“So I guess we’re friends now,” Aeschines said as got dressed the next morning.

“We definitely are.” I smiled at him. “You could come and eat in Florentia with me tonight if you want.”

“That feels strange,” he said. “I didn’t know you, and now I know that you like doing sex standing up.”

“Don’t tell anybody!”

“Of course not!” He sounded shocked, which was a relief. “Boys do talk about it sometimes. I always thought they were lying. About getting girls to sneak off to the woods with them. Specific girls. And what those girls liked. It’s a kind of showing off they do when they jerk off.”

“Jerk off?”

He mimed with his hand. “At night, in the sleeping houses, standing round together with everyone doing that and nobody touching each other. Girls don’t do that?”

“Not equipped,” I said.

He laughed. “But nothing like that?”

“Not in Hyssop,” I said. “I never heard of girls doing that, but that doesn’t mean they don’t. But I never heard of them sneaking off with boys, either.”

“Would you do that?” he asked.

“What? Sneak off to the woods with you? No. That would be wrong.” I wanted to get back to Hyssop and bathe in the wash-fountain before breakfast. “You’re not seriously suggesting it?”

“No, of course not.” I wasn’t sure whether he meant it or not.

“Dinner tonight, then?” I asked, my hand on the door.

“Sure.” He picked up the headdresses and garland from the corner. The flowers were dying, away from water for so long. “Do you want yours?”

“What for?”

“No, I suppose they’re done with now.” He turned them in his hands looking a little sad. “Well, I hope we do this again some time.”

“So do I,” I said, and meant it. I didn’t share the calculations of probability with him, though.

19

APOLLO

“How are you going to get out of it?” I had cornered Athene in the library. She was sitting in the window seat she liked, the one where she had a secret compartment in the armrest, reading Tullius’s newly printed monograph on the integrity of the soul.

“He’s getting old,” she said, putting it down on a mess of books and papers on the seat beside her.

“He is,” I agreed. “Ikaros flattened him in their last debate. And he’s been avoiding Sokrates.”

“He’s going to die soon, whatever I do. I know he’s vain and silly, but I’m very fond of him.”

“I am too. Even if you have to send him back to face his assassination, at least he got this extra length of his natural lifespan.”

“I hate that cold bastard Octavian,” she said. “Killing Cicero for political advantage. It’s like burning down a library to make toast. I could never warm to Rome again until Marcus Aurelius.” She picked up the book again, then hesitated and put it down. “Did you want to ask me something?”

“Yes. How are you going to get out of being paired off at the festival of Hera?”

“I’m sick of the subject of the festival of Hera. It’s all anyone’s talking about. I may be getting a bit bored with this whole thing, actually. Anyway, I shall be chosen and walk off with somebody, and then they will fall asleep and dream they’ve had a pleasant afternoon with Septima, while I come back to the library.”

“Do you need help with the dream?” I asked.

“No thanks. There’s a perfectly good bit of Catullus.”

I laughed, quietly because we were in the library. The funny thing was that she was so serious. She rolled her eyes. “Sorry,” I said. “I should have guessed you’d have a plan.”

“Did you come to offer to help if I needed it?” she asked.

“Well…” I felt caught out. “I knew you wouldn’t want to participate, and I hadn’t thought of a dream.”

“Well thank you. I don’t need it. But I do appreciate the concern. I’d have thought you’d be looking forward to it. First sexual act in sixteen years?”

“I’ve been continent for longer before,” I said. Though that was usually when I was focusing on something else and not noticing how long it had been. “And anyway, that isn’t quite true. This will be the first time mating with a woman, but there have been some sex acts with men.”

“Boys?”

“And masters.”

“Not Pico?”

“No. He’s never done more than look admiring.” I wondered why she was asking, but her expression did not invite questions.

She picked up her book again and put her finger in it ready to open it. “So did you want me to influence the lots to get you whoever you have picked out for the festival?”

“No. I thought I’d go with chance. That way I’ll learn something about choice.”

She looked astonished. “I suppose that’s true, but I’m surprised to hear you say so. I’ve never seen you with anyone who wasn’t perfect. What will you do if it’s your funny little Simmea? She’s very smart, isn’t she? I was talking to her about the constraints of time the other night.”

“She’s very smart,” I agreed. Of course I knew she was in love with me. “It’s extremely unlikely that we’d be chosen together, though.”

Athene shook her head. “You’re changing.”

“Learning things. That was the whole idea.”

She started to read, and I left.

The next day was the games, where I was careful to do well in everything without actually winning anything. Simmea came third in the swimming. I could swim now, but I didn’t even enter the races. Human bodies aren’t made for that kind of exercise. The day after was the festival. We wore flowered headdresses and danced in the plaza before the temple of Zeus and Hera. Phidias’s huge chryselephantine seated Zeus stood on one side of the steps, and a large Hera from Argos stood on the other. I wondered, eyeing them, what Father knew about this enterprise, and what he would say. Athene was his favorite daughter, but even so. It would be possible to argue that we were bending his rules all over the place.

I avoided Simmea. I felt uncomfortable at the thought of her. I liked her very much. I admired her. I enjoyed her friendship. But Athene was right. In thousands of years I’d never mated with anyone who wasn’t perfect. I didn’t know if it was possible. If it turned out it wasn’t with some random girl, that didn’t matter all that much. With Simmea it could be a disaster.

It turned out I was worrying about entirely the wrong thing.

There’s a whole section in Book Five of the Republic about how the masters are supposed to cheat with the sex festival, to make sure the best get to have the best children. The children of the less good will be exposed anyway, but while everyone’s supposed to believe it’s entirely random, they naturally cheat for eugenics. I hadn’t forgotten this, but I had only thought it would mean that they’d be likely to match me with somebody beautiful after all. They did. But when I heard our names read out I froze.

“Pytheas, Klymene!” old Ficino read. My friends were pushing me forward and laughing. I walked mechanically towards the steps. I saw Klymene coming from the other side, not looking at me. The garland was tied around our wrists and our arms raised. Our eyes had still not met. We walked together down the steps and off through the dancers and down the street.

Eventually I looked at her. She was so pale and resolute that she’d have done for a portrait of Artemis. “I’m really sorry,” I said.

“It’s random chance,” she said. “It’s not your fault any more than it is mine. It’s just Fortuna laughing at both of us.”

“I mean I’m really sorry I said what I said to you on the mountain.”

She looked at me now for the first time. “That’s the latest apology I ever had.”

“Simmea said you didn’t want to talk to me. She beat me up. She made me realize what an idiot I was.”

“She made me practice being brave until I could be brave again,” Klymene said. “Simmea’s a good friend. And I didn’t want to talk to you right away. But it has been a long time. Years.”