The Philosopher Kings (21 page)

He smiled at me. “I've been using oil. But I'll try it. Go on. You were going to give me the reason you don't believe the angelic orders are perfect. Do you believe that God is perfect?”

“Plato talks about the world of Forms and the nature of reality, and the perfect God that is Unity. You think that's the same God as the Christian God the Father, but I see no evidence for it.”

“It makes logical sense. Why do you want evidence?”

I shook my head. “Why do you deny the need for evidence, and try to explain away evidence that doesn't fit your structure? We know Athene exists, and we know she's pretty much the way Homer describes her, and so we can make a reasonable guess from that and from the way she behaved and the way she talked when she was here and from things like encouraging us building temples and having festivals and sacrifices, that the Olympians exist and are pretty much, if not exactly, the way the Homer described them. Plato was wrong about that. Plato would have censored Homer because of showing the gods behaving exactly the kind of way Athene behaved.”

“But the angels, and Homer's gods if you want to call them that, are on a level between us and God.”

“Perhaps. What I think is that in the Allegory of the Cave, where we are the prisoners watching shadows flickering on the cave walls, perhaps the gods are the things behind the fire casting the shadows.”

“There are entire hierarchies of levels, with different angels, and the Forms are part of that.” He reached toward his eyes again, and again stopped himself.

“I've read your theses. I agree that the internal logic makes sense. You don't have to go through it all again for me now.”

“But if you can follow the logic—”

“I can follow the logic and still continue to disagree, when the logic doesn't fit the facts! What we know about Athene does not lead us to be able to deduce anything about unlimited omnipotent deities that may or may not exist, and may or may not be in overall control of the Olympians. You didn't ask her about this, did you? You had plenty of chances. She came to almost all your debates.”

“All of them unless they were about metaphysics,” he said, and smiled. “She never wanted to talk about that. And I like to work things out for myself.” Suddenly the palaestra was full of children, running and shouting, as they were released from their lute lesson.

“But you must see that when you build huge complex structures of dialectic that purport to reconcile Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Buddhism with the presence here of Athene, it has to fit the evidence as well as making logical sense.” I raised my voice a little and leaned forward eagerly as the children streamed past us.

“It fits the facts if you acknowledge that all the wise are in agreement about everything essential. It's just a case of understanding how and reconciling supposed contradictions. And the reason we see supposed contradictions and don't understand everything about what Athene did is because we're too imperfect,” he said, also leaning forward until our foreheads were nearly touching.

I moved back and sat up straight again. “In saying that, you have left the path of philosophy. Literally. You're denying sophia, betraying what she really was.”

“If we became angels ourselves, which in my system we might be able to achieve, then we could understand what she was. For now, we don't fully understand. We can't.”

“I can't believe that,” I said. “And that's why I'm going to leave this city, because this isn't just a disagreement where I can accept the majority vote was against me, this is about our own beliefs and practice. I can't believe it, and I can't practice it.”

“You don't have to leave, even though you disagree. We've voted to accept it as the majority religion and practice it at festivals, but we'll have freedom of conscience. You can believe what you want.” He reached out to pat my arm, then thought better of it and drew his hand back.

“But I'd have to teach it, and I can't do that,” I said.

“You wouldn't have to believe it to teach it!”

“You might not, but I would.” I stood up. He stayed where he was on the wall.

“Don't go. Plotinus and Sokrates and Tullius and Myrto are dead, and I almost never see Ficino. Klio's marvelous, and some of the Children are coming along, but there are too few people here who can stretch my mind.”

“Are you really suggesting I stay here just to argue with you?”

“Yes!” He laughed suddenly. “How absurd this is.”

I laughed with him. And then I left the City of Amazons and went to the Remnant, to start again.

 

17

ARETE

All my life I'd heard people talk about Kebes and the Goodness Group and the Lost City as if they were all one thing, and it took a lot for me to take it in that they weren't. Kebes was a person, a person now calling himself Matthias, and the Goodness Group consisted of a hundred and fifty people with divided opinions about things, and they weren't one Lost City, they were a whole network of civilization. It was a bit of a shock. The other thing I had never thought about until I talked to Aristomache was that of course they had left during the Last Debate, or at the very end, at the moment when Sokrates turned into a gadfly. They didn't know anything about what had happened afterward. They didn't know that we hadn't seen Athene since, until Father told them so. They didn't know that theirs was only the first defection, nor that the rest of us had lived in a constant state of warfare. They hadn't taken any art when they left, they hadn't taken anything but the
Goodness
and their own skills. All this time they'd been doing what Mother had always said people ought to do and making more art instead of squabbling over the art we had. They'd been doing the same with technology too, starting with what they had and knew and going on from there.

I slept in my hammock on board, ready for my watch that began at dawn. I woke early and went up on deck before the sky began to pale. I had thought of a safe way of testing to discover whether I could fly, but I needed to be alone with my brothers to try it. Of course, wonderful as sea voyages are, being alone is almost impossible to manage. Even conversations are constantly being interrupted. I wanted to try diving from the deck, which I had done several times to go ashore, but instead of diving, fly. If it didn't work then I'd hit the water as normal. I had forgotten that the deck lights would be on, and that Neleus and the other members of the Nyx watch would be around, even with the ship safely tied up at harbor.

I took my turn on watch, though it was as unlike the watch of the day before as anything could be. I sat at the masthead with nothing to see but Marissa on one side and the rippling sea at the other. Phaedrus came up part way through and told me the ship's council were meeting, which didn't surprise me. I hoped we'd go to Lucia and the music festival. I liked music, and I wanted to meet more of the Goodness Group. “Mother would have liked them,” I said to Phaedrus.

He nodded thoughtfully. “I think she would. Except maybe for the religious stuff.”

“But why couldn't it be true? If Father's incarnate now, why shouldn't Yayzu have done the same thing in Roman times, the way Aristomache says?”

“Oh, interesting, I hadn't thought of that.” Phaedrus put an arm around the mast and leaned out, looking over the city.

“Can you fly?” I asked, seeing that.

“Walk on the air like we did on Ikaria? I haven't tried it this high up, but I'm sure I could.”

“No, really fly, swoop about like a bird. I feel I can, but I haven't tried it because I don't want anyone to see me.”

“No, it would be pretty conspicuous.” He grinned. “I don't feel that I could, but I don't feel that I couldn't either. Have you found anything else you can do?”

“Understand languages I don't know. Maia and Aristomache started speaking some strange language yesterday and I understood it clearly, though I'd definitely never heard it before.”

“Wow.” He looked impressed. “Hard to test. Though I suppose you could go around asking the Masters and the Children to say something in their birth languages. But they're supposed to have forgotten them. I've never heard anyone speak in them. Maia's usually so properly Platonic, too. Which of them started it?”

“Aristomache. I suppose in the Goodness Group things are different.”

“I don't think they were the ones who raided us. They don't even have any art that isn't Christian, why would they want the head of Victory? But I hope Father believes that.”

“Who do you think it was?” I asked.

“Psyche or the Amazons, like normal,” he said. “I believe Alkibiades that it wasn't Athenia, and Sokratea has never broken a treaty without a declaration.”

“Do you think Father will believe it?”

“There would have to be good evidence. But it should be easy enough to find out where the
Goodness
was at the time, once we catch up with them. I hope he will accept it. If not, it's going to be exceedingly awkward. And if he does start to believe it, I hope he doesn't want to go straight home and immediately get vengeance there. I hope we go to the music festival.”

“So do I. Will you do me a favor? When we get the chance, I want to go off somewhere and test flying, and test lifting you when I fly,” I said.

“Sure. I want to try that too. And the language thing. I wonder if we all have the same powers or if we all have different ones.” He sounded excited to find out. “The only thing I've tried is healing.”

“Who did you heal?”

“Caerellia had a bad tooth, and I fixed that. And one of the women at the feast last night had a growth in her belly. It felt uncomfortable being near them, and I knew what to do, so I just did it.”

“I haven't felt anything like that. But maybe I just haven't been near anyone who's sick. Though Ficino's awfully old and frail, there isn't anything actually wrong with him, at least not as far as I know.”

“I'll try walking by him and see if I feel anything, and if there is, put it right. By the dog, this is great!”

“Aren't you worried about our powers at all?” I asked.

“I'm worried about Fate and Necessity, and screwing things up badly, like getting lost if I try to go outside time and that sort of thing,” he said, after a moment's hesitation. “I'm excited about the powers, though. I want to find out what we can do and how it works and have fun with it. I understand why old Kallikles is worried about telling Rhea. But we've never been like everyone else, really. This just makes it more solid.”

“Do you still want to develop an excellence of volcanoes?”

He took a step up onto the air and then back down onto the masthead beside me. “I really do. Imagine being able to direct the lava. Imagine bathing in it. Imagine having control over it.”

I shuddered, imagining burning up. The volcano had always frightened me. “You can definitely have that.”

Erinna called him to stop loitering and get about his duties, so he went back down to the deck, where she had him coiling rope. I stayed at the masthead. Now I was finally getting my free time to think, and I was a little bored.

When my watch was over and I went down to the deck, Phaedrus came up to me. “Nope,” he said. “Nothing wrong with Ficino that I can tell. Also, I got Maecenas and Ficino to say things in their old languages, and they were completely incomprehensible. But we're going to the festival.”

“Good. What did you get Ficino to say?”

“Some poetry. It sounded a bit like Latin, but more sing-song. I could make out the occasional word that pretty much was Latin, but that's all.”

I found sitting Ficino in the agora of Marissa, drinking wine and talking to a group of locals about Plato. He drew me deftly into the discussion, which was examining the question of whether this was a republic. It seemed to me quite clear that it was, and that it was as Maia had said the night before, one of the fabled republics Plato had heard of.

Sitting there, though, I realized that their classes were much more pronounced than ours. There's a thing people say, that you can tell somebody is gold without checking their cloak pin. It means they are truly excellent, so much so that their quality really shows. People used to say it about my parents. In Marissa, you really could tell, but not because of shining excellence. The people talking to Ficino were all golds, and they were all free to sit drinking wine in the middle of the afternoon. They were cleaner and somehow glossier than the people working around us. I watched a man carrying a sack and a woman buying vegetables. Both of them wore bronze pins. Their kitons were shabbier, more faded, frayed at the edges. Of course, there are always people who let their clothes fall into disrepair. But this wasn't a case of sloppy individuals or personal idiosyncrasy. The people sitting with us all had more embroidery on their kitons, and while none of them were fat they tended to be a little plumper than the others. I thought back to the feast the night before. Had everyone inside the hall been a gold? I thought perhaps they had. This visible class difference was nothing like the poverty in the Kyklades. But it was strange to me.

Just then a woman came up to our table with a pitcher. Because I'd been thinking about it I noticed that she was wearing a bronze pin, of the same design we used at home. I also saw that there was something odd about her attitude. She seemed somehow lacking in confidence. She refilled our wine cups, deferentially, and one of the men paid her—paid her with a coin. I had read about money, but not seen it before. I tried not to gape.

After a while, I persuaded Ficino to walk through the city with me. As we walked I drew him around to the subject of the verses he'd recited to Phaedrus. He repeated them to me patiently, they were by Petrarka on the subject of someone thinking about how people in future ages were deprived by not being able to see a woman called Laura. He then translated them into Latin for me. I had understood them perfectly. So, clearly my divine language ability worked on all languages. It seemed as if there would be places it would be more useful than on Kallisti, where everyone spoke Greek and Latin and nobody spoke anything else, but it still seemed like a fun ability. I wondered whether Father could do it. I wondered whether I could speak the other languages or only understand them. That would be hard to test without giving myself away, but maybe I could try it with Father.