Free The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton Page B

you as well as her.”
    â€œYou’d be lost too,” Phaedrus pointed out.
    â€œI’d be back on Olympos, and you’d all be in Hades after having achieved very little in this life. You’re heroes. Arete asked what that means. It doesn’t mean anything if you don’t live like heroes.”
    â€œI’m going,” Neleus said, stubbornly. “I’m not a hero, but I am her son, and I am going on this voyage.”
    â€œWe’re all going,” Kallikles said. “It won’t be all of your sons, Father. Alkibiades and Porphyry and Euklides would still be on the island even if the ship sinks. And how can we live as heroes if we don’t get the chance to join the one heroic venture in our lifetimes so far?”
    Father looked from one to the other of them, then he slowly set down his cup, got up, and went out of the street door.
    â€œWhere are you going?” Kallikles asked, but Father kept on walking and didn’t answer.
    â€œWhere is he going?” Phaedrus asked.
    Since nobody else was going to, I got up and followed Father. He was walking aimlessly south down the middle of the street. “Where are you going?” I asked.
    â€œTo visit the lion,” he said.
    I put my hand through his arm. “I’ll come too.” I knew the lion he meant. It was a bronze statue of a lion on a street corner near Florentia. Mother had been especially fond of it. One of my first memories was walking to visit the lion, one of my little hands held in each of my parents’ big ones. We walked down briskly through the night’s chill that made me wish for my cloak. Father felt warm, but then he always does. I don’t know if it was his divine fire burning even in his mortal incarnation or just a natural warmth. We reached the lion, and he patted it the way Mother used to. I patted it too. The lion’s face was very expressive, but it was hard to say just what it expressed. It seemed to change from time to time. Tonight the shadows made it seem worried. We turned around and walked back toward home.
    It was a cold night and the stars were burning bright and clear, so distinct that I could see colors in some of them. “I can see all the stars in Orion’s belt,” I said.
    â€œWe’ll go there one day,” Father said.
    I looked at him, startled. “You and me?”
    â€œPeople,” he clarified. “They’ll settle planets out around those distant suns, one day, far ahead. I haven’t been there yet. I’m always reluctant to leave the sun. But eventually I will, and you will too. I promised your mother I’d see her out there one day.” He wiped his eyes.
    â€œBut what does it mean?” I asked. “She might be out there on another planet far in the future, but she won’t remember us, or her life here.”
    â€œNo,” he agreed, sadly.
    â€œAnd the civilization that settles the stars won’t be our civilization. They won’t have learned anything from this experiment, they won’t know anything about the Just City except the legend of Atlantis in the Timaeus and Critias .”
    â€œTime is so vast—they probably wouldn’t anyway,” he said. But as he stared up at the stars he began to weep again. We walked on in silence.
    â€œI had not meant this grief to unman me so,” he said quietly, when we were getting close to Thessaly.
    â€œIt might be better on the ship. Here everything reminds us of her,” I said.
    â€œThe boys are right. They are men, and heroes, and they have to act as they think best. I can’t keep them children, or keep them safe.”
    â€œI’m going,” I said, guessing where this conversation might be going. “The Chamber have approved me. I’m going!”
    â€œArete,” he said, then stopped and began again in a different tone. “And you have to decide for yourself too. Equal significance means letting people