“Would she talk to me?” Sokrates asked.
“I’m sure she would. Hasn’t she already? She brought you here. You’re her votary as well as mine.”
“I mean would she talk to me the way you are talking to me?”
“I’d be very surprised if she would,” I said. “She’s here, but she’s not incarnate. She’s still detached.”
“Would she debate me? In front of everyone?”
“On what?” I asked. He seemed very focused on the idea.
“On the good life. The Just City.”
Simmea laughed. “I’d love to see that.”
“Everyone would,” Sokrates said. “Will you ask her? I’d really like to initiate a series of debates with her.”
“When she has calmed down a bit,” I said. “And when we’ve sorted out the issue of the workers a bit more.”
“What’s going on with them?” Simmea asked. “They’re really thinking and wanting things?”
“They can choose the better over the worse, thus clearly demonstrating that they have souls,” Sokrates said. “The whole city is in turmoil over it.”
“If they have souls, I don’t know whether they’re like human souls,” I said.
“It would be logical for them to come from the same pool of souls,” Sokrates said. “Man and woman, animal and worker. You said there’s no shortage. And Pythagoras believed that every soul had a unique number, and that when those numbers added up again the soul would be reborn.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “If they each have a unique number then we’re certainly not going to run out soon. But as far as I know, the souls are reborn when they find their way through the underworld, not when numbers add up. But numbers might be adding up without my being aware of it. There certainly do seem to be patterns in the world.”
“The workers each have a unique number,” Simmea pointed out.
“That’s true, and it’s inscribed over their livers,” Sokrates said. He looked at me.
“Minds are in the brain, truly,” I said. “Souls are harder to locate.”
“Ikaros has some interesting beliefs,” Sokrates said, carefully.
I laughed. “He does.”
“He thinks man is the greatest of all things, being between animals and gods and partaking of both natures.”
I nodded. “Yes. I didn’t really understand that until I was incarnate, but he does have a point. There are some wonderful things about being human.”
“He thinks there are greater gods, and the Olympians are a circle of lesser divinities serving the greater ones. He thinks there are many such circles.” Sokrates raised an eyebrow.
I hesitated. “Many circles is right; all human cultures have their own appropriate gods. But the only thing on top is Father. It isn’t a set of concentric rings the way Ikaros wrote—unless he’s changed his mind. I haven’t talked to him about it recently. He thought of it as a hierarchy with divinities subordinated to others. It isn’t like that at all. It’s a set of circles of gods pretty much equal to each other but with different responsibilities, and linked by Father.” I sketched circles in the dust, overlapping in the centre and a tiny bit at the edges.
“And his thoughts about the divine son Jesus and his mother the Queen of Heaven, and sin and forgiveness and reconciling all religions with all other religions?”
“Christianity is one of those circles.” I put my finger down in one. “Jesus is just as real and just as much Father’s son as I am. He’s one of the Elohim who incarnated. The eras when that was the dominant ideology in Europe tend to be a little inimical to me, but I do have friends there. And they made some wonderful art, especially in the Renaissance, which is where Ikaros comes from.”
Sokrates rocked back on his heels. “You should explain these things to him.”
“Tell Ikaros? The last thing he wants is certainty. About anything. That’s why he chose that name. And he’s a favorite of Athene’s. She wouldn’t like me interfering with him.” For that matter, I wondered how she liked his newest theories on religion.
Simmea had eaten a whole cheese and two lemons and was absentmindedly licking the chestnut leaves the cheese had been wrapped in. “What’s in the overlap between the circles?” she asked, pointing at where they touched at the edges.
“Well, say there’s a man out on the edges of Alexander’s empire, in Bactria. And when he’s sick he prays to Kuan Yin, the Mother of Mercy, not to me. But when he’s composing poetry in Greek, it’s me he looks to. That’s the kind of case where the circles overlap, when cultures come together like that.”
Sokrates nodded at the circles. “And what does your Father want, alone in the middle?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “None. I never have had. I wish I knew.”
“Whereas what you want is to increase your excellence,” Simmea said.
“And look after your friends,” Sokrates said, rocking back on his heels.
“And increase the excellence of the world,” I added. “In any number of different ways.”
“And what does Athene want?” Simmea looked up from the leaves to meet my eyes.
“To know everything there is to know,” I said. They were silent for a moment, considering that. “I expect she wants to increase the world’s excellence too. But it’s knowing everything that she prioritizes.”
“Do the gods have souls?” Sokrates asked, unexpectedly.
“Certainly,” I said, surprised. “How else would I be here like this?”
“You went down into the underworld and were reborn as a baby, in the hills above Delphi as you told me?”
“Yes…” I didn’t see where he was going at all.
“Then maybe you chose this life so that you could talk to us about the Mysteries.”
I laughed, delighted at the thought. “I only wet my lips in Lethe.”
“But wouldn’t that be enough to forget the future of the life you chose?” Simmea asked.
“Yes—that’s why I did it. And in any case, we make choices and change everything. There’s Fate and Necessity, but no destiny, no Providence. Fate is a line drawn around the possibilities of a life. You can’t overstep that line, but as long as you stay within the lines you can do anything. You can concentrate on some parts of what’s possible and ignore others. Excellence consists of trying to fill out as much of what’s allotted as you can, but always without being able to see the lines Fate has drawn. Souls choose lives based on what they hope to learn. Say a man has been dismissive to women. He may choose to live as a woman next time, to learn that hard lesson. Or a slave owner might choose the life of a slave, when their eyes are opened. It’s not punishment. It’s a desire to learn and become better. They choose lives based on the hope of learning things. But it’s a hope. Nothing is inevitable. Choices are real all the way along. You could have hit me or walked away, and it’s nothing you or I chose before birth that affects that, it’s what you chose in that moment.”
“Hit you?” Sokrates asked.
“A fight we had once,” Simmea said, her cheeks glowing. “Or for that matter, earlier today.” She jumped up in one fluid motion, her old self again, no longer needing hauling up from the ground as she had. “I’m still starving, and it’s nearly dinner time. Come with me to Florentia, both of you, we can look at beautiful beautiful Botticellis and eat.”
Sokrates and I got to our feet. “I can tell you about the workers,” he said.
“Before we go out—you really won’t tell Kebes, will you?” I asked.
Simmea looked down her nose at me. “He’d keep your secret. But I won’t tell anyone. I said I wouldn’t. You know you can trust me.”