“I mean can’t Jathery go after her alone? Gla’s the one who has the shield of Necessity, not you,” Marsilia said, though she was still not looking at Jathery.

“I would be willing to go alone,” Jathery said, gla inner eyelids shining over gla eyes.

Pytheas shook his head. “No. If Athene trusted gla, she’d have left the message for gla, not for me. I have to go, Marsilia. Jathery can come, we’ve agreed that, but I don’t trust gla, and I’m not letting gla go alone.”

“Besides these instructions are for two gods working together,” Arete said. “But I don’t see how you’re any less likely to get stranded there than she was, if you go there using the method she left you. You’d simply be repeating what she did, which worked to take her out but not to bring her home. So all you’d achieve by going after her would be to make things worse.”

Pytheas stared at her grimly. “We have a shield she did not. Jathery is bound by Necessity, that great force. Alkippe is his child, but he hasn’t yet been back to conceive her. Does that affect your estimate of our safety?”

“What? You can’t risk Alkippe like that!” Tears sprang to Thetis’s eyes at once. She leapt to her feet. “Grandfather! That’s the worst thing I ever heard. You can’t! And you, Jathery or whoever you are, you have to go there right now and set things straight!” I’d forgotten she hadn’t been there when we’d found out about this, back in Thessaly.

“Calm down, it’s all right,” Marsilia said.

I stood up and put a tentative hand on Thetis’s arm. “Let’s hear more about it,” I said. “Marsilia—”

“It isn’t all right! It can’t be!” Thetis shook me off. “It’s unbearable.”

“But Alkippe might be keeping all of us safe, the whole of our civilization even,” Marsilia said.

“The whole of history, potentially, Thee,” Pytheas said.

“I don’t care!” Thetis said. “You can’t take risks with her like that! How can you think of it? She’s only seven.”

Marsilia looked at me pleadingly. I didn’t know what to say or do. I felt sorry for Thetis, but things were bad enough without getting upset about them. It seemed strange that she could hear about the potential unravelling of the world as calmly as any of us, but a threat to one child she loved overcame her this way.

“I’m horrified too, but if it’s really keeping all of us safe, then the risk is no worse for Alkippe than for any of us, all of us,” I said.

To my surprise Hilfa got up and put his arms awkwardly around Thetis, and she sank down on the bed and allowed him to hold her.

“Are you Alkippe’s mother, Thetis?” Sokrates asked gently.

Thetis shook her head.

“No, I am,” Marsilia said quietly to Sokrates, as poor Thetis wept on Hilfa’s shoulder.

“And you say you are all right with this, this risk to your child?” Sokrates asked.

“She can’t be!” Thetis said, barely able to speak through her sobs.

“I’m not all right, but it’s necessary. It’s what Jason said, the risk is the same. If she ceases to exist because Jathery doesn’t go back to conceive her, or she ceases to exist because the whole city, or all of history does, there’s no difference. And I have stayed as close to Jathery as I can since finding this out. It’s why I went with gla,” Marsilia said. Her face was set and brave. “I also love Alkippe very much—and I agree it’s terrible.”

Sokrates patted her shoulder. “What a hard choice,” he said. “But if Jathery doesn’t go to rescue Athene—”

“Then Alkippe may be safe from Necessity, but Zeus may bring down the Darkness of the Oak on all of us, Alkippe included,” Marsilia said.

“Arete?” Pytheas asked, over the sound of Thetis’s sobbing. “Please?”

Arete’s eyes widened. “All right, I’ll translate it. The shield of Necessity may be enough. Well, I will if Hilfa agrees.”

“Hilfa?” I asked, surprised into speaking.

“Hilfa is the anchor. He always was. He’s Athene’s anchor right now.”

Hilfa kept his arms around Thetis. As he looked up I caught a flash of vivid orange and blue from his eyelids. “Like a boat anchor? What does it mean, for a person to be an anchor?”

“It means you’re her connection back to this universe,” Arete said. “If Pytheas and Jathery go out there, they’ll need to follow the thread from you to her.”

“You’re not only her message, but her anchor,” Jathery said.

Hilfa was staring at Arete over Thee’s head. “Tell me what I am?”

“You’re a hero, and what you make of yourself is your own choice. Like all Saeli, you have five parents. Jathery, a male human, the earth and water of Plato, and the spark of Athene’s mind,” Arete said.

Ikaros made an uneasy motion, but did not speak. He took a step forward, then stopped.

“So I belong to this planet? To Plato?” Hilfa asked, staring at Arete with the glint I thought was his real smile on his face.

“Yes,” Arete said. “And you don’t object to being the anchor?”

“It is what I was made for, how could I mind?” Hilfa asked. He let go of Thetis and stood up. Thee was getting herself under control. I sat down again and put my arm tentatively around her. She leaned into me as she had been doing with Hilfa.

“Let’s do it and have done,” Pytheas said.

“And if you don’t come back?” Arete asked. “Should I send—”

“That will be up to you,” Pytheas said.

“But we’re not sure how time out there relates to time here,” Ikaros said. “That was part of why Athene refused to take me. If you don’t come back, we should wait before going to Zeus with this.”

“Wait how long?” Arete asked.

“Ask Porphyry. The same way you have a connection with patterns of truth and language, he has a connection with the patterns of place and time. If we don’t reappear immediately, go to him tomorrow and ask him to go to Father when it feels right,” Pytheas said.

“All right,” Arete said, walking back to the table. “Look, nobody can go except the gods, and none of the rest of us can do anything to help now. I think everyone else should go to bed. There’s still a human spaceship up there that we’ll have to deal with tomorrow, and it’s getting late.”

“If tomorrow comes,” Jathery said, with another bone-chilling laugh.

All I’d have to deal with tomorrow, if it came, was the sea and the fish, but that was enough. “That sounds like good advice to me,” I said. “Sleep will help.”

“As if I’d be able to sleep with Alkippe in danger,” Thetis said, mopping her eyes.

“But we should try, Thee, because she’ll be awake and wanting breakfast, and your little ones will need you,” Marsilia said. I picked up Thetis’s cloak and wrapped it around her. She huddled into it.

“We’ll let you all catch up on sleep,” Pytheas said. “We’ll come back and let you know what’s happened tomorrow evening.”

“But you won’t want to wait … oh!” Arete said. They wouldn’t have to wait, of course, they could step back into time tomorrow evening as easily as today. It must be so incredibly strange to be a god.

“I’m not tired. If you’ll tell me where Crocus is, I think I’ll go and find him,” Sokrates said. “I know the City, unless it has changed very much in being moved here.”

“Crocus is out at the spaceport,” Marsilia said.

Sokrates laughed. “Then it has changed more than I imagined!”

“I’ll take you to the spaceport,” Arete said to Sokrates. “I want to go there anyway. I can be useful there. And it’ll be quicker for you to come with me than taking the train at this time of night.”

“You have trains here now?” Ikaros asked.

“What are trains?” Sokrates asked.

“Trains are moving rooms—electrical conveyances that run on rails moving at fixed times to fixed places,” Marsilia explained. “And Ikaros, you could take one to the City of Amazons and be there in less than an hour, though there isn’t one now until morning.”

“I know Rhadamantha would be pleased to see you,” Arete said. “She has children, your grandchildren.”