“She must have wanted you to learn about grief while you could,” he said.

“I wish you’d been here, because it took me months and Ficino’s death in battle to figure that out.”

“Ficino died in battle?” Sokrates looked surprised. “I didn’t know he could fight! How old was he?”

“He was ninety-nine, and he couldn’t fight, as it happens. But he put himself between Arete and a blade. So I started asking what Simmea would value that much.”

“We talked about how important it was to help you increase your excellence only a few days ago—that is, only a few days before the Last Debate,” he said.

“I know. She wrote about that, and I read it after she was dead.”

The first blaze of light that was the shuttle appeared high up, and people started pointing to it in excitement. “But what you said last night was true. Other people shouldn’t have to die so I can learn things. They also matter.”

“It was her choice,” Sokrates said.

“I stayed incarnate for forty more years to honor that choice.”

He nodded, understanding the significance of that. “But now are you glad to be a god again?”

“Oh yes. Very much. It’s wonderful. No aches and pains, a lyre that stays tuned, the ability to go anywhere I want to, detachment, power—everything I’ve been missing.” I could hear the roar of the shuttle now, through the special glass of the window.

“Yet you keep wearing your Gold pin?”

I touched it for an instant as he mentioned it. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Athene is wearing one right now, in her Septima form as she came to the debate, but she wasn’t before. You’ve had yours on the entire time, even when we were wearing those absurd costumes in Cirey. It was pinning the fall of lace at your throat.”

I’d had it on on Olympos, and out there, and in the Underworld, and when I’d been watching sun formation. “I like it,” I said. “Simmea designed it. And it stands for excellence and philosophy.”

“So you don’t miss being a mortal?” he asked. The shuttle touched down in a thunderous roar that seemed to shake the building, a designed pattern of sound that was almost music. Lots of the spectators cheered.

“No,” I said, when it was quiet enough to speak again. The last time I’d had to wait for silence to speak it had been the bells in Bologna. A shuttle landing was better. “It was a wonderful experience, and a terrible one. It was a significant event. It changed me. I did it for very mixed reasons, some of them much better than others. I’m really glad I experienced it. I learned all kinds of things from it I could have learned in no other way. But I don’t miss it.”

The shuttle, on the ground now, was rolling slowly towards us. Marsilia, Diotima, Klymene and Arete climbed up onto Crocus’s back, holding on to the webbing, and he rolled out.

“What do you think the space humans will be like?” Sokrates asked.

“Very very different. Maybe more different than the Saeli, harder to adjust to. They come from a future that has had marvelous things in it, but also awful things. We’ll have a lot to learn from each other, as cultures, a lot of things to give in both directions. It’ll be interesting. I wonder who these first people will be? A scientific party? Traders? Military? All we know so far is three humans and three Workers.”

“Crocus told me Workers first explored the solar system. Before humans.”

“Yes, that’s true. I told him that.” I smiled. “He was so proud.”

The shuttle drew to a halt and the door slid open. Crocus, with the others on his back, came closer.

“Whoever they are and whatever their culture, it’s going to be fascinating to see it interact with Plato. Athene will probably be interested too.” A flight of steps swung out from the ship, meeting the ground.

“I wish you Olympians would all agree not to interfere, to watch if you want to, and certainly protect us from Jathery and other dangerous gods, but let us get on with things and make our own decisions.” Crocus stopped at the foot of the stairs, and the others jumped down and took up waiting positions.

“I could agree to that,” I said, though I felt a little hurt. Why did nobody trust me? “We could ask Athene if you like. But I’ve been thinking—this experiment has had wonderful results. I want to work on doing more of this kind of thing, making more opportunities for places where people can be philosophical and artistic and pursue excellence.”

A young man appeared in the doorway of the shuttle, and began to come down, followed by two young women. They were all dark-skinned and wearing white overalls. The man had implausibly violet eyes, and one of the women had a blue bindi on her forehead. Everyone started murmuring about his eyes and their clothes.

“You need to be more responsible with your power,” Sokrates said.

“Me? What have I done? I’ve been trying to be responsible.”

“All of you.”

The three humans came down to the ground, and started bowing and taking the hands of our people. Sokrates was saying something to me, but I stopped listening as the first of their Workers came out. It was much smaller than our Workers, about half the size, and beige not yellow, and the treads were different, but none of those things were what caught my attention. As it trundled into the light, the Worker sent out a prayer to me, to my sun, to the light, a prayer of hope for recognition and freedom.

Soul is not personality, but souls are recognizable, whatever bodies they happen to be incarnated in. I had recognized Sokrates as a fly in the Jurassic, as he had immediately recognized me in my mortal form. Rolling carefully down the steps, owned by space humans who didn’t believe their Workers were sentient, came a Worker with the unmistakable soul of Simmea.

And that’s the end. That’s not, obviously, the last thing that happened, but nothing ever is, life has no end, things always keep on happening, unless the protagonist dies—and I am immortal. My mortal death was no kind of conclusion. But that moment, as I stood with Sokrates looking out over the landing field, is where I want to stop this story. I’ve told you now what I think it best for you to know, so you can learn and benefit from it. It may not be a story of good people doing good things, but all the same I think Plato would approve my didactic purpose here. The overwhelming presumption is that you who read this are human, and that among the confused goals of your mortal life you want to be the best self you can. Know yourself. Bear in mind that others have equal significance.

I ended the first volume with a moral, and the second with a deus ex machina. This third and final volume ends with hope, always the last thing to come out of any box.

THANKS

In the cyberpunk books of the eighties, people were fitted with brain/computer interfaces, which seems like a wonderful idea until operating systems are upgraded to the point where your interface won’t. Just like them, I’ve been writing in Protext since 1987, and for the last decade I’ve been feeling like a Jack Womack character. My overwhelming thanks to Lindsey Nilsen, who has now made Protext work in DOSBOX for Linux, ensuring that I can keep writing even as the last DOS computers become one with the dodo. I no longer have to resign myself to descent into oblivion and darkness, or at least not so soon. This book, like everything I write, was written entirely in Protext, which remains the best word processor in the world. And now it runs on netbooks running Ubuntu, which makes me so much more flexible. Thank you, Lindsey.

This is unquestionably the most difficult book I’ve ever written. Time travel seems like such a useful thing until you have to confront the implications close-up. (Just say no to time travel. You think it will solve your problems, but in the end you have all the same problems, just much more tangled up with time.) I owe huge thanks to the late John M. Ford, whose GURPS Time Travel started me thinking about it in interesting ways, and whose personal conversation on the subject was invaluable. There were so many times when I really wanted to email him when writing Necessity but he has gone where email doesn’t reach. Death sucks. Read his books.