Abby, of course, had been performing one of those deliberate exaggerations so fundamental to human humor. There was nothing dark and dreadful about Chester's claim to have been a samurai; indeed, there was nothing even mysterious about it, once he had explained that the samurai of the Japanese Islands, contrary to my friends' presuppositions, were not exclusively a warrior caste. "Not in my day, anyway," he said with a wry grin. "For some reason, the Tokugawa didn't much like the idea of masterless swordsmen wandering the roads of Japan. My foster father and I spent most of our time in a little office in Nagasaki, making sure that the Chinese silk dealers had all their papers in order."
"Sounds thrilling," said Richard dryly. "I wonder why Kurosawa never made a movie about you."
Chester shrugged. "Short-sightedness, no doubt," he said. "To be honest, I always thought Kurosawa a little overrated. Ozu, now there was a filmmaker for you."
"You think?" said Abby, making a face. "The Tokyo Story guy? I watched that once, with Grandma, so I could read the subtitles to her; she thought it was the most wonderful thing, but I couldn't see…"
"I want to hear more about Cassie and Jake," said Elly.
She spoke softly, but there was that in her tone that made it impossible to ignore. This was unusual for Elly, who is typically of a shy and self-effacing disposition; still, she is Prince Josh's sister, and is quite capable of being as firm as he when a matter affects her deeply.
Prince Josh's eyes flitted momentarily toward her, and then back to Chester. "Yes, I think we all do," he said. "It's all very well to give us this news, and you're right that it was worth interrupting our film night for, but we are going to need more information before we can… What?"
For Chester had raised one metal paw, and was shaking his cynoid head. "You don't understand, Josh," he said. "The Cassie thing is just background material. I haven't told you the really ominous part yet."
Prince Josh stared at him – as, I am sure, did all the rest of us. "Do you mean to tell me," he said, with a small laugh of incredulity, "that there is something more ominous going on on the other side of the country than a girl knowing how Elfangor spent his last hours? Just how much trouble has your friend Erek been getting up to out there?"
"I'm serious, Josh," said Chester. "Cassie Freeman doesn't know what happened in this world, only what happened in that other one. Even if the Yeerks get hold of her, all they'll learn is that it's possible for humans to do what your Morph Force does; they won't be any closer to knowing that you're actually doing it, let alone who, specifically, you are. Whereas this other thing… well, if I'm any guesser, it could make you look back with nostalgia on the days when all you had to worry about was the total enslavement of your species."
Prince Josh was silent, at that, for a long moment. "I see," he said at length. "And what is this delightful other thing, exactly?"
"Ah," said Chester. "Well, that gets us back to Erek. You see, the only thing Cassie had told Jake that seemed as though it might be useful was that a certain friend of a friend of theirs, by name Erek King, was not really human, but an umpty-thousand-year-old android invented by pacifist dog-aliens. So Jake looked him up, gave him a call, and indicated – with admirable subtlety, by the way – that he would like to speak to someone who had helped build the Pyramids, and would be available at the corner of Such-and-Such and So-and-So at noon the next day."
«And Erek went?» I said, surprised. «Did he not suspect a Yeerk threat?»
Chester cocked his head. "Such as?"
«Well…» Upon consideration, I had to concede that there was very little with which a Yeerk could threaten a Chee. «Perhaps not, then. And so he went?»
"He went," said Chester, "and he got Jake's bona-fides, and revealed himself to him, and heard this whole story I've just told you. Then they had a long talk that isn't currently important, and at the end of it Erek left to go do something that is: namely, take a look at this construction site where Cassie thought Elfangor had landed, to see if he could actually find any traces of Andalite activity there."
"Aha," said Prince Josh. "And what happened at the construction site?"
"That's the interesting part," said Chester. "He doesn't know."
Prince Josh blinked. "What do you mean?" he said. "He has amnesia? Someone wiped his memory banks, or something?"
"Oh, no," said Chester. "He remembers going to the construction site, all right. He remembers examining the soil for traces of thruster-burn marks, and the rusty metal for abnormal electric behavior – neither of which he found, by the way. He even remembers little details, such as the young tree that was growing out of one of the rubble piles, or the mouse that had crawled into one of the discarded beer bottles and drunk itself to death. To all appearances, his memory of the event is entirely intact – except it isn't, because, every time he retrieves it, he has to dismiss a notification that this datum configuration has been modified by Oubliette Protocol Adamantine."
"By which what who?" said Abby.
Chester sighed. "See, this is where the story gets a little awkward," he said. "I told you guys when we first met that we Chee were originally designed to be toys, and that's true enough as far as it goes, but it has implications that might not have occurred to you."
"You don't say," Richard muttered.
Prince Josh and I both shot warning glances at him. Richard has always had a certain distaste for Chester, and for the Chee generally; his reading of futuristic human romances led him, as I believe, to have certain expectations for a race of supremely sophisticated androids, and he seems to regard the Chee's consistent frustration of these as personally offensive. One of the ways he has sometimes expressed this is by insinuating that Chester is not, in fact, depicting his race honestly or forthrightly – that he has been glossing over certain crucial details about them, which, if known to us, would cause us to regard them in a quite different and much less positive light. Since Chester is far less defensive of his honor than an Andalite would be, this has rarely caused any serious conflict; still, the potential is there, and it should surely have been obvious to Richard that a briefing on events of such gravity was not the occasion to risk it.
Fortunately, Chester ignored the insinuation, if he noticed it at all. "Oh, but I do," he said. "Think about what our makers did. They constructed a line of hologram-equipped androids with a level of emotional and cognitive complexity rivaling their own, plus essentially unlimited lifespans and learning capacities – and then they used us as the next generation of interactive playthings. Now, I think we can all agree that there's not much use in a Chatty Cathy doll that's gotten jaded and cynical with the passing of the centuries…"
"Jaded and cynical?" Abby repeated. "On the Pemalite world?"
"It did happen, now and then," said Chester. "In particular, it happened to doctors, who seem to be the same everywhere. So our inventor created a thing called Oubliette Protocol Adamantine, which was simply a special routing program that would automatically redirect all data of a given category to a sealed memory file. If she, or any other master Chee-wright, determined that a certain kind of information was counter-productive of our function, all she had to do was classify it under the Protocol, and we would be perpetually incapable of retaining any conscious knowledge of the subject."
«Oh,» I said, enlightened. «So that's why there are no healer Chee.»
"You remember that, do you?" said Chester with a chuckle. "Yes, medical knowledge – or, more precisely, the concrete experience that would give such knowledge meaning – was the first thing Nar Sebdi buried in the Oubliette. If one of you had an open wound or a running sore, I could look straight at you for three hours and still have no more idea of what such a thing looks like than if I'd sat at home and read the Boy Scout handbook. You can see why we're not much use for anything beyond psychological reassurance and maybe a few leeches."
"So is that what happened at the construction site, then?" said Prince Josh. "One of the local vagrants had been knifed or something, and Erek's programming wouldn't let him know about it?"
"Oh, no," said Chester. "If that had been all, there wouldn't be any mystery. It's just the immediate sense impressions of blood and guts that we're unable to retain; the basic fact of an injured life-form registers with us as readily as any other. But Erek's lost the abstract content of the information itself – which implies that there was something else at the construction site that afternoon: something that our masters thought more terrible, and less seemly for their Chee to know about, than any injury, disease, or death."
The silence that followed these words continued until it grew oppressive, and at length I found it necessary to break it myself – if thought-speak may be said to break silence, that is. «Have you and your fellows any notion what such a thing may be, Chester?» I said.
Chester held out his metal paw, and waggled it back and forth in the human gesture of uncertainty. "Depends what you mean by a notion," he said. "Obviously, we can't know specifics, or even generalities; if we did, then Erek would, and again there wouldn't be a mystery. But there are inferences we can make. Certain places where our memories don't entirely explain themselves: events that seem to have no cause, phrases our masters used that don't seem to be connected to anything – that kind of thing. The Chee-net's been buzzing with speculations about this for the past few hours, and we think we can explain all the anomalous data by positing three subjects that were totally buried in the Oubliette Protocol this way."
"And what are those three?" said Prince Josh.
"First," said Chester, holding up one clawed finger, "that there was some sort of temple on the homeworld dedicated to a god called the Azure One. That may be connected to the medical thing; Chee-elman remembers one of our masters, when he told her that the Howlers' plagues were incurable, saying that 'the heart of the Azure One is surely hidden'. So maybe he was some sort of god of healing, and things happened or were said in his temple that it wasn't appropriate to tell little androids about."
Prince Josh nodded. "Okay, that's number one," he said. "What's number two?"
"The word ivvi-sapmer," said Chester. "It just means nonsense or deliberate stupidity, but there doesn't seem to be any good etymological reason why our masters should have called a nonsense joke a 'sapmerism'. Combine that with the fact that some of your race's philosophic literature seems to fall under the Oubliette Protocol – Chee-nallu mentioned the story 'Blue Tigers', by Jorge Luis Borges – and it seems reasonable to conclude that there was someone named Sapmer, back in our masters' barbaric ages, who proposed some nonsensical philosophy with enough prima facie plausibility to be a danger to us. Sort of like your Sophists, only more so."
"And number three?"
"Ah," said Chester. "Now we're getting down to it. We're pretty sure this is the one Erek saw; he certainly didn't see the temple of the Azure One, and it's not very likely that Sapmer had come back from the dead and was preaching irrationalism in an Earthly construction site. But this third one – well, again, it's just a word to us, but it sounds like the name of a whole race. If so, it's not impossible for there to have been a member of that race at that construction site at the same time Erek was – maybe even for the same reason. And any race," said Chester softly, "that our masters feared and abhorred enough to forbid the very memory of it… well, I've got to believe it's bad news for Earth to have them visit."
"What's the word?" said Prince Josh.
"'Qualls'," said Chester.
There was a strangled gasp from the far end of the room, and all of our gazes turned sharply toward Elly. She was definitely trembling now, and her pallor seemed to have increased even further; she was, in the human phrase (which seemed to me, for the first time, to perhaps be something other than mere hyperbole), "as white as a sheet".
"Elly?" said Prince Josh slowly. "Something wrong?"
Elly raised her hand with a small shake of her head, and took a deep breath. "Chester," she said, her voice small and unsteady, yet firm, "is there any way that the Oubliette Protocol can be overridden?"
"Not anymore," said Chester. "As I said, only master Chee-wrights had the authority to modify it, and there aren't any of those left."
"Couldn't someone learn to be one?" said Elly. "The knowledge must still exist in you; you've talked enough times about fixing and updating yourselves. If you shared it with one of us…"
Chester smiled indulgently. "You don't understand, Elly," he said. "It's not just a question of knowledge. Our masters worked on a guild system, the way your people did back when they were vaguely civilized; a master Chee-wright was one who not merely knew the information, but had met the requirements of the guild and been initiated into its secrets. And one of the requirements of that particular guild, I'm afraid, was that you had to be a Pemalite; our masters never felt confident that aliens would use their android-craft wisely. So you see, even if we wanted to reinstate the…"
He trailed off, and his jaw hung open. Nor was he the only one; all of us, in our varying ways, were reacting with shock as we watched Elly. As soon as Chester had said the word "Pemalite", she had begun to morph; her skin became covered with heavy tan fur, her delicate, five-fingered hands contracted into short, clawed paws, and her face lengthened outward into a near-perfect fleshly replica of Chester's own. It was impossible, of course – the Pemalites had been extinct for millennia, and no-one can acquire the dead – but, impossible or no, she was unmistakably doing it.
In a matter of seconds, she had completed the morph, and a child of a vanished race sat before us in the light of day, incongruously arrayed in the artificial skins of a young human female. She cocked her head and smiled, showing a mouthful of sharp yet somehow innocuous teeth. «Well, Chester?» she said in thought-speak. «Will this do?»
Chester fell to his knees with a heavy thud, and the shimmer of his hologram around us momentarily flickered (causing Prince Josh to frown briefly in alarm). "Mistress," he stammered. "My own true lady, my long-lost joy… command me, I am your Chee… but… how?"
"Just what I'd like to know," said Abby. "Evidently I've forgotten one of our more interesting missions – or else my little sister-in-law-to-be has been having some outré adventures while I've been busy with theater practice or something."
Elly ducked her head shyly. «Um, yeah,» she said. «Yeah, I guess I have some explaining to do, don't I?»
"If you want the judgment of your older brother and commanding officer," said Prince Josh, "I'd say you have a lot of explaining to do. Abby, how'd you like to go ask your grandmother for permission to go out somewhere tonight? I think the situation just got too sensitive for this house."