The gap year, p.32
The Gap Year, page 32
“Probably?” Leitus spoke with the smile of a man whose wife knows all his thoughts before he does.
“The neighbors,” Helene said. “They’ve been irritating us for years. Never anything serious, so we don’t have any real ill will toward them. Despite the fact that they never would sell Leitus a puppy,” she added with a smile. “But over the last dozen years or so, they’ve been overgrazing—”
“Out of sheer foolishness, as far as I can tell,” Leitus broke in. “Just trying to make more money. But now their returns are way down. I’ve heard talk around town that they’re thinking of upping sticks back to Thessaly and moving in with their children.”
“So, to avoid a long story,” continued Helene, “they may be looking to sell. In case you have another box full of money lying around,” she said wryly.
“Box full of money?” Phaia perked up. “Now you’re speaking my language.”
Helene laughed. “Many people speak that language. You may not know, but Anna and Indy helped out with Iole’s dowry. Made her this great match here,” she said, patting Neleos’ meaty shoulder fondly with a thin hand. Neleos rolled his eyes in embarrassment.
“Sounds like I latched onto the right two people.” Phaia eyed Anna and Indy shrewdly. “You might want to let me come along and help you get a good deal on that land, though.”
“My father Timais could be helpful too,” Neleos said. “He’s a merchant, and our family is well informed about the value of the land around here.” He smiled at Anna and Indy. “Hopefully, between all of us, we can ensure that Anna doesn’t get taken advantage of.”
Anna reddened as the others around the table laughed. But Indy spoke seriously. “Go easy on my little sister here. She has a pure heart, and that’s worth more than gold.”
“Thanks, Indy. That means a lot to me. Really.” Anna leaned over and hugged her friend close, then released her and sat back up. “It’s been a lot harder to do the right thing here than I ever thought it would be.” Regret tugged at her features. “And I’ve made some pretty big mistakes.”
“That may be,” Phaia said. “And I know I can be sharp sometimes. But I know a good person when I see her.” There was a murmur of assent from the others.
Neleos’ stomach broke the silence with a growl, and everyone laughed. “Sorry,” Iole said, “It’s after dinner time, and we were so wrapped up in your story I haven’t even started cooking!”
“Just tell me how I can help,” Phaia said.
“Me too,” Anna said. “Suddenly I’m starving!”
57
It turned out that starting a school was much easier said than done.
The first step was to buy land to build it on. But as they should’ve guessed from their experience renting a house in Athens, non-citizens like Anna weren’t allowed to own land, not to mention non-humans like Indy.
Here, Timais’ legal advice proved invaluable. The first difficulty was that Anna needed a citizen sponsor. Leitus leapt to volunteer, even after Timais cautioned him that he could be making himself liable for anything that might go wrong in the future. “It’s the least I can do after all Anna and Indy have done for us,” he insisted. “Besides, with Neleos managing more of the household these days, I could do with something to keep me busy.”
After Leitus’ sponsorship was approved and recorded, Anna became an officially registered immigrant. This allowed her to legally gift a large sum of money to Leitus, which he used to purchase the distressed land from his neighbor. The land came to nearly a hundred acres, but much of it was mountainous, and all of it had been poorly managed. Parts of it were seriously eroded, and it was obviously unfit for sheep or even goats, at least not anytime soon. The owners closed the deal with unseemly haste, obviously wanting to sell before Leitus realized he was making a mistake. All it took was a handshake and a witnessed oath down in Lebadeia, and the deal was done. Then Leitus simply rented the property to Anna. She tried to make the fee a generous one to compensate him for the trouble and risk, but Leitus and Helene refused to accept more than a nominal payment, and finally she acquiesced.
At the end of the process, Leitus and Helene were now Anna and Indy’s landlords, and all it had cost them was a box of silver holding twice as much as what they’d given away for Iole’s dowry. Fortunately, their mining-drones had dug deep while they were in Athens, sifting out tiny bits of silver and other easily transmutable metals and replacing the rock behind them as they traced narrow deposits down into the earth. They were flush with cash again, at least for the moment.
Building the school itself was another challenge. They still couldn’t make proper power supplies, so even if they’d had a fab big enough, they couldn’t create any large-scale construction equipment. Which was just as well, since there was no way to keep such equipment concealed during use. And even smaller tools like rock molders or joiners would certainly be found out, since they couldn’t very well build the whole school by themselves in secret.
So they took their small stock of gold, painstakingly scraped together by their mining-drones over the whole ten months or so that they’d been in ancient Greece, and went to talk to Timais again. It turned out that he was more than willing to act as lead contractor for them, hiring laborers and stonemasons to come and camp out on their land for the months it would take to build a modest but attractive school from the local limestone.
Meanwhile, Phaia had gone warily back to Athens to find them some suitable assistant instructors, careful to keep a low profile even though her lengthening hair no longer marked her as someone else’s property. In late September, as the grape harvest wound down and construction of their school neared completion, she returned to their construction site one afternoon with a pair of Greek candidates in tow.
“This is Themis, who I think you’ve already met.” Phaia gestured to the first of her companions, a slender woman with intense, dark eyes. “She was my across-the-hall neighbor in Athens, and the best freaking designer and metalworker I’ve ever known.” Themis tilted her head in ironic acknowledgement. “And this—”
“Wait!” Anna looked at the second of Phaia’s companions, a huge square of a man in early middle age, burn-scars stippling his knuckles and forearms. “Don’t we know you from somewhere?”
“You do indeed, young lady.” The man smiled, inclining his head toward her and Indy. “Though we were never formally introduced, due to the brevity of our meeting. My name is Melas.”
The smith who let us escape the Thebans by going through his shop, Indy said.
I knew I recognized him! “I’m Anna,” she said out loud, offering her hand. “And I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to bring trouble to your door.”
Melas made a dismissive gesture. “My nephew and I saw them off with just a hard look, once you had slipped away.” He smiled. “I am glad they did not find you again after that. They had a persistent look about them, somehow. I was surprised to hear from Themis that her friend Phaia was looking for instructors to work out here in the country, and was even more surprised to recognize your description from her.”
“I’ve known the big guy here professionally for donkey’s years,” Themis said, her words tumbling out in a rapid-fire cadence. “I worked for him back in the day, before I struck out on my own. I figured this would be right up his street.”
“I have always wanted to teach, and to learn.” Melas’ demeanor was surprisingly calm and intellectual, incongruous against his imposing physique. “Phaia has withheld some details of the situation, pending this meeting, but it seemed like an intriguing opportunity. There is always plenty of paying work to be done, but after a while, a man can’t help but wish for something more.” As he talked, he effortlessly lifted a fifty-pound limestone block from a stack waiting to be laid, muscles rippling in his thick arms as he turned the block this way and that to inspect the chisel marks. “My nephew has been a journeyman for some time now. If the position here proves compelling, I may elevate him to master sooner than he was expecting.”
“Knowing the big guy here, he’s got a ton of deep questions he’s about to hit you with,” Themis said. “So let me go first.” Her eyes shifted from Anna to Indy as she spoke. “I only need to see one thing to make up my mind.”
Quick as a snake, Themis’ arm darted out and took hold of one of the spring clips attaching Indy’s mini-pack to her harness. “Mind if I check out the hardware?” She bent and examined the clip minutely before Anna could reply, running a thumb over its curvature, tapping first with a fingernail, then a knuckle to test its stiffness, clipping and unclipping it a few times quickly as Indy stood still, nonplussed.
“You called it, P.” Themis straightened back up as she spoke to Phaia. “Whoever made this, I want to know what they know.” She gave Anna an up-nod. “Count me in, chief.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.” Anna put on her best fake-serious expression. “It’s just a dog harness.”
“Please.” Themis made a rude noise. “If you’d said it was hand-crafted by the smith-god’s buxom golden fembots, that would’ve been more believable.”
“Golden… fembots?” Anna awkwardly echoed her translator’s rendering of Themis’ slangy speech.
“The smith-god Hephaestus is said to have created golden automatons in the form of young maidens to assist him in his work,” Melas said. “I have always liked that story. Though the creation of thinking beings would be morally problematic.”
“Don’t get him started,” Themis said. “These buckles, though!” She jerked her chin toward Indy’s harness. “I’ve seen steel from India of this quality, but nobody can hammer out a sheet of steel this thin and smooth. And then cut it, fold it up into a buckle, temper it to give it back its spring, solder the cut edges together, sand it down, and somehow give it a matte black finish that isn’t paint.” She snorted. “All that to make dog harness buckles? Put me down as doubtful.” She gave Anna a direct look. “So I’m in,” she repeated, “as long as you teach me how to do this.”
I think this one is going to work out well, Indy said.
“Okay, so here’s the deal,” Anna said out loud to Themis and Melas. “We came here from a place far away to the west.”
You said ‘we’ again, Indy said.
“Our homeland,” Anna continued, “knows some things about metals, medicines, and other stuff that might be helpful here. We’ll teach it to you, and pay you to help teach other people. There’s one small twist, though.”
“You are smiling,” Melas said, “but in my experience, a ‘twist’ is seldom the good part of the deal.” Themis nodded agreement, eyeing Anna speculatively.
“The twist,” Anna said, “is that you haven’t met our most senior faculty member yet.”
You’re sure about this? Indy said. Once we let this cat all the way out of the bag, it’ll never go back in.
You’ve already had to stay quiet for way too long, Anna said. Plus, I’m not scary enough to be headmaster of a school!
Good point. Though now that it’s finally time to do this, I’m the one who’s scared.
Indy planted all four feet and fixed her gaze on Melas and Themis with human directness before speaking aloud. “Welcome, new instructors!”
Then she paused, since Themis had frozen with her mouth open in surprise. The more phlegmatic Melas looked to Phaia, who gave him a short nod to indicate that this was really happening. Then he returned his gaze to Indy, seemingly unperturbed.
“Here’s our offer,” Indy said. “We will teach you how to make a variety of useful and valuable products, along with whatever supporting knowledge turns out to be necessary. In turn, you will teach those same things to our students, and help us refine our curriculum. You’ll get paid in silver once every two weeks, plus free food and housing. Any questions?”
Melas raised his hand and spoke mildly. “How is it that you can talk, Indy? Or should I call you ‘mistress Indy’?”
“Call me whatever makes sense here,” Indy said. “Back home, people with my degree could choose to be called ‘doctor,’ but we usually didn’t bother.”
As Indy talked, Themis had crept forward and was now holding her ear to one side of Indy’s collar and then the other, trying to figure out where the sound came out, and tapping it to try to determine its composition. At a long-suffering look from Indy, she reluctantly stepped back to a normal distance, though she kept moving around to view the collar from as many different angles as she could.
“And as for my ability to talk,” Indy said, “one of your fellow Greeks told us recently that a centaur named Chiron taught the medical arts to a doctor named Asclepius. And a centaur is just a talking horse, more or less. So I don’t see why this is so unusual.”
“Well, yes,” Melas said, “but that is a tale out of legend, and this is real life. I have never seen a talking horse or a talking dog.” Beside him, Themis nodded vigorously. “Though Hesiod did speak of a race of dog-headed men who lived in far Libue. And I have heard it said that Asclepius’ statue in Epidaurus includes a dog lying by his side,” Melas added. “But that is symbolic of the reputed curative power of dog saliva, rather than a teaching relationship.”
“I’ve never tried using it on a human.” Indy barked out a laugh. “It probably couldn’t hurt, though.” She raised an eyebrow. “My boyfriends always seemed to enjoy it.”
“First of all, ew.” Anna made a face. “And second of all, let me try explaining this. We can’t tell you guys the whole story now, because… of some reasons. But I promise everything I say will be true.”
“Go on…” Themis made a drawing-out motion with her hands.
“Yes, go on.” Phaia smirked as she leaned back against the stack of limestone blocks that Melas had been inspecting earlier. “I’ve been waiting to hear more about this myself.”
“Okay.” Anna took a breath. “So I already mentioned how we’re from a distant land. It’s far off to the west of here, and a little way to the south.”
“Our girl P told me it’s Iberia,” Themis said to Melas in a stage whisper.
“That seems unlikely,” Melas said. “The Iberians are barely more than herdsmen.” He looked at Anna keenly. “Though she does bear some resemblance to them in the facial features, at least.”
“Not important right now,” Anna said. “So. Where we’re from, a long time ago, we found out how to make animals intelligent. Well, they were already intelligent, I guess. But we figured out how to make them even smarter.” She paused, squirming as she considered what to say. “Some mistakes got made. But eventually, they became full citizens, with the same rights as everyone else.”
“Sounds like there’s more to that tale,” Phaia said.
“Of course there is,” Indy broke in. “But it’s our story, and we’ll tell the rest of it when we think it’s time.” She softened her tone. “Plus, she’ll never finish if you keep interrupting her. Anna, please continue.”
“Thanks, Indy.” Anna considered for a moment. “Anyway, long story short is that we changed them, the dogs I mean, in our own image. And when we did that, it made us responsible for them, though people didn’t think it all the way through. At least not at first.” She paced, trying to think of a good analogy. “It’s like when you have a child. You created them, so you have to do everything you can to care for them. But animals aren’t children, they’re already adults in their own way, so they have to have some choice in what happens to them. They have to consent.” She stopped and looked at Indy. “Okay, maybe this is harder to explain than I thought.”
Indy stepped forward and continued the story. “My earliest ancestors had no say in what happened to them. And after a time, they were at an uncomfortable middle ground, between canine intelligence and human intelligence. And once a being is sufficiently intelligent and self-aware, as Anna said, they must consent to what is done to them. Or the one doing it becomes a monster.” She curled her lip in a snarl without seeming to realize it.
“There were more than a few monsters. But eventually, decency prevailed.” She sat and faced Phaia, Melas, and Themis. “Those of my ancestors who chose for themselves to continue, were raised up until they became like me. The rest chose to return to their original state of nature, over the generations.”
Indy brushed her collar with a thick claw, making the metal ring. Themis raised a hand unconsciously as though to tap the material herself, but held back with a visible effort.
“Even with our arts, there’s only so much you can change a dog before she is no longer a dog,” Indy said. “So they left us as close as they could to our original selves. That’s why I speak through a collar and not through my mouth. Our jaws and lips could never produce human speech, not without disfiguring us into freaks.” She raised a paw and flexed its independent pads, showing off their dexterity. “Many things can be changed, though.” She stood up on her long hind legs, balancing effortlessly upright with her head nearly six feet above the ground and front legs spread wide, before settling smoothly back onto her haunches.
“So, in our land, there are those like me.” She considered a moment. “We’re relatively few in number, but we live close together, so in the cities we’re not uncommon. We go to school, and live and work just like anyone else does. Back home, I was training to become a researcher and teacher, but my training was cut short when we came here.”
Anna laid her hand on Indy’s shoulder. “My father was a great teacher, and Indy was his best student.” Anna’s throat closed up with emotion, and she had to pause before continuing. “That makes her the closest thing to a big sister I have.” Indy laid her muzzle along Anna’s arm and pouched her whiskers in a smile.
Themis opened her mouth to ask what looked to be the first of a million questions, but Melas spoke first. “Thank you for sharing part of your story with us.” His mouth bent in a half-smile. “You must realize that your words raise many questions in my mind.”
“Mine t—” Themis began, before Melas cut her off. “Of course, we both would like to know more.” Melas regarded Anna and Indy with sympathy. “But as they said, their story is theirs to tell. We are here, and we have work that we love waiting for us. The rest can wait for another day, surely.”
