I had never before heard of the darkness of the oak. But as soon as I heard what Father said, I understood what it meant. Zeus had the power to undo time, to make things never have happened. He could do that with the city, unmake it. The Masters and Children would never have left their own times. The Young Ones would never have been born. The City would never have been more than Plato’s dream. The darkness of the oak. I shuddered.
Fear is a strange thing. I had been afraid I wouldn’t qualify as gold, but I had not been afraid when all-knowing Zeus had appeared before me and carried me off outside time. I had sat through the debate so far listening to Athene being chided and been calm and interested. But as soon as Father said “the darkness of the oak” I was terrified—and yet still a little detached from my fear, observing it rather than being swept off in it. Was this what it was like to be a god?
“But why, Phoebus?” Zeus grumbled. “You’re outside time. You’d still remember what you’ve learned. Your children are here, even Neleus.” Neleus straightened Ficino’s hat as Zeus glanced at him. “And however much agape you felt for her, your woman is already dead. The whole thing is ludicrous. Their souls are going back where they came from. It has only been a few years. The darkness of the oak would be a mercy—”
“No,” Father said. “Please.”
“Bring down the volcano,” I said, seeing it all at once as a solution. Zeus’s eyes met mine over Father’s prostrate form, and again I felt that I puzzled him. “If we can’t go on, if you have to end it, bring down the lava and the fire and the death we have always known is coming, sweep it away, kill us all. But let it have happened! Wipe it out if you must, but don’t make it never have been.”
“Why?” Behind him lightning flashed around the snowy peak of Olympos.
“We were trying to do Plato’s Republic,” I said. “It may be ludicrous and impossible, it may seem foolish to you, but we were trying. We made compromises and adaptations, but we were all trying to increase our excellence, to increase the city’s excellence, and the world’s. You heard the vow I made, that’s why you came, because I called on you to hold the oath. We all made that vow. We may have fallen short, we may have made mistakes, we may have done it all wrong, but our goal was great. Athene set us there under the volcano so that we would have no posterity, and we accepted that—difficult as it is to accept. But we were what we were, we existed. We tried. Kill us now if that’s what’s necessary to preserve history, but leave us the effort we made, at least.” I thought of Mother, Ficino, Erinna, Crocus, the everyday life of the Republic, Alkibiades showing me the vines and saying he didn’t want divine power, the people of Psyche joining in raggedly on the last chorus of Father’s ode to peace. “We might not have been philosopher kings as Plato intended, but at least we made the attempt.”
Maia was smiling through tears. Neleus nodded at me.
“And would you go back and die with the city you care for so much?” Zeus asked, his great dark eyes fixed on mine.
“You know I would. I know how temporary death is. My soul would go on with what it learned in the Just City, as we all would. Don’t take that away from us.”
Ikaros was staring at me, his lips parted. “You said you weren’t an angel,” he said.
“God is a better term,” Zeus said, absently. “She has free will, and limited knowledge. And there is no such thing as omnipotence, and omniscience is extremely overrated. As for omnibenevolence, I’m sure you realize by now that we’re doing our best. And time is a Mystery, by which I mean you are welcome to make up your own theories and I’ll be grateful if any of them come close to being a useful analogy.”
“I’ll work on it,” Ikaros said. He looked at Athene. “I’ll work on it with Sophia’s help.” Athene was smiling at him, but he looked away from her, to me. “And I will always pursue excellence.”
Zeus’s gaze ran over my brothers. He looked down at Father, who was still clutching his knees. “Get up, son. I won’t do it. Though I can’t see where, under Fate and Necessity, the place can go. She wants posterity, you know.”
“Mortals all want posterity,” Father said, getting up and settling back on the grass next to Zeus. “It’s some compensation for forgetting when they go on to new lives. Mortality is so strange. You should try it sometime. It’s so very different in practice.”
“I look forward to hearing you sing about it.” Zeus put his hand on Father’s shoulder.
“They have equal significance, you know,” Father said. “All of them. They all matter to themselves, to each other.”
“I know. I wondered how long it would take you to figure that one out.”
Father leaned back on his hands. “There will be songs. A lot of songs.”
“Good. These are things the gods need to understand. If I am to send the lava—”
“Yes. Send me back to die with the city.” Father didn’t hesitate.
“And I,” Maia said, instantly.
“And I,” my brothers chorused.
“And I,” Ikaros said, only a heartbeat later.
“It’s not even your city anymore, you’ve just been given a research project by ever-living Zeus, you’re on Olympos with the gods, and you’re asking to go back to die?” Athene asked, incredulous.
“If it’s going to perish that way, I should go with it. And all of Kallisti is the Republic, all the different cities are our own visions of the Just City, and choices we have opened up in our interpretations.” Ikaros nodded to Porphyry, who grinned at him.
“Don’t worry, he won’t do that either,” Porphyry said.
Deep-browed Zeus turned his gaze on Porphyry. “Won’t I, grandson? How do you know?”
“You’re trying to find a way, by Fate and Necessity, to give us posterity. And I see one!”
“Oh Porphyry, you have your powers! Are they prophetic?” I asked.
“I’d much rather be able to fly,” Porphyry said. “And I don’t know whether it’s prophetic power, or just being outside time, but I can see time from the outside, and I see the threads and patterns of it, so I see where we could go.”
“What useful skills your children have,” Zeus said, to Father. “Did you think at all what you were doing with a whole clutch of them? Setting up your own pantheon? Will you go back with them even if it’s not to fiery destruction?”
“I’ll live out this life until this body dies, and then come home to Olympos,” Father said. “When this body dies, whether that’s in ten minutes from the volcano or in fifty years from old age.”
“You’ll be cleaning up this mess for a lot longer than fifty years,” Zeus said. “And you too,” he added, to Athene. “You’ll be out there getting your hands dirty, not tucked away in your library.”
“If that is your judgment,” Athene said.
“Show me what you have found, Porphyry,” Zeus said.
Porphyry stood up and walked over to Zeus. He put his hands together, then pulled them apart, as if doing a cat’s cradle, but without string. Something glimmered between his fingers. I thought for a moment it was one of the blue and gold bell-headed flowers, but there was nothing there. “Here,” Porphyry said, indicating the emptiness between his fingers. “And a little while before the ships arrive from Earth, do you see?” Zeus peered into the nothingness, then laughed. Thunder rolled around the mountain.
“That’ll do,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked.