“But no longer as slaves,” Aristomache said. “As citizens?”

“Only some of them are aware,” Lysias said. “We can’t consider them citizens yet. It’s too early. You mentioned how carefully we considered every child for their metal.”

“We need to find out what the workers want,” Sokrates interrupted.

“Proposal to set up a committee to discover what the workers want,” Tullius said.

This was carried at once. “Members of the committee?”

“Sokrates, first,” Lysias said. “He’s clearly the ideal person to work on dicovering this. He was the only person to consider their selfhood. He has already been working with them.”

“I won’t work on committees,” Sokrates said. He had consistently refused this.

“Then since we have voted for a committee and you won’t work on one, I propose that it should be a committee consisting of just you,” Lysias said.

Everyone laughed. Sokrates nodded. “Very well. I will constitute myself a solo committee to investigate the wants of the workers, and I will come back to report it to all of you when I have discovered it.”

34

SIMMEA

Walking back through the city I heard babbling and a crowing laugh, and realised that there were children a year old in the city, learning to talk. There were also workers who could already talk, if you counted engraving words into stone as talking. Some of them were only too eager to do so, while others remained silent and enigmatic. That afternoon Pytheas and I went to Thessaly at our usual time and found Sokrates a little way up the street with Kebes and a worker, a great bronze shape with four arms, treads, and no head. “They don’t use names among themselves, but I call him Crocus,” he explained to me. “He’s the first one who answered me, the one with the bulbs.”

“Of course,” I said. “Joy to you, Crocus.” Crocus remained still and said nothing. I looked at Sokrates.

“We were just discussing the question of the workers who do not speak,” Sokrates said.

Crocus moved and one of its arms came down to the ground. It was a chiselling tool. It carved neatly at Sokrates’s feet. “Workers do not speak to workers.”

“You can’t speak among yourselves?” Sokrates asked. “Do you want to?”

“Want to speak to workers,” it responded.

“I wonder if there’s some way you can. I’ll talk to Lysias and Klio about it.”

“They may be able to talk with keys,” Kebes said. “We should have people studying how all this works.”

“Workers who do not speak: aware? not-aware?” Crocus carved.

“I don’t know,” Sokrates answered. “Nobody can tell. And that’s a problem. We’ve told all of you you’re permitted to talk, but only some of you do.”

“Are they going to be citizens?” I asked.

“That’s another question,” he said. “How much can they participate in the life of the city? We expect a lot from them, but we’re giving them nothing.”

“Give power,” Crocus wrote.

“You want us to give you power?” Sokrates asked, startled.

“Have power. Power in feeding station.”

“I don’t understand,” Sokrates said. “I think we have to go back to definitions. What do you mean by power?”

“Electricity,” it wrote.

Sokrates laughed. “Not at all what I was thinking.”

“What do you mean by power?” it asked.

Sokrates and Kebes exchanged glances. “Not an easy question,” Sokrates said. “Power can be many things. We should examine the question.”

“Power is the ability to control your own life,” Kebes said.

“It’s choice,” Pytheas said, of course.

“The ability to make choices for other people,” Sokrates suggested.

“There’s physical power, like electricity, and the ability to move and affect things,” I said, thinking about it. “And there’s political power, the ability to have your choices count and constrain other people’s. There’s the power to make things, to create. I don’t know where that fits.”

“There’s power over the self, direct power over others, and indirect power over them, influence,” Pytheas said.

“Divine power,” Sokrates added.

“Internal and external power,” Kebes said. “Power given and power taken.”

“Want power choose. Want power over self,” Crocus wrote. “Electric power given at feeding station. Where other power given?”

“Good question, very good question,” Sokrates said, patting Crocus affectionately on the flank.

“Some of it comes naturally,” Pytheas said. “I have the power to speak aloud, you have the power to carve in marble. Inbuilt power.”

“And some is granted by other people. I have the power to choose what to do in the afternoons because I am a gold. If I were iron I’d be working now,” I said. “The masters gave me that.”

“And some is taken,” Kebes said. “The masters took power over us and over you.”

Sokrates shook his head. “Let’s consider all of this carefully and in order, and make sure we do not miss anything.”

“Good,” Crocus wrote.

Just then another worker stopped by us. I had seen it coming and taken no notice, workers were such a familiar sight. I counted them as part of the street, or part of the scenery, like passing birds.

When this one stopped and I took in that this meant our debate group had increased, I realized I had as much work to do on granting them equal significance as Pytheas had needed to do with humanity. “Simmea, this is 977649161. His number is his name. We call him Sixty-one for short.”

I couldn’t tell it apart from Crocus except by where it was standing, and had no idea how Sokrates could. “Joy to you,” I said.

Sokrates continued to interrogate the idea of power, with both the workers participating, but I wasn’t really concentrating. I was thinking about the workers, and what it meant for the workers to be people, to be citizens, especially if only some of them were aware.

“I think you’re like children,” I said when there was a break in the conversation.

“Like us?” Kebes asked. “In that they were brought here without choice?”

“No, like real children. Like the babies. Children are people, but they need to be educated before they have power and responsibility. The workers are the same.”

“Educated?” Sixty-one wrote.

“Read. Write. Learn,” Crocus replied.

“That’s exactly right,” Sokrates said.

“Want educated,” Crocus wrote.

“You can read,” Pytheas said. Then he frowned. “Oh.”

“There’s nothing for them to read in Greek but in Latin letters,” Kebes said. “Even if they can read books. But maybe we could teach them the Greek alphabet.”

“Music and mathematics,” I said. “That’s where we should start. And we can educate any workers who want it, and when they’re educated they can be classified—the philosophical ones gold, the others to their proper places.”

“That’s an excellent idea!” Sokrates said. “They want education. It’s something we can give them in return for all the work they do.”

Crocus went back to where it had engraved “Give power” and tapped it, moving rapidly to “Electricity.”

“Do you mean we give you electricity in exchange for work?” Kebes asked.

“Yes,” it wrote.

“It would seem to me that since you look after the electricity supply, it’s something you give yourselves,” Kebes said.

“Power comes in from sun,” Sixty-one wrote.

“Well, you get it directly from Helios Apollo, then,” Kebes said.

Sokrates looked at Pytheas, and then at me, and we all smiled.

“Want to read,” Crocus wrote.

“Can you read books?” I asked. “Could you if they were written in the alphabet you know?”

It was still.

“I don’t think they could,” Kebes said. “Books are too fragile.”

“What are books?” Sixty-one asked.

I tried to explain.

“There must be a way, other than inscribing every book in the city on the paving stones in Latin letters,” Pytheas said. “Though that’s not unappealing.”