The Philosopher Kings (32 page)

We had envoys aboard to Kallisti from Lucia—to all the five cities. And we had people who wanted to go to other Lucian cities, and a handful like Nikias who wanted to come back to the Remnant. There were no more secrets about where the Lucian cities were. Timon had given Maecenas a map, a beautiful thing, drawn like an illuminated manuscript, embellished with dolphins and triremes, with all their cities neatly marked.

“Ah,” Father said, when he saw it, and then when we looked at him curiously he just said “Beautifully drawn.”

We called at the Lucian cities, one after another, where the news that Kebes was dead and the
Goodness
destroyed was met each time with shock and horror. Aristomache tried to explain to them that it wasn't really our fault, but it was hard to avoid feeling guilty nevertheless.

“The problem is that it's a subtle complex thing and hard to explain,” she said to me as we sailed toward Marissa. “Matthias was in the wrong, and he started the attack. But you did destroy the
Goodness
, and that does destroy our civilization. And we were doing so much good.”

“The
Goodness
would still be safe if Matthias hadn't attacked us,” I said. It felt strange to call Kebes by his other name.

“Indeed,” she agreed. “That attack was wrong and unprovoked. And you didn't destroy the
Goodness
on purpose. The wind changed. It was Matthias's fault for using a fireship and trying to destroy this ship. God punished him. But he has punished all of us for Matthias's hubris.”

It was strange. I knew Kallikles had made the wind change. In one way that did make it unquestionably a divine action. But I was much less ready than Aristomache to see it as part of Providence, or being inherently just. To Aristomache, even though she had known Athene, the actions of the gods were something that happened on a different moral plane. To me they were not, they couldn't be. “Kebes—Matthias—was one of your leaders,” I said.

“One of them, yes, but one among many. You saw how we didn't all follow him.”

“I did. But he wasn't acting alone, either.”

“The other conspirators, those who survived, were condemned to iron for ten years. I thought you heard that.” A cloud passed over the sun, and in the changed light Aristomache looked old and frail, though she was nowhere near as old as Ficino had been.

“I heard it, but I didn't understand it.”

“They're reduced to iron, the fourth rank,” she said.

“We have irons, but it isn't a punishment.” The idea was very strange to me. “Do you mean that they'll be slaves?”

Aristomache winced. “Not slaves. But the irons do all the hardest work. They mine, and do all the things nobody else wants to. Especially in the new cities it's dangerous and difficult work.”

I thought about it. It seemed almost like slavery. And the way Kebes behaved seemed like putting pride above the good, exactly as Plato said timarchy began. Sparta had been a timarchy, valuing honor above truth. But saying this to Aristomache would hurt her without helping anything, and she was among the best of the Lucians. I was glad she was coming to the City with us as one of the envoys, and glad that Auge was another—though poor Auge was seasick, even in these calm breezes.

We set people down and picked up more envoys at all eight Lucian cities. I wasn't allowed ashore anywhere, though I sometimes had a chance to swim. Maecenas wasn't taking any more risks with the ship.

I kept on grieving for Ficino. Maia missed him even more. She wasn't grieving extravagantly the way Father had. She withdrew into herself and never mentioned him. She spent hours standing at the rail in the wind. She avoided Aristomache much as Erinna was avoiding me.

“He always said he'd die when he was ninety-nine,” I said, coming up next to her.

She jumped. “Arete, don't creep up on people that way!”

“I wasn't creeping up, you were completely locked in your thoughts.”

“It's not true that I don't love people,” she said, out of nowhere. She had Ficino's hat crushed between her hands.

“Of course it's not! Who said that?”

“Ikaros,” she admitted.

“That idiot.” I had never met Ikaros. “What does he know about it? You love lots of people. You love me.” I put my arm around her.

Maia snorted, half way between laughter and tears.

“Come on, Magistra, you haven't taught me anything for days.” It was the best way to cheer her up, giving her something to do. And besides, my birthday was coming the next month, and with it my tests and my oath. I wanted to be ready.

We sailed on among the islands, and I wished them unknown again and empty of consequences. I stood my watches and did lessons with Maia and had occasional conversations with Father and my brothers. We did not stop at Ikaria, but I looked longingly at the shore and the pine woods as we sailed past.

We struck the shore of Kallisti from the northeast, and so we saw the City of Amazons first, immediately recognizable with its immense statues on the quayside. We sailed on. “Home first,” Maecenas said, decisively, and nobody disagreed.

We arrived home at sunset on the twenty-ninth day after our departure, though it felt as if we had been away for centuries. The mountain was rumbling and belching out red-black streams of lava as we sailed in. “Just a normal little eruption,” Phaedrus said reassuringly.

“You know?” I asked.

“I do,” he said, sounding a little awed.

It is a testament to how much had happened on the voyage that our gaining god-powers seemed such a minor part of it. And yet the story of what had happened to us wouldn't make an epic. Or would it? I thought it over. It seemed too ambiguous, but Homer embraced ambiguity. Homer had heroes on both sides. I remembered Ficino saying he'd fight for Troy. How would people tell the story of Kebes? Would they tell how Apollo beat him in a contest and skinned him alive? Or would it all be forgotten as Father believed? But Father had said everything the gods did became art, and he was still a god. Maybe it was more like a tragedy, heroes overcome by their flaws.

We tacked in to the harbor and tied up, safe at the wharf, home at last.

It felt strange to be greeted by Baukis and Boas and Rhea, to see people I knew well who hadn't been with us. I had almost forgotten they existed, that home was still there behind us all the time. It must have been how Odysseus felt coming back to Ithaka.

 

26

APOLLO

I spent the voyage home composing a song. It was the song I had been reaching for for months, the song that wouldn't come, because I couldn't make any true art about Simmea's death while I didn't understand why she had chosen to die.

I had been maddened with grief, and now I was not. I still missed Simmea. But I understood now that she had died to increase my excellence and the excellence of the world, and I would increase it, for her, for myself, and for the world. I would savor this mortal life while I had it, learn and experience all I could. And when it ended, I would take what I had learned and be a more excellent god and make the world better. That was what I always wanted. That was why I had chosen to become mortal.

The song I had sung in the colosseum at Lucia had been a cold Platonic composition, perfect but passionless. This one was the opposite. It made the Dorian mode burn with passion. If I had been on Olympos my hair would have stood on end and glowed as I made the song. I would also have concentrated and done nothing else for however long it took until the song was done. As it was, onboard the
Excellence
I had to stand my watches, sleep, and eat, and beyond that I was constantly interrupted. There's no privacy on a ship, and it's hard to be alone. I couldn't so much as play a chord without someone stopping to listen, and I didn't want anyone to hear this song before it was ready. The ship was teeming with people—in addition to the surviving crew we had a whole slew of envoys. Maecenas was very firm that I wasn't allowed ashore. I don't know what he thought I was going to do, or whether he thought the Lucians would try to kill me if they had the chance. I wanted nothing more than to be quiet somewhere alone to work on the song, but instead I trimmed the sails and talked to people who wanted to talk to me. These frustrations too were part of mortal life, and fueled the song.

Every day I went up on deck to watch the sun rise, as the lyrics and music echoed through my head. One morning Maia was there by the rail, twisting Ficino's hat in her hands as she stared out to sea. Always thin, she was gaunt now, and her silvering hair wisped out of its neat braid in the sea wind.

“One thing I have learned about grief,” I said to her, “is that nothing anyone says to you is useful, but it can still be comforting sometimes to know you're not alone and not the only person who cares about missing them. Ficino was my friend too.”

She smiled through her tears. “Thank you, Pytheas. And Simmea was also my friend.”

“We have to do the work they left undone,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “Oh, I know. But it makes me so tired to think of it.”

“We have to stop the art raids, and come to an equitable solution with the Lucians, and bring up the next generation to be more excellent than their parents.”

“The Lucians skin heretics, and have gladiatorial fights, and their irons are almost like slaves,” Maia said. The edge of the sun showed red over the rim of the world.

“Nobody's perfect,” I said. “The Romans had gladiatorial combats, they dislocated the arms of heretics in Renaissance Florence, all of the classical world had slavery, and so did we in the City before we realized that the Workers were self-aware.”

“Plato—”

“Plato was laying out an unachievable ideal, to spur people to excellence,” I said. “What was it Cicero said about Cato?”

“That Cato acted as if he was living in Plato's Republic instead of the dunghill of Romulus?” She switched into Latin to quote it.

“That's it. Plato wanted to give people something to aspire to. That's why he isn't here, he didn't really imagine it as a possibility, just as something to encourage everyone to think, and to work toward excellence. In reality, while we aim for excellence, we're always living on somebody's dunghill. But that doesn't mean we're wrong to aim to be the best we can be. And the Lucians aren't all like Kebes. If they were we'd all be dead. We can find a way to help them toward excellence.”

She sighed. “Everything is complicated and compromised.”

“It is,” I said. “That's the nature of reality.” A gull swooped down low over the water.

“Ficino understood how to go on amid the compromise and find a way forward,” Maia said.

“Yes. He took over the Laurentian Library for the Florentine Republic after Piero de Medici fled,” I agreed.

“How do you know that?” she asked. “Were you there?”

I had frequently been there, but of course I didn't want to tell her so. “I've heard him talk about it,” I said, truthfully. “I know nobody is supposed to talk about their lives before they came to the City, but everyone does.”

“I don't think we were wrong to make idealistic rules,” Maia said, her voice shaking a little. “I don't know, Pytheas. I've been trying to make the Republic work since I was a young woman, and I'm getting old now. Ficino was always so delighted to be here, to be doing it. He loved everything, except when we divided after the Last Debate. When I came back from Amazonia he was so pleased to see me. I don't know how I can take it all up again without his enthusiasm to keep me going.”

“I'm the worst person to ask,” I said. “I only just worked out that what I'm supposed to do is keep on working and doing Simmea's share too, as best I can.”

“I can't possibly do Ficino's share!” she said, horrified.

“You can do some of it, and I'll do some of it, and other friends will do some of it.”

“You'll teach music and mathematics?”

I had been teaching gymnastics in the palaestra but diligently avoiding teaching music and mathematics, as we called all intellectual study. I had evaded it by taking a larger share of the physical labor we all had to share since the Workers left.

“And you'll serve on committees for Simmea?” she went on.

“Oh Maia!”

“You can teach Ficino's beginning Plato course, for the fourteen-year-olds,” she said, relentlessly. “And you can teach the advanced lyric poetry class. I don't understand how you've got out of that so far.”

“I always volunteer to judge at festivals, and I couldn't judge fairly if I were teaching them too,” I said smugly.

“Well, that's been a good argument, but now you can teach them. You can do it better than anyone else, so it's your Platonic duty. And you can serve on the Curriculum Committee too, as well as taking Simmea's place on the Foreign Negotiations Committee.”

I looked at her face in the glow of the sunrise. She had stopped crying. “I believe I have actually comforted you a little,” I said.

“And I you,” she replied.

It was true. Taking on those responsibilities wouldn't be any fun, but knowing they needed doing and I could help do them in Simmea's name did ease my grief a little.

As for stopping the art raids, I was working on a song.

When the
Excellence
tied up at the City, the travelers who had been together for so long divided immediately. Kallikles went off with his girl, Rhea. Maia headed for Florentia to tell the sad news to Ficino's friends there. Arete was immediately embraced by her agemates. Neleus and Phaedrus headed for Thessaly. Everyone else went their separate ways. I was so desperate to be alone to get my song straight that I went straight to the practice rooms on the Street of Hermes.

I shut myself into one of the little rooms and worked nonstop on the song for several hours. The last time I sang it through I was happy with it, but a song isn't real until somebody hears it. I went home to Thessaly, and was astonished to find my son Euklides there, Lasthenia's boy, who lived in Psyche. Phaedrus and Arete and Neleus and he were sitting in the garden by Sokrates's statue of Hermes, under the lemon tree. They looked up when they saw me, and all of them tried to speak at once.