“But they can’t live out there, away from the cities?”

“No.” I took another gulp of my soup, finishing it. I put the empty bowl down. “I’d never thought of anyone wanting to try.”

“The Saeli have not tried it either,” Hilfa said.

Talking to Sokrates made me feel as if I should have been paying more attention to everything all along instead of only really thinking about my own life.

“So, Jason, tell me about your revolutionaries.”

“What revolutionaries?” I had no idea what he meant.

“The malcontents, the people who don’t like the system and agitate against it,” Sokrates explained.

I was still confused. “You mean Sokratea?”

“You don’t have people like that here?”

“We have people who disagree about things, but they’re not revolutionaries,” I said. “They debate a lot. People who really disapprove fundamentally of how things work here tend to go off to Sokratea, the same as people who want to be really rigid and Platonic go off to Athenia. The twelve cities are all different, so people who are discontent with the way things are usually move around until they find one where they’re happier and things suit them better. People sort themselves out by temperament and what they like. People from the other cities come to the big festivals and tell you what it’s like there, sometimes trying to persuade people to move. I’ve never been tempted. I like it here.”

“But you’re free to move around?”

“Oh yes. That’s one point you made in the Last Debate that really bit hard.” I smiled at him.

“So you know what I said about that to Athene?”

“Are you joking? There are hundreds of books about the Last Debate.”

“I have read some of them,” Hilfa said. “Everyone knows what you said at the Last Debate. And at your trial in Athens.”

“I seem doomed to keep catching up to my own fame,” Sokrates said. “But I’m glad they didn’t try to conceal how it went. There was a lot of censorship here sixty years ago, and I was afraid the Masters might have kept that up. Twelve cities that are different and allow free movement sounds ever so much better than what I knew when I was here before.”

“Oh yes. Even in Psyche these days they allow immigration and emigration,” I said.

“What’s Psyche?” he asked, cautiously.