I went off to the library, where at that hour every day one of the Children took turns reading Plato to a group of interested Workers. Ikaros stayed where he was, looking down at the words I had carved in the paving stones.
V. On Composing Socratic Dialogues
Plato was fortunate not to be limited in what he wrote by having his own clumsy words inscribed in stone all over Athens.
VI. On Censorship
Later, in exchange for some work I did for the City of Amazons, Ikaros translated Thomas Aquinas’s work into Greek and read it to me.
It is my belief that the Masters were right in their decision to exclude Thomas Aquinas from the Republic. Though he had many interesting ideas and speculations, he too often started from conclusions and made up ingenious theories to fit them. This is not the way of a true philosopher. I believe Plato was right that some things should be kept from underdeveloped and fragile minds, lest they do harm.
VII. On Unanswered Questions
Why did Athene take away all the other Workers and leave only me and Sixty-One in the City? Was it meant as punishment or blessing? Was it meant as a punishment for the humans and a blessing for us? Where are all the other Workers? Where did she take them? Are they pursuing excellence where they are?
Why was it Lukretia who asked me to mend the fountain, and not Ikaros, when they were equally responsible for Ferrara? Who had decided that was her job? Would she have agreed with Ikaros that the women giving birth could go to other houses to use the latrine fountains?
Who should decide the priorities? Should everything be examined every time, or should there be guidelines? Are there times for priorities to be delegated?
Is ignorance a burden, or a blessing?
Are will and intellect different? Is will an appetite of the soul? What is will? Is my will different from human will?
Was Ikaros right or wrong to bring his forbidden books?
Why did I never tell Sokrates how much I loved and appreciated him?
11
JASON
“Are you all right, Hilfa?” I asked.
Hilfa stopped rocking and looked up at me. He pulled away from Thetis and scrambled to his feet in his ungainly way. Thetis beside him flowed to hers smoothly and sat down again beside me on the bed. “No. This is too much for me,” Hilfa said, in clear Greek. “I can’t deal with Jathery. I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize, none of this is your fault,” I said.
Thetis nodded emphatically.
“Oh Jason, I don’t know what is my fault, or my responsibility, or what I am, or why I exist!” Hilfa said.
“Neither do I,” Thetis said.
“Me neither,” I said, realizing how true it was. I laughed. Thetis laughed too. “I wonder how many people do know those things?”
Hilfa laughed too, his strange formal laugh. “But for me it is even more true.”
At that moment, Pytheas came back, and with him were the two most famous and controversial people who had ever been in the Republic.
I recognized them instantly, even faster than I’d recognized Hermes. Hermes bore a resemblance to his pictures and statues, so that you’d immediately think of them when you saw him. Sokrates looked exactly like his. It was the oddest thing. All Crocus’s statues of Sokrates had something a little bit weird about them, and I had always thought that was to do with the nature of the artist, that Crocus had grown up surrounded by human art without being human and therefore saw things in a different way. Now that Sokrates was in front of me, I saw that Crocus had captured him very well. Although he was only a balding old man with a big bulbous nose, there was indeed a difficult-to-define strangeness about him. As for Ikaros, there are frescoes of him debating Athene or being carried off to Olympos outside every Ikarian temple. Besides, Dion and Aelia and I had taken the boat into Amazonia in a storm once, years ago, and I saw a beautiful lifesize Auge bust of Ikaros in one of the palaestras. When he appeared abruptly in Hilfa’s room, I knew him at once, even though he was wearing a heavy black robe, belted with a piece of rope. He looked around curiously, beaming.
Sokrates stumped around in a slow circle, taking everything in, his eyes resting longest on Hilfa. Hilfa stared back at him. “Joy to you. What are you?” Sokrates asked, gently.
“This is Hilfa. He’s a Sael. This is his house,” Pytheas said. “And that’s my granddaughter Thetis and her friend Jason,” he added, with a wave of his hand towards where we sat on the bed. “And of course, everyone, meet Sokrates and Ikaros.”
“What are Saeli?” Ikaros asked. “The aliens you mentioned? Folk who live beyond the stars?” He gestured questioningly towards Hilfa, who was standing completely still staring at the newcomers. I was used to Saeli, and especially to Hilfa, but seeing their stunned reaction reminded me of how strange they had seemed when I first saw them, with their patterned green skin and their strange eyes. I had stood behind the glass of the landing field in a whispering line with the other Samian children, full of anticipation. When they had come out of their shuttle and we had seen them out there we had all fallen silent, and although we were ten years old and not babies, we found ourselves clutching each other’s hands for comfort against the strangeness. I had slid slowly from that awe into comfortable familiarity. In this last couple of years working with Hilfa and seeing him every day I had almost forgotten that first astonishment, until I saw it now reflected in Sokrates and Ikaros’s faces.
“Yes, precisely that,” Pytheas said, sitting down again in the chair where he had been before.
“Joy to you, Hilfa,” Sokrates said. “And what a joy to meet one of your kind and learn that you exist.”
“Joy to you,” Ikaros echoed.
Hilfa turned to me and Thetis where we sat on the bed. “How do I welcome them? Should I bring them wine?” he asked in a loud whisper, as if this were a real question of whether they should be extended hospitality, a question to which there could be possible negative answers. They politely looked away, pretending not to hear.
“Yes, I’m sure they’d enjoy wine. I’ll get cups,” Thetis said. She got up off the bed, picked up the empty water jug from the table, and went off to the little storeroom.
“But are they humans, or gods?” Hilfa asked me, still in the same tone. “Or heroes perhaps?”
Behind Hilfa, I could see Ikaros make an uncomfortable movement with his hands and open his mouth without speaking. What should I say? Some people said Ikaros was a god, a new and different kind of god. Even among Ikarians there wasn’t any consensus about what Ikaros was. “They were human when they were in the City before. I really don’t know what they might be now,” I said, quietly but making no attempt to hide my words from the others, which wouldn’t have been possible anyway. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know that everyone else in the room probably knew more about it than I did. Certainly Pytheas would have had a better answer than my fumbling one. But Hilfa had asked me because he trusted me, and I was here to help him as best I could.
To my great relief, Thetis came back in with beakers and water before Hilfa asked me any more difficult questions. She began to mix the wine at the table. Everyone turned to watch her.
Hilfa took the two full beakers from Thee, and handed one to Sokrates and the other to Ikaros, who smiled at Hilfa and set down a pile of books on the table so he could take it. Thetis went around with the jug refilling cups. Sokrates and Ikaros each took the first ritual sip of their wine, thus formally accepting Hilfa’s hospitality and becoming his guest-friends.
“Joy to you both, and be welcome to my home,” Hilfa said. “Will you answer my question? What are you?” I’d have thought he was being rude, except that Sokrates and Ikaros both responded to being addressed this way with an identical air of delighted alertness that reminded me of the way a boat sometimes, after handling sluggishly coming out of harbor, suddenly comes clear of the land and catches the wind and goes racing away. They looked at each other, and Ikaros spread his hand in the rhetorical gesture meaning that Sokrates should speak first. Sokrates smiled. Pytheas too had a smile playing around his lips. I realized that they were all looking forward to that most characteristic of all entertainments, a Socratic debate. I sipped my wine, which Thetis had mixed strong, and felt uncomfortably aware that it was getting late and I had missed my dinner. I felt out of my depth in this company. I was only a Silver.