But the point I’m making is, there was no standing police force, any more than there had been a standing militia in the Wilderness lands. Rather, there were countless informally undercover individuals who could at a moment’s notice transform from their regular activities as scientists or musicians, or restaurant owners or shopkeepers or wandering tourists, into “the guard” needed to keep the peace. And I realized that it had been the same in the Wilderness lands. Representatives of Atalantaya had been everywhere out there, but only showing themselves when needed. I had even seen those tiny twinkling lights now and then. But it was only now, seeing them in large numbers quelling the riot, that I recognized them for what they were and became curious as to how many there were.

Well, I never found out any specific numbers on the force of guardians, or civil servants, but what I have realized since is that this highly complex world did not need a standing police force or military. And as I had nothing to compare this to, I thought it made perfect sense. But imagine if nations in the modern world took this approach—training a huge and quiet guardian force of peacekeepers who only became professional peacekeepers when needed.

After we came awake in the twentieth century, I thought of this often. And I realized something else. The world of Amel had never been equipped to fight any kind of massive attack from Bravenna—perhaps because Amel had always known that defending Earth from Bravenna was impossible. And Atalantaya had never been equipped to fight any sort of savage or barbarian assault either. Of course we never saw any savage or barbarian assault, but when I read the histories of civilizations known to the modern world, I saw a horrifying pattern: great cities built, and then sacked and burned by warriors flooding in with no other purpose than theft or the joy of massacring the population. Again and again it has played out—Egypt, Mesopotamia, Athens, Rome, ancient Kiev, even Constantinople. Well, it didn’t happen in Amel’s world. And why? Perhaps because the Wilderness people were never exploited or forced to do anything by Atalantaya and Amel, and all had some free access to Atalantaya and much of what it had to offer. If warlike tribes existed somewhere outside the cultural reach of Amel—and they apparently did—there was no talk of their being a concerted threat, and no fear of them among the people we encountered.

But it’s now time to let Amel speak for himself through my memories.

It was a week after the Festival that our meeting with Amel occurred. We were gathered together at dawn to watch once more the seeding and growth of a large building, and after we had witnessed that spectacle with the same awe and emotion we had experienced before, someone came up to us and told us that Amel wanted to see us, and that we could have our audience with him that very day.