“Why did you bring Pico?” Athene asked Zeus.
Zeus raised an eyebrow. “He’s the reason you did all this, isn’t he?”
I looked at Ikaros. He looked different, younger. His long hair was chestnut brown and his face was unlined. He looked only a few years older than my brothers. He was still clutching Maia’s arm. Maia also looked younger, very much the way she looked in her statue in Amazonia. She was staring at Athene. Ikaros opened his mouth as if he was about to say “Me?” again, but Porphyry put a hand on his shoulder and he subsided. Athene didn’t turn her head in his direction, but the owl was staring at him, and I felt she didn’t need to look at him to see him. I could also tell by the way he was looking delightedly at everything that he could see properly.
“It’s true I wanted somewhere interesting to take him. But he prayed to me for the Republic. They all did, all the Masters. And I could grant their prayers and help. It seemed like a good time and place for such an experiment.”
“It was meddling for your own vanity,” Zeus said, decisively. “And dragging Phoebus into it, where’s the sense in that?”
“I wanted to become incarnate to learn some things,” Father said. “Athene offered me the Republic as a time and place to do that. It was my free choice.”
“And you’ve learned them, I see, and more besides. And you have a daughter. How very unlike you.” Zeus looked at me, and I met his gaze as best I could. He looked a little puzzled. I felt as if I should be terrified, but I wasn’t afraid at all. It wasn’t like the time on Delos where everything I did was under the control of Fate and I was going through a prescribed and required set of motions. I was entirely free to act and choose for myself. But I didn’t feel fear or anger, or anything at all really. Indeed, I felt preternaturally calm.
“My daughter Arete, my sons Kallikles, Phaedrus, Neleus, Euklides and Porphyry,” Father said, indicating us. I realized for the first time that Alkibiades wasn’t there, though he had been standing with the others. Was that because he had said he didn’t want divine powers? How did Zeus know? And how was Neleus here? He wasn’t really Father’s son.
“A place women can be excellent, eh?” Zeus said, punning on my name of course, not even the king of gods and men was above that. He seemed to hear a lot more than was said, because while I knew that Father usually only had sons because it was generally so unpleasant to be a woman, but the Republic was fair to both, Father hadn’t said anything to Zeus about that.
“Plato—” Athene said.
“Don’t start,” Zeus said. “After what you did to Sokrates?”
He stopped and looked at Ikaros. “To answer your unspoken question, I knew nothing about it until it was drawn to my attention by Arete just now, and now I know everything about it, as if I had always known.”
“Thank you,” Ikaros said. “And if you don’t mind me asking, why are you taking the time to explain this to me?”
“Because it’s better than overhearing your infernal conjectures,” Zeus said. As he laughed the mountain seemed to shake. Then he looked at Maia.
“And yes, this is Olympos, and you are correct that we are not perfect. And yes, Pytheas is Apollo.”
Maia nodded gravely. “Of course,” she said. “And Simmea knew, of course.” Father smiled at that.
“And you are here because Ikaros felt you were a deserving philosopher who had been right where he had been wrong,” Zeus went on.
“And since I was wrong, why from all the assembled citizens did you choose to bring me?” Ikaros was being very polite, but he didn’t seem afraid either. I wondered if calm was somehow in the air here.
“My wise daughter, in her chaste and foolish way, is in love with you. Only with your mind, I hasten to add. But I think it would be fair to say that she is in a state of unrequited agape with regard to you.”
“Father, we all have favorites,” my own father said. Maia laughed. Ikaros was staring at Athene in complete astonishment. “It helps to have conversations with them about it and find out what they want,” Father went on.
Athene looked up from her shield and rolled her eyes at Father. “It wasn’t that kind of thing. There’s no comparison. I just—he was so bright and so young and he did pray to me for it, and lots of other people had too, and it all seemed as if it would be so interesting and so much fun,” she said. “Nothing like your romances at all.”
“Not unrequited,” Ikaros said, passionately, as soon as she had finished speaking. “Never unrequited. I have loved and sought wisdom all my life—and you, Sophia, from the day I saw you.”
“Then why did you betray me?” she asked, her gray eyes hard as flint.
“With Sokrates? Or by saying you were an angel?” he asked.
“That there are multiple possible occasions does seem indicative of problems,” Zeus said.
“But I loved you all the time.” He didn’t look away from Athene, and he absolutely meant it.
“You betrayed me when, just before the Last Debate, you turned away from reason and said will and love could be enough, you didn’t need comprehension!” Athene said.
“Oh.” Ikaros looked abashed. “That was just a theory, and I was just wrong. Simmea said it was mystical twaddle, and I realized she was right as soon as I read Aquinas again. But even then I never stopped loving you.”
“I am reason, you idiot,” she said.
“I am human and make mistakes, but I always try again to serve you and be worthy of you,” Ikaros said. “You have always been my goal and my delight.”
“Touching as this is, we have serious business,” Zeus interrupted.
“He is my votary. He prayed to me when he could have been burned at the stake for it,” Athene said, turning to Zeus. “And others too. Ficino. Aristomache. Maia.” She gestured to Maia, sitting primly on the grass listening intently. “They loved our world, and their own worlds held too little to fulfill their souls. I wanted to see what they would do with their imagination of our world, and Plato’s vision.”
“Plato’s Republic,” Zeus said. “Three hundred philosophers and classics majors. Ten thousand slave children. Lost artworks from all of time. Robots. The head of the Winged Victory of Samothrace.”
“All the books,” Ikaros put in. “We rescued all the books from the Great Library of Alexandria.”
“Of course you did,” Zeus said, his gaze still fixed on Athene. “You took Pico and Ficino and Atticus careering through time rescuing books and art, you turned Sokrates into a fly because he beat you in a fair argument, and you’d like me to regard this as something other than sheer unadulterated self-indulgence?”
“I have learned a lot I could have learned nowhere else,” Father said.
“I have lived a life I could have lived nowhere else, and I shall always be grateful to Athene for giving me my life,” Maia said.
“I accept your judgment,” Athene said, inclining her head to Zeus.
“My judgment. Yes. But how shall I judge what I shall do with it? They’ve already left the island and started to reach out. I can’t leave them there to tangle with history. For us, what’s done is done. But for them, it might be kindest if—”
“No! Please!” Father said. He flung himself down before Zeus, flat on his face, with his hands on Zeus’s knees. My sense of scale quailed, for in one way Zeus’s knees were as huge as mountain ranges, and in another Father, who was the same size he always was, could comfortably clutch them. Also, the posture was ridiculous, but Father managed to make it seem not only graceful but entirely natural. “Not the darkness of the oak! Don’t unmake them. I beg you, Father, not that.”