Marsilia looked up. “Dion, how lovely to see you. I have a crisis. If I borrow Jason, could you and Hilfa manage the unloading?”

“Borrow me?” I asked, jumping ashore, leaving Hilfa and Camilla aboard. “What for?” I couldn’t imagine how she might need me in dealing with a strange human culture, but of course I was prepared to do my best.

Marsilia detached Thetis from her shoulder and gave her a gentle push towards me. “Can you take Thee home?” Ah, of course. She didn’t need help with the big problem, but with the immediate human problem. Well, that was more to my scale.

“To Thessaly,” Crocus interjected.

“You should come too, Marsilia,” Thetis said. I put my arm around her. Hilfa was already tipping the next tub of fish into the cart.

“I will come, and so will Dad, as soon as we’ve dealt with this crisis,” Marsilia said.

“But I’m sure there’s a plan for dealing with it, and what does it matter anyway?” Thetis asked. “You can’t put politics ahead of family.”

“There has been a plan for this meeting since the consulship of Maia and Klio, but the question is whether people will follow the plan in the face of events,” Marsilia said. “This is one of the most important things that has ever happened, Thee. Oh, it’ll be so wonderful to talk to them.”

“Perhaps,” Crocus said, cautiously.

“You don’t think so?” Marsilia asked, sounding surprised.

“I knew the Masters longer and better than you did,” Crocus said. “I have apprehensions about what recontact could mean. I have watched the generations maturing in the Cities, and seen how each one is more Platonic than the last as we grow further from other human cultures. Plato was wrong to want to start with ten-year-olds. They should have started with babies. The Children remembered their original cultures too well. Your father’s generation, the Young Ones, were the first generation to know nothing but the City. And your generation are in an even better position. These days we take the pursuit of excellence for granted, and go on from there. Each new generation so far has been better. Perhaps recontact with the human cultures that have developed from the ones the Masters came from will indeed be wonderful. I hope so. But I have reservations.”

“But we’ll have so much to share with them,” Marsilia said. “We’ve developed so much. And we have the works of classical civilization that were lost to them. We have everything we’ve learned about applying Platonism and reconciling it to other systems. The aliens didn’t know anything about Plato until we explained to them. But the humans are bound to be excited.”