The Just City

by Jo Walton

  There was a ripple of laughter among the masters.

  “Plato’s Just City has no slaves, only citizens playing their different roles and doing their different tasks, the tasks they are fit for. Though he lived when slavery was universal, he understood that slavery itself was unjust, that the relationship between master and slave is inevitably one of injustice and inequality. He saw that slavery was bad for the masters as well as the slaves, that it takes them away from excellence. Plato understood all that. He saw it. He was as visionary and radical in this as he was in saying women could be philosophers, or that philosophers ought to be rulers. He believed some people were best fitted for doing a slave’s work, and he knew the work needed to be done, but he saw that slavery, the ownership of one person by another, had no part in the Just City, if it was truly to be just. And we believed we were following him in this. We thought we had no slaves, just people doing the work they were best fitted for.”

  She paused and took a deep breath, clutching her bright cloak around her shoulders and looking out at all of us. “In the ancient world, slaves were a necessary evil. Even Plato with all his vision couldn’t imagine a world where slaves were not necessary, a world like the one Klio comes from, where machines do that work, and where they regard slavery as barbarism. But Athene could, and so she brought us machines to take the place of slaves. Tullius said last time, that if ever there were natural slaves, the workers were that.” Tullius nodded at this, and I saw others nodding around the Chamber.

  “I’m sure that’s what Athene was thinking when she gave them to us, that they were unthinking tools, natural slaves. And when she gave them to us, that’s what they were. Lysias has told us all tonight that they have come to consciousness here in the city. Working here, surrounded by philosophy and excellence, they developed self-awareness and began to examine their lives. We didn’t realize this, and we inadvertently mistreated them. I want to add my own apology to that of Lysias and Klio. If we had known that they were thinking beings we would have treated them better. And now Sokrates has established that. They are no more natural slaves than any one of us. They can choose the better over the worse. They are capable of philosophy. And so are we. To be our best selves, to make the best city, as we all want to do, we have to recognize what they are and treat them justly, as Plato would have us do.”

  Sokrates leapt to his feet. “I call for a vote!”

  “On what?” Tullius asked, reprovingly.

  “Why, on freeing the workers,” Sokrates said, as if it were the only possible question.

  I put my hand up, and Kreusa, beside me, leapt to her feet, waving her hand. Axiothea did the same, and I joined them, and others were doing it, so that the whole Chamber was a sea of waving hands. We were supposed to maintain silence, but somebody began a cheer, and I joined in with the rest. Ikaros hugged Aristomache, and then everyone around her was hugging her. I didn’t see anyone sitting down, and though Tullius was calling for silence it took some time before silence and calm were restored. Aristomache had shown us the Platonic path to choose, and we had unhesitatingly chosen it, by acclamation, and as simply as that we had abolished slavery and manumitted the workers. “We are doing the right thing by them, as Plato would have wanted,” Axiothea said to me as we sat down again. She had tears in her eyes, and so did I.

  Soon everyone was seated again except for Sokrates, Lysias and Aristomache, who was openly weeping. Sokrates hugged her again and she laughed through her tears.

  “We still need them to do their work,” Lysias said, when Tullius recognized him.

  “But no longer as slaves,” Aristomache said. “As citizens?”

  “Only some of them are aware,” Lysias said. “We can’t consider them citizens yet. It’s too early. You mentioned how carefully we considered every child for their metal.”

  “We need to find out what the workers want,” Sokrates interrupted.

  “Proposal to set up a committee to discover what the workers want,” Tullius said.

  This was carried at once. “Members of the committee?”

  “Sokrates, first,” Lysias said. “He’s clearly the ideal person to work on dicovering this. He was the only person to consider their selfhood. He has already been working with them.”

  “I won’t work on committees,” Sokrates said. He had consistently refused this.

  “Then since we have voted for a committee and you won’t work on one, I propose that it should be a committee consisting of just you,” Lysias said.

  Everyone laughed. Sokrates nodded. “Very well. I will constitute myself a solo committee to investigate the wants of the workers, and I will come back to report it to all of you when I have discovered it.”

  34

  SIMMEA

  Walking back through the city I heard babbling and a crowing laugh, and realised that there were children a year old in the city, learning to talk. There were also workers who could already talk, if you counted engraving words into stone as talking. Some of them were only too eager to do so, while others remained silent and enigmatic. That afternoon Pytheas and I went to Thessaly at our usual time and found Sokrates a little way up the street with Kebes and a worker, a great bronze shape with four arms, treads, and no head. “They don’t use names among themselves, but I call him Crocus,” he explained to me. “He’s the first one who answered me, the one with the bulbs.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Joy to you, Crocus.” Crocus remained still and said nothing. I looked at Sokrates.

  “We were just discussing the question of the workers who do not speak,” Sokrates said.

  Crocus moved and one of its arms came down to the ground. It was a chiselling tool. It carved neatly at Sokrates’s feet. “Workers do not speak to workers.”

  “You can’t speak among yourselves?” Sokrates asked. “Do you want to?”

  “Want to speak to workers,” it responded.

  “I wonder if there’s some way you can. I’ll talk to Lysias and Klio about it.”

  “They may be able to talk with keys,” Kebes said. “We should have people studying how all this works.”

  “Workers who do not speak: aware? not-aware?” Crocus carved.

  “I don’t know,” Sokrates answered. “Nobody can tell. And that’s a problem. We’ve told all of you you’re permitted to talk, but only some of you do.”

  “Are they going to be citizens?” I asked.

  “That’s another question,” he said. “How much can they participate in the life of the city? We expect a lot from them, but we’re giving them nothing.”

  “Give power,” Crocus wrote.

  “You want us to give you power?” Sokrates asked, startled.

  “Have power. Power in feeding station.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sokrates said. “I think we have to go back to definitions. What do you mean by power?”

  “Electricity,” it wrote.

  Sokrates laughed. “Not at all what I was thinking.”

  “What do you mean by power?” it asked.

  Sokrates and Kebes exchanged glances. “Not an easy question,” Sokrates said. “Power can be many things. We should examine the question.”

  “Power is the ability to control your own life,” Kebes said.

  “It’s choice,” Pytheas said, of course.

  “The ability to make choices for other people,” Sokrates suggested.

  “There’s physical power, like electricity, and the ability to move and affect things,” I said, thinking about it. “And there’s political power, the ability to have your choices count and constrain other people’s. There’s the power to make things, to create. I don’t know where that fits.”

  “There’s power over the self, direct power over others, and indirect power over them, influence,” Pytheas said.

  “Divine power,” Sokrates added.

  “Internal and external power,” Kebes said. “Power given and power taken.”

  “Want power choose. Want power over self,” Crocus wr
ote. “Electric power given at feeding station. Where other power given?”

  “Good question, very good question,” Sokrates said, patting Crocus affectionately on the flank.

  “Some of it comes naturally,” Pytheas said. “I have the power to speak aloud, you have the power to carve in marble. Inbuilt power.”

  “And some is granted by other people. I have the power to choose what to do in the afternoons because I am a gold. If I were iron I’d be working now,” I said. “The masters gave me that.”

  “And some is taken,” Kebes said. “The masters took power over us and over you.”

  Sokrates shook his head. “Let’s consider all of this carefully and in order, and make sure we do not miss anything.”

  “Good,” Crocus wrote.

  Just then another worker stopped by us. I had seen it coming and taken no notice, workers were such a familiar sight. I counted them as part of the street, or part of the scenery, like passing birds.

  When this one stopped and I took in that this meant our debate group had increased, I realized I had as much work to do on granting them equal significance as Pytheas had needed to do with humanity. “Simmea, this is 977649161. His number is his name. We call him Sixty-one for short.”

  I couldn’t tell it apart from Crocus except by where it was standing, and had no idea how Sokrates could. “Joy to you,” I said.

  Sokrates continued to interrogate the idea of power, with both the workers participating, but I wasn’t really concentrating. I was thinking about the workers, and what it meant for the workers to be people, to be citizens, especially if only some of them were aware.

  “I think you’re like children,” I said when there was a break in the conversation.

  “Like us?” Kebes asked. “In that they were brought here without choice?”

  “No, like real children. Like the babies. Children are people, but they need to be educated before they have power and responsibility. The workers are the same.”

  “Educated?” Sixty-one wrote.

  “Read. Write. Learn,” Crocus replied.

  “That’s exactly right,” Sokrates said.

  “Want educated,” Crocus wrote.

  “You can read,” Pytheas said. Then he frowned. “Oh.”

  “There’s nothing for them to read in Greek but in Latin letters,” Kebes said. “Even if they can read books. But maybe we could teach them the Greek alphabet.”

  “Music and mathematics,” I said. “That’s where we should start. And we can educate any workers who want it, and when they’re educated they can be classified—the philosophical ones gold, the others to their proper places.”

  “That’s an excellent idea!” Sokrates said. “They want education. It’s something we can give them in return for all the work they do.”

  Crocus went back to where it had engraved “Give power” and tapped it, moving rapidly to “Electricity.”

  “Do you mean we give you electricity in exchange for work?” Kebes asked.

  “Yes,” it wrote.

  “It would seem to me that since you look after the electricity supply, it’s something you give yourselves,” Kebes said.

  “Power comes in from sun,” Sixty-one wrote.

  “Well, you get it directly from Helios Apollo, then,” Kebes said.

  Sokrates looked at Pytheas, and then at me, and we all smiled.

  “Want to read,” Crocus wrote.

  “Can you read books?” I asked. “Could you if they were written in the alphabet you know?”

  It was still.

  “I don’t think they could,” Kebes said. “Books are too fragile.”

  “What are books?” Sixty-one asked.

  I tried to explain.

  “There must be a way, other than inscribing every book in the city on the paving stones in Latin letters,” Pytheas said. “Though that’s not unappealing.”

  “We could read aloud to them,” I suggested. “We could take turns doing it.”

  “Want talk to workers,” Crocus wrote.

  “You are,” Sokrates said. “When you answered Sixty-one about what education is, you were talking to each other.” Sokrates tapped the exchange.

  Crocus inscribed a circle in the pavement, and went over it again. “What does that mean?” Pytheas asked.

  “That’s distress, I think. I asked Lysias to tell them they could answer my questions, not talk to each other,” Sokrates said. “I’ll ask him to change that.”

  “And ask him about how to educate them,” I said. “I feel sure that’s the way forward on this.”

  “He only barely admits they think, he’s not ready to believe they have souls,” Sokrates said.

  “But they were talking to each other,” Kebes said. Crocus was still etching its circle deeper. “Hey. It’s all right. Stop. You can talk to each other.”

  Crocus took no notice.

  “Stop,” Sokrates said. Crocus stopped abruptly and lifted the chisel. Seeing it close up at the level of my belly I suddenly realised what a formidable weapon it would make. It swivelled and wrote “Want talk to workers. No. Command language.”

  “Command language?” Pytheas repeated. “What does that mean?”

  “Command language,” it wrote again.

  “We need to define that,” Sokrates said. “What do you mean?”

  “Command language,” it wrote, a third time.

  “Go and get Lysias,” Sokrates said. “Run.”

  And Pytheas ran, like an athlete off the mark.

  Sokrates patted Crocus again. “We’ll go inside and wait for Lysias. Talk to each other if you want to. We’ll be back soon.”

  Crocus didn’t respond in any way. I frowned. We walked back to Thessaly, where Sokrates opened the door and led us inside. I took a long drink of water, then went out into the garden. As soon as I did Sokrates looked at me compassionately. “How are you doing, Simmea?”

  “I’m well,” I said, confused. “I really am cured.”

  “Not too many shocks?” he asked. “You’re quieter than normal.”

  “I suppose it is a good deal to take in,” I said, sitting down.

  “Yes, we’ve been getting used to the workers bit by bit over the last months, and you’re getting it all today,” Kebes said.

  “Yes,” I said, and Sokrates smiled. “Pytheas ran like the wind when you asked him to.”

  “He’s a good boy,” Sokrates said.

  “He’s too good to be true,” Kebes said. “I hate to see you with him so much. You could do better than him.”

  “Meaning you? You’ve been telling me this every month or so, ever since Pytheas and I became friends.”

  “It’s still true,” Kebes insisted.

  “You’re both my friends.”

  “But he’s your lover.”

  This was plainer than Kebes had ever been. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t value you too. Friendship isn’t something where one person can do everything for another.”

  Kebes was about to answer, but Sokrates intervened. “Simmea is right, and if she and Pytheas are practicing agape it is none of your business to interfere unless she asks for help.”

  “But you and I are meant to be together. We were together from the slave market. We were chained together. You know my name,” Kebes said.

  “I know it and I value it. I also value what I have with Pytheas, which is different.”

  “Interesting as this is, I wanted to come inside to discuss something without the workers,” Sokrates said. “The masters agreed in Chamber that they’re not slaves, that they are people, and that as they’ve been treated as slaves we should stop. I’m supposed to be finding out what they want. If what they want is education, that’s not something that’s in short supply here. But how do we persuade the masters to give it to them?”

  “My idea that they are children should hold,” I said. “They can have the status of children, from which they can later be emancipated, as we were.” I touched my gold pin.


  “It probably is the best way,” Kebes said. “Except that it validates everything.”

  “Precisely,” Sokrates said.

  I looked from one to the other of them. “What do you mean?”

  “If we say they should be educated in the ways of the city, it validates the city and everything that has been done here,” Sokrates said.

  “Yes?” I waited, then went on. “Kebes, if you have a problem with me loving Pytheas, you should have ten times the problem with me loving the city. You’ve been analyzing and examining it, and you have to be prepared to be open to admitting that it might be good.”

  “And you have to be prepared to be open to the other interpretation,” Kebes snapped.

  There was a scratch on the door. We got up and went back through the house. Outside was Pytheas, with Lysias, and also Ficino.

  “Thank you for coming,” Sokrates said. “Joy to you, Lysias, Ficino. Lysias, do you know what command language means?”

  Sokrates went out past them into the street, leading the way to where we had left the workers. Pytheas put his arm around me and I relaxed into it. “Yes, but it’s complicated to explain, like a lot of things to do with the workers,” Lysias said. “It means the language in which they can accept orders.”

  “I want you to let them know, using a key if necessary, that it’s all right for them to talk to each other,” Sokrates said.

  “They ought to be able to communicate,” Lysias said.