Christie pulled out a notebook. “So, my objective, for which I spent my free time in the camp library, was to determine if there was a trend of authoritarian meddling in human affairs by powerful entities. Empire building, unusually aggressive conquest, the justification of human subjugation, and so on. I suspect that the Jotnar may have been working behind the scenes, using a group of human philosophers to try to enslave humanity. It all begins with Plato.”
Thandi grinned. “Does it, Christie? Really?”
“Um, yes I believe so; most of the major ideas—”
“Start with Pythagoras. You really have to go beyond the basic reading list, you know?”
Christie bristled. “Pray tell, how does a high-school boxer get so well acquainted with Greek philosophy?”
“Bible school. Christians love Plato, but I think they’re misguided in that respect.” Thandi cocked her head. “You didn’t see me stop by the library a couple of times?”
Chisom put her book down. “I am way too tired for this. I’m going to sleep. At least keep your voices down?” She pulled her pillow over her head.
“So, I have no idea what you two are talking about,” Kayla said. “How did the Jotnar get humans to try to enslave each other?”
“Well,” Christie began, “it seems clear that, in the ancient past, human tribes were easily controlled by powerful warlords who claimed to represent ‘the gods’. These men were stronger than others, had better weapons, and were able to boast of a few miracles to justify their divine legitimacy.
Kayla nodded. “A few high-tech tricks to con the unsuspecting masses?”
“It seems too easy, doesn’t it? But, in ancient Greece, the people questioned their ruler’s power. They had discovered their own capacity for rational thought, and the claims of these powerful men stopped adding up. The Greeks wanted freedom, and they tried to fight back. There was a great deal of mob violence and bloodshed in the city states, until Cleisthenes arrived in Athens, in 510 BC. He managed to gain power, and enacted the reforms that created the first democracy. This new kind of government spread across Greece, and so the ruling class was faced with something of an existential threat. I think that about sets the scene for Pythagoras, and the Jotnar intervention.”
“Can I talk now?” Thandi said, her notepad held ready in her hand.
Christie smiled. “I ardently await your edification.”
“Pythagoras is the triangle guy, right?” Kayla asked.
“Oh, this guy had a lot of angles,” Thandi said. “As Christie said, the Greek aristocrats were facing the loss of all their power and control, until Pythagoras turned up with a solution. He was born to a powerful family, but had been run out of his hometown of Samos, and ended up in the Greek colonies in Italy. Styling himself as a charismatic cult leader, he created a belief system that completely transforms Greek philosophy.
“Pythagoras told his disciples,” she continued, “that the purpose of existence is to attain the elevation of the soul through wisdom. He taught that the soul is reincarnated until it achieves harmony with the divine ‘source’ that created the universe.”
“It’s a fascinating conception,” Christie interjected, “that opens the door to a really ugly kind of class system. Regardless of your merits as a person, your soul is just lower level, base and muddy, while mine is enlightened and pure. So, do what I say, peasant; my higher wisdom lets me see what is good for you better than you can.”
“What is this divine source supposed to be?” Kayla asked.
“A trick. Really, he means that if you play nice, you get to share the advanced technology and knowledge of the Jotnar. You see, Pythagoras is claiming to be a god himself. Actually, a version of Apollo from Hyperborea—a northern region of Greece. He can heal sickness by playing mathematically calculated sounds. In his words, he has descended to the mortal realm ‘to remedy and improve the condition of the human race, having assumed human form lest men, disturbed by the novelty of his transcendancy should avoid the discipline he advised’.
“In other words,” Kayla said, “if people realize that he is representing aliens, or that all his abilities are available at the flick of a switch, they’ll want to know what is really going on. His best cover is that of a divine being in mortal form.”
“That makes sense. He also claims to have a temple built to himself in the north, and he keeps showing people his golden thigh.”
“Uh… is that a typical God thing, or is he just being a creep?”
“He’s probably being a creep, which is typical of cult leaders. Anyway,” Thandi continued, “he gets a lot of aristocrats recruited into this cult, and once they’ve passed a ‘purity’ test, he teaches them advanced mathematics. Where he got this knowledge, nobody knows.”
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“Aliens.” Kayla nodded wisely.
“Sure. And to us, it might seem trivial—we all learned the Pythagorean theorem in school—but to ancient Greeks, it would have been a staggering demonstration of divine truth.”
“That’s absolutely what it is,” Christie said. “Mathematical education will literally gain you mastery over the universe.”
“Right,” Thandi continued. “And the insidious nature of this cult becomes clear when you realize that the cult members are forbidden from sharing the secret knowledge with the outside world. Well, knowledge is power, isn’t it? Can’t let the wrong people get a hold of it. The cult grows and grows and ultimately the Pythagorean secret society gets a very strong foothold in mainland Greece, southern Italy, Turkey, and many of the Mediterranean islands.”
“How does an aristocracy hold on to its power in a democracy?” Kayla said. “Build a secret cult that hoards knowledge.” She cocked her head to one side. “Imagine being excluded from the cult and growing up believing that your soul is worth less than the people who control you. You won’t develop self-confidence, you will be credulous, doubting your own inspiration or creativity. You will be an easy victim for subjugation.”
“Exactly,” said Thandi. “It seems like the Jotnar have covertly introduced a scientific form of authority—one that doesn’t require power or wealth to sustain itself.”
Christie nodded. “A religion of control.”
“But there’s something that’s bothering me,” Kayla said. “What you’re talking about is only three thousand years ago. According to what the instructors taught us, this is a long time after the end of the war that supposedly destroyed the Jotnar.”
“So, maybe they weren’t destroyed,” said Thandi. “Somehow, at least one faction must have survived and stayed in the shadows, manipulating events.”
“But why Earth, and why couldn’t they regain power?”
Thandi flipped a page. “Well, actually, their Pythagorean project didn’t go that well. Someone figured out what these guys were up to, and the word spread. Suspected Pythagoreans were mobbed, run out of town or even killed. There’s a story of a tyrant named Dionysius capturing a group of them. His soldiers are chasing them through the countryside, but when they get to a field of beans they stop. One of the cult rules is that they should die before touching beans, and so the soldiers kill them all, except for a few prisoners. Dionysius promises he’ll let them go if they’ll just tell him why they can’t touch beans. They refuse. In an effort to get one man’s pregnant wife to talk, the tyrant tortures him. Rather than comply, she bites off her own tongue and spits it in his face.”
Kayla’s jaw dropped. “That is some hardcore loyalty. What was the deal with beans?”
“Greeks deposited black and white beans in jars to vote,” Thandi said. “They represented democracy.”
The room fell quiet. The sound of chirping insects in the forests drifted through the cabin windows.
“Those people were totally committed to controlling the world,” Kayla said glumly, “and they were willing to die for it.”
“Pythagoras himself gets killed by a mob, but a lot of his followers survived, and they went underground. They kept the religion alive until it was reintroduced in a sanitized and publicly digestible form by Plato, one of the most influential philosophers of the classical world.”
Kayla thought for a moment. “There’s no mention of secret groups of superwomen in any of your books, is there?"
“None, outside of unrelated myths.”
“But the instructors told us that Valkyrie stays well clear of civilization, for the most part,” Christie argued. “And why shouldn’t they? People are perfectly capable of protecting their own societies from these kinds of infiltrators. A quiet word in the ear of a powerful ruler to pay more attention would be all that was needed.”
“Well, they didn’t pay attention, did they?” Kayla said stubbornly. “Because now we have the Helvetic League to deal with, and this ugly ideology they’ve been trying to push for centuries has finally taken over.”
“Maybe humans just prefer being ruled by tyrants? Did you think about that?”
“No, miss super brain, because I know colonists that would rather die than live in a world where someone controls everything you do and think. Look what happened the moment they began to gain freedom on Caldera. A bunch of alien bioweapons turn up to terrorize people. I don’t care what Urtiga and her friends told us—it’s not a coincidence. Maybe Valkyrie doesn’t let people blow themselves up with super bombs, but it is clear to me they haven’t been paying attention to the last couple of hundred years of human history. A Jotnar agent is out there, running rings around them.”
Christie shook her head but didn’t respond. Thandi looked pensive.
“Actually, I think I get it,” she said. “But you’re not going to like it.”
Kayla watched her expectantly.
“Valkyrie doesn’t interfere because they don’t want to. It’s very clear that they don’t want an army of super soldiers dictating human destiny. Frankly, I think that’s why they only pick women—men would be much more ambitious. But if they spent two thousand years trying to outwit these Pythagoreans and whoever came after them… maybe they just got fed up with trying? It is our society, and our responsibility to make it virtuous.”
“I don’t agree with you about women,” Christie cautioned, “we can be monstrously ambitious too. However, the Helvetic League is in decline. If they really had to resort to bioweapons to get the people of Caldera under control, that really shows how desperate they have become. Even worse, it means they have crossed a line that will eventually necessitate Valkyrie’s intervention. Who knows what that will look like?”
Kayla leaned her head back against the cabin wall. She felt frustratingly far from any real answers. How long would she have to wait? How much longer would colonists have to keep dying until she could figure it out?
She tried to change the subject. “So Rose is definitely going to get kicked out, right? If these are the good guys, there’s no way they would let someone who believes in this ‘scientific elitism’ into their organization.”
Thandi raised an eyebrow. “You mean the stuff she was raised from birth not to question, and probably doesn’t fully understand?”
“And you must no doubt agree, Kayla,” Christie said with a smirk, “that you and I, having gone through the same education system, are also agents of the enemy?”
Kayla went red. “Look, some of the ideas they were trying to shove down my throat—”
“Yeah, we get it,” Thandi said. “It’s a messed-up community. But at the end of the day Rose is just another girl. Both of you need to grow up.”
Kayla fell silent.
“Okay, girls,” Thandi announced, falling back onto her pillow. “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to get at least a few hours of sleep before the torture resumes.”
“Freaking finally,” Chisom’s muffled voice said from under her pillow.