Diotima recognized Androkles next. He bounded down to the front to face us all. “I call to schedule a debate with the gods, on why we need to lie to the space humans about our origins and our experience of divinity. I don’t want to have this argument here and now, I want to call the gods here to make their case.”

“Our gods, or all the gods?” Hermia asked. There was a laugh.

“Well, our gods might come,” Androkles said. “Though Pytheas too, if he wants to; I heard he was back here last night, and that people saw Hermes in Thessaly. I’d welcome any gods who want to come and explain themselves in Chamber. Look, Athene started all this seventy years ago, an experiment, a whim as Sokrates said at the Last Debate. We’re here because of the gods. Zeus moved us to Plato directly. I’m quite prepared to believe there are good arguments for keeping quiet about this to the space humans. In fact, I think there probably are, and I can think of some of them for myself. I’ve been thinking about this all night. I think this Chamber deserves to hear the arguments and decide for ourselves. I think we’ll decide responsibly. I’m only opposed to accepting the word of the gods as—well, as divine writ, without any examination. That’s not the spirit in which any of our cities were founded.”

“What if Athene came?” Diotima asked.

“Athene most of all,” Androkles said. “There’s nothing we want more in Sokratea than for Athene to show up and finish arguing the Last Debate.”

But he was wrong. His mouth fell open, and everyone turned to see what there was behind us that he could be staring at. Crocus had come late to the meeting. And riding on his back, beaming at everyone, was Sokrates.

An hour later, after the meeting, Sokrates and I walked over to Thessaly to see Ikaros. I hadn’t yet learned that when you do anything with Sokrates you have to budget twice as much time as you expect it to take. He kept stopping and reading bits of inscribed debate on paving stones. “Weren’t you there for all that?” I asked.

“There are new bits,” he said. “I mean look at all this about classification. That must have been after the Last Debate. I wonder who they were talking to—Patroklus, maybe? Glaukon? It’s interesting that the Workers approve of classes, here anyway. Hmm. That’s not what I’d have said.”

“You mean we’ve been having debates and you missed it?” I teased.

He grinned up at me. “I’ve skipped over so much! Well, it was two thousand years the first time. This time, only sixty. And then we’ll all be catching up with the next thousand years or so once the space humans get down here.” He rubbed his hands together eagerly.