Kebes frowned at them. “It’s almost as if—no. I’m being silly.”

“What is it?” Sokrates asked.

“Well, you remember the worker was planting bulbs here when you asked it questions? The pattern the bulbs are planted in looks like N and then O in the Latin alphabet, which is like the beginning of non, the Latin for no.”

Sokrates stared at Kebes, and then back at the bulbs. “As if the worker were trying to answer me as best it could, with the materials it had? And as if it answered in Latin? Why would it do that, I wonder?”

“Latin was the language of civilization in the West for centuries,” I said.

“But it didn’t finish the word. Perhaps it ran out of bulbs. Or perhaps I’m imagining the whole thing,” Kebes said. “Seeing a pattern where there isn’t one.”

“It must have understood my questions, to answer no,” Sokrates said, ignoring this. “My questions were in Greek.”

“They were. It doesn’t make much sense,” I said. “But it does look deliberate. Let’s go on and see if it used this pattern in any of the other plazas.”

It hadn’t. Lots of the plazas had crocuses, but all of them were arranged in four neat vertical rows.

“What did I ask it?” Sokrates mused. “If it enjoyed its work?”

“I think so,” I said. “If there was anything it preferred doing. A whole pile of questions at once, typical of you!”

“So I can’t know which, if any, the no was intended to answer!” He ran his fingers through his hair, which was standing on end anyway. “Where’s Pytheas?”

“I think he’s in the palaestra this morning.”

“We must find him at once.” Sokrates set off rapidly in the wrong direction. Kebes and I got him turned around and walking just as fast towards the Florentine/Delphic palaestra.

“Why do you want Pytheas?” Kebes asked as we trailed him.

“The first time I asked about workers he said he had a belief that they were tools,” Sokrates said. “I want to know who told him that.”

“Ficino told us that, on the Goodness when we came,” Kebes said. “Probably it was the same for him.”

Sokrates stopped dead and stared at us as if he’d never seen us before. “I think it might be better if I spoke to Pytheas alone,” he said, and turned and walked off so fast that I’d have had to run to catch up with him.

Kebes and I stared at each other. “What was that about?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Do you think the worker really was trying to communicate?”

“Well, it seems unlikely on the face of it, but it also seems like a very unlikely coincidence that in only that one spot where Sokrates was trying to talk to the worker, the flowers should spell out something that could mean no. I’m almost more interested in why he acted like that about Pytheas. What would Pytheas know about workers that we don’t?”

“Pytheas knows some very odd things sometimes.”

“He reads a lot,” I said, defensively. “No, but what?”

Kebes frowned. “When we’re talking to Sokrates, sometimes Pytheas says odd things, or sometimes he says ordinary things and Sokrates reacts oddly. Like when he mentioned his parents that time, and Sokrates acted as if he’d said something completely bizarre.”

I remembered that. I shook my head. “That’s Sokrates behaving oddly, which … isn’t unusual for Sokrates. Do you think he’ll be in Thessaly this afternoon?”

“I’ll be there to see,” Kebes said.

“So will I. But first I have my math group. See you later!” I went off to join Axiothea and the others, puzzled.

Sokrates was at Thessaly when I got there at our usual time. Pytheas was there before me, and Kebes arrived a moment or two later. “I brought some nuts,” he said, pulling out a twist of paper.

“Raisins,” I said, pulling out a matching twist.

“Olives,” Pytheas said, smugly, bringing out a whole jar of olives stuffed with garlic.

“You bring a feast! And I as always can offer crystal clear water and the shade of my garden,” Sokrates said, leading the way out. It was a little chilly to sit outside, and I kept my cloak around me. Once we were seated and passing round the food, he began. “I believe I have discovered evidence of conversational thought among the workers.”

“I’m not convinced,” Kebes said.

“It’s not necessary to be convinced by one piece of evidence,” Sokrates said. “But it’s indicative that it might be worth further investigation.”

Sokrates unveiled his plan, in which the three of us were to do nothing but go around talking to every worker we saw, in Latin, while he did the same in Greek. “Do any of you know any other languages?”

“A little Coptic, if I still remember any,” I said.

“Italian,” Kebes said. “It’s like simple Latin without the word endings.”

Pytheas spread his hands. “I was born in the hills above Delphi. How would I have encountered anything but Greek?”

“How indeed?” Sokrates muttered. “I believe I can recruit Aristomache into this project,” he said. “She speaks two other languages of Europe. I forget their names now, but she told me so. With all those languages it may be easier to get them to answer.”

“Or they may not,” I said. “And we’re going to look awfully silly trying to have dialogue with workers.”

“As cracked as me,” Sokrates agreed cheerfully. “Report any results, positive or negative. But results might be slow—like the bulbs.”

“If they can speak, why don’t they?” Kebes asked.

“I don’t think they can speak. This is just a theory, but I suspect they can hear and move and think without being able to speak. They have no organs of speech, no mouths, no heads. But they have things like hands, and they may be able to write. That one found a way.”

“They have nothing like ears either, how do you know they can hear?” I asked.

“I conjecture that they have the ability to hear because the response to my questions suggests that it heard them. I conjecture they have understanding for the same reason.” Sokrates shook his head. “I think it would be wrong to consider them people, but we don’t have a term for anything like them. Thinking beings that aren’t human! How wonderful if they are able to reason and communicate!”

“Without heads, where might they keep their minds, if they have them?” Kebes put in.

“In their livers, obviously,” Sokrates said. “What makes you think minds are in the head?”

“Closest to the eyes,” Kebes said.

“And people with head injuries are often damaged in their minds, while people with liver injuries continue to think perfectly well,” Pytheas added.

“Huh.” Sokrates touched his head. “But they have no heads, and you’ve all been assuming that the head is the seat of intelligence and therefore that’s why you’re all so reluctant to consider that they might be intelligent. Well, now. Perhaps you’re right, and perhaps I am. They might help sort it out.”

“They’re made of metal and glass,” Pytheas said.

“So?” Sokrates looked puzzled.

Pytheas shook his head, defeated.

“The next problem is that there’s no way to tell them apart! Have you ever found one?”

I shook my head. “They sometimes have different hands. But I don’t know if they change them or if it’s always the same hands on the same ones. And of course some are bronze-colored and some are iron-colored.”

Pytheas nodded. “What Simmea said. I’ve never tried to distinguish them.” Whatever it was Sokrates had imagined he knew about them clearly didn’t amount to much.

Kebes smiled. “Actually, they are easy to tell apart. They’re numbered. Lysias showed me once, when I was helping him.” When he was going through his period of making Lysias think that Kebes would begin to strive for excellence through his encouragement, I thought. “The numbers are very small, down on their side, above the tread. They’re long. But they’re all different. So we can tell them apart, by checking the numbers.”

“Are they numbered in Latin or Greek?” Sokrates asked, leaning forward, urgently interested.