She carried the clavicle and life-support machine in a large locked trunk; in a smaller suitcase, she also carried her grandmother’s “slate,” an electronic tablet for reading and writing upon. These were guarded by Lugotorix, her Keltic bodyguard, in her cabin. Lugotorix was unarmed, bowing to the sophē’s abhorrence of weapons and warfare, but hardly less lethal for all that. Rhamōn, for all the Hypateion’s pacifist philosophy, was a practical man, on occasion surprisingly resourceful and worldly. Lugotorix’s service was being paid for in goods more valuable than money; his two brothers now studied at the Akademeia. With such an education, they might overcome the prejudices that had handicapped those of Keltic descent since the uprising of century twenty-one.

Rhita felt a steady, unobtrusive connection with the clavicle; if anything happened to it, she would know, and she would probably be able to find it, wherever it was taken. With Lugotorix standing guard, few would try to take it; but not even the Kelt knew what he was protecting.

In good time, Rhita would petition Queen Kleopatra for an audience. She would present her evidence.

What happened after that, she did not care to dwell upon.

Having had enough sea air for the time—it was thick with cinders as the smoke shifted on the changing wind—Rhita returned to her small, stuffy cabin, sending the hulking, quiet black-haired Kelt to his own cabin for a rest. She removed her clothes and put on a simple Hindi cotton nightshirt. Crawling between the short bunk’s thin blankets, she switched on a feeble electric lamp and removed from her suitcase the smaller wooden teukhos, the book-box containing her grandmother’s slate and the cubes of music and literature, including her own diaries.

Nothing like the slate existed on this Earth, though in a few years the Oikoumenē mathematicians and mekhanikoi promised to create great electronic calculating machines. Patrikia had provided some of them with the theory of such machines, in meetings conducted just before her death.

Rhita realized her responsibility in caring for these Objects. In a real sense, she carried the fate of the Rhodian Akademeia with her; the Objects were proof of Patrikia’s truth-telling. Without them—if, for example, the ferry were to sink in the sea and the Objects were lost—there would be no proof, and in time Patrikia’s story would be considered myth, or worse, a lie. But whatever the danger, wherever she went, Rhamōn had ordered that Rhita was to have these objects with her always.

Rhita had read her grandmother’s notes many times, comparing the history of her Earth with the history of Gaia. She took comfort in the notes on the slate, as she might have taken comfort from reading familiar fairy stories.

The modern Earth her grandmother described was such a fabulous, if horrifying place—a world that had burned itself alive with its own genius and madness.