We landed with a jolt in the Underworld, at the bank of the river Lethe. (It’s full of brightly colored fish. I don’t understand why nobody ever mentions that. I suppose they must forget all about them.) I looked at Athene. There was nothing to say. Moments before, in the eternal moment, we had been entirely open to each other. I knew now why she hadn’t trusted me, and she knew that she could have, that I had learned the lesson that had been one of her many purposes in setting up the Republic. She knew I thought she was irresponsible, and I knew that she thought the gain in knowledge was worth any risk.

It was the same with Jathery. I understood gla now. Gla had wanted Platonism for the Saeli so much that gla had enticed Athene into the whole Republic plan. And all this was part of a wider plan in which gla intended to set them free, which was a goal I did respect. But gla also loved tricks for their own sake, and would rather do something a twisty way than a straight one. Hilfa had been gla idea, and the divided instructions. Meanwhile, Athene had believed that seeking out the different parts of the instructions in different parts of time would help prepare us, if we needed to seek her in Chaos. She had also thought that she was already prepared for it. Both of those were scale errors.

I did not long to be back out there, though I was separated from it. It is always there, and I am too, from the first photon to the last, and there is no difference. I wanted to laugh when I remembered that I had imagined it would be boring.

It’s always dark in the Underworld. A grey kind of grass grew here, on the slopes leading down to Lethe’s water. A breeze moved. It felt like being out of doors, though there were no stars, only endless darkness above. Behind us, in the caves, lay Hades’s chamber and the Fates, and beyond them the other rivers, the Styx and the Acheron. There were also innumerable mortal souls, waiting, choosing new lives, having their brief glimpse of eternity and then coming out again here, to cross this river and go on, forgetting. They were all around us, visible as shadows. Some of them pressed around us, either votaries of ours or simply drawn to anything here that had color and weight. One clung to my hand, drawn to me by love. It had last been a dolphin, and was going on to be a poet and a translator. From leaping joy in sun-spray and song, to the passing along of poetry, all to my glory, and through me to that wider wonder. I blessed the soul and called it friend, and set it down gently on the edge of the water. I kept my face turned away from the others until my eyes were free of tears.