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

Of course from the very first day on we heard talk of the Great One, the Great Amel who had built Atalantaya, the Great Amel, Amel who made all things.

We listened carefully to every bit of intelligence about Amel that was offered us, and we were confident the whole time that we were lost in the shuffle, lost in the human herd. After all, how could the ruler have picked us out of this great stream of brilliant humanity? We looked like Wilderness people newly arrived, and quickly adjusting, and we had done nothing to call attention to ourselves in any way.

The first real startling glimpse of Amel came when we entered a Meditation Center on our street, just steps from our new home.

We had seen these Meditation Centers everywhere in our wandering, as their facades were marked by relief sculptures of human beings sitting quietly with heads bowed and eyes closed. And we had come to be curious, naturally, about these figures and why they appeared so often flanking doors to the street. Were these Chambers of Suffering, we asked those around us. They laughed at the idea and told us, no, that there were no Chambers of Suffering in Atalantaya.

Finally, when we were overwhelmed by all our experiences and tired, and ready to focus on something a little more challenging than wandering and asking and marveling, we saw a great many people walking towards the nearby Meditation Center, and we entered it along with them and found ourselves in a great dark domed room.

It was fitted out with a horseshoe of ascending benches, what people call bleachers today or stadium seating. We took places at the very back and top, and found the seats were comfortably padded and that people were now filling the place, though many left spaces beside them so as to signal a need for privacy or distance.

Soon all were sitting with their heads bowed and eyes closed, just as in the relief carvings on the exterior, and some were crying, quite visibly crying, but much more quietly than the Wilderness people did in their Chambers of Suffering.

So it is the same thing, I thought. Exactly the same thing. It was more subdued but it was the same thing.

At one point as we sat there waiting, trying to covertly study those around us and opposite us, the picture wall became illuminated and we saw for the first time the face of Amel. A deep-throated bell sounded somewhere, perhaps in the city outside, or within this building, I couldn't tell.

What a shock. I am not sure what I had expected to see but the face that appeared on the picture wall was that of a male, pale skinned as an albino, with substantial red hair and deep blue-green eyes, and very agreeable features. The man we saw as Amel in fact resembled you, Lestat, so closely that he might have been your cousin or even your brother. He had the same alert intense expression, the same easy smile when he spoke. And the same rather busy unkempt hair, and even the same square shape to his face and a similar symmetry to it. Of course, his pale skin in a uniformly dark-skinned world gave him an unearthly look, and something of an unearthly shimmer. We had glimpsed only a few albinos on our path to Atalantaya, a few others with red or golden hair, a few with pale eyes. And to see the rosy flush in his cheeks, and the expressive lines made visible by the lightness of his skin, all this was startling. But it was also a little repellent. That he spoke passionately and normally as a human being made him compelling.

He greeted his audience as I would see him do often in the next few weeks and began to talk in a seemingly natural and spontaneous way.

"Good evening, my fellow Atalantayans. This is Amel coming to you from the Creative Tower to remind everyone that the first Festival of Meats will be in three weeks, and when the gates open to the Wilderness people visiting for the first time, many will need shelter among you, or a helping hand in finding the public shelters. Please do extend your arms to your brothers and sisters from the Wilderness lands, and help us to enjoy a healthy and happy festival.

"Now I welcome you to the Meditation Center, and I remind you all as I have so often that you are not being spied upon here in these halls or theaters, that what you say is not being recorded, that it is not for the benefit of anyone but yourselves, and that these places exist for you and you alone and what you would make of them."

The face was gone as suddenly as it had appeared, and we were left breathless and silent with this first glimpse of the creature we had come to admonish and destroy, and wondering if it was true that we could share our thoughts with one another in this theater.

I wish I had hours to describe what then happened, how pictograph writing appeared on the screen as a succession of human beings took the floor to discourse on the definition of evil and to recount their own personal triumphs or defeats.

"Evil is that which goes against life," said the first speaker, apparently reading a statement in the pictographs on the screen. "Evil is anything that goes against life, harms life, stifles life, destroys life. Evil is bringing harm to another person, inflicting unnecessary pain, suffering, or confusion. All evil comes from this. This is the root of all evil."

This struck us as profoundly beautiful. We found ourselves nodding ju

st as others were nodding around the auditorium. We also pondered the pictographs. We had seen them in other places and thought them mere decoration. We each independently sought to memorize what was on the screen.

After that, people spoke up about their personal sufferings, the loss of a mother, the loss of a child, a disappointment in the workplace, an innate and debilitating melancholy which they could not cure. They spoke of losing a lover or a spouse. Others listened in almost total silence. But people nodded; tears were shed. Finally people began to sing. For the first time the screen was changed, and flooded with new pictographs and the people chanted in their untutored voices, echoing the beautiful music we had heard before we were actually born.

We joined in this singing, easily following the repetitive lyrics, though we could not yet read the writing. "Behold, we sing the song of life most beautiful; behold, we sing the song of the flowers of the field and the trees of the forest, and the splendor of Atalantaya and the splendor of a child's smile. Behold, we sing the song of harmony and unity. Behold, we sing the song of life itself."

When we went back out into the streets, Derek walked up to a man and asked him, "Who rules Atalantaya? And how is it done?"

The man said, "Well, no one really, at least not in the way that you ask. Amel is the Great One, but Amel does not necessarily rule." The man then talked on easily of councils and rulers, and representatives from this or that area of the city and from the Wilderness lands. "Amel's will is absolute, but he seldom asserts it, and usually only when there has been a ghastly crime committed, and even then he invites the councils high and low to review his decision."

Derek wanted to ask more but I spirited him away.

When we returned to our home in the tower, we talked frankly with one another for the first time. We took wine from our refrigeration compartments and shared it in the translucent drinking vessels that had come with our apartment, and we sat down on the couches of the gathering room, with no real light needed as we could see lighted towers all around us.

Garekyn who has always been more aggressive than the rest of us, more prone to sharp questions as well as solutions, spoke up immediately.

"If there are truly no stores of energy on this island," he asked, "if there are only places for using water and places for using the light of sun, how are we to make an explosion big enough to set off the fatal chain of explosions?"

But Derek didn't wait for anyone to answer. "What is so evil about the people of this city," he asked, "that the Parents want all of them dead, all of them and the Wilderness people who have been sheltering us and helping us for the last three months--all to be reduced to primal dust or soup! How can the Parents believe this is right?"

"Maybe we are not seeing deeply," Welf suggested. "We need to give ourselves time."

We talked over everything that night, and then went back to simply living in Atalantaya and witnessing everything the city had to offer. Within days we realized that erotic coupling was free and easy in Atalantaya with none of the rules that had prevailed in the villages of the Wilderness lands. And that people were in the main highly protective of and friendly to little children even though these children were not their own. People formed families both large and small, and respect for the very elderly was what we call today the norm. Elderly people, in fact, had the greatest freedom to do just about anything they wanted to do. People rose and bowed to the elderly, offered them tables in crowded restaurants, fell silent when the elderly spoke, and stepped aside for them on the street.

Life was busy in Atalantaya. People had places to go and things to do.