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I knew that story as well. I smiled. Of course, Fareed could do such a thing. But what else might he do?

Jesse continued.

"Well, Maharet took him up on the offer. She did not like the idea that a young fledgling would be blinded for these purposes. But he soon got around this ethically, telling her to choose a victim for herself, one upon whom she thought it entirely proper and just to feed. He would take that victim, render him or her unconscious, and then infuse the body with the vampiric blood. When he'd removed the eyes, he would do away with the victim. She might be present at all stages if she wished. And once again, he emphasized that the placement of the eyes would involve his skills as a surgeon with more infusions of vampiric blood to perfect the result. Her eyes would be her eyes forever. She had only to pick the victim, as he said, from all those within her hearing, all those with the proper-color eyes."

That sent a chill through me: "the proper-color eyes." Brought back flashes of something horrible, but I didn't want to see exactly what it was. I shook myself all over and fastened my attention on Jesse.

"She took him up on it," said Jesse. "But she took him up on more than that. He wanted to welcome her and Mekare both to his laboratory in America. He had a huge place, apparently a mad scientist's dream. I believe it was in New York at that time. They'd tried a number of locations. But Maharet wouldn't risk trying to take Mekare to this place. Instead she spent a king's ransom bringing all Fareed's staff and equipment to us. She had everything flown into Jakarta, and brought out by truck to the compound. Electricians were brought in, new generators purchased and installed. When it was finished Fareed had what he needed to do every kind of test known to modern science on Mekare."

Again, she broke off.

"You're talking about magnetic imaging," I said, "CAT scans, all of it."

"Yes, exactly," said Jesse.

"I should have known. And all these years, I've been afraid for Fareed, afraid that she'd done away with him, blasted him and his staff off the planet."

"And how could she have done that with Seth protecting Fareed?" asked David. "When you met Fareed, surely you met Seth."

"She might have made a considerable dent in operations," I said. "She could have burned them both out. But you're saying"--I looked at Jesse--"you're saying, they're all friends."

"Allies," said Jesse.

"Did Mekare submit to the tests?"

"Completely," said Jesse. "Meekly. Mekare has never balked at anything that I was ever aware of. Nothing. And so they did the tests. There were these physician fledglings with them, and Seth was always working with Fareed. It was frightening to me to meet Seth. It was frightening to Khayman to meet him. Khayman had known Seth when Seth had been a human child. When Seth had been the Crown Prince of Kemet. Sometime after the Blood came into Akasha, she'd sent Seth away. Khayman had never had any knowledge of Seth being made into a blood drinker. He feared him, feared some old blood tie between mother and son that he said might be more powerful than our Blood. Khayman didn't care for anything that was happening, for these scientists taking tissue samples and X-rays, and sitting around with Maharet until early morning, discussing all the properties of our bodies, the properties of the force that makes us what we are."

"I've given up on scientific language," I said. "I never thought I'd need it. And now I wish I had been there, and understood everything they'd said." But this wasn't entirely true. I'd left Fareed and Seth of my own accord years ago when I might have asked to remain indefinitely. I'd fled from the intensity of both of them and what they might discover about us.

"So what the Hell was the upshot of all of it?" I said suddenly, unable to contain myself. "What the Hell did they find out?"

"They said Mekare was mindless," said Jesse. "They said the brain in her head was atrophied. They said there was so little indication of brain activity that she was like a human in a coma, kept alive by the brain stem alone. Apparently she'd been entombed so long, possibly in a cave, no one knew, that even her sight had been affected. The powerful Blood has actually hardened the atrophied tissue over time. I couldn't fathom it. Of course they took some three nights to say this with incredible disclaimers, qualifiers, and tangents, but that was the gist."

"And what about the other?" I asked.

"What other?" Jesse said.

I glanced at David and then back at her. They both appeared sublimely puzzled. This surprised me.

"What about the Sacred Core?" I asked.

Jesse didn't respond.

"So what you're asking is," David interjected, "could these various diagnostic instruments detect the Sacred Core?"

"Well, of course that's what I'm asking. Good grief. Fareed had the Mother in his clutches, didn't he? You don't think Fareed would be looking for evidence of a parasite inside her with some sort of cerebral activity of its own?"

They continued to stare at me as if I were mad.

"Fareed told me," I went on, "that this thing, Amel, was a creature just as we are creatures, that it has cellular life, boundaries, is knowable. Fareed made all this clear to me. I simply couldn't understand all his deductions, but he made it clear that he was obsessed with the physical properties of the Sacred Core."

Oh, why hadn't I listened more? Why had I been so pessimistic about the future of Fareed? Why did I have such a grim apocalyptic mind-set?

"Well, if he detected anything," said Jesse, "I heard nothing of it." She reflected for a long moment, and then asked: "What about you?"

"What about me when?"

"When you drank from Akasha," she pushed gently. "When you held her in your arms. Did you hear anything, detect anything? You were in direct contact with the Sacred Core."