Page 77

"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."