“But you’ll have Pico to help. He’s going to love your library. And learning all the new languages.” Behind us, he was hugging Maia, and Porphyry, and to my surprise, Arete.

“Thank you for speaking up for me,” Athene said, stiffly.

“It was nothing,” I said. I had felt sorry for her, exposed that way. “I know what it’s like to love a mortal.”

“It’s not the same,” she said, automatically. “Did you think of doing that with Simmea? Taking her outside time, where you could keep her young?”

“Sooner or later her soul would have wanted to go on,” I said, gently, because it would happen with Pico too, sooner or later, unless he became a god. Perhaps he would. He had the right kind of mind. Father had noticed that at once. We could do with a god with an excellence of fitting facts together into complex theories, especially if he could generalize it to things other than metaphysics. Now that I’d seen it, it seemed obvious. Athene didn’t have any children, so none of her areas of responsibility ever got passed along to anyone else. I really liked the idea of Pico as a god of synthesis.

“But did you want to?”

“I’m glad in a way that I didn’t have to make that choice. Simmea’s mortality was so much a part of who she was, and my incarnation so much a part of our relationship, that I don’t know what it would have been if I’d brought her here.” She’d have started to analyze everything. It would have been wonderful. I wished I had brought her, and Sokrates too. But mortal souls need to grow and go on, that’s part of the marvel of them, part of what we love about them. If Pico became a god, which I was now sure was Father’s plan all along, he would lose some of what made Athene love him, and lose the opportunities his soul would have had to transform. Who could tell what wonderful people Ikaros might become, given the opportunity? How much he might contribute to the excellence of the world? Still, there wasn’t any point saying that to her and risking spoiling what they had for now. He had to make his own choices.

“But you knelt in supplication to Father rather than let her life never have been.”

“Yes,” I said, simply. I hadn’t cared what it cost me.

She nodded. “Maybe it’s not so different. Agape.”

“Thank you for setting up the Republic, so I could learn what agape was,” I said.

She smiled. “I’m glad it was worth it. Have fun on the new planet. They’re bound to call it Plato. What else could they possibly agree on?”

I laughed. “Have fun with Pico. Keep learning everything, and let me know all about it when you have the chance.”