“Ask if he’s aboard.”

“Is Matthias here?” I called to a sailor. He jerked a thumb backwards to where a burly man in a cap was leaning on the rail, in a stance that reminded me a little of Ma. “Someone for you, Matthias,” he called.

The man, who must be Kebes, met my eyes and straightened into immediate alertness. “No. Not again. Not for anything. Go away. I want nothing more to do with you. Leave me alone!”

“I suspect,” Hermes murmured, “that we had better try earlier.”

10

CROCUS

I. On the Physical Form of Chamber

Chamber is the first building I remember, and indeed it was the first building in the City. It was built by Workers under the direction of Athene before there were any humans here at all. The first gathering of the Masters, when Athene drew together all those who had prayed to her to allow them to help make the Republic real, took place inside it. I must have been there, and perhaps participated in the construction, but I do not remember. Like everyone else here now, I know because I have been told.

The Chamber was built, like most of the original city, from marble, and is as formally classical as any building there has ever been, with evenly spaced white Doric pillars and a fine pediment. Of course, like all such buildings, it was intended for the clement climate of Greece, to catch the zephyrs and be cooled by them. Once we found ourselves open to the winds of chilly Plato, where for half the long year the temperature hovers around the freezing point of water, the humans immediately urged us to fill the spaces between the columns and to install electrical heating. (Such heating was refitted almost everywhere, where before it had only been used in the library.) In the case of Chamber, the space between the pillars was filled with obsidian blocks up to about the height of a tall human, and the top with clear glass. It always fills me with quiet pride to see it—beautiful and appropriate to its use, built by Workers, refitted by Workers, and the place where I, in my first consulship, was accepted as one of Plato’s true philosopher kings.

II. On Pronouns

Although I do not have personal gender, I use masculine pronouns. This is because I was, like all Workers, assigned the neuter pronoun “it” when I was considered no more than a tool. This was changed to “he” when first Sokrates and then others came to see me as a person. To me, “he” is the pronoun of personhood. Other Workers have made other choices. We divide at 46%⁄37% he/it, with a 17% minority opting for “she.”

The Saeli have many pronouns for many things, and their pronouns reflect the different way they see the world. Arete tells me they have a pronoun for a person engaged in a form of work that will be finished soon, and a pronoun for a person engaged in a form of work that will not be completed for a long period of time. In addition to all the possible pronouns for people, they have special pronouns for gods, domestic animals, wild animals that can be hunted, and inedible wild animals. Aroo told me that a war was started long ago on their home planet when one Saeli used the pronoun for inedible wild animals to refer to the leader of another faction.

They do have personal gender, but their pronoun choice in Greek seems to be unaffected by that and simply a matter of personal choice, as with us.

III. On the Analogy of the City and the Soul

In the Republic Plato slid easily between the city and the soul, as if what is just and fair and right in one is the same in the other, as if a city is a macrocosm of the soul, truly, not as an analogy. We in the Republics have tended to follow him in this, perhaps without sufficient examination.

It is illuminating to attempt to stop and consider, when thinking what is the right direction for the city in a specific circumstance, whether the same is true internally for one’s own soul. It is also interesting to consider whether it scales larger—can the whole commonwealth of all the cities on the planet be analogous to a soul? Plato says each thing has its own specific excellence: the excellence of a horse is not the excellence of a tree. So can the excellence of a city be the same as the excellence of a soul?

I think it may be easier for me to consider this than for most people, because I remember coming to consciousness in ignorance, and also because I was fortunate enough to be guided by Sokrates in my earliest explorations.

IV. On Priorities and Will

Sokrates and I were conversing one day in the agora, near the Temple of Athene and the library. We had been talking about education and rhetoric, and I was finding much to ponder in his views on these topics when suddenly Lukretia came dashing up and informed me that a pipe was blocked in the latrine fountain of the birthing house of Ferrara, and asked me to mend it urgently. I hastened off to get on with my work. Sokrates followed along, skipping to keep up with me.

“Why are you hurrying off in this way?” he asked.

“Lukretia say fountain broken,” I inscribed on the flagstones. I was surprised that he asked, as he had been there and must have heard Lukretia for himself. Sokrates paused to read this and then hurried on after me.

“Yes, but why are you going?” he asked when he came panting up.

“Mend fountain,” I wrote.

“Oh, this is hopeless,” Sokrates said. “I can see I won’t get any sense out of you until we get there.”

So I trundled off and he followed behind at his own speed. When I reached the Ferrara birthing house, the attendants were extremely pleased to see me. I went inside and mended the fountain. It was easy. A part of the flushing mechanism had been pulled loose, which kept the plugs pulled out so that the water ran straight through without allowing either tank to refill. It took me only a short time to fix it, and soon the latrine fountains were back in working order. When I went outside, Sokrates was sitting on the wall with a naked baby on his lap, playing a game with her toes that made her laugh. This was the first time I had seen a baby close up—this one was about a year old, beginning to learn to talk. “They wouldn’t let me inside in case I profaned the mystery of birth, so I waited here for you, and I have been amusing myself playing with this baby,” he said.

“Sun, foots, ning ah gah ah!” the baby said, reaching for Sokrates’s beard. Her hands, though tiny, were perfect, with a little nail on the end of every finger. She was already clearly a miniature human.

“This baby is like you, Crocus, still very young, and sometimes she doesn’t make much sense,” Sokrates said, smiling and tapping at her toes again.

“Sense?” I asked, carving the word in the flagstone at Sokrates’s feet.

“I heard what Lukretia said to you, and I understood what you were going to do. But we agreed that you would work for ten hours a day, and those ten hours are done for today, so you should have been free to enjoy your conversation.”

“Need fountain,” I wrote.

“You need education,” Sokrates said.

I underlined where I had written that the fountain was needed, and added “more.”

As I did that, Ikaros came out of the Ferraran hall and saw us. “Well, what’s this?” he asked. “I was about to go seeking you, Sokrates, and here you are sitting in the sunshine with a baby and a Worker.”

“Yes, I’m being lazy and indulging myself,” Sokrates said, smiling up at Ikaros.

“I don’t believe you. I think you’re engaged in one of your enquiries into some subject and you didn’t mean to include me!”

Ikaros sat down beside Sokrates. The baby cooed at him and kicked up her feet. “Ooooh!” she said.

“On the contrary, I’m delighted to have you join us. We were considering the ethics of need. Crocus believes that the birthing house of Ferrara needed their latrine fountain mended more urgently than he needed his leisure time for education.”