Disclaimer: Me Qoheleth. She Applegate. She own Animorphs. Me no own Animorphs.
My name is Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill.
To a human, that probably does not sound like a name at all. Humans have many different kinds of names, but none like Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. I am aware of this, but it is nonetheless my name – because I am not a human.
I am an Andalite. I am the only Andalite on Earth, unless you count War-Prince Alloran-Semitur-Corrass. And it is difficult to count him, because he is no longer his own Andalite, but the host of Visser Three.
Visser Three is a Yeerk. He is not the only Yeerk on Earth, though it would be well for Earth if he was, for the Yeerks do not have Earth's best interest at heart. They are a vile race of parasitic worms, who exist only to control and enslave other races.
They have conquered the Gedds and the Hork-Bajir. They have persuaded the Taxxons to surrender themselves to them. They have for some time been slowly infiltrating the human race, attempting to corrupt it from within.
And, this morning, it became clear that they have moved against another species.
You see, this morning I and four of the young humans who fight the Yeerks with me moved against Visser Three in his feeding place. Since he infests an Andalite, he must eat as we do, and when he eats, he is vulnerable.
It was supposed to be a simple assassination. But we were prevented by the Visser's personal guard – and by something else. A small, Andalite-like creature that could move almost faster than thought.
It was a Yeerk. A candidate for the Yeerks' all-powerful Council of Thirteen, in fact. It described its host body as the newest of the Yeerks' host species. And it gave it a name.
Garatron.
My human friends did not know what that meant, of course. They noticed that the creature looked very like an Andalite, but they did not worry very much about it. What concerned them was whether we could use the Council candidate to discredit Visser Three in the eyes of the Yeerk Empire – and, if so, whom we should choose to lead that mission, since our usual leader was not with us.
These things concerned me as well, of course. They did not, however, concern me nearly so much as the sight of that Garatron-Controller.
For thousands of years, Andalite parents had been urging their children to study the sciences «because we must be ready when the Garatrons return». Well, now the Garatrons had returned – and they were under the control of the Yeerks.
If the Yeerks could conquer the Garatrons – the Misborn – the bogeymen that had haunted Andalite nightmares for millennia…
Well, suffice it to say that I was disturbed. Disturbed enough, that evening, to forget the words to a ritual that I had performed a thousand times.
«From the rising of the sun to the setting, to its rising again,» I said, «I place what is sweet to… no, I place what is hard to remember with what is… no…»
«We place what is hard to endure with what is sweet to remember,» said a voice. I turned an eyestalk, and saw my friend Tobias alighting on a branch behind me.
«Ah, yes,» I said. «Thank you, Tobias. We place what is hard to endure with what is sweet to remember, and we find peace.»
«Amen,» said Tobias.
The two of us stood for a moment in silence, watching the last rays of Earth's sun sink below the horizon. Then Tobias spoke.
«So, Ax,» he said, «what's the deal with these Garatrons?»
I froze. «I beg your pardon?»
«Come on, Ax-man,» said Tobias. «Maybe you can fool the others, but you can't fool me. When Marco asked if there was a relationship between Garatrons and Andalites, that wasn't offense I saw on your face; that was terror.»
«Terror?» I said, attempting to laugh. «Why should I be terrified of the Garatrons?»
«I don't know,» said Tobias. «Why don't you tell me?»
He stared at me, and I felt myself begin to weaken. Tobias is what we Andalites call a nothlit: one who has spent more than two hours in the form of another species, and can no longer return to his natural form. In his case, the species is a kind of Earthly bird known as a red-tailed hawk – and one of the characteristics of red-tailed hawks is that their eyes are more penetrating than the eyes of nearly any other animal I know of. When a red-tailed hawk stares at you, you must be a much stronger person than I am to preserve your equanimity.
«Very well,» I said after sixteen seconds had elapsed. «I will tell you.»
And I told him everything I knew about the Garatrons. But then something unusual happened: after a while, I began to tell him things about the Garatrons that I did not know – that no Andalite, perhaps, had ever learned before.
How I came by this knowledge, I do not know. But I have set it down here, all the same, in hopes that someday some Andalite, or perhaps some human, will find it and learn from it, and be a little wiser for it in the end.
I have not, of course, set it down in the order that I told it to Tobias. To him it came out piece by piece, in response to a question he asked, or as an afterthought comment related to something else I had said. Here I have told it in the order that it happened – beginning in the Andalite year -15.7, as an Andalite scientist was performing a breakthrough experiment.