I tried to answer her. But suddenly, without the slightest warning I felt a dreadful pain in the back of my neck. It grew so intense that I cried out and went down on my knees. I heard Rose scream. David fell to his knees with his hands to his head. I looked up at Fareed. Fareed was feeling nothing. Louis was right next to him and Louis was feeling nothing.

“Enough!” I shouted. And it was gone, just like that. No pain.

I looked around me as I rose to my feet. Everyone—but Gremt, Fareed, and Louis—was recovering more or less from the pain. I didn’t have to ask whether Teskhamen or Seth had felt it. There was blood in Teskhamen’s eyes and Seth was still holding his head with both hands, his eyebrows knitted, as if he was straining to remember just what he’d felt.

“Well, this is extremely helpful,” said Fareed. “Because I didn’t feel a thing.”

Amel was still making himself known to me, but in the gentlest way.

“And what do you think, Amel?” I asked aloud so all could hear me. “Do you think this experiment will work?”

“You won’t die and I won’t die if your heart stops,” Amel answered. “Do it for the same amount of time that Fareed did it. No more.”

I sat down on the couch, still numb from the pain. Gremt sat beside me but said nothing.

Amel spoke. “I told you I could not go into Louis, did I not? And now I tell you, I cannot go into Fareed.”

I looked up at Fareed, and then to Louis. “Well, you two will survive, whatever happens,” I said. I wanted to weep with relief. “Look, we have to go ahead with this. But you do keep mixing up the matter of my heart and your individual hearts. Fledglings may die when my heart is stopped. Everybody but—. I’m sorry, I can’t keep it straight.”

Fareed and Seth were looking at one another. Something was wrong.

Suddenly Amel spoke to me softly as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear, but of course most of them could hear. “Do it,” said Amel. “Nobody will die. You won’t die because I’m inside you, and I and your body will simply be waiting for your heart to be restarted, that’s all. And they won’t die, all the others, because they are safe and intact and they will likely be disconnected almost at once.”

“At once?”

“Exactly,” said Fareed. “Amel is correct, don’t you see? Go back to when the Mother was killed. You all suffered. But if Amel had not been rescued and transferred within seconds, the connection would have broken. And likely none of you would have died. Akasha alone would have died. And Amel would have been—.”

“Released,” said Seth.