“Joy to you both, and be welcome to my home,” Hilfa said. “Will you answer my question? What are you?” I’d have thought he was being rude, except that Sokrates and Ikaros both responded to being addressed this way with an identical air of delighted alertness that reminded me of the way a boat sometimes, after handling sluggishly coming out of harbor, suddenly comes clear of the land and catches the wind and goes racing away. They looked at each other, and Ikaros spread his hand in the rhetorical gesture meaning that Sokrates should speak first. Sokrates smiled. Pytheas too had a smile playing around his lips. I realized that they were all looking forward to that most characteristic of all entertainments, a Socratic debate. I sipped my wine, which Thetis had mixed strong, and felt uncomfortably aware that it was getting late and I had missed my dinner. I felt out of my depth in this company. I was only a Silver.

“My name is Sokrates, the son of Sophronikos. As for what I am, that’s another matter. I have been human. I have been a fly. I appear to be a plaything of gods and time.”

“When did you stop being a fly?” Thetis asked. She was standing over by the table, holding the wine jug, looking like one of Hestia’s more radiant nymphs.

“Apollo was kind enough to turn me back an hour or so ago,” Sokrates said, turning to her for a second with a smile, and then back to Hilfa. “As for what else I am, I am a philosopher, that’s certain, a lover of wisdom and an inquirer after knowledge.”

“You do not wear a philosopher’s pin,” Hilfa said, in his usual earnest, slightly hesitant way.

“Ha! I am a philosopher without being part of the system of the Just City, or in any way endorsing that system,” Sokrates said, grinning, his head jutting forward, clearly looking forward to the response.

“They don’t wear pins in Sokratea,” Thetis pointed out.

Sokrates looked away from Hilfa, taken aback. “Sokratea?” he asked, warily. He had an exceedingly mobile face; his expression could change in an instant.

“There are twelve Platonic Cities now,” Pytheas said, grinning. “All different. Sokratea is the one Patroklus founded, on the principle of re-examining everything.”

“Patroklus? Not Kebes?” Sokrates asked at once.

“Kebes—” Pytheas stopped smiling. “Oh Sokrates, I’m sorry to bring this news. Kebes left, with some of the others. He founded eight cities of his own on other islands. We were out of contact with them for a long time. When we found them again, we discovered that they had set up a very unpleasant form of Christianity, and institutionalized torture.”

“I told you about Christianity,” Ikaros put in.