The Philosopher Kings (16 page)

But at that moment when I saw my Young Ones coming back aboard full of power, I wanted access to my own power. And I could even have had it, if I really wanted it, far more power than my children had. I could return to being my whole self at any time, at the cost of this mortal life. I considered it for a moment, there on the deck. I could swim to where my priests were standing on the Delian shore watching the ship maneuvering out. I could sacrifice myself there—dying, as was poetically appropriate, where I had been born. I could return moments later in my full power. I just had to want it enough to give up my incarnation—and that meant wanting it more than I wanted to fulfill Simmea's dying wish.

It was tempting, but only fleetingly. I looked down at the choppy sunset-hued sea between the ship and the shore. Simmea had taught me to swim. And Simmea had wanted me to stay in mortal form. She had some reason, and I felt sure she was right, whatever that reason was. Until I understood it and fulfilled it, or until I happened to die naturally, I would stay incarnate, even if it was inconvenient. Even when it hurt. Envy wasn't pleasant, but it did teach me something about myself, even if it was something I didn't much like. I was glad to have time to compose myself before there was a chance to talk to the Young Ones. I wouldn't want them to know I suffered from such a mean emotion.

My priests were still standing on the Delian shore, looking toward the
Excellence
as the watch on duty brought her head around so her sails could catch the wind. I leaned out on the rail, smiling, and waved to them. They looked at each other in consternation, then back at me in dawning affirmation. They waved back emphatically. I was glad I'd been able to make somebody happy.

I was tempted to take up my powers again on Ikaria—not out of envy for the Young Ones' power. I had thoroughly dealt with that annoying emotion by then. No, on Ikaria the urge came purely out of a desire to protect them. They were children, and there was so much trouble they could get into! With divine power there were so many things it was easy to get into and difficult to get out of. The things they thought of—walking on lava! Time travel! I didn't want them burned up by lava, but far less did I want them stepping outside time and not being able to negotiate what they found there.

I tried to remember my own childhood. I'd had Mother and a whole set of goddesses shielding and teaching me. (That may be why I have always lived solitary since.) What I chiefly remembered were bounds set around my power, bounds for me to test, to encourage me to develop safely. From the moment I was born I had the power to destroy the world (I had the
sun
), and they shielded me until I had the judgment to understand that destroying the world would be unutterably stupid. They knew what I was to be. The other Olympians wanted me—well, except Hera, who didn't want me or anything like me. They shaped me to fill the place in the pantheon meant for me. I like to think I have done better than that already, fulfilled far more than the promises and prophecies. And I am still trying to increase my excellence, and the world's excellence.

If there were places destined for my children I did not know what they were. I wasn't aware of any prophecies or expectations. They had to find their own way. I could give them advice and prohibitions and information. I couldn't use my power to teach them, or to give them safe boundaries to work in, because right now when they needed it I didn't have any power. It felt like letting them down. And yet, Simmea had wanted me to stay incarnate, at the cost of her own life. Could this be why? Could they need to learn without boundaries? As soon as I thought it I knew that this was insane. Simmea hadn't known anything about the powers of a god except what I'd told her. She hadn't known about Delos or what they would need. She was going on the information she had at the time, most of which I must have and some of which I might be able to discover if we ever caught up with Kebes. (Or whoever had killed her, if it wasn't Kebes.)

I did feel like an idiot whenever I thought about it. What could I do, incarnate, that I couldn't do as a god? I usually asked the question the other way around, for there were so many things I could do as a god that I couldn't do as a human. I had become human to learn about will and consequences and the significance of mortal life. There were things I had learned, and no doubt there was more to learn. But as for things I could do better incarnate—beyond learning that it seemed to amount to suffering, and waiting. Perhaps there was something else Simmea wanted me to learn. But she had seemed so urgent—don't be an idiot, she had said, as if her reason was obvious and imperative. She let herself die, she gave up her memories and our life together and the future we could have had. The least I could do was try not to be more of an idiot than I could help.

From Ikaria we sailed to Samos, and there we had our first solid news of Kebes. (I had the map with me. But I hadn't shown it to anyone or even spoken about it.) There were no Samians in the Catalog of Ships. And the priests in Delos hadn't known anything beyond “northeast” for Kebes. There was no sign of the
Goodness.
But there was a settlement here, where the city of Samos would one day stand. It wasn't a mud-hut encampment either, like the primitive ones we had seen on Naxos and Paros and Mykonos. The buildings were made of well-mortared stone, with familiar pillars in the style it amused me to call archaeo-classical. Nor did it have the strange flat Kykladic statues, but rather a solid Renaissance-style statue of a goddess. The people didn't run away or immediately attack us, though we saw a stir in the streets.

Maecenas dropped anchor just outside the harbor and immediately called a council meeting. Everyone who wasn't part of the council looked enviously at us as we went down to Maecenas's cabin. I was on the ship's council because the Just City was an aristocracy—rule was by the best. And by the standards they were using, I was going to be selected as among the best on almost all occasions. I sometimes felt a bit of a fraud about this, as they were judging by human standards. But I was glad to be included in the council and have my voice heard.

“What do we do?” Maecenas asked bluntly. “This could be Kebes. Probably is. Do we attack? Or talk first?”

“Talk first,” Klymene said, a hair before me.

“We need to find out more,” I said, when she spread her hand to yield to me. “We don't see the
Goodness.
It seems like a small place.”

“It's as big as Psyche, and it has the same kind of look about it of something built without Workers but with our sensibilities,” Maecenas said. “And Kebes only took a hundred and fifty, and no Young Ones.”

“I don't think this is it,” I said.

Everyone disagreed with me. As I didn't want to tell them about the map, I couldn't explain why I didn't think so.

“It's logical that it is,” Klymene summed up after a while.

“What we need is more information,” I said. “Whether this is Kebes or not, we need to talk. And if it is, we need to find out whether they raided us and took the head of Victory. We might be able to set up friendly relations, if not. And if it isn't Kebes, we need to find out who they are.”

“Let's go in then, and see,” Maecenas said. “If I send you, Pytheas, will you stay calm?”

“If I am an envoy, I will behave as an envoy,” I said, standing up and bumping my head on the cabin roof.

“I wasn't challenging your honor, man,” Maecenas said. “Sit down. You go, and Klymene, and take Phaenarete and Dion. We'll stay anchored right here, in bowshot. If there's trouble, we'll hear. But if there's trouble, get back here as fast as you can.” Phaenarete and Dion were older Young Ones, strong, and well-trained with weapons.

“That place doesn't have a palisade,” Klymene said. “And they didn't run off. We ought to be able to talk.”

“Wear armor,” Maecenas said.

So I had to put on a cuirass, and endure the envy of the entire ship's company as I was rowed ashore. Samos has a natural deep harbor, and they had built a wooden wharf with poles—they were clearly used to receiving a big ship like ours. There was a crowd waiting to receive our little boat, and the armor didn't feel like much protection.

Nobody looked familiar. Most of the crowd were young, and so I wouldn't have expected to recognize anyone, but some of them were older, indeed aged. They were also the wrong mix of people to be the Goodness Group—all of these had what I think of as typical Ionian Greek looks. They could have been carved in marble. “Joy,” one of them said, a middle-aged man. “You have come early. Why do you stand off from shore? Is there sickness aboard
Goodness
?”

His accent was unusual, but he spoke good Greek.

“Joy to you. We're not the
Goodness
,” Klymene said. “Our ship is called
Excellence.
We come from Kallisti. Who are you?”

The answer was surprising, and took a long time to elicit clearly. It turned out that they were a group of assorted refugees from wars in Greece and the islands who had been settled here by Kebes and his people to found a new city, which was called Marissa—after, they told us, the name of the mother of God. God himself was called Yayzu. They traded regularly with the
Goodness,
giving them food in return for manufactured items such as bowls and statues. They did not recognize the name Kebes, though when I said Matthias there was a general sigh and a smile of recognition. The thing they most wanted to discover from me, once I had said the words “
Excellence
” and “Kallisti,” were whether we were still in contact with Athene. When I told them that we hadn't seen her since the
Goodness
left, they seemed very relieved, and admitted that they had two people in Marissa from the Goodness Group, the doctor and the teacher. These two came forward now through the crowd, visibly of our people. The teacher was much paler-skinned than anyone else, a Master I had known slightly called Aristomache, now in her seventies. The doctor, Terentius, was clearly one of the Children, much swarthier than most in the crowd. He seemed only vaguely familiar. They hugged us and asked for news of friends left in the City.

“Is it safe for us to bring the
Excellence
in?” Klymene asked.

Terentius looked surprised. “Of course! Why wouldn't it be? Marissa is a civilized city. Well, semi-civilized. As civilized as any of our colonies,” he finished proudly.

“You have colonies?” Phaenarete asked. “How many?”

“Lots,” Terentius said, slightly cagily, though the appalling arithmetic positively leaped to mind—if they had two people in each one they could have seventy-five colonies like Marissa up and down the Aegean. “Are you all still on Kallisti trying to do Plato's Republic?”

“Yes,” I said. “Though we have five cities there now, and lots of Young Ones. This is our first exploratory voyage.”

If I made us sound like five united cities, who can blame me? Kebes had been founding colonies. Who could imagine how large an army he might be ready to field if he thought we were divided and easy to conquer? I didn't doubt that he would still hate us.

Klymene and Phaenarete started to signal to the ship that it was safe to come in. “One thing, Aristomache,” I said. “Marissa. Yayzu. Is this some primitive religion I'm not aware of, or are you really teaching them Christianity?”

“Christianity, of course,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye.

“What's Christianity?” Dion asked.

“It's the one true faith. It has been kept from you, so you could worship Plato, but it's the only thing that can save your soul,” Aristomache said. Heads were nodding around her. Dion's eyes widened.

“It hasn't been kept from you at all. It's that crazy religion Ikaros has in the City of Amazons,” I said, dismissively.

Dion was a sensible lad. He nodded politely at Aristomache. “Oh, that,” he said.

“God sent his son, his only son, down into the world to save everyone,” she said.

“Right, and Athene's one of his angels,” Dion said. “I remember now. It's popular in the City of Amazons. Here too, I see.”

Although we had thought a lot about what Kebes and the Goodness Group might have been doing, collecting refugees from Greece and settling them in colonies on uninhabited islands had never crossed our minds. And of course they were doing just exactly what everyone else I knew was doing, trying to live the Good Life in Plato's Republic. It also hadn't occurred to anyone that Kebes would try to do this in a Christian context, more than a thousand years before Christ. Ficino and Ikaros had managed to reconcile Christianity and Plato, and also in Ikaros's case Christianity and the inarguable presence of Pallas Athene. I wondered how Kebes had done it. He wasn't stupid, and he'd been trained by Sokrates, but didn't have most of the structure they were starting from. He couldn't have. He'd been
ten.

“No, actually Athene's a demon,” Aristomache said.

Dion shrugged as if he didn't care either way. I hoped this would be the general reaction aboard, at least among the Young Ones.

I don't have anything against Christianity. It's a wonderful story. Indeed it's a wonderful story that has been mostly wasted by Christians. It produced some incredible architecture and music, and some splendid visual art, especially in the Renaissance. But they have made surprisingly little art about what it's like to be an incarnate god, suddenly subject to the pains of humanity, and then being tortured to death, before returning to sort things out in divine form. It's the heart of the story, and I'd been thinking the whole time I'd been incarnate myself that they could have done so much more with it. Michaelangelo, Rembrandt, Bach, yes, but who else had truly entered into the Mystery of it? For every
Supper at Emmaeus
there are thousands of Annunciations and Nativities, as if the interesting thing is that Jesus was born. Everyone is born. There's a lot of focus on the Crucifixion, again mostly in the visual arts, but surprisingly little about how he experienced his life, before or after death. Fra Angelico came closest, I think. But you'd think in that whole era where Christianity was dominant, they'd have thought about the whole thing more, instead of getting obsessed with sin and punishment.