Necessity Read Free Page A

tried Artemis. To my intense relief, I sensed her immediately. She was on the moon, at a time when people lived there and had built temples to her. I tried Athene again, and again felt nothing. Aphrodite was on Olympos. Hera was in classical Argos. Dionysos was in Hellenistic Baktria. Hephaistos was in his forge. Hades was in the Underworld. Hermes was in the marketplace in Alexandria. But no matter how many times I tried, Athene was nowhere to be found.
    Strange as it was that I couldn’t locate her, it was stranger still that she hadn’t shown up when she was supposed to meet me. That wasn’t like her at all. I was worried. I couldn’t imagine what could have happened to prevent her. Fate and Necessity might tangle us up, but we’re still there. I reached for her again. Where could she possibly be? She didn’t seem to be anywhere in or out of time. Could she be dead? How? It didn’t bear thinking of.

 
    2
    JASON
    I’m only a Silver, so don’t expect too much. My name is Jason, of the Hall of Samos and the Tribe of Hermes. I was born in the Year Forty-two of the City, eleven years after the Relocation. I work on a fishing boat. I haven’t written anything long since I qualified as a citizen thirteen years ago. These two days I’m going to tell you about changed my life completely. Since Fate caught me up in great events, I’ll do my best to set things down clearly, in case it can do anyone good to read about what happened and what we all said and did.
    Amphitrite had been kind, and we’d had a good haul that day, lots of ribbers and a few red gloaters, big ones. They were all heading north with the winter currents, so we simply had to stay in place and use the fine nets to scoop them out. We joked about sticking our hands into the water and pulling out a fish, the kind of day that redeems all the other days where we came home with thin hauls or none. Plato’s a hard planet for humans, and we depend on the catch to have enough protein.
    It was chilly and grey out on the ocean, spitting with rain. As we headed homewards around Dawn Point the east wind caught us. I fastened my jerkin up to my throat. The other boats coming in made positive signals. Everyone seemed to have had a good day. It was the kind of thing to cheer your liver. We passed a flatboat gathering suface kelp, which the Saeli like to eat, and even they signalled that they had a good haul.
    Our boat was called Phaenarete after a girl Dion had known who was killed in the Battle of Lucia. Dion had been the first one to sail her, so he’d had the choice of naming her. He had taught me everything I knew about handling boats, and fishing too, and a lot about how to live. We were as close as father and son, and closer than many such because we’d chosen each other. Dion was too old to go out regularly now, and Leonidas and Aelia were dead, so I was in charge of Phaenarete , and I had a crew of lunatics. Well, that’s not a kind way to put it, but that’s how I thought of them.
    Now, fishing is essential, everyone knows that, and it’s also reasonably dangerous—even if you know what you’re doing you can get caught out by a squall or an underwater eruption—or the usual kind of eruption, come to that. That’s what happened to Aelia and Leonidas five years back. Their luck ran out.
    It’s not really all that dangerous. Most days most of us come back. And we need the catch, we rely on it. There are no land animals on Plato, only what we brought with us, and the sheep and goats don’t thrive here the way they did in Greece, where they could graze on plants growing wild everywhere. Dion remembers Greece and talks about it sometimes, but it sounds strange to me, the idea of plants sprawling all over, plants nobody planted and nobody tends to. There’s none of that on Plato. Our plants take a lot of attention. We have to nurse them along. Keeping them alive is hard work