“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 that this would make him the cruel “headman” that he had never wanted to be.