At first it was two thousand people camped out in the fields on the north side of the island. Building the physical city was a challenge. Klio persuaded Crocus to help us. Crocus was one of the two remaining worker-robots. In the debates that followed the Last Debate, both Workers had considered Sokratea, but decided to stay in the Remnant. They had good solid philosophical reasons, but also practical ones—they needed electricity as we needed food, and designing and installing electrical generators elsewhere would be a challenge.

Crocus quarried marble for us and delivered it to the site of the new city, and then we humans wrestled the slabs into roads and assembled the blocks into buildings. Crocus helped—what was difficult for even the strongest of us was trivially easy for him. We built one wall while he built the other three and put on the roof. He cut marble pipes and installed plumbing. We assembled ourselves into teams and tried to learn skills from him and from each other. We did as much as we could. As there were two thousand of us and one of him, in the end more of Amazonia was built by humans than by Crocus, but I don’t know how we could have possibly managed without him. We voted him full privileges of citizenship including voting rights, although he never became a resident. We inscribed his name among the list of founders. There is also a bas-relief of him above the main gate, carved by Ardeia.

He returned to the Remnant every night to rest and recharge, while the rest of us planned the city and the work for the next day. We did our planning in the dark. We had all grown used to electric lights in the time we had been in the City, and we missed them. Our old Tech Committee was almost all there, and we assembled to try to deal with problems.

“We need to find a way of having light,” Lysias said. “They have refused to let us have any of the solar lights, so we need a proper alternative. What did people use?” Lysias came from the twenty-first century and so, like the Children, he had grown up with electricity.

“Gas lights,” I said. “Gas was made from coal in some way. I’ve no idea how.”

“Nobody will know, and there won’t be any books on it,” Lysias said, savagely. “I don’t think there’s any coal on the island anyway. What else?”

“Oil lamps,” Axiothea said, a calm voice in the darkness. “We have olive oil. We can make glass, or if we can’t we can make clay lamps like the Romans had. I wonder what wicks are made out of?”

“If the Romans had them, somebody might know, or it might be written down somewhere,” Lysias said, sounding a little more cheerful. “Did they give enough light?”

“Enough to read and work by,” I said. “And there are also candles, made from beeswax or tallow. Wicks were made from cotton in my time, which we don’t have, but I expect linen would do just as well.”

“Candles, of course,” Klio said.

“They’re just decorative,” Lysias protested. “Not that I wouldn’t appreciate having one right now.”

“Lamps are more effective,” I said. I had lived with electricity long enough that it was easy for me to understand how in future ages, candles could have come to be thought of as nothing but decoration.

“Yes, I’ve heard of things smelling of the lamp, meaning people were up late working on them,” Klio said. “And burning midnight oil. So it must give enough light for people to work. We can’t make glass, but Crocus can. Except I don’t want to impose on his good nature to ask him to do even more for us. There’s not much we can do for him in return—only discuss philosophy and read to him, and there are plenty of people in all the cities happy to do that.”

“Books,” Lysias said. “That’s another tech issue we should discuss. We can use the libraries in the Remnant, they’ve agreed we can. But can we use their printing presses? We should have our own library here. The City Planning Committee have assigned it a place. But should we be building a printing press? Do we have anyone who can set type?”

“And should we be duplicating everything so we have it to hand and don’t have to walk ten miles every time we want to look something up?” I asked.

“And if we have only one press, should it be Greek or Latin?” Klio asked.

“It doesn’t matter, we melt all the type regularly and recast it—it’s only lead.” I said. “We’d have to have both sets of molds, but we could print in either language, switching when the type got worn.” I had always enjoyed working with the presses.

“Good!” Lysias said, relieved.

When we had set up the original city, most of the tech questions had been philosophical—we had to decide what we wanted to do and what was the best way to achieve it. We had the practical means, unlimited Worker resources, and the presence of Athene to give us divine intervention as needed. We didn’t realize what a luxury these things had been until we had to manage without them. Now the problems were almost all practical, and the answers were almost all things we didn’t like.

We made the most urgent decisions, and had drinking-fountains and latrine-fountains and wash-fountains enough for everyone, and fields prepared for animals and crops, and shelter from the elements before the first winter came. During that winter we began to manufacture lamps. We had a skilled potter, one of the Children from Ferrara, a girl called Iris. She made the bases, and Kreusa, of all people, knew how to make wicks from flax and instructed others. Crocus was still helping us finish off the city, and it fell to me to ask him if he would make us some clear glass bowls for the lamps.

It was raining. Crocus was putting a roof onto the hall in the southwest corner that was destined for our library. Some of us had, through practice, become quite skilled at masonry, but roofing was still a real challenge. “Joy to you, Crocus,” I said.

He stopped work and turned one of his hands to carve “Joy to you Maia!” into one of the damp marble blocks of the library wall. As was his custom, he carved the Greek words in Latin letters, which always looked peculiar.

I beckoned him over to where he could carve his responses in the paving stones of the street outside, some of which already bore his side of dialogues, sadly more practical and less philosophical than those that still lined the walks of the Remnant City. I asked him about the glass globes. “Can make,” he inscribed tersely. “How many?”

There were over two thousand of us Amazons, and we all desperately wanted light at night. We were used to it and hated doing without it. Some people had slunk back to the Remnant already for this reason, but most of us were made of sterner stuff. Everyone would want one. “Two thousand five hundred,” I said.

“In return?” he carved.

“What do you want?” I asked. How easily it turned to this, I thought, to trade and barter.

“Thomas Aquinas,” he carved.

“We don’t have it,” I said, surprised. “We don’t have any Christian apologetics. We didn’t bring them. You know we didn’t. We’ll read you anything we have.”

“Ikaros owns forbidden books,” he carved.

“He does? How do you know?”

Crocus just sat there in the fine drizzle, huge, golden, mud-spattered. I’d say he was looking at me, but he didn’t give any impression of having eyes or a head. With a shock of guilt I remembered my Botticelli book, full of forbidden reproductions of Madonnas and angels, with text in English. Of course. Ikaros had given it to me. What else might he have brought here?

“If he has it, then yes,” I said.

“Thomas Aquinas. In Greek,” Crocus wrote.

“If Ikaros has it, I’ll make him agree to translate it and read it to you,” I said. “If not, we’ll read you something else you want.”

“Display sculpture,” he inscribed.

“What? I don’t understand.”

“I make sculpture, for display in Amazon plaza.”

“Oh Crocus, but we’d love that. You don’t have to ask that as a favor. We’d regard it as an honor.”