“You are begining to study rhetoric tonight,” the old man said. “What are your names?”
“Simmea,” I said.
“Kebes,” said Kebes, reluctantly.
The old man looked sad for a moment. “I had friends with those names once,” he said. “Men of Thebes. Did they give you those names when you came to the city? Because I thought I heard you use another name just now in the street.”
“It is forbidden,” I whispered.
“Is it?” the old man asked. “Then I shall forget I heard them, and use my old friends’ names when I address you. I had not been invited to join your conversation but invited myself along, so I should disregard anything I should not have overheard before you began to speak with me willingly. But now I shall recruit you to converse with me and be my friends, if you will. My name is Sokrates the son of Sophronikos.”
“Of course it is,” I said. I didn’t know how I hadn’t guessed it before. “I thought you were dead.” I had wept for him, reading the Apology.
“I should have been dead, but for my friend Krito, who thought it good to overrule my own wishes and the will of my daemon and drag me off here, for whatever good I might do. What would I do in Thessaly? I asked him, and yet here I am, will I or not. Now, Kebes, do you see yourself any closer to finding yourself trusting me?”
Kebes shook his head in astonishment. “Perhaps,” he said.
“And you, Simmea, are you further from it?”
“No. I trust you more than ever, now that I know you are Sokrates.”
“You can’t trust everything that ass Plato wrote,” Sokrates said. It was astonishing to hear somebody refer to Plato as an ass, after five years of hearing him revered almost as a god. I gasped. Sokrates laughed. “It is late. You should go in to bed,” he said. “And you should meet me tomorrow. When are you free? Oh, I forgot, you are never free, are you? All of your time is accounted for. I shall request of our masters that they permit me the use of some of your time, so that you may begin to study rhetoric with me.”
Then he nodded gravely to me and went off down the street, taking Kebes with him. I stared after him. There was no reason Sokrates should not be here. And yet it seemed fantastical, dreamlike. I could see his profile as he turned to speak to Kebes. Sokrates! And here against his own will.
11
MAIA
I hadn’t intended to, but I took the gymnastic training so that I could teach in the palaestra. I didn’t ever want to be helpless again. Once I got used to it, I liked it. My arms and legs developed muscles in unexpected places. I wrestled with the other women and learned how to break holds and how to use my body as a lever. Of course, Ikaros took the same training, and he was still stronger than I was.
Ikaros mostly left me alone. He acted hurt when he did talk to me and I was cold to him. He was conducting a spectacular public Platonic relationship with old Plotinus, the leader of the Neoplatonists. Plotinus was much older than Ikaros, but still handsome, very dignified with his white beard and flowing hair. They acted as if they were Sokrates and Alkibiades in the Symposium, at least in public, and Ikaros seemed happy. Atticus asked me whether I thought they were as Platonic in private as in public, and confided that Tullius had asked him his opinion on the matter. Ikaros seemed to revel in being the subject of everyone’s gossip.
I had occasional invitations from other men, especially once we all had our own houses. I always turned them down politely, and that was always the end of it. I was still working hard, still happy, but it no longer had that same wonderful glow. I had thought it was perfect, or almost so. I had thought these people were all my friends, my Platonic brothers and sisters. I had trusted them unthinkingly. Now I had learned to be wary.
Eventually, everything was built and most of the initial decisions made, and we were ready to begin bringing in children and really getting started.
The Committee on Children reported to the Chamber. Plotinus made the presentation. “We have decided that the best method is to send out ships to purchase slave children. They will be freed, and be glad to be rescued and be here.”
Klio stood up, and was recognized. “Can’t Sophia find ten-year-olds who wish to be here?”
Sophia, the goddess Athene, was sitting at the side of the hall. She had shrunk to normal human size, and generally went unarmed and wore a kiton like the rest of us. The owl was sometimes on her arm, and sometimes swooped about, alone and disconcerting, in the dusk. “Children don’t generally read Plato,” she said.
“Nor do we want children who have read Plato. It would confuse them,” Plotinus said hastily. “We agreed that they wouldn’t be allowed to read the Republic until they are fifty, though they can start reading some other Plato once they are fifteen.”
“How about slave children who wish to be free, and orphans who want homes?” Klio said.
“Certainly we can collect them. But I don’t know if I could find ten thousand and eighty such praying to me for deliverance,” Athene said.
“They’d have to pray to you?” Ficino put in.
Her grey eyes flashed, literally flashed, like light glancing off metal. “The gods are bound by Necessity, as you know.”
“It’s just that going to slave markets and paying slavers for children seems distasteful,” Klio said.
“We have, ah, decided that only men should go on these expeditions.” Plotinus stroked his beard. “As with the expeditions to rescue art, it’s not safe for women. But we’ve decided that all the men will take turns going, to be fair. Oh, but not you, of course, Lysias.”
Lysias was an American whose family had come from China. He came from the mid–twenty-first century and was the only Asian in the Republic. I knew him quite well, as Klio had recently drafted him onto the Tech Committee. He nodded—it was obvious he’d be too conspicuous in a classical or medieval slave market.
“The point is not who’s going, but whether we’re empowering slavery by buying children,” Adeimantas said. He was an old man from my own century, an Oxford professor who had translated Plato into English. I hadn’t spent much time with him; we weren’t on any of the same committees.
There was a vigorous debate, ending in a vote, in which we narrowly decided to buy children, making sure they knew that they were free as soon as they came aboard our ships. The committee then explained which slave markets they would go to in which years. Athene would have to accompany each expedition, to which she agreed. Each expedition would bring in two hundred children, which meant it would take fifty to fill our quota. “You’ll never find two hundred ten-year-olds in any slave market,” Tullius said.
“What we propose to do is to go to one market and buy all the available children of the right age, then move through time so that it seems as if we return every year, until the ship is full. Then we’ll bring the children home, and make another expedition to another market,” Plotinus said.
Tullius sat down, satisfied. I looked at Klio and Axiothea. “Won’t that really be creating a demand?” I asked.
“That question has been decided and gains nothing by being reopened,” Plotinus said, huffily.
So we prepared to receive the children. Every dining hall was ready, named and furnished, with two masters assigned to it. Every sleeping house had a name and an associated flower. Every bed had a chest and every chest had two blankets, a comb, a belt, and an iron pin, the very minimum we felt they needed. We had food ready, and workers reprogrammed to make food for everyone. We had so many plans. Of course, they collapsed on contact with reality.