“So you know more than mere mortals, isn’t that so?”

“Of course,” Athene said.

“So we should trust you to be doing what is right for us, even if we can’t quite understand why?”

“Yes.”

“And you have been deeply involved in setting up this city from the beginning?”

“Yes.”

“And you have constantly used your power to make things work out for the city, things that might otherwise not have worked?”

“Yes.”

“The trouble with that is that even though you are a god you too are ignorant in some areas. One area I can easily cite is to do with the workers. Until I discovered it, just recently, nobody knew that they had free will and intelligence.” Sokrates raised an arm to indicate the workers who were there listening in a circle around the outside of the agora. Axiothea was standing near Crocus and read aloud the response he carved.

“Volition,” she read. “Want to choose, want to talk, want to make art, want to debate, want to stay.”

“Wait,” Manlius called. “Sixty-one is writing something.”

“What is it?” Sokrates asked.

“No choice brought, choose stay city,” Manlius read out.

“Precisely,” Sokrates said. “They wanted to choose and to talk and to make art, they wanted a say in their own lives. They didn’t choose to come, but they do choose to stay. But you didn’t even know they could think, nobody did.”

“But as soon as you discovered it, we agreed to consider them people. Now they spend ten hours a day working and ten being educated and the rest recharging, their equivalent of eating and sleeping.” Athene looked pleased. “Once we realized we were committing an injustice we moved at once to redress it.”

“Indeed. That speaks very well of you, of the city in general. I think Aristomache deserves especial thanks for this.” He smiled at Aristomache where she stood near him in the crowd. “But my point is that the reason you were treating them unfairly is because you were not even aware, until Crocus and I discovered it, that the workers were people.”

“He’s got her,” Simmea muttered.

“Yes, I was unaware,” Athene admitted.

“So even though you are a goddess you don’t know everything?”

“Of course not.”

“Of course not,” I echoed. “He knows that.”

“Yes, but not everybody does,” Simmea said. “Hush.”

“So, for instance, you didn’t know how well Plato’s experiment would work until you tried it?”

“No.”

“It was an experiment?”

“Yes. I said so.”

“An experiment, and nobody knew what would happen. And to perform this experiment, why didn’t you do as Plato said?”

“We did,” Athene said, indignant.

“Plato said you should take over an existing city and drive out everyone over ten years of age, you didn’t do that?”

“No. It seemed better to start fresh.”

“Seemed better to you?”

“Yes.”

“Even though it wasn’t what Plato said?” Sokrates pretended surprise. There was a ripple of laughter.

“What Plato said wasn’t possible,” Athene snapped.

“Wasn’t possible even for you?” Sokrates sounded even more surprised.

“Not everything is possible even for the gods,” Athene said.

Sokrates paused, then shook his head sadly. “Not everything is possible, and you do not know everything?”

“I already said so.” Athene was clearly irritated now.

“To return to what Plato said. He thought his city would be near other cities, would trade with them and make war with them. Why did you decide instead to put it on an island far away from other cities and with no contact with the outside world?”

Athene hesitated. “It seemed it would work better that way.”

“So you felt free to change things Plato wrote when you thought they would work better a different way, but you kept them the same and held Plato’s words up as unchangeable writ when you didn’t want to change them?”

She hesitated again. “There were a number of good reasons to choose this island.”

“Yes, the volcano that will erupt and destroy all the evidence of your meddling. That was going to be my next point. If you believe that this is the Just City, that the life here is the good life, why did you situate it in this little corner of the world that will be destroyed, at a point in time where it can influence nothing and change nothing? Why is it set here in a sterile backwater? Why didn’t you put it in a time and place where it could really have an effect, where it could have posterity, where all humanity could benefit from the results of this experiment and not just you?”

There was a swelling murmur through the crowd at that, especially from the masters. Everyone must have wondered about that.

“This was a time when it was possible. The more things affect time, the less power the gods have to do things.” She sounded even more irritated now.

“So you deliberately chose a backwater?”

“Yes,” she snapped.

“And you deliberately chose a time when it could not last?”

“I told the masters when I gathered them together. Nothing mortal can last, and the most we can hope for is to create legends. Legends of this city will change the world.” She spread her hands out to the crowd.

“Ah yes,” Sokrates said, drawing everyone’s attention back to him. “Atlantis.” He laughed. “Can legends change the world? Is that really the best you could do?”

“Legends really can change the world,” I whispered to Simmea. “Whether Sokrates believes it or not.”

“This city is worth having whether it has results in time or not,” Athene said.

“Then why didn’t you build it on Olympos, outside time?”

“That wouldn’t have been possible.” It really wouldn’t. It wasn’t even imaginable. Athene cast another furious glance at me, only too aware who must have told Sokrates that Olympos was outside time.

“And how do you know it is worth having?”

“It self-evidently is!”

“It may or may not be, but you have established that you did not know everything, that it was an experiment. You did not, could not, know it would be a better life for those you brought here against their will.”

“They prayed to be here,” Athene said.

“The masters prayed. The children and the workers were purchased and given no choice at all, since we have agreed to leave aside the claims of choices made by souls before birth.”

Athene smiled. “The children had as much choice as humans ever do. Every human soul is born into a society, and that society shapes their possible lives. And we have given them lives as good as we could imagine. As for the workers, if they had not come here they might never have developed souls at all.”

“Even if that is so, it’s worth mentioning that since they came here, the children and the workers have not been allowed to leave. In most cities, as young people grow up they can leave and seek out a more congenial home if they do not like it. They could leave Athens for Sparta or Crete, or if they preferred they could choose to found a new colony, or settle among the horselords of Thessaly. But if your children have tried to leave they have been brought back, even if it damaged them.” Sokrates indicated Glaukon in his wheelchair. “They have been flogged for running away.” He indicated Kebes. “And did you do this with good intentions?”

“Yes!” she insisted.

“But you did it in ignorance of how it would turn out?”

“… Yes.” I could tell she was still uncomfortable, but she seemed to have regained her calm.

“Did you even believe that it could work, or were you just as interested in seeing how it might fail?” I had never told him that, he must have just deduced it.

Athene bared her teeth. “I wanted it to succeed. I worked hard for it. I have spent my time and efforts here. I brought everyone here to make it succeed.”

“Everyone except me. Why didn’t you bring me here until the fifth year?”

“So you could teach the children rhetoric.” She hesitated again. “You were an old man. I wasn’t sure you’d live to teach them at fifteen if you came here at the beginning.”