“We will come to that,” said Kapetria. She narrowed her eyes as she looked at Marius, and then at Seth. “Believe me, I want to tell you. But first let me make this observation.” She again addressed me. “It is that your method of propagation through the blood and through the brain has many things in common with ours. I suspect that Amel is no more in control of this propagation and its limitations than we are of ours.” She paused as if to allow us to ponder this. “In fact, I have a working hypothesis that you are all connected to Amel because his method of propagation has failed. The method wanted each of you to be an independent unit; but the method couldn’t achieve its end, and so you are somehow one enormous organism.”

“I don’t think so,” said Seth. “I’ve considered this, but you see, it was Amel who pushed from the beginning for propagation—for more blood drinkers so that he might taste more blood—and for a group of connected entities to satisfy his thirst.”

“He pressed for this, yes,” Kapetria said, “but did he know what he was asking for? Was he an articulate mind at that stage or something lost and struggling? Yes, he begged to enlarge himself or to satisfy an immense thirst, but would it not have been more nearly perfect if each new unit in which he implanted himself through the blood might have eventually become autonomous?” She shook her head. “Tentative conclusion only: you are an organism that involves a failed attempt at propagation. You are an immense organism with a fragile core.”

“Are you suggesting that some of us could be disconnected from Amel?” asked Fareed.

“Well, yes, I suspect that’s entirely possible,” she said. “Clearly he suffers agonies when your numbers are increased beyond a certain point, when the thin elusive material of which he is made has become stretched to its maximum length.”

“Thin, elusive material,” said Seth. “That is a fine way of putting it.”

“Is it actually material?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s made of material all right,” she said. “Ghosts, spirits, whatever they are, they are all made of material.” She looked at Gremt, Gremt who sat there impassively studying her with his perfect replica of a classical Greek face and body. “Are you not made of material?” she asked. “I’m not speaking of your physical body, I’m speaking of the core of your being, where your consciousness resides.”

“Yes, it is made of a subtle material,” Gremt said in a soft voice. “I came to realize this a long time ago. But what is that subtle material? What are its properties? Why did I come into being? These things we don’t know, because we can’t see or measure or test the subtle material.”