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"Through a great explosion," I said. "We are to detonate it, causing Atalantaya to catch fire and explode, and from our disintegrating bodies will come a toxin, a plague that will kill all complex life-forms. The Parents assumed there were stores of explosive materials on the island of Atalantaya. They said that when we detonated, the explosion would detonate those stores."

"And you believe that these powerful explosive materials are in your bodies?" he asked. "That the toxin is in your bodies?"

"This is what they told us. They told us to come here, get inside the dome, get an audience with you, and then detonate. As I've explained, they did allow that if we could persuade you to come out of the dome and talk to them, that maybe this disaster could be averted. But frankly, I'm not sure they were telling the truth with this. They assume that you won't leave the protection of the dome, and they have emphasized that we were created for this one purpose--destroying you and life on Earth as it is now--and they expect us to fulfill this purpose."

He fell silent. He appeared to be brooding. And overall, he gave the impression of an emotional and sensitive being, not any sort of cool or detached genius. In fact, throughout this conversation he was seeming more like Derek than any other one among us. He was seeming hot blooded and distinctly mammalian. I couldn't help but wonder about the mixture of elements given him by the Parents.

Suddenly he rose to his feet and motioned for us to follow him. "I want to show you something," he said. And when we were all facing the inner wall to the left side of the entrance of the room he made a motion which caused the wall to light up, revealing four strange images. I recognized them immediately as images of us which appeared to show our exterior features and interior features. I could tell this by the outlines, the hair, the female morphology and the male morphology but the images were not pictures so much as vibrant and alive color paintings which showed a complex network of veins or threads all through the interior of our bodies, and small innumerable organs, perhaps, which I couldn't recognize as human. The tiny organs were threaded all through our torsos and our limbs. In some places the weblike circuitry of veins and threads was much denser--in our hands, in our feet, in our necks, and in our heads.

Now understand. We all had a rough idea of what composed a human being. We knew this from the information implanted in us: we knew humans like all mammals had hearts, lungs, reproductive organs, circulatory systems, brains, eyes, et cetera.

But we could see from these images that we did not possess these organs. Indeed, there were no brains in our heads according to these strange images. And I knew what a brain was, obviously, and I knew therefore that our consciousness command centers had to be a unique type.

"These are scans taken of your bodies," Amel said. "These were taken when you passed through the entrance to the ferryboat to Atalantaya. They are not of the highest quality. I can provide you with much more detailed scans of your interior workings if you want them. But this is what you are. Replimoids indeed. Now do you see anywhere in these scans anything that indicates your bodies contain toxins or explosives?"

"No, but we don't know what we are looking at or what a toxin or explosive looks like," I said. "We could be seeded with these elem

ents in ways that don't show up on your scans. Perhaps there are seeds in us of explosives that are so tiny the eye can't see them."

"Well, that's true," Amel acknowledged. Then with a wave of his hand he brought up another image that was clearly an image of himself, inside and out. And he possessed the organs of a human being. I recognized his red hair, his greenish-blue eyes, his pale skin, and I studied the interior of his body.

Now this was the first time I'd seen such a scan of a human, yes, but I saw all that I expected to see in a human: heart, lungs, veins, and the brain in the skull behind the eyes.

"So they didn't make you," I said. "You're not a Replimoid."

"No, I'm not," he said. "But I am apparently the first human being they ever forcibly and stealthily and immorally removed from this planet. And what I became in their hands is the enhanced creature you see before you, ever resilient and self-renewing, and seemingly immortal." Once again, his face was flushed, and he was clearly angry.

He gestured for us to return to the couches, and then he spoke aloud to someone or something we couldn't see and asked for wine and food for all of us. We sat quietly looking at him as he sat there reflecting, waiting, as emotional as before.

Whisper-quiet servants came and set a long broad table before us, and then laid out bowls of fruit, and of the sweet vegetables people eat raw, and some fresh-baked bread, very thin, and hot--like the naan in Indian restaurants today. And a clear wine was poured into the usual luracastria goblets.

"Go ahead, please. Eat and drink," said Amel. He appeared sad. He himself sat back and folded his arms as if he was not hungry or had too much on his mind to eat. His curly red hair fell down over his eyes and he brushed it back with annoyance.

I'm not sure any of us enjoyed a morsel of food, but it was considered courteous to eat in this world when a host offered food and drink, and so we did. I found the wine flavorful but safely weak. I took only sips. I wanted to keep my mind absolutely clear. I was pondering the scans we'd seen, going over in my memory the images. No brain visible, no heart visible in our bodies, and what were the tiny organs threaded all through our arms and legs and neck and head? Where were our brains? Why did I hear a heartbeat from myself? Why did I hear the heartbeat of Welf or Garekyn or Derek? Where was the physical command center of our intelligence and our bodily systems? Why were the networks of seed and vein so much denser in our hands and feet, in our necks, in our heads?

Finally Amel began to speak again. "I was born in the far north, in the cold lands, where snow is frequent and people wear heavy skins just to survive. My tribe was much paler than the people of the southern climes." He paused and took a deep breath as though all this caused him pain. "But even for a pale tribe I was a mutant, a green-eyed red-haired child in a world of dark hair and dark eyes, and my skin looked sickly. In our tribe, I inspired fear and distrust. And so my parents, after many painful mishaps had befallen me, decided to sacrifice me to the gods they believed in. They decided this when I was twelve years old. They laid me on an open altar in the forest and left me there, bound and helpless. In time wolves or bears would come, or the wildcats. I had been drugged and did not care too much. I was frankly glad to be out of the world where I was constantly ridiculed and persecuted. It was then that the Bravennans removed me from the planet. I spent years on Bravenna growing to my full height, and being educated by the Parents and being altered into the being I am now. But! Understand this!"

He sat forward and looked into my eyes again. "Understand this," he repeated. "Everything good in me came from my birth as a human being, my childhood among human beings, my parents on Earth, my teachers on Earth, the wise and the kind of my village, the children brave enough to befriend me and pity me--and not so much from the superstitious and fearful notions of my tribe, but from the underlying morality of the tribe!" He pressed his lips together. Again we saw anger and emotion. "It is from nurture, mammalian nurture, that all human beings derive their sense of what it is to be loved, to be cared for, to feel this world as a good place, to feel life as something good. And it is from mammalian nurture that they derive their crucial sense of fairness."

Fairness. How many times had I shared my amazement with the others on how all the human beings we encountered seemed to have an innate sense of fairness?

"Are you following me?" Amel asked. This time he looked to each and every one of us. "Do you see what I am saying? Do you think the Parents care about what gives life value for the people of this planet? Do you think they really mean their pious nonsense about reptilian and avian ascendant species being superior? Did they tell you all their pious ideas about the gentleness and wisdom of reptilian ascendant species or the patience of avian species? Did they discourse forever on the evils of hot-blooded mammals? They are puppet masters! Do you know what that means? Have you seen the puppet shows in the city?"

We all nodded because we had.

"They are liars!"

Suddenly Garekyn couldn't contain himself any longer. "But why would they lie?" he asked. "Why would they seek to control human beings as if humans were puppets? What's the point if not to return the planet to a primal state for the good?"

"The good of what?" Amel said. He pounded his right fist on his knee. "What good? But they're lying about wanting to do this." He sighed and threw up his hands. "I cannot prove this to you without destroying one of you, but I wager there are no explosive devices or toxins in your bodies! They have lied to you."

"But what is the point of the lie?" asked Welf.

"To foment trouble!" he said. "So that you would come here and seek desperately to lure me out of the dome and into exposure to their monitors! This is just the latest ploy! They want to take me prisoner, and stop the manufacture of luracastria!"

"But why?" Welf pressed.

"Don't you see what I've done? I've built a city here!" Amel used his word for city, of course, but the word meant huge, complex, infinitely more than a village. It meant metropolis. "And," he said holding up his finger for our attention. "I have sheltered innumerable human beings in this city from the prying transmitters of Bravenna! And I am building outposts along the coasts all over the world protected by luracastria. True, there are only a handful now, but eventually there will be thousands! You've seen our great luracastria plants, you've seen our plants for cleansing the water, and for using it for energy. You've seen our solar plants. We can make a world on which they cannot spy, a world protected from their conniving, a world on which they cannot build more of their plans to foment violence and suffering on the planet! They don't want a better ascendant species here. They want more war, battle, violent struggle, human against human!"