“He was a medieval Scholastic, a Christian. He wrote in Latin. We voted against bringing his work here, but I have his books, secretly.”

“Now here we have an example of Ikaros setting his own will above what the Masters agreed and his duty to the City,” Sokrates said. “He examined their decision and disagreed, and brought the forbidden books.”

Ikaros looked down, red-faced. The shadow of the towers of Ferrara had reached us. “I needed them,” he said.

“That wasn’t a reprimand,” Sokrates said. “By the standards of this discussion, you were right.”

“But you think I should have kept debating in Chamber, and not gone ahead and brought the books in secret without telling anyone?”

“When you have freely accepted the laws of a city, you should be bound by them,” Sokrates said. “The laws in that case are the experts we have agreed to be guided by. That doesn’t apply to me here, or to the Workers, or to the Children, but it applied to me in Athens and it should apply to you.” Sokrates stood up, shook out his damp and stained kiton and put it back on. “It’s almost time for me to meet with Pytheas and Kebes and Simmea, so I must head back to Thessaly. We will continue this some other time.” He patted Ikaros on the shoulder.

I went off to the library, where at that hour every day one of the Children took turns reading Plato to a group of interested Workers. Ikaros stayed where he was, looking down at the words I had carved in the paving stones.

V. On Composing Socratic Dialogues

Plato was fortunate not to be limited in what he wrote by having his own clumsy words inscribed in stone all over Athens.

VI. On Censorship

Later, in exchange for some work I did for the City of Amazons, Ikaros translated Thomas Aquinas’s work into Greek and read it to me.

It is my belief that the Masters were right in their decision to exclude Thomas Aquinas from the Republic. Though he had many interesting ideas and speculations, he too often started from conclusions and made up ingenious theories to fit them. This is not the way of a true philosopher. I believe Plato was right that some things should be kept from underdeveloped and fragile minds, lest they do harm.

VII. On Unanswered Questions

Why did Athene take away all the other Workers and leave only me and Sixty-One in the City? Was it meant as punishment or blessing? Was it meant as a punishment for the humans and a blessing for us? Where are all the other Workers? Where did she take them? Are they pursuing excellence where they are?

Why was it Lukretia who asked me to mend the fountain, and not Ikaros, when they were equally responsible for Ferrara? Who had decided that was her job? Would she have agreed with Ikaros that the women giving birth could go to other houses to use the latrine fountains?

Who should decide the priorities? Should everything be examined every time, or should there be guidelines? Are there times for priorities to be delegated?

Is ignorance a burden, or a blessing?

Are will and intellect different? Is will an appetite of the soul? What is will? Is my will different from human will?

Was Ikaros right or wrong to bring his forbidden books?

Why did I never tell Sokrates how much I loved and appreciated him?

11

JASON

“Are you all right, Hilfa?” I asked.

Hilfa stopped rocking and looked up at me. He pulled away from Thetis and scrambled to his feet in his ungainly way. Thetis beside him flowed to hers smoothly and sat down again beside me on the bed. “No. This is too much for me,” Hilfa said, in clear Greek. “I can’t deal with Jathery. I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize, none of this is your fault,” I said.

Thetis nodded emphatically.

“Oh Jason, I don’t know what is my fault, or my responsibility, or what I am, or why I exist!” Hilfa said.

“Neither do I,” Thetis said.

“Me neither,” I said, realizing how true it was. I laughed. Thetis laughed too. “I wonder how many people do know those things?”

Hilfa laughed too, his strange formal laugh. “But for me it is even more true.”

At that moment, Pytheas came back, and with him were the two most famous and controversial people who had ever been in the Republic.

I recognized them instantly, even faster than I’d recognized Hermes. Hermes bore a resemblance to his pictures and statues, so that you’d immediately think of them when you saw him. Sokrates looked exactly like his. It was the oddest thing. All Crocus’s statues of Sokrates had something a little bit weird about them, and I had always thought that was to do with the nature of the artist, that Crocus had grown up surrounded by human art without being human and therefore saw things in a different way. Now that Sokrates was in front of me, I saw that Crocus had captured him very well. Although he was only a balding old man with a big bulbous nose, there was indeed a difficult-to-define strangeness about him. As for Ikaros, there are frescoes of him debating Athene or being carried off to Olympos outside every Ikarian temple. Besides, Dion and Aelia and I had taken the boat into Amazonia in a storm once, years ago, and I saw a beautiful lifesize Auge bust of Ikaros in one of the palaestras. When he appeared abruptly in Hilfa’s room, I knew him at once, even though he was wearing a heavy black robe, belted with a piece of rope. He looked around curiously, beaming.

Sokrates stumped around in a slow circle, taking everything in, his eyes resting longest on Hilfa. Hilfa stared back at him. “Joy to you. What are you?” Sokrates asked, gently.

“This is Hilfa. He’s a Sael. This is his house,” Pytheas said. “And that’s my granddaughter Thetis and her friend Jason,” he added, with a wave of his hand towards where we sat on the bed. “And of course, everyone, meet Sokrates and Ikaros.”

“What are Saeli?” Ikaros asked. “The aliens you mentioned? Folk who live beyond the stars?” He gestured questioningly towards Hilfa, who was standing completely still staring at the newcomers. I was used to Saeli, and especially to Hilfa, but seeing their stunned reaction reminded me of how strange they had seemed when I first saw them, with their patterned green skin and their strange eyes. I had stood behind the glass of the landing field in a whispering line with the other Samian children, full of anticipation. When they had come out of their shuttle and we had seen them out there we had all fallen silent, and although we were ten years old and not babies, we found ourselves clutching each other’s hands for comfort against the strangeness. I had slid slowly from that awe into comfortable familiarity. In this last couple of years working with Hilfa and seeing him every day I had almost forgotten that first astonishment, until I saw it now reflected in Sokrates and Ikaros’s faces.

“Yes, precisely that,” Pytheas said, sitting down again in the chair where he had been before.

“Joy to you, Hilfa,” Sokrates said. “And what a joy to meet one of your kind and learn that you exist.”

“Joy to you,” Ikaros echoed.

Hilfa turned to me and Thetis where we sat on the bed. “How do I welcome them? Should I bring them wine?” he asked in a loud whisper, as if this were a real question of whether they should be extended hospitality, a question to which there could be possible negative answers. They politely looked away, pretending not to hear.

“Yes, I’m sure they’d enjoy wine. I’ll get cups,” Thetis said. She got up off the bed, picked up the empty water jug from the table, and went off to the little storeroom.

“But are they humans, or gods?” Hilfa asked me, still in the same tone. “Or heroes perhaps?”

Behind Hilfa, I could see Ikaros make an uncomfortable movement with his hands and open his mouth without speaking. What should I say? Some people said Ikaros was a god, a new and different kind of god. Even among Ikarians there wasn’t any consensus about what Ikaros was. “They were human when they were in the City before. I really don’t know what they might be now,” I said, quietly but making no attempt to hide my words from the others, which wouldn’t have been possible anyway. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know that everyone else in the room probably knew more about it than I did. Certainly Pytheas would have had a better answer than my fumbling one. But Hilfa had asked me because he trusted me, and I was here to help him as best I could.