“My daughter Arete, my sons Kallikles, Phaedrus, Neleus, Euklides and Porphyry,” Father said, indicating us. I realized for the first time that Alkibiades wasn’t there, though he had been standing with the others. Was that because he had said he didn’t want divine powers? How did Zeus know? And how was Neleus here? He wasn’t really Father’s son.

“A place women can be excellent, eh?” Zeus said, punning on my name of course, not even the king of gods and men was above that. He seemed to hear a lot more than was said, because while I knew that Father usually only had sons because it was generally so unpleasant to be a woman, but the Republic was fair to both, Father hadn’t said anything to Zeus about that.

“Plato—” Athene said.

“Don’t start,” Zeus said. “After what you did to Sokrates?”

He stopped and looked at Ikaros. “To answer your unspoken question, I knew nothing about it until it was drawn to my attention by Arete just now, and now I know everything about it, as if I had always known.”

“Thank you,” Ikaros said. “And if you don’t mind me asking, why are you taking the time to explain this to me?”

“Because it’s better than overhearing your infernal conjectures,” Zeus said. As he laughed the mountain seemed to shake. Then he looked at Maia.

“And yes, this is Olympos, and you are correct that we are not perfect. And yes, Pytheas is Apollo.”

Maia nodded gravely. “Of course,” she said. “And Simmea knew, of course.” Father smiled at that.

“And you are here because Ikaros felt you were a deserving philosopher who had been right where he had been wrong,” Zeus went on.

“And since I was wrong, why from all the assembled citizens did you choose to bring me?” Ikaros was being very polite, but he didn’t seem afraid either. I wondered if calm was somehow in the air here.

“My wise daughter, in her chaste and foolish way, is in love with you. Only with your mind, I hasten to add. But I think it would be fair to say that she is in a state of unrequited agape with regard to you.”

“Father, we all have favorites,” my own father said. Maia laughed. Ikaros was staring at Athene in complete astonishment. “It helps to have conversations with them about it and find out what they want,” Father went on.

Athene looked up from her shield and rolled her eyes at Father. “It wasn’t that kind of thing. There’s no comparison. I just—he was so bright and so young and he did pray to me for it, and lots of other people had too, and it all seemed as if it would be so interesting and so much fun,” she said. “Nothing like your romances at all.”

“Not unrequited,” Ikaros said, passionately, as soon as she had finished speaking. “Never unrequited. I have loved and sought wisdom all my life—and you, Sophia, from the day I saw you.”

“Then why did you betray me?” she asked, her gray eyes hard as flint.

“With Sokrates? Or by saying you were an angel?” he asked.

“That there are multiple possible occasions does seem indicative of problems,” Zeus said.

“But I loved you all the time.” He didn’t look away from Athene, and he absolutely meant it.

“You betrayed me when, just before the Last Debate, you turned away from reason and said will and love could be enough, you didn’t need comprehension!” Athene said.

“Oh.” Ikaros looked abashed. “That was just a theory, and I was just wrong. Simmea said it was mystical twaddle, and I realized she was right as soon as I read Aquinas again. But even then I never stopped loving you.”

“I am reason, you idiot,” she said.

“I am human and make mistakes, but I always try again to serve you and be worthy of you,” Ikaros said. “You have always been my goal and my delight.”

“Touching as this is, we have serious business,” Zeus interrupted.

“He is my votary. He prayed to me when he could have been burned at the stake for it,” Athene said, turning to Zeus. “And others too. Ficino. Aristomache. Maia.” She gestured to Maia, sitting primly on the grass listening intently. “They loved our world, and their own worlds held too little to fulfill their souls. I wanted to see what they would do with their imagination of our world, and Plato’s vision.”

“Plato’s Republic,” Zeus said. “Three hundred philosophers and classics majors. Ten thousand slave children. Lost artworks from all of time. Robots. The head of the Winged Victory of Samothrace.”

“All the books,” Ikaros put in. “We rescued all the books from the Great Library of Alexandria.”

“Of course you did,” Zeus said, his gaze still fixed on Athene. “You took Pico and Ficino and Atticus careering through time rescuing books and art, you turned Sokrates into a fly because he beat you in a fair argument, and you’d like me to regard this as something other than sheer unadulterated self-indulgence?”

“I have learned a lot I could have learned nowhere else,” Father said.

“I have lived a life I could have lived nowhere else, and I shall always be grateful to Athene for giving me my life,” Maia said.

“I accept your judgment,” Athene said, inclining her head to Zeus.

“My judgment. Yes. But how shall I judge what I shall do with it? They’ve already left the island and started to reach out. I can’t leave them there to tangle with history. For us, what’s done is done. But for them, it might be kindest if—”

“No! Please!” Father said. He flung himself down before Zeus, flat on his face, with his hands on Zeus’s knees. My sense of scale quailed, for in one way Zeus’s knees were as huge as mountain ranges, and in another Father, who was the same size he always was, could comfortably clutch them. Also, the posture was ridiculous, but Father managed to make it seem not only graceful but entirely natural. “Not the darkness of the oak! Don’t unmake them. I beg you, Father, not that.”

I had never before heard of the darkness of the oak. But as soon as I heard what Father said, I understood what it meant. Zeus had the power to undo time, to make things never have happened. He could do that with the city, unmake it. The Masters and Children would never have left their own times. The Young Ones would never have been born. The City would never have been more than Plato’s dream. The darkness of the oak. I shuddered.

Fear is a strange thing. I had been afraid I wouldn’t qualify as gold, but I had not been afraid when all-knowing Zeus had appeared before me and carried me off outside time. I had sat through the debate so far listening to Athene being chided and been calm and interested. But as soon as Father said “the darkness of the oak” I was terrified—and yet still a little detached from my fear, observing it rather than being swept off in it. Was this what it was like to be a god?

“But why, Phoebus?” Zeus grumbled. “You’re outside time. You’d still remember what you’ve learned. Your children are here, even Neleus.” Neleus straightened Ficino’s hat as Zeus glanced at him. “And however much agape you felt for her, your woman is already dead. The whole thing is ludicrous. Their souls are going back where they came from. It has only been a few years. The darkness of the oak would be a mercy—”

“No,” Father said. “Please.”

“Bring down the volcano,” I said, seeing it all at once as a solution. Zeus’s eyes met mine over Father’s prostrate form, and again I felt that I puzzled him. “If we can’t go on, if you have to end it, bring down the lava and the fire and the death we have always known is coming, sweep it away, kill us all. But let it have happened! Wipe it out if you must, but don’t make it never have been.”

“Why?” Behind him lightning flashed around the snowy peak of Olympos.

“We were trying to do Plato’s Republic,” I said. “It may be ludicrous and impossible, it may seem foolish to you, but we were trying. We made compromises and adaptations, but we were all trying to increase our excellence, to increase the city’s excellence, and the world’s. You heard the vow I made, that’s why you came, because I called on you to hold the oath. We all made that vow. We may have fallen short, we may have made mistakes, we may have done it all wrong, but our goal was great. Athene set us there under the volcano so that we would have no posterity, and we accepted that—difficult as it is to accept. But we were what we were, we existed. We tried. Kill us now if that’s what’s necessary to preserve history, but leave us the effort we made, at least.” I thought of Mother, Ficino, Erinna, Crocus, the everyday life of the Republic, Alkibiades showing me the vines and saying he didn’t want divine power, the people of Psyche joining in raggedly on the last chorus of Father’s ode to peace. “We might not have been philosopher kings as Plato intended, but at least we made the attempt.”