Beside me Jason was nodding.
“In Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, he puts words into my mouth, as usual,” Sokrates said. “And they are more interesting than most such words, though I never said them. I am talking with this man, famous for his piety, and Plato depicts him quite as I remember him, as a bit of an ass. ‘Tell me then, oh tell me,’ Plato has me say, ‘What is the great and splendid work which the gods achieve with the help of our devotions?’ What is it, Pytheas, Athene? You say you care, about us, about the world. What are you doing? How can we help you? What is the great and splendid work?”
“We have projects,” Grandfather said. “This city was one of Athene’s. I’m going to be working on more of them. You can definitely help, all of you. You can learn new things.”
“But what is the great work?” Sokrates asked. “What is it for?”
“I’ll have to sing it.”
“Sing, Far-Shooter,” Athene said.
And Grandfather sang, there in the garden of Thessaly, and we listened, and I did understand, as much as anyone human can. And although I wept, I was not the only one.
III. Jason
We were out in the garden of Thessaly, where so much of the history of the Republic has been made. A little while after Pytheas had sung. I realized that Marsilia and Thetis were both not-looking at me in the same way. They’d be talking, and looking somewhere, and then one of them would catch sight of me, or glance at me, perfectly normally, and then immediately look away as fast as they could. I’d probably have noticed either one of them doing it, but when it was both of them it wasn’t a thing I could overlook. And that got me thinking, as we were out in the garden talking to Neleus and Crocus and the gods. I kept thinking about what Hilfa had said, that I wanted Thetis but Marsilia wanted me. I’d never thought about Marsilia wanting me, or wanting anyone, really, she seemed so self-contained. She had her life in order. She didn’t behave as if she wanted me. We were friends, comrades. And she knew how I felt about Thetis; she teased me about it. But the way she wasn’t looking at me now, maybe she did want me, maybe like I wanted Thetis, and maybe we should have talked about this before. Well, we weren’t gods, we couldn’t go back and talk about it any earlier than now, but we could talk about it now. We go on from where we are.
So after I’d worked this out, I waited until there was a suitable pause, and said: “I think our pod should go to Hilfa’s house and talk.”
Then of course Sokrates wanted to argue with Athene, and Ikaros wanted to come along, and Marsilia said she needed to make plans with Neleus for the debate the next day, and Thetis said she was tired. Only Hilfa agreed with me. But I was persistent, so Neleus agreed to put Alkippe to bed, and Ikaros agreed he could wait until tomorrow, and off the five of us went.
We walked through the gate and saw the starlight glimmering on the sea. The wind was coming up from the west, bringing clouds with it. The temperature was falling. There would be rain by morning.
We came down into the harbor, and turned onto Hilfa’s street. It was less than nineteen hours since I’d been there before, but everything had changed. He opened the door and we all went in. Hilfa and Marsilia fetched wine and mixed it. This time we all had matching winecups. We stayed standing, slightly awkwardly, until we all had wine. Then Hilfa and Sokrates took the chairs, and the sisters and I took the bed. They sat together on one end, and I perched on the other end.
“Well,” I said, and then started to giggle. It wasn’t the wine, it was how solemn everyone’s faces were as they turned them to me. Hilfa’s was always solemn, of course, but the others weren’t. “It seems to me there are a few things we need to talk about,” I said. “First, do we really want to form a pod, or were we only saying that to defend Hilfa?”
“I want to form a pod,” Hilfa said at once. His markings were clear, and he seemed confident, indeed, the most relaxed of all of us.
“I certainly won’t back out now,” Sokrates said.
“I won’t back out either,” I said. “I think this is exciting and fun.”
“I definitely don’t want to back out,” Marsilia said. “But I feel I rushed everybody into it. I should have thought faster about how to respond to Jathery.”
“I do feel rushed into it,” Thetis said. “But I’m getting used to the idea, and I think I like it. I want to know if it’s real or not.”
“That’s what I’m wondering too,” I said. I looked at the women, and saw two pairs of identical velvety brown eyes fixed on mine with completely different expressions. Thee looked worried and Marsilia looked as if she was remembering the bit of Plato that says you shouldn’t express your feelings.
“I really like both of you,” I said. “I’d be thrilled to be married to either one of you, and both of you is better, because you’ve developed complementary virtues, and dividing you wouldn’t work so well. I’m not sure how pods are supposed to work, and the Saeli have three genders anyway. But I look forward to finding out, and finding out more about all of you. Hilfa’s already like a brother, and no family with Sokrates in it could ever be dull.”
“Oh, Jason, you know I’m completely helpless before your beauty, but I’m an old man, and I have to live up to the reputation Plato gave me for chastity and moderation,” Sokrates said, batting his eyelids coquettishly. “And don’t think you can get around me because you called your boat after my mother.”
“You had three sons,” Marsilia said to him. “If the space human autodoc can make you young again, don’t think you can get away with that. And don’t say you’re helpless before my beauty, because I know I look like a philosopher.”
“You look like my friend, your grandmother Simmea. She used to say that the interesting part of her head was on the inside.”
Marsilia laughed. “It’s true for me too.”
“But the inside is very interesting,” I said, and Thetis nodded.
Hilfa was looking happy. It’s hard to say how I knew, because his face hardly moves, and he doesn’t convey his emotions in his expressions. His shoulders and knees seemed looser than normal, his head seemed more firmly seated on his neck, and his pink markings were standing out clear and distinct.
“How are you doing, Hilfa?” I asked.
“I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. Or do you mean how am I feeling? I am feeling safe.”
Marsilia took a big sip of her wine, and looked at me over the rim of the cup. “I know how you feel about Thetis. But I’ve always really liked you.”
“My pulse beats faster when I look at Thetis,” I said, looking at Thee and feeling it doing exactly that. “I don’t know why. It always has. Plato says acting on that kind of feeling is wrong, and I thought it didn’t do any harm if I kept it to myself. And you always seemed to have lots of admirers.”
“Lots of admirers, yes, and I like to flirt with them, but I’m mostly interested in my babies,” she said. “But sooner or later I need to become acquainted with Aphrodite. Look what happened to Hippolytos. And I do like you. I’ve always liked you. I like talking to you. And I’ll like having babies of my own, I think.”
I was amazed. “And I like talking to you too,” I said. Then I looked at Marsilia, who was biting her lip. “I like talking to you, too, Marsi, and if my pulse doesn’t speed up, well, I still feel really warm towards you.”
“I like you too. And I have been to the Festivals of Hera, and always enjoyed it,” Marsilia said, and I thought she was blushing.
“And I think you’re all three almost irresistible,” Sokrates said.
“And I think you are all four my podmates, and that makes me very happy,” Hilfa said.
If this were a space human kind of story, one of the “classic” works of fiction from their culture they traded us in return for copies of all the things Ficino rescued from the Library of Alexandria, the end would be that I, the virtuous hero, had to choose between the two sisters, who would represent ugly wisdom and beautiful vice. How I chose would determine my fate, whether happy or unhappy. No wonder their culture is so strange and twisted. We think of romantic love as a primarily negative force, one we would do better to resist. They elevate it to being the most significant thing humans do, apart from making money—which, as far as I can make out, is a numeric quantifier of prosperity. I can’t understand how anyone reads such twaddle.