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in the section where benches had been removed to make a space for Workers, and humans in wheelchairs.
    â€œWho has the details of what has happened?” I asked.
    Klymene, one of the Children, and the oldest person still serving on the Council, stood up. She was bony and wrinkled, and looked as if she were made of old tanned leather. Her hair was no more than a straggle of thin white strands stretched over her scalp. She had the log of our communication with the ship, and summarized it for us in her thin elderly voice. “They don’t speak Greek or Latin. We started off using Amarathi, and were at the point of asking Arete to help when Sixty-One worked out that they were speaking a variant of English, which it could mostly understand. So after a brief delay we were able to communicate with them that way. They are humans, not from Earth but from a planet called—” she squinted at the printout, holding it farther away from her eyes, “Marhaba, but they have been to Earth. They asked permission to land and wanted to know who we were. According to the plan, we told them the name of the planet and that our cities were founded seventy years ago. They have also been in communication with the Saeli ship in orbit.”
    â€œWhere’s Aroo?” I asked, realizing for the first time as I looked for her that none of our Saeli senators or councillors were present.
    â€œNot here. But the meeting isn’t due to begin for an hour and a half. We all came here now because we heard the news. The Saeli don’t think that way,” Dad said.
    â€œIt would be good to make some decisions quickly, and we need information. Can somebody find Aroo and bring her back here?” I asked. I looked around for people who Aroo was likely to pay attention to, and noticed Parmenion sitting near Crocus. “Parmenion?” He had been consul three years ago, a quiet man in his forties, an excellent lyre-player and composer.
    He nodded, accepting the errand, and rolled his chair out.
    â€œMeanwhile,” I said, looking out over the room, at my friends and allies and political rivals, “we have a plan for this situation. It’s been in place since Maia and Klio were consuls. Unless there’s some really good reason not to follow it, that’s what we ought to be doing, not running around in circles trying to make new decisions in advance of information.”
    â€œWe have been following the plan so far,” Klymene said. She hadn’t moved. Though she was frail with age, she still stood straight-backed. It was easy to imagine her leading troops in the art raids long ago.
    I nodded, and she went back to her seat, squeezing in on the end of a bench next to Dad, who moved up to make room.
    â€œThe plan is that we find out as much as we can about them, and when they ask about us we tell them the truth as an origin myth, expecting that they won’t believe it,” I said. “Maia wrote that this was what Zeus wanted.”
    â€œI can confirm that,” Dad said. He had actually been on Mount Olympus and talked to Zeus at the time of the Relocation. “Porphyry said it, and Zeus seemed to agree.”
    â€œSo what happens if they do believe it?” Diotima asked. “What happens if they use carbon dating?”
    â€œCarbon dating will show nothing to surprise anyone, as the atoms have not existed through all the time between,” Crocus said. “But that’s an extremely interesting philosophical question. Would it change everything for humanity if we gave them all proof that the gods exist and care, and interfere with our lives?”
    â€œIkaros said, and Zeus didn’t disagree, that it was better for us to discover things for ourselves. But all of us on Plato know, unavoidably, and we certainly haven’t hidden it from our alien allies,” Dad said.
    â€œIt’s not the sort of thing that’s usually a problem in everyday life,” Halius said.