Sokrates came up to us as we were leaving. “How will you give the news to the workers?” he asked Lysias.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s a case of changing parameters, which isn’t easy. I’ll probably use a key.”

“Can I watch?”

“Certainly, though if you’re wanting to check on my integrity you should know you won’t understand any of it.” Lysias drew himself up stiffly. I put my hand on his arm, which was like a bar of iron.

“He was just interested,” Klio said.

“Nobody really understands how they work,” Sokrates said. “I least of all, I know that. And I don’t distrust your integrity, I just want to learn more about them.”

“All right,” Lysias said. He nodded to Sokrates, who nodded back. “It will be quite a lot of slow tedious work.”

“I’ll help you do it. Tomorrow—is that all right?” Klio asked. “I need to get back to a baby.”

“Tomorrow, after breakfast, and thank you,” Lysias said.

Klio nodded.

“I’ll be there,” Sokrates said. “At the feeding station?”

“Yes,” Lysias said, looking resigned.

We wished each other joy of the night and left. Lysias walked beside me, in silence. “Do you really think it was Kebes?” I asked after a little while.

“It’s by far the most likely explanation.” Lysias was staring straight ahead. “They are more advanced than the workers of my own time. But they work the same way. Look how much we’re being asked to believe, that they have intelligence, free will, and that they’ve managed to learn Greek?”

“I think it’s harder for you to believe it than it is for me, because you understand them better. For me there’s something a little magical about them. Steam engines were a wonder of technology for me. I can as easily believe that the workers can think as that they can prune a lemon tree.” I paused for a moment, thinking about it. “For the people from even earlier times, with even less knowledge of how machines work, it would be even easier to think of them that way.”

“And that’s why Sokrates, who’s from the earliest time of any of us, feels so sure they’re sentient?” He had been walking quite rapidly, now he stopped, I almost bumped into him.

“It may be why he started talking to them in the first place,” I suggested.

“It’s just a hoax and a waste of my time,” Lysias said. “But he needn’t have thought I wouldn’t do it. That hurt.”

“I don’t think he did think that.”

“Oh yes he did. I know him. Come on, let’s get you home before you fall asleep in the street and a worker comes and carves no on you!”

28

SIMMEA

I slipped down into exhausted sleep, and the sleep didn’t rest me and the exhaustion didn’t go away. Even worse than the exhaustion was the lethargy. From the time when I woke the morning after giving birth, I could hardly bring myself to stir. Worse again was the indifference. I didn’t care about anything. Everything was too much effort. I hadn’t fainted at all when I was pregnant, but I began to faint all the time as soon as the baby was born. Sometimes I couldn’t go for an hour without fainting. These fainting spells kept up for a month, during which time I seldom went anywhere except between Hyssop and the nursery. I seldom went to Florentia to eat, I ate things people brought me. I never felt hungry, but when I had food I wanted it. When I did go to Florentia I grunted at my friends and stared at Botticelli’s Winter while remembering distantly that I had once loved it. I fed babies three times a day. I bled heavily and constantly. I slept voraciously and woke still tired and with my breasts aching.

Maia called Charmides to me. He said I needed iron, and prescribed liver and cabbage, which I ate dutifully although it made me want to gag. Axiothea gave me iron lozenges to suck. Auge brought me figs and Klymene reported debates that I would normally have been sorry to miss. I could see that they were all genuinely concerned for me, but I couldn’t seem to rouse myself out of my stupor. I felt passive and stupid as if only half of my mind was working. I wondered idly if perhaps some of my soul had gone into the baby and left me this empty husk without passion or desires.

I was tired absolutely all the time. The thought of resuming my life exhausted me. Maia told me I was commissioned to do a painting for a book cover, and instead of a joy and an honor it felt like an insurmountable burden. If I got up to go to the latrine-fountain I felt I had to rest when I came back to bed. The other girls in Hyssop, even those who had given birth, didn’t know what to make of me. I avoided Sokrates and Kebes and even Pytheas. I felt it unfair of them to demand more of me than I had. I had just enough energy to eat and sleep and feed babies. Conversation drained me. It was an effort not to cry and an effort not to snap with irritation. Making the effort left me more exhausted than ever.

The iron, or something, helped with the bleeding, which began to ease off in the second month after I had given birth. I still fainted frequently and didn’t care about anything. I didn’t even care enough to be concerned that I didn’t care; or rather I was aware that there was a problem and I would usually care, but it was as if it were a message sent to me from far away in dubious characters about people I had read about once. “Pytheas was asking about you,” Klymene said one evening.

“Tell him I’m just tired,” I said, and only much later thought how strange it was that Pytheas should have been driven to ask Klymene. Even as I thought it, I couldn’t bring myself to care. Just looking at the fact was an effort. He must really care about me, I thought, just when I don’t care about anything. How could I possibly be worthy of him, in this condition? I felt myself starting to cry. That was the other thing. It started immediately after the baby was born. I cried all the time as if my eyes had sprung a leak. Anything that would have sparked any emotion at all now made me weep.

A few days after that, Pytheas lay in wait for me outside Hyssop. He could not enter the house, of course, or the nursery, but nobody could stop him waiting by the door for me to come out.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as soon as he saw me.

I started to cry immediately. “Nothing’s wrong,” I said.

“You’re crying.”

“Oh Pytheas, I’m too tired to explain it. It’s just nothing.” I felt exhausted at the thought of one of our usual conversations.

“I haven’t seen you.”

“I haven’t been fit to see.” My head began to spin. I took a deep breath, which sometimes helped. “Everything makes me tired.”

Pytheas took my hand. “This isn’t right,” he said. “You shouldn’t feel like this. Where were you going?”

“To the nursery. It’s time to feed the babies.” My breasts were tight and uncomfortable. I could feel Pytheas’s hand, which was warm in mine, but as if I felt it through layers of muffling cloth. I tried to smile but just cried harder.

He frowned. “Simmea—look, I’m going to get Septima. I’ll bring her back here in an hour, all right?”

“Why Septima?” I asked, but he had gone, running full tilt.

I walked to the nursery, still in my haze of misery and exhaustion. Nothing seemed to matter. Maia had said I could have a baby and go on with my life, but it seemed my body had other ideas. I fed a baby Andromeda brought me, one of the small ones but not mine. I had not seen mine again. I did not know his name. I drank some cabbage soup and ate some barley bread, barely tasting it. I sucked obediently at one of the iron lozenges Axiothea had given me. When I went outside again Septima and Pytheas were waiting, sitting on the low wall by the currant bushes. Pytheas looked concerned, and Septima looked irritated. They weren’t talking as they waited, or even looking at each other. Seeing them together, they did have a clear family resemblance—their golden skin color, and the shape of their chins, and the way their eyes were set.