The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton Read Free Book Online

willingly, because I argued with them, personally and at length. Some of my girls from Florentia chose Psyche of their own will. It was those debates that drove me to the other extreme and the choice of the City of Amazons—those debates, and the necessity for them. There were women trained in logic who were prepared to argue that they didn’t deserve citizenship, and that they were inferior to men.
    I know Ficino felt the same way about me leaving the Remnant as I felt about Andromeda and the others who chose Psyche. He was almost in tears, arguing with me at one point. But in the end he respected my decision, as I respected his to stay.
    The other, less worthy reason I made the choice to go is that all of my close friends except Ficino were going: Axiothea, and Klio, and Lysias, and Kreusa. I went despite Ikaros, not because of him.
    I have written already about how Ikaros raped me when I was young and naive. I had been sheltered and protected all my life until I came to the city, and I had no instinct for self-preservation. I went off alone with Ikaros, seeking answers to questions, with no idea that he imagined this was a sexual tryst. (It’s hard to believe I was ever so stupid.) I saw him as a man from the romantic and wonderful Renaissance, and I did not consider what that really meant. He had read Plato and loved the idea of the Republic, and he was prepared to concede that women had the philosophic nature. That didn’t mean he had entirely put away the appetites and expectations of his own era. He thought my protests were conventional. He thought I was saying no because society allowed me to enjoy sex only if it was forced on me in circumstances beyond my control. He believed I wanted it, even when I screamed and fought. He was confused, afterward. He tried to make amends. He gave me a book. I remained furious with him—for raping me, and for continuing to act as though he had done nothing. Others adored him, but I kept away from him as much as I could. I didn’t trust him, and I found it harder to trust any men because of him.
    I spent eight years in the City of Amazons.
    At first it was two thousand people camped out in the fields on the north side of the island. Building the physical city was a challenge. Klio persuaded Crocus to help us. Crocus was one of the two remaining worker-robots. In the debates that followed the Last Debate, both Workers had considered Sokratea, but decided to stay in the Remnant. They had good solid philosophical reasons, but also practical ones—they needed electricity as we needed food, and designing and installing electrical generators elsewhere would be a challenge.
    Crocus quarried marble for us and delivered it to the site of the new city, and then we humans wrestled the slabs into roads and assembled the blocks into buildings. Crocus helped—what was difficult for even the strongest of us was trivially easy for him. We built one wall while he built the other three and put on the roof. He cut marble pipes and installed plumbing. We assembled ourselves into teams and tried to learn skills from him and from each other. We did as much as we could. As there were two thousand of us and one of him, in the end more of Amazonia was built by humans than by Crocus, but I don’t know how we could have possibly managed without him. We voted him full privileges of citizenship including voting rights, although he never became a resident. We inscribed his name among the list of founders. There is also a bas-relief of him above the main gate, carved by Ardeia.
    He returned to the Remnant every night to rest and recharge, while the rest of us planned the city and the work for the next day. We did our planning in the dark. We had all grown used to electric lights in the time we had been in the City, and we missed them. Our old Tech Committee was almost all there, and we assembled to try to deal with problems.
    â€œWe need to find a way of having light,”