“Could be earlier, could be later. Let’s try earlier.” The shadows shifted a little, and the birds vanished, but nothing else changed. Then the shadows shifted again and we were standing by a busy harbor, full of little fishing boats with colored sails. More of the grey and white birds were flying around them, squawking indignantly. A woman with a basket of fish almost bumped into me, and when I apologized she told me to look where I was going. Two naked children pulled themselves out of the water right in front of me, dripping. “How about this?” Hermes asked. “Those buildings are really anachronistic. It’s a good thing they got taken off to your planet.”

“Yes, I think this is it,” I said. I looked around me, trying to picture the colors as they would be lit by our redder sun, and the spaces between the pillars filled in. “If I’m right, I think we should go up that way to come to the agora.” I pointed. “But the Goodness isn’t here, the ship. From what Dad said, I think Kebes usually stayed near the ship. We could ask somebody.”

“There’s a mouthwatering smell of cooking fish coming from over there,” Hermes said. “We could buy some and ask.”

They used money in Lucia, of course. Money is un-Platonic and leads to injustice and inequality and immoderate behavior—nobody doubts this. Whenever we’re having trade negotiations with the Lucians they admit this and agree, and then keep talking in terms of money. It’s the same with the Amarathi. It’s supposed to be only a medium of exchange and accounting, but I think it must be a way of viewing economics that’s very hard to shift.

We took a step, and I staggered. My balance was all wrong. Hermes looked at me impatiently. I took another step. Gravity difference, I realized. I’d heard the Saeli talking about how different planets had different gravity. I’d never realized that Earth and Plato were different. I felt slightly heavier. I put my shoulders back and took a deep breath. Hermes led me, following the smell, which was coming from a little house on the quayside. Earth. Apart from the oddness of gravity, and the vividness of the colors, it didn’t seem much different. I kept reminding myself I was in Greece, in Lucia when it was one of the Lost Cities. In the Remnant at this moment, my parents were children. They might not even have met. It was warm, but no warmer than it might be at home in the middle of summer.

Inside the house were tables where people were sitting eating, like any eating hall at home. An old man was grilling fish over coals. I had been wanting fresh fish earlier, but these were different from the fish I knew. They were silvery, not black or red, and shaped like the fish I had seen on mosaics, the shape of an elongated alpha, with flat tails and tiny jaws.

“Skubri and wine,” Hermes said, because I was standing frozen in place staring at everything. The old man looked at us incuriously and gave us hot fish on flatbread and cups of wine. I paid him from my purse, and he gave me change, a custom I remembered from when I was in Lucia at home, in my past and this Lucia’s future. It made me feel more confident. It was strange and yet familiar, something I had mastered as a traveler, and this was merely more travelling.

“Do you know if Matthias is in town?” I asked.

“No, he’s gone with the Goodness, he won’t be back until spring,” the old man said.

“Thanks.”

“Strangers in town?” the old man asked.

“Yes,” I said, again pleased with the familiar. I’d had this conversation over and over when I’d spent my year in Lucia. “From—” and then I remembered that if I told the truth, or even an amended version of the truth and pretended to be from Kallisti in this time, I’d be in serious trouble. “From Petra.” It was a settlement about two days’ walk away, on the other side of the island. I hoped he wouldn’t know everyone there.

“Come round on a fishing boat?” he asked.

“Mmm,” I said, then took my plate and left before he asked which boat and how long it took.

We sat down at an empty table. The sun was streaming in through the window, and I could see dust motes dancing in the beam, exactly the way they did at home. I had adjusted to the gravity, which wasn’t all that different after all. I took a bite of the fish, which was a bit bland and over-sweet, though perfectly cooked.

“I thought he was called Kebes?” Hermes asked.

“He was called Matthias here. Kebes was the name Ficino gave him, from Plato.” I realized that Hermes wasn’t touching his fish and stopped eating. “Aren’t you going to eat?” I asked.

“I can only eat for ritual purposes,” he said. “It’s a pity, because it smells so good.”

“Ritual purposes? You mean sacrifices?” We sacrificed animals to the gods on some special occasions, burning the fat and skin and then eating the meat.

“Sacrifices, yes, or to accept hospitality.”

“So since I bought that, if I were to offer it to you as hospitality, you could eat it? Because I’m forbidden from eating alone, and I’m really hungry.”

“Thank you, I accept,” he said. “We are guest-friends now.” He took a bite of the fish. “Oh that’s good.”

“What were we before?” I asked.

“Well, you are my votary,” Hermes said, smiling. “And I suppose we’re acquaintances who have a child—what do you call that relationship in your cities? Ex-spouses?”

“No, it usually is friendship,” I said.

“Friendship is good.” He looked at me seriously, then nodded. “It’s a strange custom.”

“It lets everyone start equal,” I said. “Otherwise, people inherit status from their parents.”

“But to do without that, you have to do what Plato says and have all the children grow up anonymous, don’t you? That was part of Plato’s vision.”

“About half of us in the City do grow up in nurseries not knowing our parents. And everyone in Athenia and Psyche,” I said. “And it is better that way for being equal, only as it happens lots of people like to live together and raise their own children. So the way we do it is a kind of compromise. We try hard not to consider the status of the parents, if we know it, when looking at the ephebe candidates. Those of us who are guardians are forbidden to discriminate in favor of our own children, and we never make decisions about what class they should be. We never serve on any committees that consider them. We do get family traditions and all that kind of thing, though we try not to. Our family is one of the worst, because of Pytheas being a god. But even so we’re not all Gold.” Though I was, of course. I felt very aware of my pin. I knew I had earned it through my own merit, but saying so would only make it seem worse.

“Hmm.” He finished the last bite of his fish and set down the backbone. “Let’s try catching Kebes in the spring.”

We walked out of the restaurant and I found myself in a cooler, lilac-scented day. There was a schooner tied up at dock among the fishing boats, the fabled Goodness of course, twin to our Excellence. It gave me a shock to see it. It was missing a mast, and patched on the near side in a lighter-colored wood, but nevertheless immediately recognizable. Ma was captain of the Excellence and I’d practically grown up aboard her, which is how I’d gained my love of sailing. From this angle, looking across to the grey-flecked sea, everything looked simultaneously familiar and bizarre. I now knew exactly where I was in the Lucia I knew, hundreds of miles from the ocean. But in this light, with the waves lapping, beneath a clouded sky, it reminded me much more of the harbor at home. It was almost as if I could have stepped onto the Phaenarete and headed out around the point with Jason and Hilfa.

“That’s his boat,” I said to Hermes as we strolled towards it. Walking in the slightly heavier gravity made me aware of how tired I was. I guessed by the light that it was morning here, but my body knew it was late at night after a busy day. One of the birds was perched on the rail of the ship. It took to the air as we came close.