“They probably don’t spare a thought for Plato’s Republic.”

“I do,” he said. “As well as working on my new theory of the universe.”

“Newer than the New Concordance?” I wondered whether to tell him now what had been going on among the Ikarians on Plato.

“The New Concordance arose out of realizing that the Republic wasn’t working, couldn’t work, because Plato was wrong about the nature of the soul. The philosophical soul can feel love, in addition to desiring the Good. Love isn’t simply a way towards opening the soul to God. So I had to rethink everything. They were doing the same in Psyche, coming to different conclusions but working on the same basis. If Plato had been right about that, it would all have worked properly. The problem on Kallisti was that we got overfocused on tweaking practical reality.”

“Do you still think all the authorities agree with each other?”

“They do if you look at them the right way. They were all trying to reach the truth, and it’s amazing how much congruence there is. But I have lots of new information. My new theory is an attempt at integrating that.”

“How long is it, in your personal time, since you last saw me?” I asked. I really wanted to know, and to ask it conversationally. It was why I was sitting on the wall instead of taking him outside time and straight back into his cell.

He wrinkled his brow. “I can’t say. A lot of it was outside of time. And China. And France. A long time. Decades at least.” So perhaps Athene’s personal time was similarly long, since they had been working together. Interesting. Good. Maybe she hadn’t only been using me all the time, maybe she had truly intended to meet me when she made the offer, and then later realized it would fit with her rescue plan. I hoped so. “I’m working on a theory of time, too. Jathery has been very helpful.”

“Jathery—” I was speechless. “You know he’s an alien god? And that he and Athene have gone out into Chaos and are trapped there?”

“What was that word? Alien?”

“Intelligent people who evolved on other planets. We’ve only started to use it to mean that since we’ve been on the planet Plato and had to deal with them all the time. But I’d assumed you’d know it.”

He shook his head. “So there are people on other worlds? And Jathery is one of their gods? Wondrous! I want to go there.”

He’d want to reconcile all their theories with Platonism and Christianity and make one huge synthesis. “Athene knows. You couldn’t tell?”

“Jathery didn’t seem as if she’s from another planet. Are you sure Athene knows?”