"What… how did we get here?" I said.
We are not here, said the Ellimist. I am where I have been for a hundred magnennia, and you are still in your counterpart's bedroom. This is merely a projection, imposed upon your senses so that you may observe the various futures that may await you.
I had to take his word for it; it was his idea, after all. But it sure looked to me like the two of us were standing in the middle of a tropical swamp, and it took all my credulity to believe otherwise.
Actually, it wasn't quite a swamp. The part I was standing on felt pretty solid, and there was long grass and stuff growing on it. But the Ellimist – or his Lapkin-shaped projection – was sitting right on top of the murky water, with little blue fish swimming around beneath his paws. I was pretty sure he was just showing off, and I tried to keep my eyes from bugging out, but I'm not sure I succeeded.
I looked around to see if I could figure out what continent we were on. The local plants didn't help me much (botany's not one of my best subjects), but then I saw some fish in the river that I thought I recognized from one of our first missions.
"Are those piranhas?" I said.
The Ellimist nodded.
"Then this is South America?"
This is the Pantanal, said the Ellimist.
"The what?"
An immense lowland area surrounding the Paraguay River and several of its tributaries, said the Ellimist. At present, it varies seasonally between drought and flooding, but in this future, due to a slight change in the Earth's climate, it is an island-studded marshland all the year round.
"Global warming, you mean," I said, wondering whether Al Gore had ever expected to be vindicated by a super-powered alien.
No, said the Ellimist. It had nothing to do with carbon-dioxide emissions or Malenkovich cycles. My co-racialists and I altered the atmosphere directly.
I blinked. "You did? Why?"
Instead of answering, the Ellimist gestured with a paw towards the water. It looked like he was pointing at the piranhas; they'd found something at the bottom of the river, and they were all clustering around it and doing their skeletonize-a-cow-in-five-minutes thing. I leaned forward, being careful not to fall in (which was pretty stupid, since I wasn't really there, but, like I said, that was hard to remember), and tried to see if I could figure out what it was they were eating.
It was big, whatever it was. There must have been at least six dozen piranhas down there, but they still couldn't cover it entirely; I saw a little bit of green tail poking out, for instance, and one of the scaly, three-toed foot was just visible. At first, I thought it might be a crocodile of some kind – but then the piranhas finished with the head and swam a little ways downwards, and I got a clear view of the three horns and the long, toothy beak.
I felt suddenly sick to my stomach. I suppose I've seen hundreds of dead Hork-Bajir in my life, but I don't think I'll ever really get used to it – and there was something especially horrible about the way the piranhas were feeding on this one. I mean, I know that there have to be scavengers in the world, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
The bed of the Paraguay is littered with such corpses, said the Ellimist, for all the world as though he was narrating a nature special. They are the remains of those Controllers who, having subjugated all the other peoples of Earth, attempted to claim the Pantanal as well. They would likely have succeeded, if the inhospitable terrain and the continual rains had not impeded their efforts; as it was, the few hundred humans dwelling on these small islands managed to fend off their attackers, and the Visserarchy has never thought it worthwhile to offer them a second challenge.
He turned and gave me a meaningful look, but I hadn't quite recovered from seeing the Hork-Bajir skull yet, and it took me a few seconds to get it. When I did, I felt a shiver go down my spine. "You mean… it's a preserve? You and the other Ellimists tweaked the weather to make the Yeerks lose, so that… so that there would still be free humans somewhere?"
It was all that we could do, said the Ellimist. I cannot, of course, tell you the details – that would compromise your freedom of action, should you choose to remain in this universe – but what you are seeing is the result of Crayak's deft use of you, at certain key moments, to demoralize the Earthly resistance.
"Oh," I said quietly.
The Ellimist didn't say anything; he just stared at me with those big, green eyes of Lapkin's, and, for a minute or two, the only sound was the noise of the piranhas munching on the dead Hork-Bajir. Then even that stopped; the piranhas ran out of meat and swam away, leaving just these pale Hork-Bajir bones gleaming up out of the water at me. It made me uncomfortable to look at it, and I raised my head and stared vaguely down the shore of the island.
I swear the Ellimist was waiting for me to do that. The instant I looked up, the grass rustled, and a girl about my age came down to the riverside and started filling a small urn with water.
She was a few inches taller than I was, but I doubt she was any heavier; her rough, brown wrap hung loose on her body, and her arms were so thin I could almost see the bone. Except for that, she looked basically like an ordinary Hispanic girl, except that her skin was maybe a little darker than most of the Hispanics I see in America. I was trying to remember if Paraguay was close enough to the Equator that that made sense, when for some reason the girl turned and looked up at me.
Yeah, I know: she wasn't looking at me, because I wasn't there; she was looking up at the sky, or at the next island to the west, or just staring off into space the way we all do sometimes. But the point is that her eyes met mine.
I'd never seen human eyes look like that before. Even in the Yeerk pool, which I'd always thought of as the ultimate in dehumanization, there's always been that little gleam of hope that keeps the hosts screaming pointlessly at the guards. This girl didn't have that. She was more alive than most of the Controllers I've seen, but it was life the way a ground squirrel is alive: huddling out of sight as much as you can, always being afraid that something bigger and more powerful is going to get you – and not minding. That was the horrible thing. This girl was living like a mouse waiting for the hawk, and I don't think it ever crossed her mind that she could live any other way.
I wondered, later on, how long before that scene the Yeerk attack on the Pantanal had taken place – whether the girl had actually been conceived and born in that animal fear. I wondered whether the Ellimist actually knew that much about the cosmos and all its creatures, if he thought that this was any way to preserve humanity. I wondered what the matter was with the Yeerks, that they felt like they had to do this sort of thing to other races. I wondered why I had been born.
At the time, though, I didn't bother to wonder about anything. I just let out a little moan, turned to the Ellimist, and said, "Can we go somewhere else now, please?"
No, said the Ellimist, with the faintest touch of amusement in his tone. But I can project you into a different possible future – though I warn you that you may not like it any better.
I waved a hand. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just do it."
And, just like that, he did.
