Klio frowned even more, twisting up her face. She was Axiothea’s good friend so I knew her quite well. She sometimes dropped in on our math class. She was one of the most friendly and approachable masters, and she never talked down to us. “I would say I knew it, but the affair of the flowers confuses me. They can hear, so it could have heard Sokrates’s questions. But they don’t know Greek.”

“I told him that Latin was the language of civilization for centuries,” I said, reassuringly.

She laughed. “Not the century our workers come from, unfortunately. But if it spelled out N and O, that’s no in English, which uses the Latin alphabet. English is the most likely language for the worker to know … or Chinese. But—in my own time, a worker couldn’t possibly be a thinking, volitional being. These come from a more advanced time. I suppose it’s just barely possible that they could have developed some kind of … but to understand Greek?” She shook her head.

We turned into the street of Hermes. There was no sign of Kebes. “Either Lysias got here first or Kebes went in with a worker,” I said.

Klio used her key to open the door. Inside it was surprisingly dull, after what I had been imagining. It didn’t look at all dangerous. It was like a warehouse full of workers, each plugged into a wall or floor socket. It was a big space, as it seemed from outside, stretching back for a long way. There was a hum in the air. I couldn’t see Sokrates, but I could see Kebes running down one of the aisles, so I followed him.

Sokrates was sitting on the floor beside one of the workers, notebook and pencil in his hand, patiently asking it questions. He looked up when we reached him. “Ah, Simmea, Kebes, Klio, joy to you. I’d like you to record the numbers of all the workers here. I’ve done the first row and this row. If you’d like to address them in Latin, that would also be useful.”

“Klio says they don’t speak Latin but they might understand something called English,” I said.

Klio told Sokrates what she had told me. In the middle of it Pytheas and Lysias showed up. Lysias added to Klio’s explanation. “But I’m not an expert,” he said. “None of us is. I’ve been forced to be one. But before I came here, I never had much to do with them.”

“You’re all philosophers,” Sokrates said, gently. “It’s perhaps a demonstration of Plato’s principle that philosophers will be best at ruling the state, to take three hundred of you and nobody else and give you a state to run.”

“Plato doesn’t say any random philosophers from different schools and all across time,” Lysias protested. “And only about half of us are philosophers. The rest are classics majors and Platonic mystics. Besides, Plato does specifically say that the city needs all kinds of people. The philosophers are just intended for the guardians, not doing the whole thing, organizing the food supply and keeping things running and looking after the workers.”

“But the end result is that nobody here really understands whether the workers have intelligence and free will or not.”

The worker beside Sokrates did not move, and showed absolutely no sign of having intelligence and free will. It could have been a chair or part of the wall. I looked for the number on the worker and found it, above the tread as Kebes had said. It was nine digits long. Above that, on its lower back, about where the liver might be on a human, was a slightly inset square that reminded me of the squares on the outside of the building.

“If the workers do have intelligence and free will, then there’s a real issue here,” Klio said. She patted the worker. It did not respond.

“Slavery,” said Sokrates. “Plato allowed slavery, did he?”

“Free will and intelligence are different things,” Pytheas pointed out.

“Different things?” Sokrates repeated. “We’ve been discussing them together, but is it possible to have one without the other?”

“Very possible. There are logic-machines in my time that can play games of logic so well that they beat a human master of the game,” Klio said. “That can be considered intelligence. But they don’t have volition or anything like it. They are machines that simulate intelligence. The way these prioritize their tasks, and come here to recharge, simulates intelligence.”

“And it’s very easy to see volition without intelligence in animals and small children,” Lysias said.

Klio nodded. “Developing one seems almost possible, but both at once? Surely not. But choosing to plant the bulbs so they would answer your question would take both.”

“Explain to me about the bulbs,” Lysias said.

“I was attempting to have a dialogue with a worker, asking if it liked its work and if there was any work it preferred and that kind of thing, while it was planting bulbs last autumn,” Sokrates said. “Today the crocuses it planted came up, and they spell no in Latin.”

“In English,” Klio corrected, pushing her hair back behind her ears. “Which seems more plausible, except for understanding the questions in Greek.”

“Did anyone else witness this?” Lysias asked.

“I did,” I said. “Both parts of it.”

“And so did I,” Kebes said.

“Kebes was the first to recognize the word this morning. And we investigated the other patches of bulbs in other places in the city, and they are all arranged in rows, not in anything resembling letters.”

“From which direction did they read as letters?” Lysias asked.

“North to south,” I said, after it seemed that Kebes and Sokrates were having trouble remembering. “And that was the direction the worker was facing as it planted them.”

“It does sound as if it would take both,” Pytheas said. He looked hopefully at the worker sitting so stoically plugged into the socket.

“Unless Simmea or Kebes went back and rearranged the bulbs to play a trick,” Lysias said.

“I would never do such a thing!” I said, hotly indignant.

“Neither would I!” Kebes said, but I could see that Lysias didn’t believe him.

“It’s certainly the most logical explanation,” Klio said. She sounded relieved.

“I shall consider that explanation and continue to explore the question,” Sokrates said. “Will you permit me to continue recording the numbers of the workers here, so that I can tell if I’ve talked to one before?”

Lysias and Klio looked at each other. “I suppose it can’t do any harm,” Klio said.

“But you must promise not to keep coming back in here through the worker doors,” Lysias said. “It could be dangerous. You can talk to them in the city.”

“How is it dangerous?” Sokrates asked. “Do you think I’m going to plug myself into the sockets?” He laughed when he saw our faces. “I promise I won’t plug myself into the sockets, or slip under a worker’s treads, or any such thing. Is that good enough?”

“I’ll stay and help,” Lysias said. “The rest of you can get to your dinners.”

I was about to offer to help, but Sokrates nodded. “If you’ll talk to me while we work,” he said. “I’m exceedingly interested in what you know about intelligence and volition. Do the workers actually want things?”

“Come on,” Klio said, gathering the rest of us up. “Do you want to eat in Sparta?”

“Sure,” I said.

“It’s bean soup.”

“Delicious! We haven’t had bean soup in Florentia since last month.” Pytheas came with us. Kebes grunted and went off alone.

“He really didn’t like it when Lysias said that,” I said after he had left.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Pytheas said.

“I thought you’d think he would. You’re usually ready to say anything bad about him.”

“He’s an unmannerly lout and he doesn’t pursue excellence, and I don’t like the way he talks to you, and I don’t like what he says in our debates on trust.” Pytheas glanced at Klio. “But he has honor. And he really cares about Sokrates. He wouldn’t play a trick on him.”

“Do you agree, Simmea?” Klio asked.