As they debated so earnestly about whether it was good to keep knowledge from people, rehearsing the same arguments, I found myself less and less convinced. There were certainly false certainties, and revealed truth did have a tendency to dogmatism. But could it be wrong for people to know that they had souls, to know what was out there? If it was something they couldn’t doubt, perhaps. But revelation was part of my province. There were ways of giving oracles that worked. I had promised to try to explain to everyone about equal significance, however hard it was to fit it into the shape of story. Could I find a way to slide it through, a way to make it part of stories? “You must change your life,” I said to Rainer in the Louvre in 1905, and he had, bless him. I should try saying that emphatically to more people. Crocus had asked how the truth could hurt philosophers.

I was jolted out of my thoughts by Marsilia asking me something. “I’m going to sing,” I said. “I think this whole thing is a Mystery. But I want to sing about what happened out there. I want you to know.”

So I sang it again, to Athene and Jathery and my children and all the assembled Golds of Plato. It was necessary.

Afterwards, we all headed off to the spaceport to see the space human ship land. Arete flew. The rest of us walked through the city to take the train. It was a typical autumn day on Plato, overcast and with a chill wind off the water, but fortunately we were between rainshowers.

Everyone else was dressed for The School of Athens. Jathery had picked the right painter but the wrong painting, and came wearing a Renaissance woman’s elaborate coiffure, over a Renaissance man’s outfit in pale green and black, with huge sleeves, on a human female-shaped body. I understood now why Ikaros had said “she.” I caught Ikaros looking at the clothes, a little enviously, I thought. “Do you want to be wearing that?” I asked.

“No. But they are the clothes of the time and place where I grew up. And it would be nice to have the option of looking flamboyant sometimes.” He shifted the books he was carrying from one arm to the other.

“Nobody else agrees,” I said, looking at the kitons on the crowd around us. There were a handful of people in dark green or burgundy Amarathi waterproof jerkins and trousers, providing the only variation.

“Well, really I do agree with Plato about all of that. Only—” He looked at Jathery again. “It looks good, and it’s good to look at. Men’s clothes on a women’s body.”

“Most of the people here have never seen gendered clothes,” I said. “They wouldn’t realize it was odd. I wonder if Jathery does?”