Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis Page 37

  Maxym shook his head as if he were genuinely disappointed. He turned his attention to me. "Follow him, will you? Work for him, will you? I tell you, someday the Maker will bring him and the offspring of his pride and greed to ruin!"

  And then off he went out the double doors without closing them and down the golden corridor, his heavy steps echoing off the walls.

  With a wave of his hand, Amel made the doors close.

  "Well, you see for yourself why there are likely not many other converted Replimoids amongst us," he said, "especially not of the complex kind. Bravenna poisons what it creates. Maxym is poisoned. He lives as one who is poisoned, unable to taste, to feel, to see, dying every day that he lives because he insists upon dying."

  "Why do you keep him as part of your family?" asked Derek. He was genuinely puzzled. I wanted to know this as well.

  "Because I love him," said Amel with a sad smile. "And he is immortal as I am immortal. I love you for the same reason. I have had lovers. I have had wives. I have lost them all. I can't share this immortality of mine with anyone." He sighed. "But there's more to it," he said. "I would rather have him here in Atalantaya shaking his fist at me, than out in the Wilderness lands fomenting his worship of the Maker among the tribes." He shrugged. "But someday, he will no doubt wander out into the Wilderness--and he will find infinitely more appreciation for his fear-inspiring ideas than he ever finds among us."

  I want to pause here. I want to ask you all--Lestat, David, Marius, all of you: do you have any idea why I have given time and space here to this Maxym? You know what is about to happen to Atalantaya, and you know what happened to us. All of us. You likely can easily surmise what happened to Amel. Well, I'll tell you why I have told you this story. Because I suspect this Replimoid, Maxym, too survived the destruction that was soon visited on all of us. But not bodily as we did. I suspect that he exists as surely as Amel exists, and that his name is now Memnoch, who creates astral traps for unwary souls.

  I have no proof of this. It's theory. But this is what I believe. And if this is so, I want to examine this creature when he's incarnated for what I can learn--not from his particle body but for the invisible and subatomic neural circuitry that controls it, just as Amel's neural circuitry sustains all of you.

  But we can talk about this in detail later. Suffice it to say that in all your writings, the Vampire Chronicles, no two spirits command the same attention as Memnoch and Amel, and I do want to explore very much this spirit Memnoch, though my first goal is of course to understand and learn about Amel, to know the subatomic anatomy of Amel.

  And when we do come to examine this subatomic anatomy, we will be examining the anatomy of a soul.

  But let me return to that night, that night of all nights!

  As the hours passed, Amel confided in us his theory once more that all sentient beings generate souls, and souls have their own intricate anatomy and organization which gives off an energy, an energy that Amel believed was irresistible to Bravennans who had been harvesting the misery and suffering of the planet for thousands of years.

  "I have often wondered," he said, "if they have found a way to harvest souls. Imagine, if you will, what this would mean for these monsters who thrive off the energy of the invisible part of us, if when the lives of men and women are finished here, Bravenna takes their souls."

  I thought it was all too fanciful, but Amel would not let go of it and I could see then how much more interested he was in the fields that later epochs would call philosophy or theology than he was in the actual biological sciences which he had used to such advantage to shape and sustain his world.

  "What if the transmitting stations, wherever they are, can draw to themselves the souls of all those who have finished their biological life, and what if these souls are drawn to Bravenna as surely as all those moving pictures are drawn, and what if the Bravennans use those souls as a concentrated form of energy, a concentrated expression of energy, enhanced and deepened and perfected by suffering so that those souls are like ripe and perfect fruit to the Bravennans and maybe even to others in the 'Realm of Worlds'?"

  He went on describing this, how it seemed to him that the souls of human beings, thanks to their mammalian nature, might have a wholly different flavor than the souls of other sentient species, and this would make the souls irresistible to Bravennans.

  Even as I regarded this as utterly far-fetched and unprovable, Garekyn took an interest and began to speculate along with Amel.

  "And what if," asked Garekyn, "that is why they want to foment war on this planet, because they will have more souls to harvest, somehow traveling through the transmission stations as they are released from the biological bodies, souls drawn Heavenward through the beam of the transmission station as if through infinitely long tunnels of light?"

  "I can't bear the thought of such a thing, such a horrible thing," Derek said more than once. Welf, always the practical one among us, simply shrugged and said that it was something one could never know for sure.

  We went over all our experiences on Bravenna, and Amel listened attentively, but there was little to support such an idea as the harvesting of souls.

  "I can believe," I said finally, "that they are feasting off the suffering of this planet, and fomenting it. I believed that really from the first moment it was suggested to me because I saw the film streams, and saw what they prized above all, and it was always suffering; but unless the soul itself is a spiritual and physical emanation of a human mind--virtually composed of the experience and suffering of that mind, unless the soul is materially changed by suffering and generated perhaps by the longing of the individual to understand its own suffering, well, then I don't know how it would work."

  "Now that is an interesting observation," said Amel, "and I had never thought of it, but perhaps you are onto something, that suffering itself helps to generate the soul."

  "I meant the energy given off by suffering, of course," I explained, "that it might organize into a soul. To put it another way, a being's unsatisfied curiosity might generate that human being's soul. And the fuel might be the collective suffering endured by that human all through his or her life, and some other intangible ingredient, perhaps, such as an overview, an attitude, a perspective on life, that too might help the formation of a soul."

  I can remember this ever so clearly, this long conversation, our being gathered there and talking to one another as though we had all of the time in the world.

  "This is what gives me the greatest hope," said Amel at one point with great excitement. "It is that if we can imagine a question, then there must be an answer to it. And it is merely a matter of hard work and perseverance to find that answer. In essence, no question can be imagined by us that is unanswerable by its nature. Does that make sense to you?"

  I for one said that it did. So did Garekyn. I could feel the workings of my own mind as we so passionately discussed these things, I could feel my mind exercising itself just as one might feel one's legs when running and leaping and dancing. And it felt so good to me to be possessed of a mind and to be possessed of these questions.

  "Whatever I do here," I said to Amel, "may it not have to do with the study of the concept of soul? May I not work on trying to discover how to measure the soul?"

  "I would love for this to be your work," Amel answered immediately. Welf raised his hand with a little mocking laugh and said he would be delighted to go along with it, because he was eager to see just how I was going to measure something as completely imaginary as souls.

  "And what if you do prove it," Garekyn asked, "that beings have souls and souls are energy and that these souls can be harvested from Earth's atmosphere, what then will you do? Can you ever strike out at Bravenna? Can you ever do more than shake your fist at the sky?"

  My memory of the next few minutes falters. Amel protested almost angrily that what he could do was hunt out every transmitting station and destroy it, and close up every Chamber of Suffering in existence, but then he lamented t
hat this would make him the cruel "headman" that he had never wanted to be.

  As for Derek, he seemed blissfully happy in the midst of this conversation and went off on his own tangent as to whether the souls of those who knew joy more than anything were not finer fruit to harvest than the souls who'd known so much pain. Welf was pressing my hand, signaling me he was ready for our home bed, and some coupling, and I caught the wink of his eye and sweet smile on his lips.

  What happened next? I reached for the goblet that held my wine and I took a long easy drink of it, which one can do when the wine is weak and deliciously cold, and I saw the wine moving in the goblet, sloshing from side to side, and I realized that the entire room was moving, that the furniture under us was moving, and that Amel had stood and was staring through the great western wall towards the stars.

  "What is it?" Derek cried. "The island is shaking. Look, look outside, the towers are moving!"

  But Amel's face was turned upwards.

  "It's Bravenna," he cried out. "Bravenna is moving! Look at Bravenna!"

  Suddenly we were all at the wall gazing upwards, and we watched the erratic movement of the bright star that was Bravenna when suddenly that star grew huge and exploded and out of the vast darkness came a great shower of innumerable burning stars--flying in all directions--and the blaze that was the star itself grew larger and larger as Amel screamed again, "She's coming towards us, she's breaking up! She's coming down on us--."

  A horrific roar swallowed his words. From all sides came the pounding reverberations of explosions. The towers everywhere were swaying wildly as if they were dancing, and the room began to rock from side to side. I saw fire descending on Earth, exploding against the shimmering dome, and then even here in this high room, even here above the city, I heard the roar of countless human voices.

  Below us, people ran in panic over rooftops, and smaller buildings were falling sideways into the buildings next to them. From the balconies and open windows people were tumbling. Huge ocean waves the color of fire splashed against the great dome as if reaching to extinguish the endless flames.

  The sounds of the explosions increased in volume until one deafening explosion after another shocked us and paralyzed us. Huge cracks and fissures broke up the walls.

  Then great knives of fire appeared to slice through the dome itself.

  "The luracastria, it's melting," Amel cried. I could see it. We all saw it, the towers melting, the dome melting. Our building shuddered. I fell into Welf's arms. Amel grabbed hold of me and ran with me towards the doors, waving for the others to follow, while with his other hand he dragged Derek along beside him. "It's the whole island; it's the whole world."

  A fierce wind broke through the shattered walls and the fire blinded me. The roar of the population was as loud as the roar of the sea. I felt rain against my face but it wasn't rain. I could feel myself falling, and I felt Welf against my ear saying, "Hold on to me, Kapetria, hold on. Hold on. Hold on." I screamed for Derek and Garekyn. I screamed for Amel. I heard Amel's voice but I couldn't see him.

  Down we fell as flames rose all around us. The surging water devoured us and then released us while innumerable humans screamed piteously for help. We were in a street which had become a roiling river of the drowning. The water was sucked away from us and again we tumbled as if into a fathomless abyss. Towers were melting, entrapping thousands of tiny faceless humans in the glistening sluggish liquid that had been the luracastria--thousands around me splashing and screaming for help when there was no help. Broken furniture, tables, chairs, traveling pods, and debris covered the waters--battered and broken trees. We were caught in a whirlpool. The planet itself had cracked beneath us. Down we went in darkness, only to rise to the surface once more.

  Then I saw Amel, saw him silhouetted against an endless wall of flame. Where we stood, where we were, I could not tell. But there was Amel.

  "Atalantaya," he cried, but how I could have heard him, or heard anyone cry out any words, I don't know. "Atalantaya!" he roared over and over again. He shook his fists at the Heavens. "Atalantaya," he cried again and again.

  The oozing luracastria was molten gold on the surface of the water as if it were burning. Boats, thousands of them, it seemed, surrounded us, but desperate people were capsizing them and pulling them under as they sought to climb on board.

  Amel was gone. Derek and Garekyn were gone.

  Welf held me, cradling my head with his hand. The rain stung my arms, my neck, my face. We were riding the surges of the water helplessly, and I saw the dead around me--lurid faces with vacant eyes, bodies stripped naked, and some headless, infants bobbing on the surface, lifeless limbs.

  Beams of light pierced the thick mist, and loud voices called out to people to seek the tunnels. I heard the word "tunnel" again and again. But how could we seek the tunnels? We had no idea where they were. I called frantically for Derek and for Garekyn. Welf did the same.

  A mass of struggling humans was swept against us by a fierce current, and masses of debris, of mingled wood and stone, raced past us with people atop these masses as if they were ships.

  A great white ferryboat rose in front of us with people high on the deck above waving and dropping ropes for those below. But the boat vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Then came another, like the ghost of a boat in the water, monstrous in size and fading into nothingness as the storm raged.

  Another explosion stunned us and deafened us, and then came another and another. Belching smoke, caustic burning smoke, and the flickering blaze of flames were all I could see.

  The stench of the smoke suffocated us. The current tossed us up and then tried to swallow us but we kept riding it, rising again and again no matter how deeply we'd been drawn down.

  Finally we realized we were in the open sea.

  Atalantaya had opened up and broken apart and expelled us into the sea. We could see her distant fires blazing but the waves were of immeasurable size, and though we never stopped calling out, we knew we had lost Derek and Garekyn.

  We were never to see them--or Amel--again.

  The cries of the desperate and the dying were gone.

  The rain drenched us as surely as the sea. Yet no matter how dense the veil of the rain, we could still see the distant spectacle of Atalantaya--the immense blazing island shaken still by one eruption after another--growing ever more distant as a great silence and darkness engulfed us in which we couldn't even hear one another, or even see one another, our bodies pressed together, our arms tight around one another as the hours passed.

  Hours. It is wrong to speak of hours. There was no time. Once in a while a small craft would pass us, broken and empty, or a massive tree would slam against us, its giant tangle of roots like a huge multifingered hand reaching vainly for help. We were alone, perfectly alone. But we had each other and my soul ached for the panic and the horror of those who had no one, those who had perished in this maelstrom without another soul to embrace, to hang on to, without loving arms around them, those who were truly alone. Was Derek alone? Was Garekyn alone?

  Dawn never came. No sun ever broke through the torrent of rain that descended on us without cease. The acrid stench of smoke or fire was gone. And the water grew icy cold, and the world was white and blinding, and we climbed out of the water and we trudged through a featureless world of snow.

  What had become of the Wilderness lands? Where were the verdant jungles and forests? Where were the fields of high grass and wild grain? Where were the thousands who had lived in the villages and settlements?

  Our garments were in shreds. And the cold hurt us but it could not kill us. It numbed us. It robbed us of stamina. It closed down on our minds.

  Sometime or other, and for a little while, we found the shelter of a cave from which we saw fire on the horizon, the sky beautifully illuminated by this fire with streaks of gold, and red and even green. How indifferent seemed this beauty, how unconscious of witness, yet it touched me and calmed me and I dozed watching it--and then th
e earth beneath us was shaking violently once more, and terrified of being buried alive, we tried to run again.

  Up and up we climbed through what must have been mountains, and soon we saw nothing but whiteness, and the spectacle of fire was no more. Gone forever, it seemed, was anything remotely like fire, and all was lost in a blizzard and in that blizzard we struggled until life itself was nothing but struggle, nothing but seeking for shelter when there was no shelter--until finally I remember wrapping my arms around Welf, holding him as tightly as I could possibly do it, and saying, "I can go no farther," and the last thing I heard was Welf whispering my name as my eyes closed.

  You know now that the four of us survived. You know that we eventually emerged from our frozen graves, and you know how we found one another. But there are other stories someday to be told.

  Welf and I opened our eyes many centuries after the destruction of Atalantaya on a later barren and wintry world. We lived a lifetime among the tribes of hearty humans who struggled against the snow and ice eternally as the very conditions of life, with no memory of the great temperate Wilderness lands that had once covered so much of Earth and no memory of such a thing as Atalantaya, though their legends told of ancient gods and goddesses and fallen worlds. The first time we came to consciousness we survived perhaps for three or four human generations before retreating, exhausted and discouraged and broken, to the ice to freeze again.

  And there was another awakening after that in a time of simple villages and towns where once again the inhabitants knew nothing of a great metropolis that had once ruled the world.

  Derek can tell you stories of the lives he lived, and what drove him in each instance to retreat to the high mountain caves of the Andes to sleep once more. Garekyn alone slept through the long aeons until awakened by his mentor and discoverer Prince Brovotkin, who was then laughed at by his colleagues and his fellow European noblemen for tales of the immortal man found in the Siberian ice.