“That changes everything,” Marsilia said, suddenly all practical, the way she was when we were out with the nets. “Thee, stop crying, it’s un-Platonic. I have to go.”

“Marsilia! You can’t go off and worry about spaceships right after Grandfather has died,” Thetis said, outraged.

“Oh yes I can,” Marsilia said. “And Dad will do the same.”

“Neleus is already in the Chamber,” Crocus confirmed. “I came to fetch you for the sake of speed.”

“Hilfa says you have a good haul!” Dion said, as he came up. “Joy to you, Marsilia, Thetis, Crocus.”

Camilla ran to me and put her arms up to be swung onto the boat. I heaved her aboard and hugged her. “Gloaters!” she exclaimed. A human spaceship, I was thinking, recontact with the mainstream of human civilization at last. And Pytheas dead. Everything had changed and nothing had. Hilfa came aboard beside me. I swung the first tub up so that the fish that filled it cascaded down into the cool boxes on the cart in a swirl of red and black.

Marsilia looked up. “Dion, how lovely to see you. I have a crisis. If I borrow Jason, could you and Hilfa manage the unloading?”

“Borrow me?” I asked, jumping ashore, leaving Hilfa and Camilla aboard. “What for?” I couldn’t imagine how she might need me in dealing with a strange human culture, but of course I was prepared to do my best.

Marsilia detached Thetis from her shoulder and gave her a gentle push towards me. “Can you take Thee home?” Ah, of course. She didn’t need help with the big problem, but with the immediate human problem. Well, that was more to my scale.

“To Thessaly,” Crocus interjected.

“You should come too, Marsilia,” Thetis said. I put my arm around her. Hilfa was already tipping the next tub of fish into the cart.

“I will come, and so will Dad, as soon as we’ve dealt with this crisis,” Marsilia said.

“But I’m sure there’s a plan for dealing with it, and what does it matter anyway?” Thetis asked. “You can’t put politics ahead of family.”

“There has been a plan for this meeting since the consulship of Maia and Klio, but the question is whether people will follow the plan in the face of events,” Marsilia said. “This is one of the most important things that has ever happened, Thee. Oh, it’ll be so wonderful to talk to them.”

“Perhaps,” Crocus said, cautiously.

“You don’t think so?” Marsilia asked, sounding surprised.

“I knew the Masters longer and better than you did,” Crocus said. “I have apprehensions about what recontact could mean. I have watched the generations maturing in the Cities, and seen how each one is more Platonic than the last as we grow further from other human cultures. Plato was wrong to want to start with ten-year-olds. They should have started with babies. The Children remembered their original cultures too well. Your father’s generation, the Young Ones, were the first generation to know nothing but the City. And your generation are in an even better position. These days we take the pursuit of excellence for granted, and go on from there. Each new generation so far has been better. Perhaps recontact with the human cultures that have developed from the ones the Masters came from will indeed be wonderful. I hope so. But I have reservations.”

“But we’ll have so much to share with them,” Marsilia said. “We’ve developed so much. And we have the works of classical civilization that were lost to them. We have everything we’ve learned about applying Platonism and reconciling it to other systems. The aliens didn’t know anything about Plato until we explained to them. But the humans are bound to be excited.”

“This is a whole new civilization,” Crocus said. “We know less about them than we do about the aliens. In some ways they will seem more familiar, yes, and we will share some cultural referents. In other ways they might surprise us more. They might have very different priorities. Many of the Masters came from times that did not value the classical world as it should be valued. I remember Klio and Lysias talking about what misfits they had been in their own times. And Lysias, who came from the mid-twenty-first century, was the last Master. Nobody from any time later than that had read the Republic in Greek and prayed to Athene to help set it up, or they would have been here. No Workers ever did. That isn’t a good sign. Besides, there were other human civilizations, on other continents of Earth, which had their own philosophical traditions and might not know or care anything about Platonism.”

“I don’t care about Platonism either, or the aliens. And whatever they’re like, they’ll still be there tomorrow, and going off to a debate on the day when Grandfather has died is heartless,” Thetis said.

“I’m consul. I think Grandfather would agree I should be there. And I really do have to go,” Marsilia said, climbing up onto Crocus’s back and taking hold of the braided blue and black web of harness that hung there. “Dion, Jason, thank you.”

I wanted to thank her as she and Crocus disappeared up the hill. This was the closest I had ever been to Thetis, and I was going to go with her all the way to Thessaly.

3

MARSILIA

I was woken the morning of the day when it all began by my daughter Alkippe bouncing on my stomach. It may not be the best way to wake up, but it’s far from the worst one. “Why are you still asleep?” she asked. I was often up before she was, up and washed and dressed and getting on with my morning. Now the sun was high, and casting a bright square of red-gold morning light on the foot of the bed, but I felt as if I could do with another whole night’s sleep.

“Yesterday was a long day,” I said.

“It can’t have been longer than nineteen hours. That’s how long days are.” Alkippe had that didactic tone kids always get when they’re beginning to learn how to muster facts for an argument.

“When people say they had a long day, they mean they made part of the night into day and didn’t get enough sleep. Or that a lot of things happened so it was an extremely busy day.” I yawned.

“It’s not a very precise term.”

“When people are talking about how they feel, precision isn’t always what you want. You asked me why I was still asleep, and the answer is because I felt I had a long day. It doesn’t matter how many hours it was; what matters is how it felt, and so why I was still sleepy.”

“Why did it feel long?” she asked.

“Well I had lots of meetings, and lots of fishing. It’s the time of year when fishing is the best, and that means it’s more work. It’s good really.”

“Sosothis says that people should only do one job, the job for which they’re best suited. He says that’s what Plato says, and that doing two jobs is un-Platonic.” She looked unhappy. I’d heard this often enough from other people already.

“Working on the boat with Jason and Hilfa is my recreation,” I said.

“But maybe you wouldn’t be so tired if you didn’t do it?”

“I wouldn’t, but I wouldn’t have so much fun either. And we might not have as much fish, and fish is good. So I’m going to carry on doing it whatever Sosothis says, or anyone else either. People complained about it when I was running for consul, but they elected me anyway, so there we are.” I could still hardly believe I was consul, consul in my year, at thirty-five, elected to planetary office at the youngest possible age.

“Let’s wash together!” Alkippe said, bouncing. She grinned at me, and I saw that she had lost a front tooth.

“Yes, that will be fun.” She usually washed with Thetis. I rolled her around so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed. “You used to be small enough that I could swing you up off my stomach. Now you’re getting almost too heavy for me to roll.”

“Was I really small? Was I as small as a walnut?”

“When you were as small as a walnut you were inside my belly. When you first came out you were the size of both of Granddad’s hands put together. But you keep on growing and growing.” I smiled at her.