“Break your heart!” cried Maxym. He came close again and then did something that struck me as most unwise. He came up behind the couch and leaned over Amel menacingly. But Amel did not respond. Now, had any being come this close to me, and leaned over me in this manner, I would have moved away. But Amel sat there, staring off, as if this were nothing threatening to him and only barely interesting. “What heart do you have to break?” Maxym asked. “What are you but a Replimoid, the same as I? You have no heart. And you have no soul.”

So there it was, the distinction that Derek had alluded to when we had gathered here before—the obvious question perhaps as to whether a thing developed and bred on Bravenna could have an “I” to it, a “me” to it that was as authentic as the “I” or “me” of human beings.

Suddenly Amel stood and faced Maxym. “I was born on this planet,” he said. “I was born on this planet!” he repeated, slightly raising his voice. The red flared in his cheeks. “I am of this planet, and you forget that, and I tell you anything that is sentient, self-conscious, possessing a sense of fairness, a sense of right and wrong, has a soul. You have a soul! These beings here, Kapetria and Welf and Garekyn, and Derek—they have souls.”

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.