“I will help draft the legislation,” I said, much moved by how unhesitatingly my friends spoke up for the rights of Workers.
“Not only any Worker, any slave,” Klymene said. “Humans can be slaves. I was born one myself.”
“Any slave, yes, of course,” I said. I had not imagined anything as bad as this.
“You are assuming their Workers must be self-aware,” Aroo said. “The Saeli have no sapient Workers.”
“But we know humans do,” Neleus objected.
“There may be more that one human culture, more than one human technology. On their planet, Marhaba, they may not have self-aware Workers, even if they had them on Earth when your ancestors left.”
“Thank you, Aroo, I feel much better for that thought,” Neleus said. I hoped she was right. “Of course space humans are not one homogenous lump, any more than our twelve cities are. The Marhabi may well have Workers who are not self-aware.”
Akamas pushed buttons, and we were back in communication. “We want numbers on the robots,” I said, in English.
“We’ll get you that information.”
We went on with the negotiations for some time. After a while, Arete came in.
“Oh, there you are, did you fall asleep?” Akamas asked.
“It’s a little bit more complicated than that,” Arete said. “How is it going here?”
“Staying on script as far as possible, with a bit of a worry that they don’t treat their Workers as people—though Aroo pointed out that we can’t tell until we meet them whether their Workers are in fact people,” Neleus said.
“Good. Well, I’m here to translate.”
“I can keep going,” I said.
“I’m sure you could, but there’s somebody outside who really wants to speak to you, so I’ll take over for a while. Go on.” She smiled at me. Arete and I have been friends for a long time.
Curious, I rolled out to see who needed me.
He was waiting in the foyer, looking down at the mosaic with an amused smile. If I say I have never been so surprised or delighted, it will sound like hyperbole, but it is the simple truth. “Sokrates!” I said, and then in my astonishment I repeated it. “Sokrates!”
“You can talk out loud!” Sokrates said. “Oh, Crocus, this is wonderful. We can get on so much faster now!”
II. On War and Peace
Sokrates and I talked all night. I carried him back from the spaceport to the City. There we went at his suggestion to the feeding station between the streets of Poseidon and Hermes, where long ago he had first tried to find me among my companions. There we joined Sixty-One and some of the younger Workers, to whom Sokrates was nothing but a legend. We settled down to recharge, each Worker plugged in at a feeding station, and Sokrates perched up on top of my station, sitting cross-legged as I had so often seen him. More and more Workers came in and quietly took up places as the news spread among us, until the big room was almost full.
It was wonderful to have Sokrates back. We told him everything that had happened since the Last Debate, and he, of course, had many questions. We puzzled together about where Athene might have taken the other Workers when she took them away, and about her motivations in doing so. We talked about the twelve cities and how they were set up, and the differences between them.
“And you Workers are free to choose where to live?”
“Yes. There are feeding stations in all the cities now. Once we have passed our tests we are free to go where we choose. As for the tests and our education, we still use the system you and Simmea thought up.”
“What exactly happened to Simmea? I heard she was killed in some kind of war that Pytheas later stopped?”
“It was an art raid,” I said, saddened by the memory. Then he wanted to know about the art raids, how they had started and why they stopped.
“I have wondered why Plato insisted on all the military training, for a Just City,” Jasmine said, when Sixty-One and I had answered Sokrates’s questions as best we could. Jasmine was a Gold, now thirty-four years into selfhood, and presently serving his first turn in the Council of Worlds. Many in his generation had flower names, which I found touching, as they chose them partly in compliment to me. Jasmine was a thoughtful and philosophical young Worker, an ally in the Council. When he was classified Gold I felt as proud as the day on which I myself earned such classification. He was braver than most of his siblings, who were mostly too shy to speak up before Sokrates.
“Plato was imagining a Just City in the real world. Not that this world isn’t real, sorry! I mean he was imagining it being in Greece, a city-state with other city-states around it, not a city in isolation on an island—or a planet—without connections. There’s something that feels strange about an isolated city—I could never have imagined one, and I don’t suppose Plato could either. He traveled much more than I did. I hardly left Athens, except once to go to the Isthmian games, and the times when I was on military service. Yet any day walking around Athens I was constantly meeting people from all over Greece, and barbarians too.”
“But does being connected in the world necessarily mean war?” Jasmine asked.
“Well, it did for Athens, whether the Persian Wars or the Spartan ones. It has for most people for most of history,” Sokrates said. “Whether that’s for good or evil, or whether it can be avoided, I don’t know. But it doesn’t surprise me that Plato expected warfare as an unavoidable part of life, or that you had these wars, these art raids, once you had more than one city. What surprises me is rather that you stopped and that the twelve cities have lived in peace since the Relocation. That’s much more unusual. How do you account for that?”
“Partly it’s because the environment is hard here, I think. Humans don’t have as much energy for fighting in the cold,” Sixty-One said. “They unite against the elements.”
“No, the art raids stopped because of Pytheas’s song,” I said.
“But the song doesn’t prescribe peace, rather it prescribes only fighting for what is important,” Jasmine said. “They always sing it to open the the Festival of Exchange of Art, so I have heard it many times.”
“I look forward to hearing it,” Sokrates said. “It must be an impressive song if it can stop war. Perhaps Apollo put some of his divine power into it—or some of his divine skill, as he had no power while he was incarnate.”
“It’s a choral ode,” Sixty-One said, parenthetically.
“Neleus thinks the Olympics also help keep the peace,” I said, remembering the conversation earlier. “He thinks that the young people who used to join in raids focus on sport instead. It’s true that the victors in the Olympics get to choose first what art will go to their city.”
“I always thought them very dull,” Jasmine said. “It’s hard to take much aesthetic interest in watching humans compete physically.”
“I think Neleus may be right that it is a calming factor,” Sixty-One said.
“The fourth circumstance that has favored peace since the Relocation is the Council of Worlds,” I said. “All the cities send representatives, chosen however they want, and we discuss the issues that affect the whole planet. People try to win debates instead of battles. Everyone gains a little and loses a little. We try to think of the good of everyone.”
“And nobody is discontent?”
“People may be a little discontent, but they think that as they have lost a little here, they have gained a little there,” I said. “But I may be prejudiced in favor. I have served in the Council regularly, and have been elected Consul three times. That is our highest elective office.”
“How about the ordinary people, the Bronzes and Irons and Silvers? Are they content with the situation?”
“If they’re not happy with how their city is governed, then they usually move to another city, as suits them,” Sixty-One said. “Mystics go to Psyche, rebels to Sokratea, and so on.”