Celestial Matters by Richard Garfinkle Read Free Book Online Page B

sharp-eyed, clean of mind, lacking in eccentricities. Now the Muse was back to reclaim me and use me for what she had originally intended. Tonight, the entire Akademe would hear me speak, and Kleio, whose voice had been unheeded since Aristotle’s day, would speak through me.
    The Muse pulled me to my feet and made me walk through the orchard. As I passed each tree, Kleio showed me a different part of the world, a different component of the past out of which she had assembled the present.
    Here was a cedar from my homeland, where trade was born and from which the ’Ellenic hand had stretched out across the Mediterranean. Here were incense trees from India, where Alexander united a thousand warring Razas and pointed them eastward toward the Middle Kingdom. Here was a baobab from Africa, where the gold that powered our weapons was found, and a maple from North Atlantea, where the nine-centuries’ war against the Middlers still raged. And throughout the grove grew the olives of Athens, the source of Delian technology.
    The divine grip grew stronger as I leaned against one of those olives to compose my speech from Kleio’s divine words.
    *   *   *
    The sun set over the Acropolis, scattering red light through the silver bars of the Akademe’s cage and bloodying Captain Yellow Hare’s armor. I brushed leaves from my robes as I stood up and stretched the kinks of inaction out of my muscles. To calm my stomach I ate an apple off a nearby tree before striding through the orchard to the lecture clearing.
    Redheaded slaves, stomping around with northern European gracelessness, uncovered sustained-fire lamps. In the clean blue light I saw dozens of students and scholars milling about between the low stage on which I would speak and the ring of marble benches on which my peers would sit to judge me.
    The blue-fringed scholars chirped like crickets as they argued the esoterica of their fields while red-fringed students listened respectfully. Occasionally, a brave youngster would interject a question into the rarified discussion. Most such interruptions would be dismissed with a succinct sharp answer calculated to instill in the student an awareness of his own foolishness. Rarely, the question would be one of those strokes of juvenile brilliance, and neither query nor querier would be berated. Instead, the sages would debate the matter, growing the fruits of implications from the callow seed of youthful inquiry. The student who had spoken would listen with parental pride, drinking in the envy of his friends.
    The time for my speech approached and the senior kerux of the Akademe strode onto the stage and banged his wooden speaker’s staff three times. The noise of the crowd dulled to a murmur. The kerux waited a moment, gathering all eyes to him before speaking. “Aias of Tyre will now address the Akademe.”
    I stepped into the light, and the knots of talking people drifted apart as I passed among them. Captain Yellow Hare faded into the shadows as silence came to the meadow.
    The students seated themselves cross-legged on the ground in attentive rows, while the scholars perched on the marble benches. The young had come to hear what it was like to command a League project, to develop weapons for the good of the state. The old wanted to know what that weapon was. With Kleio’s aid I planned to disappoint all of them.
    “May Athena and Aristotle bless this assemblage with wisdom and knowledge,” I said. The assemblage made the obligatory response. The students leaned forward like grass before the wind; the scholars steepled their hands and sat straight backed. “Tonight, my subject is history; my thesis is that nine centuries ago the Akademe abandoned the study of philosophy for that of science, and that abandonment was done not for the glory of Athena but for political reasons.”
    “What is this nonsense?” a querulous voice warbled from the back bench. Pisistratos, one of my teachers in Ouranology, forced himself to his