The Philosopher Kings (7 page)

“I keep wanting to tell her things, and then realizing she's not there to tell,” Neleus said.

But none of them could really understand how I felt, or how Father felt. They all wanted to join his revenge, once he organized it. I did too. Wrestling and throwing weights in the palaestra gave me a temporary relief. I did feel sometimes that it might have made me feel better to go out with a spear and something clearly marked as an enemy to stick it into. But I knew enough philosophy already to know that it wouldn't help much. Mother would still be dead no matter how many enemies we sent down to Hades after her. And how could it be just to want vengeance, to return evil for evil?

Erinna was a great comfort, when she had time for me. She was nineteen, a silver, and she had real work to do, learning to sail the
Excellence
and fighting in the Platean troop. She was my friend, and she had loved Mother. She was lovely-looking, with olive skin and fair hair, which, since she had been assigned to the ship, she wore cut short on the nape of her neck but still curling up over her broad forehead. When she was free she listened to me talk and often did things with me to distract me. She even organized our calculus class into working on our own. Axiothea, one of the Masters from Amazonia, came over once to help us. Erinna was really kind to me during this time, and I treasured every moment I could spend with her. But she was frequently busy, and much in demand, and I didn't want to waste too much of her precious free time. And naturally, I couldn't explain to her about Father properly, because really explaining about Father would have meant talking about his true nature.

Erinna is the one who suggested that I should try to write an autobiography. She said that writing things down sometimes helped her to come to terms with them. She said that Mother had told her that, years before. Because it was her advice, and before that Mother's, I began it, and I found that like wrestling, it helped at the time. So I dealt with my grief by writing autobiography, working hard at the palaestra, and reading history.

The other person who really helped was Crocus. Crocus is a Worker, a robot, and he had been a close friend of Mother's. We had long ago worked out a way for the Workers to write in wax so there wasn't a permanent engraved record of every time they wished somebody joy, but he always carved what he wrote about Mother into the paving stones. He wanted to talk about debates they had shared, and he took me to the places where they'd had them. His responses were engraved into the marble, and it comforted us both when he engraved what Mother had said beside them, making them into full dialogues. He knew all about death and what happened to human souls—at least as much as anyone else. But he worried about his own soul, and Sixty-One's, and the souls of the Workers Athene had taken with her after the Last Debate. We had enough spare parts for Crocus and Sixty-One to last indefinitely, but he wondered whether he should want his soul to move on. He wondered if he would become a human or an animal or another Worker. He mused about why Plato never mentioned Workers. Crocus could always distract me from my own thoughts. Sometimes he would come into Florentia and join me and Ficino when we were debating.

He had built a number of statues—we called them colossi, because they were so immense. They combined hyperrealism—you could see all the hairs up Sokrates's nose in his
Last Debate
—with strange outbreaks of fantasy—in that same statue, one of Sokrates's eyes is already a fly's multifaceted eye. Parts of them were painted and parts of them were plain marble or other stone. He had decided to make a sculpture of Mother, but he hadn't decided where. We went together to look at various places in the city he thought might be appropriate. I know he tried to talk to Father about this too. But Father was too sunk in grief to give an opinion—though he did sensibly agree with me that having a colossus of Mother in the garden at Thessaly would be a bad idea.

One day when it was my turn to help cook dinner in Florentia, I came out to eat late and saw Maia and Aeschines sitting with Father and Phaedrus. I took my plate over to join them. Father wasn't crying at that moment, but his face still had that devastated look. Maia looked firm. Aeschines was looking troubled. He was one of the Children, and father of my friend Baukis. He had been a good friend of Mother's, though not especially of Father's. Father found him slow. He was a member of the Chamber, and on a number of important committees.

“Nobody is going to agree to a voyage of vengeance,” Maia was saying as I put my plate down.

Father looked up. “Arete. Joy to you.”

“Joy,” I echoed, though joy was the furthest thing from either of our voices.

“Joy to you, Arete,” Aeschines said. “I haven't seen you in a long time. You must come and eat with me and Baukis in Ithaka one of these days.”

“Joy, and thank you,” I said. There was a fresco at Ithaka that Mother had painted when she'd been young. When Aeschines invited me, I was suddenly filled with a need to see it. She had painted it so long ago, and she had done better work since, as she always said. But I liked it, especially the way she had shown Odysseus in the harbor that was our own harbor. “I'll come one day soon,” I promised.

“Baukis will be glad.” He smiled at me in a friendly way, as if he genuinely liked me.

Meanwhile Father had turned back to Maia. “Maybe nobody wants a voyage of vengeance. But how about a voyage of exploration? It's ridiculous when you think about it, nonsensical for us to be here and know so little about what's out there right now. Finding Kebes would be an advantage, if we could, whether or not he's responsible for … for killing Simmea.” His face crumpled up.

“Exploration, yes, maybe,” Aeschines said, briskly. “But it would leave us without a ship here.”

“What's the use of a ship that takes up so much maintenance but which nobody ever uses?” Father countered.

Aeschines nodded. “We use it for training, and visiting the other cities, but I do see your point. It would also mean a number of people wouldn't be here if we were attacked. I assume you'd want to take a troop?”

“I think so. It could be dangerous. And if we did find Kebes, well, we'd definitely need a troop. But we wouldn't be looking for danger or vengeance or anything. We'd just be trying to find out what was there. If that was Kebes, well…”

“What you're a lot more likely to find is a lot of Minoan and Mycenaean settlements,” Maia said.

“Well, wouldn't it be useful to see if they're where they're listed as being in the Catalog of Ships?” Father asked.

“I want to come,” my brother Phaedrus said. “I want to see something that isn't just this island.”

“So do I,” I said.

“You're much too young,” Maia said.

“Too young for a voyage of vengeance, true,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “I'm not yet an ephebe, I haven't taken up arms or been chosen for a metal. But I'm old enough to go on a voyage of exploration.”

“Good point,” Aeschines said. “Would this be a safe voyage of exploration, safe enough to take children, or would it be a dangerous voyage of vengeance?”

Father looked at me, then back at Aeschines. Before he could speak, Ficino came over to join us. He'd finished eating, but he had a cup of wine in his hand. The red hat he almost always wore was askew. “You all look very solemn,” he said, after he'd greeted those of us he hadn't already seen that day.

“We're discussing sending out a voyage of exploration in the spring,” Aeschines said. “Arete wants to go, and—”

“Splendid!” Ficino said, unexpectedly, beaming at me. “I want to go too.”

“Old men and children,” Phaedrus said dismissively.

Ficino laughed. “What better explorers could there be? How far will we go, Pytheas? Do you mean to get to Ithaka?”

Aeschines laughed, and Father actually smiled, for the first time in months. “I hadn't thought we'd go as far as that,” he said. “Around the Kyklades, and north to the Ionian islands. Maybe touching the mainland at Mycenae.”

“Mycenae!” Ficino said. “I really have been extraordinarily lucky all my life, and now to have this voyage proposed at the very end of it! How about Pylos? Nestor might be there as a young man. Or Troy itself? Imagine meeting the young Priam, perhaps attending his wedding to Hekabe.” Maia reached over and straightened his hat.

“We know so much about the future, and so little about this time where we're living,” I said. Ficino grinned at me.

“We want to find Kebes,” Phaedrus said.

“Kebes is probably the least interesting thing in the whole Aegean,” Ficino said. “Though no, it would be interesting to know what kind of city the Goodness Group have come up with, to compare it with the others.”

“Kebes couldn't found a city without other people out there hearing rumors of it,” I said.

“We have,” Maia said.

“Well, but we're on an island, and we had divine help,” Father said.

“Kebes may be on an island,” Phaedrus said.

Father leaned forward. “He probably is. But he doesn't have enough people or enough resources to stay on an island and entirely out of contact. He must have been trading or raiding, and if he has, we'll hear about him.”

“Also, we don't know whether or not there are rumors out there about us. If we're supposed to inspire the legend of Atlantis, there probably are,” Aeschines said.

“I don't think Kebes was responsible for the raid,” Maia said. “He's never been involved in art raids before, or contacted us at all. It doesn't make any sense.”

Father looked stubborn. “Everyone else has denied it.”

“They've lied before. Psyche have lied. They just can't be trusted,” Maia insisted. “It probably was them. Or the Amazons.”

Father hesitated for a moment. “How could we find out? Send spies?”

“Perhaps,” Maia said. “But it will be sure to come out sooner or later. Whoever has the head will be sure to display it, eventually, and then we'll hear.”

“And go to war,” Phaedrus said, fiercely, slapping the table and making the cups and plates bounce.

“Unless it is Kebes,” Father said. “Then we'd never hear and there would be no vengeance and … nothing. I want a voyage of exploration so we have more information.”

“More information would be a good thing, certainly,” Aeschines said. “I'll suggest it to the committee.”

Ficino raised his cup. “It's my birthday. I'm ninety-nine years old. It seems the perfect time to set out on a voyage. To exploration!”

We all drank.

 

6

ARETE

I wasn't in the Chamber for the debate, or in the Assembly for the vote, but I was in Thessaly for the family fight.

It was just after the midwinter celebrations. It had been a mild clear day with a promise of spring in the air. The Assembly had voted that the voyage of exploration would take place when spring came, and now the question was of who was to go. Father was going, there was no question of that. Klymene was going with the Florentia troop. Erinna was going, as one of the few people who properly understood how the
Excellence
worked. And Ficino was going, and so was I—I had won that battle without any need to fight. This was to be a voyage safe for old men and children, and Ficino and I were the exemplary old man and child. That I was only a child for three more months didn't matter. I was going!

My brothers all wanted to go. Well, Plato-loving Alkibiades didn't. He had written to us—he had sent a letter to Father with the envoy who went to Athenia. Father let me read it. In addition to saying all you'd expect about Mother, he said to trust that the head of Victory wasn't in Athenia, and that he would let us know immediately if he heard anything. He sent love to all of us and said he had made the right choice and was happy.

Phaedrus and Neleus were at home in Thessaly on the evening when Kallikles came around with a jar of wine after dinner. “We need to talk,” he said.

I broke the resin seal and mixed the wine without being asked, using the big red-figure krater decorated with Apollo killing the dragon Pytho, and the cups that matched it. (Apollo on the krater didn't look at all like Father, but I liked the coils of the snaky dragon.) I watered the wine half and half, as Plato recommends, and then gave a cup to everyone.

It was too cold to go into the garden now that the sun was down, which was inconvenient as it was the only space suitable for sitting and talking. There was a reason the houses were known as “sleeping houses.” We were supposed to do everything else elsewhere. Most of the year this worked out well enough, and even now it would have been all right if we could have gone to Florentia or another eating hall to have our conversation in public. As it was, we all sat on the beds. I passed around some dried figs and goat cheese and missed Mother, who would have made the boys help.

“I want to go with you on the voyage,” Kallikles said, once we were all settled. I sat down beside him on the bed.

“It isn't up to me,” Father said. “The Chamber is deciding who goes. Apply to them.” Father was looking a little better now that the voyage had been agreed on.

“We all want to go,” Phaedrus said.

“You can't all go,” Father said. “What if the ship went down?”

“What if it did?” Kallikles asked. “That's part of the hazard of life.”

“All of you lost at once?” Father said. “No.”

“The city wants to send the best,” Phaedrus said. He grinned at me. He was constantly making jokes about my name—it was he who had first thought up the game of pursuing Arete. “And in addition to my little sister, the most excellent people they can find. We brothers are the certainly among the best of the Young Ones.”

Father took a deep draught of his wine. “Arete's going,” he said. “No more.”