rolling on the ground, clutching an arrow and weeping.

“I don't know,” she said. “They came by boat. It could have been anyone. These art raids have been getting worse and worse. They got away—the rest of the troop went after them, except that I sent young Sophoniba for you and stayed with Simmea myself.”

“She always liked you,” I said. I could hardly get the words out past the lump in my throat.

“She did.” Klymene put her hand on my shoulder. “Pytheas, you should get up and go home. Will there be anybody there?”

The thought of going home was impossible. Some of the Young Ones might be there, but Simmea would never be there again. Her things would be everywhere, and the reminder would be intolerable. “I want to find out who they were and avenge her.”

Klymene's expression was easier to read now; it was worry. “We all want that. But you're not being rational.”

“Are there any bodies?” I asked.

“No, thank Athene,” she said. “No Young Ones killed.”

“Wounded?”

“Simmea was the only one.”

“Then unless the troop catches them, this arrow is the only evidence,” I said, examining it. It was unquestionably an arrow, made of strong straight wood, stained with blood now. It was barbed and fletched exactly like all the arrows. We had all learned the same skills from the same teachers. It made war between us both better and worse. I turned it over in my hands and wished I'd never invented the things.

“The
Goodness
has been seen,” Klymene said, tentatively. “That doesn't mean it was Kebes. It could have been anyone. But it was sighted yesterday by the lookouts.”

The
Goodness
was the schooner Kebes had stolen when he fled from the island after the Last Debate. “You think it was Kebes?”

“It could have been. I didn't recognize anyone,” Klymene said. “And you'd think I would have. But if they were all Young Ones … well, maybe somebody else in the troop did. I'll check when they get back. Whatever happens we'll be retaliating, as soon as we know who and where. And if you want revenge, I'll do my best to see that the Delphi troop is included in that expedition.”

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it. The arrowhead was steel, which meant it was robot-forged, which meant it was old. There were still plenty of robot-forged arrowheads around, because people tended to reuse them when they could. Steel really is a lot better than iron. Of course, we were living in the Bronze Age. Nobody else in this time period actually knew how to smelt iron, unless maybe off in Anatolia somewhere the Hittites were just figuring it out. There was no use thinking it might have been pirates or raiders. This was one of our arrows, and the expedition had clearly been an art raid, and that meant one of the other republics.

“Did they take anything?” I asked.

“The head of Victory,” Klymene said, indicating the empty plinth where it had stood.

I expect you're familiar with the Nike, or Winged Victory of Samothrace—it stands in the Louvre in Paris, where it has stood since its rediscovery in the eighteen-sixties. There's also a good copy of it actually in Samothrace. The swept-back wings, the blown draperies—she was sculpted landing on a ship, and you can almost feel the wind. It's the contrast between the stillness of the stone and the motion of what is sculpted that makes her such a treasure. But she's headless in the Louvre, because Pico and Athene stole the head, the head which had for a time rested in our Temple of Nike. Her hair is swept back by the wind too, but her eyes and her smile are completely still. Her eyes seem to focus on you wherever you are. The head reminds me a little of the head of the Charioteer at Delphi, although it's completely different, of course, and marble not bronze. But there's something about the expression that's the same. I suppose Athene and I are the only ones who have seen her with the head, at Samothrace, and without, in the Louvre, and then seen just the head, in the City. Nobody else in the City had ever seen any part of her but the head. I tried to comfort myself that in some future incarnation Simmea, who loved the head and had died defending it, would be sure to see the rest of her. It only made me cry harder.

“We'll get it back,” I said, choking out the words.

“Yes.” Klymene hesitated. “I know I'm the worst person to be with you now, and I would leave you in peace, but I don't think you ought to be alone.”

I sat up and looked at her. She was the same physical age as all of us Children, almost forty now. She had been pretty once, lithe and graceful, with shining hair. She was still trim from working with the auxiliaries, but her face had sagged, and her hair been cut off at the jaw to fit under a helmet. She looked weary. I had known her for a long time. We'd both been brought to the Republic when we were ten. When we were fourteen she'd been a coward and I'd said it was all right because she was a girl, and she'd never forgiven me. When we were sixteen we'd shared the single worst sexual experience of my life, then had a son together. When we were nineteen and Athene had turned Sokrates into a fly and everything had subsequently fallen apart, we'd both stayed and tried to make the revised original Republic work, instead of going off to start fresh somewhere else.

“You're not any worse to be with right now than anyone else who isn't Simmea,” I said.

“How are you going to manage without her?” she asked.

“I don't have the faintest idea,” I said.

“I wouldn't have thought you'd have tried to kill yourself,” she said, tentatively. “It isn't what Simmea would have wanted. Your Young Ones will need you.”

“They need both of us,” I said, which was entirely true. The difference was that they could have had both of us. If I'd killed myself it would have been temporary. Oh, it would have been different being here as a god with all my abilities. Being incarnate made everything so vivid and immediate and inexorable. But I'd have been here and so would Simmea, and she knew that. Why would it have been being an idiot to kill myself to save her? She understood how temporary death would have been for me, how easy resurrection. If she'd let me do it we could have been having a conversation about it right now. There would even be advantages to being here as a god—there were all kinds of things I could use my powers for. For a start I could get us some more robots, unintelligent ones this time, and make everyone's life easier.

Naturally, I couldn't share these thoughts with Klymene. She didn't know I was Apollo. Nobody did except Simmea and our Young Ones, and Sokrates and Athene. Sokrates had flown off after the Last Debate and never been seen again. We assumed he was dead—flies don't live very long. Simmea was definitely dead. And deathless Athene was back on Olympos, and after twenty years probably still furious with me. If I'd killed myself and saved Simmea in front of her, Klymene would have been bound to notice. As things were, there was no need to tell her. Even without that she had no reason to like me.

“The Young Ones will need you all the more without Simmea,” Klymene said.

“They're nearly grown,” I said. It was almost true. The boys were nineteen or twenty, and Arete was fifteen.

“They'll still need you,” Klymene said.

Before I could answer, she saw somebody coming and stiffened, reaching for her bow. I leaped to my feet and spun around. Then I relaxed. It was the Delphi troop coming out. I bent down and picked up the arrow, which I'd dropped. It wasn't much of a memento, but it was all I had. “I'll go home,” I said.

“You won't … you won't do anything stupid?” Klymene asked.

“Not after Simmea's last request,” I said. “You heard her. She specifically asked me not to be an idiot.”

“Yes…” she said. She was frowning.

“I won't kill myself,” I specified. “At least, not immediately.”

Klymene looked at me in incomprehension, and I'm sure I looked at her the same way. “You shouldn't kill yourself because you don't know that you've finished what you're supposed to do in this life,” she said.

Not even Necessity knows all ends.

 

2

ARETE

You don't exist, of course. It's natural to write with an eye to posterity, to want to record what has happened for the edification not of one's friends, but of later ages. But there will be no later ages. All this has happened and is, by design, to leave no trace but legend. The volcano will erupt and the Platonic Cities will be extinguished. The legend of Atlantis will survive to inspire Plato, which is especially ironic as it was Plato who inspired the Masters to set up the City in the first place.

The more I think about this, the more I think that Sokrates was right in the Last Debate. It was fundamentally wrong of them to found the City at all. The story of humanity is one of growth and change and the accumulation of experience. We of the cities are a branch cut off to wither—not a lost branch, but a branch deliberately cut away. We are like figures sculpted of wax and cast into the fire to melt. When I asked Father why Athene had done this he said that he had never asked her, but he supposed that it seemed interesting, and she had wanted to see what would happen. In my opinion that's an irresponsible way for a god to behave. I intend to do better if I ever have the opportunity.

It may seem like hubris, but it really is possible that I might. Others of Father's children have become heroes, and Asklepius is a god. I am the daughter of Apollo, and Father says I have the soul of a hero. Sometimes I really feel as if I do, as if I could do anything. Other times I feel all too human and vulnerable and useless. It doesn't help that I have seven brothers. That's too many. They try to squash me, naturally, and naturally I hate being squashed and resist it as much as possible.

People talk all the time about pursuing excellence, and when I was younger my brothers made a game of this where they chased me. My mother was a philosopher and my father is an extremely philosophical god, and so of course they named me Arete, which means excellence. Maia, who comes from the nineteenth century, says that in her day it used to be translated as virtue, and Ficino worries that this is his fault for translating it into Latin as
virtus.
Maia and Ficino are my teachers. Ficino comes from Renaissance Florence, where it was considered the duty of everyone to write an autobiography, and since Renaissance Florence is almost as popular here as Socratic Athens, many people do. I, as you can see, am no exception.

I'm starting this all wrong, with my thoughts all over the place. Ficino would say it lacks discipline, and make me write a plan and then write it again to the plan, but I'm not going to. This isn't for Ficino, it isn't for anyone but myself and you, dear nonexistent Posterity, and I intend to set down my thoughts as they come to me. My brothers chased me and called it pursuing excellence, but I also pursue excellence, and Father told me that it can only ever be pursued, never caught—though my brothers caught me often enough, and turned me upside-down when they did.

I call them brothers, but they're all half-brothers, really. Kallikles is the oldest. He's Father's son by Klymene, conceived at the first Festival of Hera. Father and Klymene don't like each other much. But Klymene doesn't have any other children, and she and Kallikles have this odd relationship where they're not quite mother and son, but they're not quite not either. Maia says I should think of her like an aunt, and I suppose I do, insofar as I know what aunts are. We don't have any proper ones yet. When my brothers start to have children I'll be an aunt, and my little nieces and nephews will be overwhelmed by how many uncles they have.

Kallikles is the bravest of us. I used to call him “Bold Kallikles” as a kind of Homeric epithet—I have Homeric epithets for all my brothers, which I made up as a kind of revenge for the way they used to chase me. Kallikles fell and broke his arm climbing the tower on Florentia when he was twelve. His arm healed just fine, and when it was completely better he climbed the tower again, and didn't fall off that time. He has a girlfriend called Rhea who is a blacksmith, which means she's a bronze, which is a bit of a scandal as he's a gold. We don't actually have laws about that, the way they do in Athenia and Psyche, but it's definitely frowned on. He lives with her, but they're not married, and so nobody takes official notice of their relationship. Even so, it's awkward, and kind of embarrassing for me.

Next after him comes Alkibiades, whose Homeric epithet is “Plato-loving.” His mother is the runner Kryseis. Alkibiades lives in Athenia, and he didn't leave quietly—the rows must have shaken the city. He said he thought Plato's original system was the best—and he said it at great length and with no originality whatsoever. Mother and Father both argued with him. Almost everything I know about how the Festivals of Hera actually worked when we had them here comes from those arguments, as I won't be able to read the
Republic
until I'm an ephebe. Alkibiades thought it was a wonderful arrangement to have a simple sanctioned sexual union with a different girl every four months forever. Mother's question of what happens if you fall in love and Father's question of what happens if you don't fancy some particular girl you're drawn with didn't give him any pause at all. He answered every problem they mentioned by saying that if they'd kept doing it properly, the way Plato wanted, it would have been all right. I had only been thirteen at the time, and about as uninterested in love and sex as anyone could be, but I could see both sides. Having it all arranged without any fuss had advantages. But people did just naturally fall in love. Look at Mother and Father. It would have been cruel to stop them being together.