“When we left, we sailed north. We wanted to get away from Kallisti, and we didn’t know where we wanted to go exactly,” Aristomache said. “We went to the mainland of Ionia, near Troy, and found a war going on. Not a Persian invasion, or even a Trojan one, just a petty civil war. The ship was really full, so we ferried most of our people over to Lesbos and set them down, then went back to rescue refugees. It was a purely humanitarian mission, we weren’t thinking about anything else. They were mostly women and children who would have been enslaved. Of course we thought about Hekabe and Andromache, but we seem to be too early for them. The King of Troy is called Laomedon.” She took a sip of wine.
“We founded Lucia pretty much where we’d landed, without doing any surveying or anything. There was water, which was all we really needed. There were olive trees too, which may mean there had once been a settlement there before, because olives usually mean people. We rescued goats and sheep from the mainland, and fortunately a lot of our refugees knew how to look after them and milk them and process wool, because we didn’t.” She laughed. “We had a lot to teach each other! That first winter was hard. Some of the girls were pregnant, some of ours from the festivals, and some of theirs, mostly from rape. They were all grateful because we’d rescued them—but what else could we have done? We had the weapons that were on the ship, of course, and we’d all had training.”
“Of course,” Erinna said, her eyes shining. “And you founded a city?”
“It wasn’t a proper city at first, but we all worked on a constitution, and building it, of course.”
“Why did you decide to call your city Lucia?” I asked. I knew I’d heard the name before, and I’d just remembered where. Father had said it had been Mother’s birth name. It seemed like a peculiar coincidence, but I couldn’t think of any possible connection.
“I think Matthias proposed it,” she said. “It means Light of course, and new light was what we all wanted. It was only afterward we thought of Saint Lucy and seeing everything with new eyes, which is what the name means to us now, our fresh start and our turning back to God. It was Providence, I suppose.”
“So how was it in the beginning?” Maia asked.
“We debated everything, like the philosophers we were, but sometimes the practical people we’d rescued had better ideas than any of us.” Aristomache smiled at one of the locals at the table, who looked down, clearly embarrassed. “They brought us back to Earth whenever we floated off too far. And it was that winter that we came back to God. That was Matthias’s proposal too.”
“Who’s Matthias, one of the people you rescued?” Maia asked.
Aristomache laughed and took another honey cake. “No, he’s the one who used to be called Kebes. He took his real name back. Some of us did that and some didn’t, according to what made us more comfortable. I didn’t want to be Ellen again.”
“We discussed that in the City of Amazons, too. I didn’t want to be Ethel,” Maia said, astonishing me. She seemed so very much a Maia that it didn’t seem possible she could ever have been called anything else. Ellen was clearly derived from Helen, but Ethel came from that strange language they had spoken together briefly. Maia was right, it emphatically didn’t suit her.
“We didn’t force anyone to worship God, but Matthias wanted to build a church and become a priest, and most of us had originally been Christian and many of those who hadn’t saw the light and wanted to be saved. I don’t think any of us had worshipped the Greek gods seriously back in the Just City, and if we had it was because of being taken in by Athene.”
“And your local recruits?” Erinna asked.
“They saw the sense in it, after the cruel things their gods had done to them. They understood the value of a god of forgiveness who understands us.”
Some of the locals around the table were nodding. “A god who accepts everyone, even slaves and women,” one of them said, shyly.
“So how did you go from one city to many cities?” Maia asked.
“We kept sending the ship out with a troop to rescue people, and eventually Lucia was running well and we had so many people that it seemed like a good idea to start a second city around the coast. Then we founded Marissa, here, when there was another war three years later, and we filled in the others. Usually the Goodness spends half the year sailing between the cities, trading, and the other half rescuing people and bringing them to whichever city needs people. We may found another city this year, on Ikaria. The Goodness tends to stay with a new city, and lots of experienced people stay to help things get going at first—people who know how to build and plant and everything like that. It takes quite a while for a city to get going properly. But Augustine is at that stage now, where it can grow naturally. We’re ready to found a new city.”
“And how many of you—the Goodness Group—stay in each city?” I asked.
Aristomache refilled her cup, considering. “It depends. There are lots in Lucia, of course, which is still our main base. Then there are lots wherever a city is new and needs help. Otherwise, well, the ideal is to have our cities working alone. Marissa doesn’t really need anyone from Goodness now. It could have local doctors and teachers.” There was a murmur from the locals at the table to the effect that they couldn’t manage without her. “Nonsense,” she said, but she looked pleased. “I stay because I’m getting old and my friends are here. Terentius stays because he’s married and his children are growing up here. But Marissa doesn’t need us. Hektor could do my job, he’s teaching most of the younger children as it is. And Ekate is as good a doctor as Terentius now, and she has an apprentice of her own. She may go to the new city on Ikaria if we do get it going this summer. Locals move around and share their expertise too.”
“So your ideal for your cities is self-sufficiency?” Erinna asked, swallowing another honey cake.
“It takes a while,” Aristomache admitted. “And they’re not big cities, compared to the Just City, never mind the Boston I remember. Most of our cities are about a thousand people. Marissa has eight hundred citizens, and almost that many children.”
“Do the children have to pass tests to become ephebes?” I asked. I was thinking about my own looming adulthood tests, to be taken on my return.
“Just swear their confirmation oath,” Aristomache said. “And we sort them into Platonic classes, of course. And they can vote in the Assembly then, the golds and silvers, and they’re eligible for election to the Council when they’re thirty. And nine of the Council are elected Kings every three years, and they make up the Committee of Kings. You have tests?”
“We have an oath too, but we also have to pass lots and lots of tests in all sorts of things. And then we swear, and do our military training, and read the Republic, and after two years we can vote in the Assembly, when we’re eighteen, all of us, not just the guardians. But only the guardians serve in Chamber. My brothers are all adults, and I’ll become an ephebe this year.”
Maia was looking about the hall. It had frescoed walls that showed pleasant farming scenes with nymphs and shepherds lolling in fields and under trees, feasting on food very like the food we were enjoying. “You know, Plato was right,” she said.