an incalculable wealth of information, and quick of tongue with an intellect devoted to 
swiftness, synthesis, probabilities, and all this against the backdrop of horrid 
experiences, wars, massacres, the worst perhaps the world has ever seen.
  "It all happened," you said. "And I did meet with Mekare and Maharet, the ancient ones, 
and you needn't fear for me that I don't know how fragile is the root. It was kind of you 
to think so protectively of me."
  I was quietly charmed.
  "What did you think of this Holy Veil yourself?" I asked.
  "Our Lady of Fatima," you said softly. "The Shroud of Turin, a cripple rising from the 
Miraculous Waters of Lourdes! What a consolation it must be to accept such a thing so 
easily."
  "And you did not?"
  You shook your head. "And neither did Lestat, really. It was the mortal girl, Dora, 
snatching the Veil from him, who took it out into the world. But it was a most singular 
and meticulously made thing, I'll tell you that, more worthy of the word 'relic' perhaps 
than any other I've ever seen."
  You sounded dejected suddenly.
  "Some immense intent went into its making," you said.
  "And the vampire Armand, the delicate boylike Armand, he believed it?" I asked. "Armand 
looked at it and saw the face of Christ," I said, seeking your confirmation.
  "Enough to die for it," you said solemnly. "Enough to open his arms to the morning sun."
  You looked away, and you closed your eyes. This was a simple unadorned plea to me not 
to make you speak of Armand and how he had gone into the morning fire.
  I gave a sigh - surprised and gently fascinated to find you so articulate, skeptical, 
yet so sharply and frankly connected to the others.
  You said in a shaken voice, "Armand." And still looking away from me. "What a Requiem. 
And does he know now if Memnoch was real, if God Incarnate who tempted Lestat was in fact 
the Son of the God Almighty? Does anyone'?"
  I was taken with your earnestness, your passion. You were not jaded or cynical. There 
was an immediacy to your feelings for these happenings, these creatures, these questions 
you posed,
  "They locked up the Veil, you know," you said. "It's in the Vatican. There were two 
weeks of frenzy on Fifth Avenue in St. Patrick's Cathedral in which people came to look 
into the eyes of The Lord, and then they had it, gone, taken to their vaults. I doubt 
there is a nation on the Earth with the power to gain even a glimpse of it now."
  "And Lestat," I said. "Where is he now?"
  "Paralyzed, silent," you said. "Lestat lies on the floor of a chapel in New Orleans. He 
doesn't move. He says nothing. His Mother has come to him. You knew her, Gabrielle, he 
made a vampire of her."
  "Yes, I remember her."
  "Even she draws no response from him. Whatever he saw, in his journey to Heaven and 
Hell, he doesn't know the truth of it one way or the other - he tried to tell this to 
Dora! And eventually, after I'd written down the whole story for him, he passed within a 
few nights into this state.
  "His eyes are fixed and his body pliant. They made a curious Pieta, he and Gabrielle, 
in this abandoned convent and its chapel. His mind is dosed, or worse - it's empty."
  I found I liked very much your manner of speaking. In fact, I was taken off guard.
  "I left Lestat because he was beyond my help and my reach," you said. "And I must know 
if there are old ones who want to put an end to me; I must make my pilgrimages and my 
progresses to know the dangers of this world to which I've been admitted."
  "You're so forthright. You have no cunning."
  "On the contrary, I conceal my keenest assets from you." You gave me a slow, polite 
smile. "Your beauty rather confuses me. Are you used to this?"
  "Quite," I said. "And weary of it. Come beyond it. Let me just warn, there are old 
ones, ones no one knows or can explain. It's rumored you've been with Maharet and Mekare, 
who are now the E1dest and the Fount from which we all spring. Obviously they've drawn 
back from us, from all the world, into some secret place, and have no taste for 
authority."
  "You're so very correct," you said, "and my audience with them was beautiful but brief. 
They don't want to rule over anyone, nor will Maharet, as long as the history of the 
world and her own physical descendants are in it - her own thousands of human descendants 
from a time so ancient there is no date for it - Maharet will never destroy herself and 
her sister, thereby destroying all of us."
  "Yes," I said, "in that she believes, the Great Family, the generations she has traced 
for thousands of years. I saw her when we all gathered. She doesn't see us as evil - you, 
or me, or Lestat - she thinks that we're natural, rather like volcanoes or fires that 
rage through forests, or bolts of lightning that strike a man dead."
  "Precisely," you said. "There is no Queen of the Damned now. I fear only one other 
immortal, and that's your lover, Marius. Because it was Marius who laid down the strict 
rule before he left the others that no more blood drinkers could be made. I'm baseborn in 
the mind of Marius. That is, were he an Englishman, those would be his words."
  I shook my head. "I can't believe he would harm you. Hasn't he come to Lestat'? Did he 
not come to see the Veil with his own eyes?"
  You said No to both questions.
  "Heed this advice: whenever you sense his presence, talk to him. Talk to him as you 
have to me. Begin a conversation which he won't have the confidence to bring to a dose."
  You smiled again. "That's such a clever way of putting it," you said.
  "But I don't think you have to fear him. If he wanted you gone off the Earth, you'd be 
gone. What we have to fear is the same things humans fear - that there are others of our 
same species, of varying power and belief, and we are never entirely sure where they are 
or what they do. That's my advice to you."
  "You are so kind to take your time with me," you said.
  I could have wept. "On the contrary. You don't know the silence and solitude in which I 
wander, and pray you never know it, and here you've given me heat without death, you've 
given me nourishment without blood. I'm glad you've come."
  I saw you look up at the sky, the habit of the young ones.
  "I know, we have to part now."
  You turned to me suddenly. "Meet me tomorrow night," you said imploringly. "Let this 
exchange continue! I'll come to you in the cafe where you sit every night musing. I'll 
find you. Let us talk to each other."
  "So you've seen me there."
  "Oh, often," you said. "Yes." You looked away again. I saw it was to conceal feeling. 
Then your dark eyes turned back to me.
  "Pandora, we have the world, don't we'?" you whispered.
  "I don't know, David. But I'll meet you tomorrow night. Why haven't you come to me 
there? Where it was warm and lighted?"
  "It seemed a far more outrageous intrusion, to move in on you in the sanctified privacy 
of a crowded cafe. People go to such places to be alone, don't they? This seemed somehow 
more proper. And I did not mean to be the voyeur. Like many fledglings, I have to feed 
every night. It was an accident that we saw each other at that moment."