“Oh Father!”
He hadn’t said a word of reproach to her for breaking his edicts and going out there. And since she’d had no way to get back, she’d still be in that eternal moment if Jathery and I hadn’t gone after her. Yet she was immediately protesting his commands again.
“It’s time,” he repeated firmly. “His apprenticeship is over. And when he has his powers, you won’t have to worry about who’s going to rescue him from Bologna, will you?”
“No, Father.” She looked down.
“Have you learned from this?”
“I have learned many lessons, including some about who to trust,” she said, looking at Jathery and then at me.
“And you?” he asked Jathery.
“Oh yes, incalculably much,” Jathery said, but Father seemed more interested in reading the hieroglyphs writhing over gla skin.
“After the debate on Plato, you will spend a year as servant to Hermes, in payment for stealing his name and form,” Father said.
Jathery lowered his bright eyelids over his eyes. “Yes,” gla said.
“And Hermes will go in your place to conceive Alkippe. He will always have been her father.”
Even as relief washed through me, I wondered what Hermes would think about that particular command from Father.
“Yes,” Jathery said, sounding a little relieved.
“And you will spend ten years in service to me, as messenger.” As punishment for pretending to carry Father’s messages, he would really carry some. Ten years was a hard punishment, but not undeserved.
“Yes,” Jathery said again. “It is worth it. Platonism is good for the Saeli. It gives them new thoughts, new chances, a better future. It helps them to be free. And freedom is my greatest gift.”
“But Plato is all becoming so much more ordinary,” Athene protested. “So few of the Golds are really proper philosophers, whatever they call themselves.”
Father smiled to himself.
“We thought you might be angry,” I said. “I thought of coming to you, but Athene wrote that she thought you might be angry and even use the Darkness of the Oak. We were afraid. But then as soon as I was there I knew you wouldn’t be. We didn’t know what it was like, out there.”
“You understood,” he said. “And when you understand things, I understand them too. It saves me learning it all myself. I’m not likely to throw all this away and start again while you keep learning things for me. The same way you had to learn how to be a human, I have had to learn how to be a god.”
“When we learn things?” I asked. Even though learning to be human had been so hard, it was even harder to imagine him learning how to be a god, learning personal time and consequence after beginning out there. “And when we undertake projects towards better understanding?”
“Yes. All of you.”
“But some of us please you more than others because we learn more new things? And that’s why you always forgive Athene?”
“Yes.” Athene was staring straight ahead, but her owl was glaring at Jathery.
“And when I was there—I can’t remember properly, I drank from Lethe. But it seemed we were all there. Everyone. All gods of all pantheons, human, alien, everyone. All the souls. Mortals I have mourned,” I said. “All singing polyphonic harmonies.”
“The music is a metaphor. But you are there. You’re all my children.” He looked at Jathery, then back at me. “On all my worlds. You are there, were there, will be there. I nurture you with time, as plants in a sheltered garden.”
“So that you can understand, instead of knowing without understanding,” Athene said. “Comprehension.”
“And so excellence can keep on becoming more excellent,” I said. “Through choice and art.”
“I have been too content with tricks,” Jathery muttered. “I understand. I will do better.”
“We’ll see,” Father said. “Now go. Get on with it!”
21
JASON
It was another good haul, on a fine choppy day. The sun was too bright to make for really good fishing conditions, but we found the gloaters running deep off Thunder Point and followed them in the current, pulling them up as fast as we could heave until our tubs were full. Porphyry, for all that he was Dion’s age and a god, knew the work and put his back into it. The wind was coming up crossways as we came home, so we had to tack back, under a spectacular purple and gold sunset that meant some peak not too far off must have been pouring out dust and lava. We passed a flatboat scooping up kelp, and several other fishing boats on their way home—Moderation, West Wind, The Wise Lady—their sails reflecting the colors of the sky. Then, as I was congratulating myself on another successful day, Hilfa reported we’d sprung a leak. I went to look, and sure enough, water was seeping through between the planks amidships, where the caulking had worn thin. The weight of the full tubs was putting pressure on it. We weren’t in any danger, in sight of home and with so many other craft around, but nobody likes to see water coming through the bottom of a boat.
“Well, isn’t that always the way?” I said to myself.
“Caulk or bail or dump?” Porphyry asked from behind my shoulder, exactly as I’d have asked Dion if he’d been there and in charge. They were the only options.
“I hate to jettison, especially gloaters, and especially this close to home,” I said. “Letting them go to be caught another day is one thing, but these are dead already. And we can’t caulk properly, not down there, not without taking her out of the water. She probably needs new planking.”
“Bailing it is then,” he said, cheerfully, and he and Hilfa settled down to bail while I steered and Marsilia set the sails. I signalled to see if any of the other boats were close enough and with capacity enough to take our excess, but they were all close to full, except the flatboat, which had nowhere to put fish.
I took her in gently, making six tacks instead of two, to put as little pressure on her boards as we could. I really didn’t want to use the little solar motor. It was faster, but it put a lot of stress on the planking. I’d glance over from time to time and see that they were holding their own against the water, which they were. It took a while for me to see how crazy it was, a god and an alien squatting in the bilges bailing my boat. Pytheas had said Porphyry had a connection with what’s right in place and time, that he’d know when a problem was big enough to go to Zeus, and there he was bailing. It’s a strange world we live in.
I brought Phaenarete gently in to the quay and tied up. West Wind had been hanging back in case we needed assistance, and slid in beside us. Hilfa went off to get the cart, and Dion came back with him as usual. Little Dion was with him today, hopping about all over the cobbles like a wound-up spring. “We want to get the tubs emptied as quickly as possible,” I said, because we were still making water.
“Are you coming up to Thessaly after dinner?” Marsilia asked as we were tipping the first tub onto the cart. She was looking decidedly windblown but actually less tired than when we’d set off.
“Yes,” I said. “I want to know what happens when they come back. If they come back. I suppose it isn’t really my place. But I’ve seen this much of it and I’d like to see it out.”
I turned to heave the next tub onto the hoist. Porphyry was steadying it, and leaned his weight into it at the right moment to swing it forward. Dion and Hilfa were down at the cart. With this many competent people, we’d be done in no time, and I could take her round to the slips and get her out of the water.
“We’re a good team,” Marsilia said.
“Exactly what I was thinking,” I said, but then I blushed, remembering what Hilfa had said the night before.
When I turned to her, Marsilia had the strangest expression on her face. I’m fair skinned, so I always display my embarrassment for everyone to see. I decided I’d better tell her why I was red to the tips of my ears, because the truth was better than what she might be guessing. “Hilfa thinks that because we’re a good team we ought to form a pod,” I said quietly, as we lowered the next tub. “You and me and Thetis and oh, and him, of course.”