I couldn’t quite believe such a thing. We had not been inculcated with any unusual thirst for power, nor were we innately competitive, and we were not devious or quarrelsome with anyone, let alone with one another. Nor had the Bravennans spent all that much time on condemning Amel, working us up against Amel. But then maybe there was a reason for that. Maybe they really didn’t know what was going on in Atalantaya and assumed it was so evil that we would share their condemnation of it. Maybe they really couldn’t grasp the sophistication of Amel’s approach to the planet.

It was a mystery, and what also haunted me was something that the Parents had said during our final orientation—that if we did not fulfill the purpose they would find some other way to reduce the planet to its primal purity.

That shook me to the root, because now an immense desire was born in me—not merely to save myself and Welf and Garekyn and Derek, and Amel, the Great One, Amel—but to save the planet! I spent hours on the balcony or terrace of our apartment home gazing up at the bright “star” that was Bravenna, wondering how this planet Earth could defend itself from such interference. Were these thoughts the result of my mammalian makeup? Was my anger really bred into me? I didn’t know.

Derek was beside himself. He made the rounds of the Meditation Centers nearest to us, listening, singing with the others, reciting the statement as to what is evil—that which diminishes life, destroys life—and, coming home, he would say that he could scarcely bear the sight of innocent Earth people everywhere going about their lives in the paradise of Atalantaya without the slightest knowledge that their world was perhaps about to end.

Finally, after much discussion and eventual agreement amongst ourselves, we went again to the Creative Tower to see Amel.

VI

He received us cordially just as he said that he would, though he had to dismiss a meeting of what we would call scientific researchers in order to see us alone.

“We want to work for you,” I told him. “We want to do all that we can to promote the good of life on this planet. We have conceived of ourselves as the People of a New Purpose and that purpose is never to do anything that harms life.”

“I’m pleased,” he said, “and this is what I have been expecting. Tonight, we’ll feast here and I’ll invite the other Replimoids to meet you.”