The answer was surprising, and took a long time to elicit clearly. It turned out that they were a group of assorted refugees from wars in Greece and the islands who had been settled here by Kebes and his people to found a new city, which was called Marissa—after, they told us, the name of the mother of God. God himself was called Yayzu. They traded regularly with the Goodness, giving them food in return for manufactured items such as bowls and statues. They did not recognize the name Kebes, though when I said Matthias there was a general sigh and a smile of recognition. The thing they most wanted to discover from me, once I had said the words “Excellence” and “Kallisti,” were whether we were still in contact with Athene. When I told them that we hadn’t seen her since the Goodness left, they seemed very relieved, and admitted that they had two people in Marissa from the Goodness Group, the doctor and the teacher. These two came forward now through the crowd, visibly of our people. The teacher was much paler-skinned than anyone else, a Master I had known slightly called Aristomache, now in her seventies. The doctor, Terentius, was clearly one of the Children, much swarthier than most in the crowd. He seemed only vaguely familiar. They hugged us and asked for news of friends left in the City.

“Is it safe for us to bring the Excellence in?” Klymene asked.

Terentius looked surprised. “Of course! Why wouldn’t it be? Marissa is a civilized city. Well, semi-civilized. As civilized as any of our colonies,” he finished proudly.

“You have colonies?” Phaenarete asked. “How many?”

“Lots,” Terentius said, slightly cagily, though the appalling arithmetic positively leaped to mind—if they had two people in each one they could have seventy-five colonies like Marissa up and down the Aegean. “Are you all still on Kallisti trying to do Plato’s Republic?”

“Yes,” I said. “Though we have five cities there now, and lots of Young Ones. This is our first exploratory voyage.”

If I made us sound like five united cities, who can blame me? Kebes had been founding colonies. Who could imagine how large an army he might be ready to field if he thought we were divided and easy to conquer? I didn’t doubt that he would still hate us.

Klymene and Phaenarete started to signal to the ship that it was safe to come in. “One thing, Aristomache,” I said. “Marissa. Yayzu. Is this some primitive religion I’m not aware of, or are you really teaching them Christianity?”

“Christianity, of course,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye.

“What’s Christianity?” Dion asked.

“It’s the one true faith. It has been kept from you, so you could worship Plato, but it’s the only thing that can save your soul,” Aristomache said. Heads were nodding around her. Dion’s eyes widened.