“His name is Poimandros, I think he’s from Psyche. I only met him once. He’s Alkippe’s father,” I answered, looking back at them. Poimandros had turned back to Thee. Jason was on her other side, she was smiling teasingly, flirting with both of them at the same time. I tried to smooth out my brow and look serenely at Dad.

I always volunteer for the Festival of Hera. Plato was in favor, so if you want to stand for civic office, it’s a good idea to do it. Besides, it’s a great opportunity to enjoy uncomplicated sex. There are two little festivals every year and one big one, at the end of summer, when people come here from all the cities. Long ago, when there was only one city and the Masters were in charge, participation was compulsory and the Masters cheated to get what they thought would be the best children. Plato says that’s what they should do, though how he, or anyone, imagined they could tell what the children would be like I don’t know. That ended at the Last Debate, and resulted in Dad’s generation, which was followed by a decade or so when they didn’t have any Festivals of Hera here at all, though they kept on with them in Athenia and Psyche. Then they started them up again, on a voluntary basis, and with the lots chosen truly at random, though still always within the same metal. I’ve been volunteering since I was seventeen and wildly curious.

Being drawn together at a Festival of Hera left people with no obligation to each other afterwards. The marriage was strictly time-bound, until the participants left the room. By Plato’s original rules, that was supposed to be the end of it—indeed, what Poimandros had done, in never seeking me out again, and even ignoring the half-besotted note I’d sent him (at Thee’s urging) was precisely in accord with the Republic as Plato wrote it. But in present-day practice, if the people had got on well, which we had, a marriage at festival often develops into a friendship or a love affair, occasionally even a long-term marriage. Marriages that began that way were considered to be lucky. All my other such pairings were now friends, or friendly acquaintances. In any case, looking straight through me as if he’d never seen me before was well beyond what Plato had written, never mind custom. By any interpretation, that was rude. Though it had been eight years; perhaps he really had completely forgotten me.

Porphyry reached us and gave winecups to me and Dad and Aroo. Dad swallowed down a great gulp of his right away. “Gods!”