Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (The Vampire Chronicles 12)

"But how?" I asked. "They enjoy it, yes, I have seen this with my own eyes. They love it, and they lied to us about this, but how do they devour it exactly?"

"I don't know," said Amel with obvious frustration, "but I do know that suffering itself, emotion, pain, agony, rebellion, these things give off an energy just as the sun does, and just as the raging sea does....But I have not been able to discover the science of it! I have not been able to discover how the energy given off by emotion can be translated into the physical or biological realm! It's driving me mad." He paused, then went on. "This is a biological world. Biology is the reality of this world. Soul is generated by biology, by the chemistry of the brain rooted in biology. All things spiritual emanate from the biological. And they must have some way of translating the energy of anguish into a definable force in the biological realm."

This struck me as powerfully fascinating.

"I understand this in a crude way," said Welf. "When we were drinking and dancing during the Wilderness Festival, I felt the energy of the crowds around me--."

"Exactly!" said Amel.

"I felt it, it was palpable and I felt myself grow more excited and more...more delirious...on account of the delirium around me. And at the Meditation Center when someone told a tragic story--."

"Yes, exactly!" said Amel.

"--I felt the energy from that story; I felt it enter me and make me cry," said Welf.

"Exactly!" said Amel. "And when you see heroism, great heroism as in a battle, this too gives off energy, and you are energized to fight beyond your normal endurance. And when you gather and sing around a great tower being planted and grown in the earth, you feel the energy and your own body warms and quickens and gives off more energy to join the communal energy." He looked to each of us for a nod, for confirmation, and we gave it willingly.

"Well, somehow," he said, "the Parents thrive on the suffering and other less dramatic emotions of the human beings of this planet--anger, resentment, sorrow, grief--and they are, I suspect, transmitting their film streams of hot-blooded life on Earth all over the 'Realm of Worlds' to those cooler species, cold species like them who also thrive off this suffering, off the pain that human mammals feel! And for all I know this not only gives them delight, intoxicating delight, but this fuels Bravenna itself and fuels its lights and its warm air, and the laboratories in which you were developed and grown! It is their fuel--our human suffering!"

"This is appalling!" said Derek. "This is cruel."

"Yes, it is very cruel," said Amel, "and the Parents are very cruel. Did you not see that?" He paused, then went on. "Someday I will discover how this energy is being translated into something biological or measurably physical. I will discover it."

At this point, Derek began to cry. Just as he's crying now. Because of course we had all seen it, the unspeakable cruelty of the Parents developing us and growing us and offering us beautiful music in our cradles and then telling us that we were meant to destroy ourselves, to lose our lives as we destroyed everything on this planet.

In a hushed voice Derek began to talk about it, talk about the cruelty of the Parents, and talk about how the deathbed scenes in the film streaming had torn at his "soul," and how he loathed and detested the Parents and would fight them forever, and fight everything that was cruel.

"Ah, but be wise," said Amel. "They want you to fight. They have bred you to fight. They would like nothing better than for you to go forth and start to try to root out every transmission base and station and to quarrel and fight with any human who sought to stop you. They want people to come to blows. They want people to shed blood. They would love to see you taken prisoner by the tribes for seeking to destroy their Chambers of Suffering!"

"The people believe suffering has value!" said Welf. "That's what I saw in the Wilderness lands. We all saw it."

"Yes, for thousands of years, the people have believed this!" said Amel. "It's the only way they can go forward in a world where there is so much suffering. They have always believed that a brave man will suffer torment but will not give in. They have believed the gods want the blood of children and the agony of those children when they die, and the agony of their parents when they see them sacrificed. And people have been bred to feed off suffering! To feed off the grief and pain of the victims of war and blood-soaked altars. But there is no value to suffering!"

"There is only value," said Derek, "to overcoming suffering and seeking to spare others the suffering one has known oneself!" He sat on the edge of the couch. "In the Meditation Center I saw and heard that people of all ranks understand this. They see suffering as inherently a natural evil!"

r /> "Exactly!" said Amel. "And with luracastria, I have locked the Parents and their greedy eyes out of the lives of countless humans! And I have fought with all my being to provide a way of life in Atalantaya that does not thrive off of nor require suffering."

We sat quiet for a long moment, and then for an endless while we talked about these things. We talked about the stories we'd heard in the Meditation Centers. We talked about all the lessons we'd learned on Atalantaya and how we marveled at life here and the influence of Atalantaya and what it meant for the Wilderness lands.

"It is through example and enticement that I teach," said Amel. "Not coercion. Those tribes who war and sacrifice are banned from Atalantaya. They are not welcome in our farming or mining villages in the Wilderness lands. And that alone is the most powerful inducement for them to seek the peaceful ways."

"Yes, we've seen it," I said. "There was indeed so much the Parents never explained."

Amel laughed suddenly. "They treated you like humans treat their pets, didn't they?" he asked. "You've seen the dogs in the village? You've seen the pretty little cats and dogs people on Atalantaya are given to keeping? That's how they treated you? Am I right?"

"Yes," said Derek. He was wiping his tears away and trying to calm himself. "That is how they treated us, putting out food for us, letting us wander about, comforting us when they felt we needed it."

"And any truths or explanations that they sought to teach were just part of that comfort," said Amel. "They have sent so many bands of you here!"

"But what happened to the others?" I asked.

"Well, in the beginning, I destroyed them. I hadn't caught on. I played into their hands. I won the battles that they fomented. And they were crude, these early Replimoids, some apelike, others mechanical. They went to the very opposite extreme of what they had achieved in enhancing me. But whatever the case, I was a better leader. I won out against their emissaries. But for all I know, there are surviving Replimoids out there now." He made a gesture to include the wide world. "For all I know there are Replimoids up north building transmitting stations among the northern tribes who are far beyond my influence. There are Replimoids perhaps beyond the seas on islands that have no name. How can we know? And some Replimoids they sent in the first years of Atalantaya disappeared without a trace when I refused to go with them outside the dome--wandering back out to report the failure of their mission, I presume, and being given some other dreary task if not the making of more transmission stations."

"And no one has ever remained with you to work with you?" asked Derek. "To give you their allegiance?"

"Yes," said Amel. "They exist and they are here, and they are scattered throughout Atalantaya. But even the latest are not as complex or beautifully realized as you are. The last group before you was excellent, I have to admit. But not as fine as you are." He paused as if to ponder. "But there are a few here, yes, a very few. Alas, like me, and like you, they are sterile. They're good workers. But no new tribe can ever be grown from those of us who have been the playthings of Bravenna. Our offspring must be the promotion of love and goodness. Because that is all we can birth and nurture."

Derek gasped at this. I found myself smiling. Our offspring must be the promotion of love and goodness.