“I can tell you if you want,” I said, reluctantly.
“No, I don’t want at all. It’s delightful being in the dark for once. It’s such a nice change.” He laughed, panting, then we saved our breath for running. Down below we could see some boats going out already with the tide, but Phaenarete was still waiting at the quay when we came up alongside.
20
APOLLO
Once the door closed behind the rest of them, the three of us stood alone in Hilfa’s sitting room, looking at each other uncomfortably. Then Arete sighed, and took up the papers and read through them again, silently. “I feel Necessity pressing hard on me,” Jathery said. The spell of gla words had no effect on either of us, but I could feel the power gla was putting into them, to make us trust gla. Gla looked all Saeli now, with the greenish skin and the bright lids and the strange knobbly joints that didn’t bend the way human joints bend. The patterns on gla skin were not random, as on mortal Saeli, but formed changing letters in an alien alphabet that perhaps Arete could read.
“Don’t push me,” I said. “I’ve agreed to let you come with me, for Alkippe as much as for the aegis of Necessity, but that doesn’t mean I like you or want anything more to do with you than I have to. And afterwards you’ve agreed to abide by Father’s judgement.”
Gla glared at me.
Arete began to read aloud.
When she had finished, I looked at Jathery. “That seems possible,” I said.
“This is what Athene and I prepared, for the two of us to go,” Jathery said. “How did she do it alone?”
“I’ve read you all she wrote,” Arete said.
“She obviously didn’t want us to know that, and did want us to work together,” I said.
“Well, we can do that,” gla said, scowling. Gla face was much more flexible and human than any normal Saeli face could be. It made me wonder how much time gla had spent around humans, and with Athene.
“I know you can do it. What I’m worried about is you getting back,” Arete said, and her voice quavered. She dashed away tears from her eyes and hugged me. “See you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow evening,” I said.
Arete nodded. “I’ll talk to Porphyry, if necessary. But I hope very much to see you instead.”
We stepped out of Hilfa’s sitting room and out of time.
I’m not going to tell you the details of Athene’s instructions for how to get out from Avernus. She went to a lot of trouble to hide them, and for extremely good reasons. We followed them, and they worked, and we found ourselves … out there.
Where time and space are all and one, and self
Is smeared out over every where and when,
And memory, and soul, and stars, and dust,
Future and past and I and now and then
All merge, all melt together, beautiful,
Impersonal, and yet a point of view,
All greatness of the universe at once
Impinging, blossoming, becoming true.
So everything that’s ever been and done
Is now, encompassing, and truly whole,
All happening, all past, all that’s to come,
Each atom’s heart, each world, each grain, each soul.
Each planet spiralling around its sun,
Each quark, and growing leaf, and galaxy,
Each word, and molecule, and falling stone,
And every mortal choice and destiny.
Where I am all, in all, all is in me,
Timeless, entire, all suns, all life, all love,
All words and music one, the endless dance,
Reflecting, knowing, here, below, above.
And art and consciousness reflect, engage,
When spread across all time and space as one
Subjective, glorious, a strange bright joy,
A vaster wonder, and a deeper fun.
Only one soul emerged to being here
To be the point of view the atoms need
To be the consciousness that knows itself,
To be awareness, the essential seed.
Our Father’s soul, diffused across the void,
Perceiving all, not knowing what he knew,
In bliss complete, observer and observed,
Knowing, alone: imagined change, and grew.
Out here, where every moment touches now,
Conceived of life, and brought forth other souls,
And shaped the spheres of mind and soul and time
Where we with time could live and set our goals.
Each nebula and every lepton matter
And every soul will choose, and care, and mind
Can heal potentials into what is known
Not simply glorious, but graced and kind.
In time to know ourselves, to change, to learn,
For souls to grow through lives, to gain the scope,
Of consciousness, out here where all is one
Where Zeus invented change, and with it, hope.
Nourished, sustained, by this eternity,
Part of its endless moment’s boundless bliss
We live our little lives to stretch our souls,
And conscious, here, make real all that is.
Thus in this no-time, every time in one,
Many in harmony make up one voice,
Where only Father sang, we all sing now:
A miracle of time and free-won choice.
And being here is always, not an end,
There’s no before or after, all are here,
And all are elsewhere, with the universe
And nothing’s truly lost, so have no fear.
As Time was birthed, Fate and Necessity,
The guardians at the gate, the speed of light,
Emerged to keep both time and space apart
So souls in time could know themselves aright.
I didn’t seek for Knowledge, for I knew—
Was knowledge there, as she was Poetry,
And Love, and Guide, and Smith, and Trickster too,
Each full potential of all soul could be.
I couldn’t choose or change, there was no time,
Was all time, none, infinity was all,
Until Necessity took hold, and anchored, drawn,
One into three, our coming out a fall.
We landed with a jolt in the Underworld, at the bank of the river Lethe. (It’s full of brightly colored fish. I don’t understand why nobody ever mentions that. I suppose they must forget all about them.) I looked at Athene. There was nothing to say. Moments before, in the eternal moment, we had been entirely open to each other. I knew now why she hadn’t trusted me, and she knew that she could have, that I had learned the lesson that had been one of her many purposes in setting up the Republic. She knew I thought she was irresponsible, and I knew that she thought the gain in knowledge was worth any risk.
It was the same with Jathery. I understood gla now. Gla had wanted Platonism for the Saeli so much that gla had enticed Athene into the whole Republic plan. And all this was part of a wider plan in which gla intended to set them free, which was a goal I did respect. But gla also loved tricks for their own sake, and would rather do something a twisty way than a straight one. Hilfa had been gla idea, and the divided instructions. Meanwhile, Athene had believed that seeking out the different parts of the instructions in different parts of time would help prepare us, if we needed to seek her in Chaos. She had also thought that she was already prepared for it. Both of those were scale errors.
I did not long to be back out there, though I was separated from it. It is always there, and I am too, from the first photon to the last, and there is no difference. I wanted to laugh when I remembered that I had imagined it would be boring.
It’s always dark in the Underworld. A grey kind of grass grew here, on the slopes leading down to Lethe’s water. A breeze moved. It felt like being out of doors, though there were no stars, only endless darkness above. Behind us, in the caves, lay Hades’s chamber and the Fates, and beyond them the other rivers, the Styx and the Acheron. There were also innumerable mortal souls, waiting, choosing new lives, having their brief glimpse of eternity and then coming out again here, to cross this river and go on, forgetting. They were all around us, visible as shadows. Some of them pressed around us, either votaries of ours or simply drawn to anything here that had color and weight. One clung to my hand, drawn to me by love. It had last been a dolphin, and was going on to be a poet and a translator. From leaping joy in sun-spray and song, to the passing along of poetry, all to my glory, and through me to that wider wonder. I blessed the soul and called it friend, and set it down gently on the edge of the water. I kept my face turned away from the others until my eyes were free of tears.