Necessity (33 page)

“How can it be? The nature of perfection—”

“Perfect things can become more perfect, endlessly.”

“Excellence, yes, but perfection implies completeness.”

Porphyry and I looked past them and smiled at each other. There was something satisfying to the soul in the way they so immediately became utterly absorbed in the argument. Sokrates caught the smile as Ikaros began to explain the nature of dynamic perfection, which was exactly the kind of abstraction Ikarians and Psycheans love. “Wait,” he said. “We're arguing with each other when we have an expert here.”

“I'm not an expert,” Porphyry said, throwing up his hands.

“But you admit you are a god?”

“Yes…” Porphyry admitted, tentatively.

“Then you must know what a god is,” Sokrates said, with a brisk nod. “Please enlighten us.”

Porphyry shook his head ruefully. “Do you know what a human is because you are one? Or how souls work because you have one? There are many kinds of god, and I don't know everything about it. It makes a huge difference who your parents were, and I'm not sure how. Gods are born with a heroic soul. Some have one or two parents who are divine, others do not.”

“What's the difference between a heroic soul and any other kind of soul?” Sokrates asked.

“I don't know, and Father—that is, Apollo—doesn't know either. But there is a difference. We don't know whether other souls evolve into heroic souls or whether they start off different. Apollo says there are always more heroic souls waiting to be born than suitable lives for them. He says all children of gods have a heroic soul.”

Alkippe, I thought, at once. I'd been so focused on getting Hermes, or rather Jathery, to go back and ensure she existed, that I hadn't thought about her heroic soul. But certainly she showed that level of excellence.

“But that doesn't necessarily make them gods,” Porphyry went on. “Look at my brother Alkibiades. He said he wanted to be an ordinary philosopher king like everyone else, and that's what he is. He has a heroic soul, but he doesn't want to be a god.”

“Is he excellent?” Ikaros asked.

Porphyry shrugged. “Yes, of course he is, but not exceptionally more excellent than you'd expect of a human born here and brought up by Pytheas and Simmea and who chose to move to Athenia as an ephebe. He's faster and more beautiful than Neleus, but not a better philosopher.”

“Dad hates being used as the exemplary human,” I put in. “It always comes up in conversations about this kind of thing.”

“He's such a useful example, though,” Porphyry said, smiling at me.

“And how about people who aren't children of gods? Do they ever have heroic souls?” Sokrates asked.

Porphyry sighed. “We think so, but sometimes it's hard to tell. Gods like to mate, is what Father says. So if there's somebody with a heroic soul, it can be hard to know for sure who their father is.”

Alkippe, I thought, again. How could Jathery deceive me that way? But I wanted her to exist. So since I willed the end, I must will the means, deception and being trapped by Necessity and all.

“So that could be you,” Sokrates said to Ikaros.

Ikaros blinked. “They say it about you, and about Plato,” he said.

“Me!” Sokrates laughed. “What god would own me as his son? Silenos?”

“Apollo.”

“We know what sons of Apollo look like,” Sokrates said, gesturing to Porphyry, with his chiselled features and bright blue eyes. Even for a man of sixty he was eye-catching, and like all my uncles he had been beautiful when he was younger. (Dad used to say he stopped being jealous of his brothers after Ma fell in love with him. I definitely shouldn't ever tell them that she might be Kebes's daughter.) “And Plato had a great broad forehead and a bit of a stoop!”

“You're young,” I said, realizing it as I looked at Ikaros. “You look younger than you do on the temple frescos.”

He ran a hand through his long hair. “I was old and nearly blind. I grew young again on Olympos. I don't know if it was Zeus or Athene or simply the place itself. I haven't seemed to age at all since then. But I've spent a lot of time outside time.”

“It's very strange being outside time,” I said, without thinking.

“Yes,” Ikaros said. “Interesting though.”

“Marsilia?” Porphyry asked.

“Jathery took me outside time last night,” I said. I didn't want to explain everything to Porphyry until Jathery and Pytheas either came back or didn't. But I knew how to distract him. “Jathery is Alkippe's father. So when you're giving her generation their choice of going to Olympos with you to get powers, you should ask her too.”

Porphyry nodded. “All right. That's surprising. I didn't know.”

“I didn't know either until yesterday. It was a Festival of Hera. He said he was from Psyche. He looked human.”

Porphyry grimaced sympathetically. “Even I didn't realize he was Jathery for a little while, yesterday.”

“Would being outside time be enough to make Ikaros young again?” Sokrates asked.

“It would make him his essential self. If that requires being young, then yes,” Porphyry said.

“I've wondered if it made me the age I was when I died,” Ikaros said. “The age I was when I came to the Republic, that is. As if only the time before counted.”

“But you didn't really die,” Porphyry said. “If you did, you really are unquestionably a god. But you can't have, you wouldn't have aged or strained your eyes and gone blind. I remember you very well that way, and so it's strange for me when I knew you as almost a father, and when I know you're a grandfather, to see you looking younger than I am.”

“No, I didn't really die,” Ikaros agreed. “Athene snatched me away an instant before death, and removed the arsenic that was killing me.”

“But it didn't take you to your essential age, because then you'd be back to being old again when you came back into time, wouldn't you?” I asked. Was Jathery's essential self that perpetual flicker? He had seemed human more often than Saeli.

“I think Athene fixed it,” he said.

“Are you her votary?” Porphyry asked.

“Of course I am,” Ikaros said.

“Then she could do that, I think,” Porphyry said. “I said I'm not really an expert.”

“I can't go outside time on my own,” Ikaros said. “That means I'm not a god, or an angel. Gods live in the hypostasis of soul, in what you call ‘outside time,' and step in and out of time, or the hypostasis of body, freely.”

“My brothers and Arete can't go outside time on their own either. They'll have to die and take up immortal bodies before they can. And I know nothing more about that. Father mentioned it, and he said it happens in the Underworld, and that's all I know about it. I think gods who have two divine parents are born with divine bodies, but they can take up a mortal body later, the way Father did.”

“Are the hypostases real, then?” Sokrates asked.

Porphyry shrugged. “What do you mean, real? They're a way of thinking about things that are very hard to put into words.”

“Aroo said spaceships go into the second hypostasis and come out again somewhere else and that's how they travel in space. If they do that, could they travel in time too?” I asked.

“Yes,” Porphyry said. “They do. Stars are in different times.”

“But why don't they return before they left?”

“Necessity prevents it,” Porphyry said.

I was going to ask more about Necessity, but Sokrates interrupted. “We have several points in favor of considering that Ikaros is not a god. What are the points for considering that you are one?”

“I've been working with Athene in a way that isn't like anything I've ever heard or read about a mortal doing,” Ikaros said. “And she talks about giving me responsibilities and power. If she did that, I'd definitely be a god. But she says I'd have to die first, put down my mortal body, and I'm reluctant to do that. I think I am perhaps an apprentice angel.”

“But you'll come to the meeting tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, resignedly.

“Then I should go if I'm to catch the tide,” I said. “I'll have to run as it is. I'll see you all here after dinner tonight.”

“Have fun fishing,” Ikaros said. “And thank you for your questions. We'll spend a happy afternoon thrashing out points of definition.”

“Oh really?” Porphyry asked. “Can I come fishing instead?”

“If you really want to and Jason doesn't mind,” I said, seeing he was in earnest. “Do you know how to fish?”

“I go out all the time at home. I find it so relaxing, and of course it's doing something really useful too.”

“I think exactly the same,” I said, pleased. “Come on!”

So we left Ikaros and Sokrates to their argument and ran down to the harbor to meet Jason and Hilfa. “There's much more going on than anyone has told me,” Porphyry said, as we ran.

“I can tell you if you want,” I said, reluctantly.

“No, I don't want at all. It's delightful being in the dark for once. It's such a nice change.” He laughed, panting, then we saved our breath for running. Down below we could see some boats going out already with the tide, but
Phaenarete
was still waiting at the quay when we came up alongside.

 

20

APOLLO

Once the door closed behind the rest of them, the three of us stood alone in Hilfa's sitting room, looking at each other uncomfortably. Then Arete sighed, and took up the papers and read through them again, silently. “I feel Necessity pressing hard on me,” Jathery said. The spell of gla words had no effect on either of us, but I could feel the power gla was putting into them, to make us trust gla. Gla looked all Saeli now, with the greenish skin and the bright lids and the strange knobbly joints that didn't bend the way human joints bend. The patterns on gla skin were not random, as on mortal Saeli, but formed changing letters in an alien alphabet that perhaps Arete could read.

“Don't push me,” I said. “I've agreed to let you come with me, for Alkippe as much as for the aegis of Necessity, but that doesn't mean I like you or want anything more to do with you than I have to. And afterwards you've agreed to abide by Father's judgement.”

Gla glared at me.

Arete began to read aloud.

When she had finished, I looked at Jathery. “That seems possible,” I said.

“This is what Athene and I prepared, for the two of us to go,” Jathery said. “How did she do it alone?”

“I've read you all she wrote,” Arete said.

“She obviously didn't want us to know that, and did want us to work together,” I said.

“Well, we can do that,” gla said, scowling. Gla face was much more flexible and human than any normal Saeli face could be. It made me wonder how much time gla had spent around humans, and with Athene.

“I know you can do it. What I'm worried about is you getting back,” Arete said, and her voice quavered. She dashed away tears from her eyes and hugged me. “See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow evening,” I said.

Arete nodded. “I'll talk to Porphyry, if necessary. But I hope very much to see you instead.”

We stepped out of Hilfa's sitting room and out of time.

I'm not going to tell you the details of Athene's instructions for how to get out from Avernus. She went to a lot of trouble to hide them, and for extremely good reasons. We followed them, and they worked, and we found ourselves … out there.

Where time and space are all and one, and self

Is smeared out over every where and when,

And memory, and soul, and stars, and dust,

Future and past and I and now and then

All merge, all melt together, beautiful,

Impersonal, and yet a point of view,

All greatness of the universe at once

Impinging, blossoming, becoming true.

So everything that's ever been and done

Is now, encompassing, and truly whole,

All happening, all past, all that's to come,

Each atom's heart, each world, each grain, each soul.

Each planet spiralling around its sun,

Each quark, and growing leaf, and galaxy,

Each word, and molecule, and falling stone,

And every mortal choice and destiny.

Where I am all, in all, all is in me,

Timeless, entire, all suns, all life, all love,

All words and music one, the endless dance,

Reflecting, knowing, here, below, above.

And art and consciousness reflect, engage,

When spread across all time and space as one

Subjective, glorious, a strange bright joy,

A vaster wonder, and a deeper fun.

Only one soul emerged to being here

To be the point of view the atoms need

To be the consciousness that knows itself,

To be awareness, the essential seed.

Our Father's soul, diffused across the void,

Perceiving all, not knowing what he knew,

In bliss complete, observer and observed,

Knowing, alone: imagined change, and grew.

Out here, where every moment touches now,

Conceived of life, and brought forth other souls,

And shaped the spheres of mind and soul and time

Where we with time could live and set our goals.

Each nebula and every lepton matter

And every soul will choose, and care, and mind

Can heal potentials into what is known

Not simply glorious, but graced and kind.

In time to know ourselves, to change, to learn,

For souls to grow through lives, to gain the scope,

Of consciousness, out here where all is one

Where Zeus invented change, and with it, hope.

Nourished, sustained, by this eternity,

Part of its endless moment's boundless bliss