"He pressed for this, yes," Kapetria said, "but did he know what he was asking for? Was he an articulate mind at that stage or something lost and struggling? Yes, he begged to enlarge himself or to satisfy an immense thirst, but would it not have been more nearly perfect if each new unit in which he implanted himself through the blood might have eventually become autonomous?" She shook her head. "Tentative conclusion only: you are an organism that involves a failed attempt at propagation. You are an immense organism with a fragile core."
"Are you suggesting that some of us could be disconnected from Amel?" asked Fareed.
"Well, yes, I suspect that's entirely possible," she said. "Clearly he suffers agonies when your numbers are increased beyond a certain point, when the thin elusive material of which he is made has become stretched to its maximum length."
"Thin, elusive material," said Seth. "That is a fine way of putting it."
"Is it actually material?" I asked.
"Oh, he's made of material all right," she said. "Ghosts, spirits, whatever they are, they are all made of material." She looked at Gremt, Gremt who sat there impassively studying her with his perfect replica of a classical Greek face and body. "Are you not made of material?" she asked. "I'm not speaking of your physical body, I'm speaking of the core of your being, where your consciousness resides."
"Yes, it is made of a subtle material," Gremt said in a soft voice. "I came to realize this a long time ago. But what is that subtle material? What are its properties? Why did I come into being? These things we don't know, because we can't see or measure or test the subtle material."
"I have my theories," she said. "But Amel is made of subtle material for certain, a subtle material that implants and develops in every new host offered to him, and ideally, he would have disconnected his mind from this host in time, diminishing eventually in size until he became comfortable in one small group of hosts, or even in one alone. But it didn't happen. It's like all the spectacular mutations of this planet--infinitely complex, involving accident and will, and blunder and discovery."
"I see what you're saying," said Fareed.
"What surprises me is that you haven't been focused on this from the beginning," said Kapetria. "I don't say this as a criticism. I offer it as an observation. Why haven't you and your team of doctors been seeking to break the link of each individual vampire with Amel?"
"I can't see a way to do it," said Fareed. He appeared slightly defensive. "Of course I realize the importance of this, that we could free each individual from the host."
"Seems to me," said Kapetria, "that that might be one of the crucial areas for your research."
"Do you realize how many areas of research we're facing?" asked Gregory. "Do you realize what a revolution is involved here for us--that we now have doctors and scientists studying our own physicality?"
"Yes, Herr Collingsworth, but these strange invisible connections to Amel are so obviously vulnerable," said Kapetria, "and so obviously a mistake, a failure--." She addressed Fareed. "And another thing, why have you not been focused on some way to take the Amel neural circuitry out of one host and transfer it to another without injuring either one?"
"Because I don't know how!" Fareed said. "What do you think I'm doing in my laboratories, simply playing around with--."
"No, no, no, forgive me," said Kapetria. "I'm not saying what I mean to say. What I mean to say is..." She hesitated and then fell into her thoughts, her right hand curled under her chin.
"How would you do this?" asked Seth in a soft voice. "How would you propose moving the neural circuitry of Amel from one brain to another, when we can't even see this neural circuitry, not even in the most sensitive scans?"
"Stop," said Derek. "Just stop!" He glared at Kapetria angrily. His lower lip was trembling and a glassy film had come down over his eyes. "Stop right now!" he said.
She was clearly taken aback. She turned to him and asked in a small solicitous voice, "What's the matter?"
"Tell them," said Derek. He glared at me, at Fareed, and at Marius. "Tell them!"
Kapetria laid her right hand gently on his left hand. "Tell them what, Derek?" she asked tenderly.
"Tell them what may happen if they seek to harm us," said Derek. He stared directly at Seth, then at Gremt. His right hand was shaking as if palsied. His eyes flashed over all those across from him and then at me. "Tell them what might happen if they try to destroy us. They think they have us at their mercy here. I know they do. Well, they don't."
"You're in no danger of us trying to hurt you!" Marius said. "No one here wants to hurt you. No one here wants to be hurt by you, either."
"No, no danger at all here," I said. "We would never attempt to destroy you. That's the last thing we want. We felt that inviting you here like this would convince you of our trust."
"No, there isn't the slightest danger," said Seth.
"We can't be destroyed," said Derek. His voice was uneven. He was clearly struggling in ways that hadn't been easy to see before. "We can't be destroyed unless you want to destroy everything in this world that is of value to you." He clutched at Kapetria's hand and held it tight. "You tell them."
Kapetria was obviously unprepared for all of this but she seemed neither angry nor offended. She studied Derek for a long moment. Her eyelashes were thick and beautifully black and her beauty overall was distracting me as beauty so often does. If her beauty was incidental, if it wasn't rooted in something profound inside of her, well, it could be mighty misleading, I thought.
"What Derek says is probably true," Kapetria said. "If you hurt us, you risk hurting countless others. You risk hurting the world. I'm not trying to sound dramatically apocalyptic. Our bodies may contain elements that, once released, might destroy the whole world. Derek is not exaggerating. But why don't I tell you the whole story?"
Every being present registered this, but the hard expression on Armand's face did not change. He looked at me. Faint telepathic whisper: Containment, from which they can't escape.
"Yes, please," said Seth to Kapetria. "The whole story. We're getting ahead of ourselves here. We need to know--."
Welf, the silent one, nodded, those big drowsy eyes of his flashing for a moment, and his full sensuous mouth yielding to a small agreeable smile.
"It's only seven o'clock now," Kapetria said. "I can tell you everything before sunrise, if you're ready to listen, and by the end you'll understand what Derek means. We cannot be physically destroyed without considerable harm being done to everyone here and people who are not here. And by the end we will be prepared to go forward together."
"I think this would be splendid," said Marius. "This is what we want. I'm moved by your trust, that you want to tell us everything."
I noted a quick glance from Gregory and Teskhamen responding in a subtle way as well. They weren't as sure as Marius about all this. But I was.
Gremt looked quietly and unobtrusively stricken as if he were lost. I wished I could say something to him to comfort him--to tell him that he was as much a part of us here as anyone else was--but I wanted to hear Kapetria's story now as well.
"Let's get to it," I said. "You talk, Kapetria. We listen. We won't interrupt unless we feel strongly that we should."
"Excellent," said Kapetria. She removed her small digital recorder and set it on the table. I could see a tiny light pulsing from the device. "You have your cameras," she said. "We have these."
Marius nodded with an open-handed gesture of acceptance.
"Trust us," Marius said, "to understand."
"I do," Kapetria said.
She was still holding Derek's hand and she reached up and stroked his hair now, comfortingly. Then she looked at me again. And then she looked at David.
Perhaps she hadn't noticed David before. But she did now. Did she sense that David hadn't been the original occupant of his body? It seemed almost certain that she did sense this. Finally she smiled and nodded to him and he returned her smile with his usual graciousness.
&nbs
p; Kapetria went on. "We've been sharing what we remember with one another. And I believe I have put the entire story together as best I can."
Nods from one and all.
"Now I will be speaking to you in English," she said, "because that is the one language we all share. I'll be using innumerable words and phrases and expressions in English which have no equivalent in our ancient tongue, but which are superbly effective--after thousands of years of linguistic development--for describing everything we experienced and everything we saw. I refer now to words like 'skyscraper' or 'polymer' or 'metropolis' or 'plastic.' Words like 'transmit' and 'magnificence' and 'empathy' and 'programmed.' Do you follow me?"
"I think we understand very well," said Seth. "There was no language in my home country of Kemet at the time of my birth thousands of years ago to describe automobiles, or airplanes, or parachutes, or the subconscious, or psychopathology, or force fields, or binary systems."
"Yes, exactly," she said with a delighted laugh. "That is what I am saying. And I will use the full power of the English language now to communicate rather than relive what happened. But there is another aspect of this too. I didn't always understand what I was seeing twelve thousand years ago. The world today has helped me to interpret much of what I saw, but whether those interpretations are accurate I don't know."
We were nodding, expressing in soft murmurs that we understood.
Gabrielle lifted her hand and pointed her finger at Kapetria. "There's one thing I want to know," said Gabrielle, "before you begin."
Kapetria turned to her attentively, and nodded. I wondered how she saw my mother, whose face always looked cold and disdainful to me.
"Do you value us?" asked Gabrielle. She leaned forward and towards Kapetria, narrowing her eyes. "Or do you see us as something inherently undesirable and even abominable?"
"Oh, that's a very good question," said Kapetria. "We value you beyond measure. You are most certainly not an abomination to us. What? Because you feed on blood? Everything living must feed on something. You have no idea how we value you. You are our hope."
Welf gave a small laugh under his breath. "We've been studying you for years," he said.
"You are the only other biological immortals of which we know anything," said Garekyn.
"We would be alone if it were not for you," said Derek. But no sooner had he spoken than he began to shake all over. Kapetria put her right arm around him seeking to steady him. She kissed him, stroked his hair, tightened her grip on him. But it wasn't doing any good.
Dertu rose from the back row and came forward, putting his hands on Derek's shoulders. "Father, be still," he whispered. Father. So the clone calls this one Father.
"We should love one another!" said Derek. He was looking at me. He was cracking, obviously.
"Derek, listen to me!" I said. I leaned towards him. I couldn't reach far enough to touch his hand. "I am sorry for what happened to you!" I said. "I am sorry. We are all sorry. We had no knowledge of your being held captive. We would have freed you if we had known. None of us would have done what Roland did!"
"He had no right!" said Derek, as he continued to look at me. "There is wrong and right and he had no right!"
"Yes, I know and I agree, and you are correct," I said. I looked to Marius.
Marius said, "There has been no authority in our world for centuries. We're trying now to come together, to make an authority, an authority under which such a thing couldn't happen."
"Oh, but you'd do terrible things to mortals, wouldn't you, any of you?" said Derek. "Haven't you imprisoned them so you could feed off them as if they were cattle?"
My mother laughed. She sat back and shook her head. She was making me perfectly furious.
"Maybe some of us have done such things," I said to Derek. "And some of us have never done such things! But we try to do what is right. We try. We believe in right. We believe in defining ourselves in terms of right. We try to feed only on the evildoer."
"Some of us feed only on the evildoer," said Gabrielle.
"Will you stop it, please?" I whispered to her. "You are exasperating."
Marius motioned to me to quiet down.
"Derek," said Marius. "We can flourish without gratuitous cruelty," he said. "There have always been ways."
"Yes, gratuitous cruelty," said Derek, his eyes watering. "Make a rule against it in your new government. Make a rule for the whole world against gratuitous cruelty. Amel knows. Amel knows what gratuitous cruelty is. And Amel knew a world where such a thing was condemned, Amel knows right and wrong, Amel knew a world of right and wrong. And there can be such a world again."
I saw Arion lean forward and reach for Derek, but he was too far away across the table from him just as I was. And so Arion laid his open hand on the table in the gesture of reaching.
"We all condemn what happened," said Arion. "Even I, who took from you what I had no right to take."
Derek nodded and even smiled as he looked at Arion. It was as if he trusted Arion and no one else here. I knew that Arion had showed Derek kindness and mercy, and it was Arion who had prompted Allesandra to abandon Rhoshamandes and come to us.
Dertu leaned down and kissed Derek on the cheek as lovingly as any mortal might have done it.
"It's over, Father," said Dertu. "It will never happen again."
"This is true," said Kapetria. "This will never happen again." She looked at me and then to Marius, and at Arion. "We all value one another too much for this to ever happen again."
"Yes," said Marius.
"I assure you of this, too," I said.
Once more there were murmurs of agreement--even from Gremt, who had a haunted, harrowed look in his eyes.
"We will bring this Roland of Hungary to justice," said Marius. "We are forming our means of government now. And I assure you, he will be brought to justice for what he did, and for what he withheld, and what he promoted."
"It was more than cruelty," said Derek in a raw excited voice. He was battling full-scale tears. "It was a missed opportunity, for we could have come together before, and helped one another."
"Yes," said Marius. "We do completely understand that. That is one of the worst aspects of evil, that it always involves the death of possible good, always proceeds from the destruction of something that might have been so much better."
"We need one another," I said.
"Yes, we do," said Kapetria. "Listen, we came to Earth as 'the People of the Purpose' and we abandoned that purpose for a finer one, and we are driven now by that finer purpose, and it is never, never to harm life. And you are alive just as we are alive, and we are all part of life."
"Well, I have the answer I wanted," Gabrielle said, as if absolutely nothing less mattered. "So proceed."
"Why don't you begin?" said Marius to Kapetria.
Kapetria nodded to Marius but she fastened her eyes again on Fareed. "Let me offer you one last observation on the matter of severing the individuals from the root. Remember that the nano-thermoplastic of the web of connections is the only part of you not directly feeding on the folic acid in blood."
What that could possibly mean to Fareed and Seth I hadn't the slightest idea.
"Tell the tale," said Marius. "This is the moment to tell the tale."
Kapetria clasped her hands together on the table. "I will pour this out as it comes to me."
Part II
BORN
FOR
ATLANTIS
19
Kapetria's Tale
I
I CAME TO CONSCIOUSNESS about twelve thousand years ago. I could not see or move. I was listening to music, music that involved singing and the myriad sounds of complex musical instruments. Not till this modern age have I ever heard anything like this music, this blending of plaintive voices and rich chords and harmony. This music aroused in me a deep pleasure and also a deep longing. I felt something like sadness when I listened to it, a kind of emptiness, and I found myself searching for something, maybe some reso
lution of my longing as I followed the melodic threads. I think I cried. But it is hard to know whether I did.
All of us were nourished on this music. And to this day, we're hypersensitive to music.
The first thing I really knew was that I was finished, full grown, done, and a great success and the Parents were pleased. They opened the translucent cover of my bed, and helped me to my feet as other Parents did the very same thing for Welf, Garekyn, and Derek.
We found ourselves in a vast space that appeared to be in the treetops of an immense forest. But even as we looked, we saw the dark branches and green leaves dissolve to reveal walls alive with motion pictures, or portals to even greater forests outside with innumerable lighted dwellings or nests everywhere, high and low.
This was beautiful to us. Simply beautiful. And so were the Parents. And all of them were the Parents.
They appeared entirely normal, lovable, even charming, though they were quite different from us: very tall and thin, with large white faces and round glossy black eyes, and lipless mouths that smiled when they spoke. Their hands were lean and white and dry and perhaps twice the size of our hands. Whereas my hand here is six inches from the tip of the longest finger to the wrist, their hands were twelve inches there and their nails were pearlescent and sharp. They had five fingers on each hand.
Their legs were very long and lean and always slightly bent at the knee, and their feet were remarkably similar to their hands. They appeared to be wearing hooded mantles which were richly colored in layers, and similar bands of bright color covered their rounded torsos. Their backs were humped. And they moved gracefully and spoke softly in an Earth language, the language of the city of Atalantaya.
None of us realized at the outset that the Parents were covered with very tiny feathers, and wore no other clothing. We didn't realize that the humps on their backs were indeed folded wings. Or that their noses and mouths were in fact beaks, or that they were another species from us. This just didn't occur to us. They were the Parents. And the language of Atalantaya was the language we needed to know for our purpose.
The Parents had made us. We belonged to them and we made them happy. We were the People of the Purpose, they told us. And though their color patterns varied, they were otherwise interchangeable and numerous as they spoke to us and interacted with us on Bravenna. If they had individual names, they never revealed this to us. One might start speaking and another take up the thread and yet another after that, all rather seamlessly, so that no one individual ever stood out to us.