It seemed extraordinary that he could be unaware of something so fundamental to history. It was like hearing someone say “Wait, who’s Alexander? What’s Thermopylae? Who won at Zama anyway?” It would be like this, I realized, with the space humans, only ten times harder because they wouldn’t believe us and we didn’t want them to. And they’d have huge history-shaping events of their own in the centuries that we’d missed and know nothing about, and they’d be as surprised as this that we didn’t know them, and would look at us in amazement when we asked about them. As Hilfa had said, asking questions could be more revealing than we might want. Dealing with Hermes might be good practice for dealing with the space humans. “It was a debate between Athene and Sokrates. She turned him into a gadfly.”

Hermes laughed delightedly. I was taken aback and glanced at him. He seemed fixed again in the form I thought of as Poimandros. I admired the interplay of dappled sunlight on his muscles. He really was the loveliest-looking man I’d ever seen, as well as the best in bed. Of course it was Thetis he wanted. Oh well. The trees were more beautiful anyway. And they stayed fixed in their forms. “Serves him right. Nobody has ever read Plato without wishing to do the same. And you didn’t have any debates after that? Did you stop wanting to?”

“I wasn’t born yet, but from what I hear they had twice as many debates as before. But Athene wasn’t there for them.”

“And Kebes left too? With her?”

It was my turn to laugh. “No, he hated her. He hated everything. He was no more than a big ball of hate from what I’ve heard.”

Hermes twisted his lips in distaste, and then his face changed and seemed to be that of a broad-cheeked woman.

I looked down and focused on the trefoil leaves of the tiny purple flowers. “He took a bunch of people and stole a boat. They founded the Lucian cities, all eight of them, helped out with people they rescued from wars in Greece. They imposed a kind of Christianity, and practiced torture.”

Hermes laughed again, but I didn’t look up. I could see tiny hairs on the leaves. “Christianity more than a thousand years before Christ? I suppose this is an example of why Father forbids taking mortals out of time. I mean, Athene couldn’t have tried harder, she stuck you on an island that was going to be destroyed, and still all this happened.”

“He forbids it? Then we’re breaking his edicts right now?” I did look up then. I’d never before realized the magnitude of what Athene had done.