6. Four Embraces

"What is it that the child has to teach?

The child naively believes that everything should be fair and everyone should be honest, that only good should prevail, that everybody should have what they want and there should be no pain or sadness. The child believes the world should be perfect and is outraged to discover it is not.

And the child is right."

— Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

Paloma López and Buzo

Lulú started barking, which was no reason to stop what I was doing, until I heard the sound of not one but two cars crunching the gravel outside the house, which was when I set aside my broom and stepped out into the courtyard. Lulú was still barking her head off, and Nahualli was up on her feet, ears pricked. Buzo buzzed from my arm to Nahualli's ear and said, "Were we expecting company today?"

Nahualli flicked the ear Buzo wasn't perched on. "If we were, you would know better than me, my love."

"Tourists, then?"

"It's the off-season!"

"You're no help at all," Buzo huffed, and flew up to the bougainvillea draping the walls of the courtyard, for all the world as if he were a real bumblebee.

I don't know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn't a Black man and an Asian woman with dog dæmons carefully pushing a mestizo boy and a white boy in wheelchairs up to the courtyard gate. I opened the gate and said carefully, "My English is no good. Can I help you?"

The Black man with the coyote dæmon said in fluent Mexican-accented Spanish, "I don't think your English is so bad. But that won't be a problem, señora. Do I have the pleasure of speaking to Doña Paloma López and Buzo?"

Buzo flew like an arrow back to the crook of my elbow. Nahualli came up behind me to stare at the strangers. It does make an impression on people when you have a cheetah dæmon by your side. I said cautiously, "Yes, I am the doña."

"I am Luis Javier Turner and Zefirita," the man said. "We have some important news about your family. May we come in?"

Every muscle in my body clenched at once. We had gotten the call six months ago from one of Eva's college friends. Peter and Marco have gone missing, she said. Are they with you in Mexico? We checked the news online regularly to see if there were any new developments on the missing persons case. The numbing grief of losing even more of our family had already set in.

"Genaro!" Nahualli yowled. "Bring out the tea things! We have visitors!"

In the end, we had enough visitors to fill both the outer and inner courtyards, and I had to unfold the umbrellas to shade the children and their caretakers in the outer courtyard where the sun slanted in. My eyes nearly fell out of my head when I saw the caretakers lift the wheelchairs and their occupants up the step into the courtyard as if they weighed nothing. Genaro brought out enough chamomile tea for everyone, though only the children drank. The caretakers just helped the children with the tea as needed, and played delightedly with Lulú, who was in a high temper with all the exciting new visitors. We had a round of introductions, of which I forgot almost everything except Señor Turner, who I would have sworn to my mother was as Mexican as mole. "Don and Doña López," he said. "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your hospitality."

He looked around significantly to the children, who chorused in Spanish, "Thank you, Don and Doña López!"

Zefirita wagged her tail in satisfaction. I smiled, but I reached out nervously for Genaro's hand. On my shoulder, near my ear, Buzo murmured a prayer. He knew, as he so often did, that this was a turning point in our lives. A moment when everything would change, like the day we received that terrible phone call from our son-in-law.

Again, I don't know what I was expecting. But it wasn't for the four strange adults in our home to suddenly turn into robots.

Genaro gasped and yelled some words I would normally have scolded him for saying. Nahualli growled like an engine starting. Lulú barked fit to burst her little lungs. I crushed Genaro's hand in mine, my jaw locked shut as Buzo buzzed in frantic, uncomprehending circles around the robot who had just been Señor Turner and Zefirita. Just as it looked like Nahualli might pounce, the robots turned back into people. I let go of Genaro's hand and shot to my feet. I demanded, "What are you?"

"They're robots from outer space," the mestizo boy with the hedgehog dæmon, Julio, said in excellent Spanish. I realized suddenly that all of the children had been completely calm through this shocking display.

"We have been on Earth for thousands of years," said Señor Turner.

Zefirita looked up at Buzo. "Don Buzo," she said, "you remind me of my years living here under the Mayan Emperors. The people worshipped the Diving God, who was also the god of the bees that made honey for their sweet drinks."

I sat back down slowly. "I know," Buzo said. "That's why I chose this name. We learned about the Diving God at university, and we saw his symbols when we worked on a dig near Chichen Itzá…" Out of the side of my vision, I saw Nahualli sniffing the ground near Señor Turner and Zefirita, as if she might find some scent-clue of their true nature.

"I remember," Señor Turner said. "Back then, I looked like this." In the blink of an eye he became a Mayan woman, bare-chested, wearing a long yellow skirt with a red sash around the waist, a yellow viper dæmon draped across her shoulders. Some of the children giggled at her half-nakedness. I did not. I stared at the skirt.

Genaro murmured in my ear exactly what I was thinking. "There is a skirt like that on display at the National Museum of Anthropology."

The Mayan woman turned back into Señor Turner. I sagged back in my chair. "Why are you here?" I whispered. "Why did you bring these children? What does this have to do with our family?"

"Don and Doña López," Señor Turner said. "I need you to listen to this recording." A tape recorder appeared in his hand out of nowhere. He pressed the play button. And I heard the most impossible thing that had happened that day. I heard my daughter's voice.

"Mami, Papi, it's me, Eva," she said in a voice half-choked with tears. "It is the year 2000. I am not dead. Mami, Papi, I am so, so sorry. Please forgive me. It was not my choice to disappear. I would never, ever have done this to you."

Señor Turner hit the pause button as I wailed into Genaro's arms. He held me close and said to Señor Turner in a tight, raspy voice, "How is this possible?"

The robot who called himself Señor Turner and Zefirita explained to us about the Yeerk Empire. A conquering force from beyond the stars who had come to enslave the minds of all of humanity. Their military leader, Visser One, who had chosen our daughter as her personal slave, and faked her death so she could steal her away to her spaceship. Who Eva had finally killed, but had chosen to go back into the mouth of Hell, with a Yeerk ally in her head, to pretend to be her former slaver. None of this shocked the children either. They merely whispered to each other and accepted help with their tea from their robot attendants as Genaro and I cried and clutched at each other.

"And she didn't…" I gasped out between sobs. Buzo had crawled inside my dress, buzzing comfortingly between my breasts. "She didn't tell us."

"She couldn't," Señor Turner said. "Sending a message to you could have put you at great risk and exposed her cover. We wouldn't have come here at all if our need weren't so great. We, the Chee, and these children are all on the run from the Yeerks. We don't know where else to go for help." He pressed play on the cassette player again.

Eva said, "The Chee, the robots playing this message for you, and the children, are all in great danger. The childrenare in danger because of a decision I made. I owe them a debt. I hope you can help me repay it. The Chee can take care of their physical and medical needs. But you can give them a home."

Eva's quiet resolve helped me see the situation from her perspective, instead of my motherly anguish. I looked around at the children. They looked uncomfortable. I couldn't blame them. They were witness to a very personal family moment. But they also looked hollow-eyed and lost. I didn't need Eva to convince me that it was my duty as a Christian to help them in any way I could.

"What about Marco and Peter?" said Genaro.

"They are also alive," Señor Turner said. I screamed into Genaro's chest and rocked against him. Learning that the family I had lost was not lost after all somehow hurt just as much as losing them in the first place. "Peter and his new wife have recently been moved to an army barracks to hide from the Yeerks. Marco is in hiding in an underground cave."

I had so many more questions. But they could wait. My daughter had made a request from beyond the grave, and I had to honor it. I straightened up to look into my husband's eyes. Buzo buzzed out of my dress to land between Nahualli's ears. "I know you don't like strangers," I began.

Genaro put a finger to my lips. "Shhh. So long as they don't go in our bedroom or the study, I am okay with people staying here. It will give me a new home improvement project, making everything so the wheelchairs can move around."

"But we can't possibly take in all of them," I said.

"Oh, come on," Genaro said. "You know our friends from church would help. Lupe still has her house set up for her son with multiple sclerosis, God keep him. Maria Luna is a nurse, isn't she? And her boyfriend has a donkey dæmon, so she always arranges her house so she can walk around… And of course Lucho and Silvia will help the moment they hear that recording."

"Lucho. Oh, God. We need to get him over here." Eva's older brother would need to know right away.

I let go of Genaro and threw myself at Señor Turner, or whatever he was, with open arms. He felt just like a normal human as I embraced him and kissed his cheeks. "Welcome to Querétaro, Mexico. Robots, children, all of you. And Señor Turner? Genaro and I have so many questions about the Mayan Empire!"

Mertil

I fed next to Estrid in the food patch of the Ralek River and pretended I was singing to myself, even as she pretended to be feeding. It was a song to soothe a frightened civilian, not one I would have ever sung for myself, but then again, Estrid was barely even trying to crush the grass beneath her hooves, so neither of us was putting up more than the flimsiest pretense for her pride. After Gonrod and I had found her, muddy and exhausted and heartsick, in an eerie glowing red pool, we had quickly discovered that this was the only comfort she would accept from either of us, and Gonrod was no djafid singer.

I thought of all the times I had told Gafinilan that I preferred the seclusion of the vecol to the responsibility of the tzeraf and thought, Oh, Gafinilan. If only you could see me now. Singing peace to a girl who only started calling me by name after I lent her a radio.

«I wish to be alone,» Estrid said suddenly. She darted back toward her quarters as if chased.

I called after her, «I will not allow him to attack you again.»

«I do not need your protection,» Estrid sneered, closing her quarters' doors with a snap behind her. I inhaled deeply and decided I needed an Ixilan tzeraf tale to commemorate my patience.

I reached out to the medbay with my thought-speech and spoke to Loren. «You may bring him out to the feeding area now.»

Aximili came in half-leaning on Loren, his stalk eyes swaying with the sedative we had used to calm him after his rampage. I could tell the sedative was wearing off – after a lifetime of assembling custom medkits for myself, I have become a decent field medic. I helped her ease him to a comfortable resting position in the grass. «He will fully wake soon. I imagine you will wish to embrace him. Do not do this, not in the way you humans do with one another. You may know this already, Loren, but for us, a close frontal embrace is a sexual act, and not appropriate with a family member. If he is receptive, it may be proper to press palms with him. To us, the palm is the point of contact for one life-force to meet another.»

"I'm fine with that," Loren said, nervously twisting her fingers round and round her dæmon's horn. "It's just that I don't know what to say in a situation like this."

Under normal military circumstances, I would have told Aximili that he was suspended from duty pending a court-martial. Needless to say, these were not normal circumstances. I said nothing.

Loren chewed on the edges of her mouth with her blunt square teeth. Tobias flew in from the medbay and landed near Aximili. He said, «Where's Estrid?»

«I think it is best if I do not disclose this information,» I said.

Loren stopped her disturbing mouth movements. "Yeah. Yeah. You're right, Mertil. Let's let her be." She sat in the grass next to her taf ratheen, crossing her legs in a way I had seen humans do in children's television programs.

I tucked my legs, too, and knelt down in the grass with enough distance back from Aximili that he could easily raise his tail or run off if he chose to.

With so many people gathering around him, Aximili woke, his spine tense. It relaxed a little when he registered who we were. He did not lift his tail from where it lay in the grass like a dry, fallen vine. «Is Estrid here?» he said in a very small voice.

«No,» I said.

«If you are here to reprimand me for – » Aximili began, but Tobias cut him short.

«No, Ax. We're here for you. No one's going to reprimand you.»

I was most certainly going to reprimand him later, but I could tell that doing so now would not have the desired effect.

«But I – » Aximili protested.

"She made the God-damned virus," Loren said, as her dæmon snorted and tossed his head not unlike an Andalite might. "She doesn't need the lab anymore. None of us want her doing any more of her experiments. If you ask me, you did us all a favor."

I bristled, but I said nothing. Loren had not seen the aftermath with Estrid. She did not yet understand.

«That is not what I meant,» the boy said miserably. «I tried to kill her. I might have, if Illim and Tidwell hadn't stopped me.»

Tobias stared in the way of his Earth bird form. Loren studied him, her face creasing. "Are you going to try to hurt her again?" she said.

«No. I can see now that I hurt her when what I really wanted to hurt was my entire planet. That is not the way I should comport myself.»

"Okay," Loren said. "I believe you."

«Also, if you attempt to attack her again, Gonrod and I will stop you,» I said matter-of-factly, because I was not sure that I believed him.

All of the coiled nervous tension drained out of Aximili, and he looked like nothing more than a lost child. He looked at me plaintively with his main eyes. «Mertil, how do you live like this? Knowing our supposed honor is a lie?»

I had been prepared for this question, after I had learned what Estrid had done. It was one I had faced before. «I believe you have two choices, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. You can reject the code of honor you have been taught as the cover for senseless brutality that it is, and build yourself on some new bedrock. That was my choice. I built myself anew on a code more similar to that of my shorm's people, the Ixilan. You have that choice, as close as you have come to other cultures in this life that you lead. Or you can decide that even if no other Andalite truly believes in the warrior's code of honor, you will be the one who does. The choice is yours.»

Aximili shook his head in a human gesture of denial. «It is too much, Mertil. I cannot – I – » He shook all over, as if cold or ill.

Loren offered her blunt human hand to him, palm up. Aximili rested his palm atop hers, and her hand curled gently around his. Tobias found a few bits of grass and mud in the fur along Aximili's back and groomed them away with his wicked beak, never nicking the skin. I offered a djafid meant to guide the spirit of a warrior burdened by the terrible things he had done.

«You're not the only Andalite to say no to this,» Tobias said. «Aldrea said no to Alloran's quantum virus. Elfangor said no to Alloran when he wanted to kill a Pool of helpless Yeerks.»

«And they could not bear it,» Aximili concluded. «Neither of them could bear to be Andalites anymore. They fled. But I cannot.» His main eyes met mine. He blinked rapidly, ashamed. «No. I can, if I choose to. But I will not. I remain Andalite. I bear the weight of what we — what I —have done.»

Tidwell

When Illim put out the call for volunteers, a dozen Yeerks came to his call. I dropped Kalysico in the Pool to swim among them, reached into the Pool sludge, and cupped my hands around them, one at a time. The first one I picked I found very small, and Kaly breached the surface of the Pool to say, "That's one of the Mielan grubs. Maybe they want to thank us for telling them our story."

I focused on the little Yeerk in my hands, the smooth slime and the palps wriggling curiously into the lines in my palm. I hoped the mud on my hands didn't bother them too much – I'd tried to wipe it off, but there was no getting away from the mud in this place. The Yeerk child went calm and still between my hands for a moment, then I let them go. Another Yeerk came to replace them. I wish I could say I knew just by touch which one was Illim, but I didn't. All of the adult Yeerks felt the same to me.

When no new Yeerks swam into my hands, I focused on the image of a Yeerk in my mind. Cassie had explained to me that if I just pictured a generic Yeerk instead of a specific one, then all the Yeerk DNA I'd acquired would randomly combine to form a new, unique morph. That was easy to do, since I couldn't really tell one Yeerk from another anyway.

"Are you ready, Sai?" I said.

"I am." The SymbiontAI, their plain badge showing they had no Yeerk in their head, projected a twisted little half-smile. "You're lucky, you know. I wish I could join the Pool, too."

I shrugged a little. Sai made me a little uneasy, though they had never been anything but polite and helpful to me. I turned my focus back to the image of the Yeerk in my mind. Then the changes began.

I wanted the changes very much, but they still frightened me. I began to shrink, falling and falling, and it was just as scary as it had been when I'd morphed the hawk, and this time without Illim to comfort me. My arms and legs melted together, and I flopped onto my front in the strange-smelling red-streaked mud. Palps exploded out of the front of my face, long and worm-like, and I would have screamed if my mouth hadn't been melting shut. My organs liquefied and sloshed inside my body, and cold slime filled my eyes and nose and ears.

Then came the desiccation. The air! All along my back! It would dry me to a crisp! I wriggled deeper into the wet mud, trying to get away from the horrible, sucking dryness. Then a huge hand closed around me and pulled me out of the small comfort of the mud. I wriggled and thrashed helplessly in its grip. Then it dropped me into sweet, blessed relief.

The Pool. The Pool. I was home. I relaxed and fired my sonar to find my fellow Yeerks.

They were all around me, young and old, their feel-fields crackling excitement and curiosity. They were talking. Really talking, not like Illim's reconstructions and memories of Yeerkish in my mind. There were so many of them talking at once I couldn't understand any of it. It was nothing like when Kalysico went for a swim in the Pool. Her senses were attuned to a clear, shallow ocean, not a Yeerk Pool, and she couldn't properly see or smell anything. Both of us could take it all in.

I tried to speak. "Hello?" But it came out a harsh mess. The Yeerks around me went quiet when they heard me. I tried again. "Hello?"

"Hello!" said a child, followed by a strange jumble of squeaks I couldn't understand.

I gathered all of my courage. Maybe I wasn't making much sense, but I was their guest, and there were protocols that needed to be followed. "To your shore I have come, Aftran Plisam Pool," I said. "Purify me so I may keep your waters fresh."

I heard the strange jumble of squeaks again, the same one the child had said, then, "Come here." I knew that voice. It was the only voice in my head besides Kalysico that mattered. I swam toward it. Illim stretched himself out, flat as a pancake, and enveloped me. He wrapped himself all around me like a blanket, coating me in his slime. I guess to a human, that would seem pretty gross. But as a Yeerk at that moment, and as someone who loved Illim as much as I did, it felt like a tender embrace. Like I was being welcomed into a new home by someone who had been waiting for me.

Illim let me go. I swam backward a bit so I could fire my sonar and have a good look at him. There was something special about seeing his face and being able to recognize, through Yeerk senses, what made it unique. I repeated the strange jumble of squeaks back to him. "What does it mean?"

His feel-fields purred with amusement. He wasn't the only Yeerk laughing. "That's how we say your name."

"Oh! You came up with a name for me!"

"Of course I did! Julian, come meet Eslin 825 – you know, Firtips. It's not proper for you to be purified just by my slime."

I didn't get the chance to meet as many of Illim's pool-fellows as I would have liked. I'd heard so much about them, and met a few of them riding along with Sai. But I was here for a reason, after all. The time had come for the funeral.

All the Yeerks gathered around a small shape lying on the floor of the Yeerk Pool. Sai had found some plastic wrap on the Ralek River and wrapped up Mielan 71 tightly, so they could return to the Pool for the funeral without contaminating the water. I fired my sonar and saw the slick, impervious texture of the plastic wrapped around the misshapen little body.

"In the Empire Pools," Illim told me quietly, his feel-fields buzzing solemnly, "Gedd-Controllers come and take away corpses for burial in a small Pool for that purpose. They drop a stone or metal token shaped like the Yeerk into the Pool, so we can gather around a symbol of the dead and pay respects."

Eslin 825 swam out from the crowd toward the body. "Back in the Sulp Niar Pool of the homeworld," they said, "there was a special plant called kedsit. Kedsit grew pods it could use to engulf creatures that swam up against it when it was hungry. The Yeerks knew to avoid touching the kedsit, of course. But they also knew it had its purpose. When one of us died, the body would be brought to the kedsit and fed to a pod. That way the Yeerk would not make the Pool sick with their death, but rather nourish the kedsit, which ate the tiny stinging pool-mites that brought pain and suffering to the living. Yeerks could come to the kedsit where their loved ones had been returned to the life cycle of the Pool, and dance around it, and remember.

"We don't have the kedsit anymore. We have lost the natural life-cycle of the Pool. I hope one day we can have it back, or maybe create some new version of it. When we are done here, Sai will bring Mielan 71 to a pool, where the Living Hive will protect it from being eaten by the Taxxons, and they will become part of the life-cycle here. But for now, we can imagine a kedsit growing where this little one lies, and gather around, and remember.

"Who would like to speak first? Akdor's Worst Nightmare? Of course. Come here, AWN."

The caretaker spoke about how Mielan 71 had worked very hard to learn about other species and how to treat them better, and was always willing to admit when they had gotten something wrong. Another grub in the creche, Mielan 182, spoke in a shaky little voice about how Mielan 71 had been their best friend and the nicest person ever. Margoth, a newcomer who had recently come to Aftran Plisam from the Campsite Rule, talked about how Mielan 71 had been so open and curious with the newcomers, wanting to learn all about their lives.

Then Green Sky, one of Illim's friends in the Peace Movement, came forward to speak. "All of you in this Pool who voted for the virus – I hope this death stirs the waters of your conscience. And I hope your guilt spurs you to action. This Andalite scientist cannot be trusted, and our child's death proves it. We cannot let her atrocities play out on an even larger scale. How many more dead children can we tolerate? Not. One. More."

"And how are we supposed to do that, tough guy?" called Filshig Traitor, another Yeerk Illim had introduced me to. "We don't have hosts! We can't do dapsen!"

"There has to be something," Green Sky raged. "We can't just sit here and let this happen! We have to act! Who's with me?"

Feel-fields crackled and zapped all around me. It was a rising tide of fury and excitement. But beside me, Illim's feel-fields went numb and cold. "Let's go, Julian," he said. "I don't think I want to be here anymore."

Aftran

Ping.

We had programmed the terminal's message notification sounds. I knew what that ping meant.

I prodded Eva's brain out of her dream and opened her eyes.

«It's the sound that means the Animorphs,» I said. «We have to read it.»

I staggered out of bed, leaning on Mercurio for support. I opened the message and entered the code to decrypt it as Eva struggled to catch up with me mentally.

The plan is to deploy the weapon at the Santa Barbara Pool in two days. Our scientist says if you bring at least twenty Controllers up to the Pool Ship a week from then, the virus will come with them. Make plans.

I sat staring at the message, committing it to Eva's memory the way only a Yeerk can. Then I deleted it with extreme prejudice. In Eva's thoughts, I saw it. A vague notion of many hosts around the Pool, in the voluntary area and in cages, and some strange deep humming rising up from the Pool sludge. It took me a moment to even recognize what she was thinking of. I would have laughed if it didn't make me so sick.

«The Psaarig,» I said. «You're thinking the Psaarig.»

«It's the perfect excuse,» Eva said. «Everyone who's everyone will be there. Even Visser Five can't miss it, can he? Of course we'll bring up people from planetside.»

I thought about the solemn majesty of the Psaarig. The clearing out of a space in the center of the Pool. The call for volunteers, who would swim to the center of the Pool to be considered. When the dekvel were chosen, the great celebration, to give the dekvel a feast of life to enjoy before they gave their lives to create new ones.

«It's a sacred ceremony, Eva.» I said. «One of the few holy things we have left.»

«It's war, Aftran,» Eva said bitterly. «Nothing can be holy. Not anymore.»

I couldn't blame Eva for her bitterness, not when Edriss had desecrated everything good in her life. But I kept thinking of Yeerks unknowingly passing the bioweapon one to another even as they celebrated the one thing the Empire still let us enjoy in our own bodies, as ourselves. I felt small and pathetic, imagining the Yoorts I'd met, Zhakdud, Ushmyerg, and Yehyulu, and how grand and beautiful the Psaarigs they attended would be. How barren and sad they would find the Psaarigs of the Empire, our last great joy.

As I wallowed in grief and self-loathing, Eva took the reins of the body, making up a guest list to invite over to the Pool Ship for the Psaarig. When I dragged myself out of my dark reverie, I scanned the list and found it mostly as I expected. But one name stood out. «Efdram 58? How are we supposed to justify that? She's not even a Sub-Visser.»

«She's the host-breaker who tamed Michelle Clark, rebellious mother of an Animorph,» Eva said. «Having Michelle up here in a cage makes a statement.»

«And gives you a chance to free her,» I said. «Fine, you can sneak one in.»

«Thanks, Mother,» Eva thought, with a pang for her mother, who by now would know from the Chee that Eva was alive. She sent off the guest list, then leaned against Mercurio, rubbing her eye with the heel of her hand. Mercurio tucked a bit of hair behind her ear with his beak with a little krek sound in his throat. «Ugh. Can you get me to sleep again?»

«Not yet,» I said, poking around her brain. «You need time to wind down. Stretch your legs.»

«We could check on Sky Hive,» Eva said. «The stats on the Taxxons in Storage Bay Three look promising – meat consumption is down, what, fifteen percent? I've been wondering how the little squirt pulled it off.»

«I don't know how relaxing that'll be,» I said dryly, «but hell, why not.»

We walked to Storage Bay Three. Eva put the filter face mask by the door over her nose and mouth. She pressed her hand to the lock and went in.

It was unrecognizable.

The entire vast storage bay was covered in a layer of mud streaked with the Hive's red luminescence. It spilled out in heaps from the hot-tub sized tank, forming mounds and mud-puddles all over the floor, climbed up the walls like dirty moss, and hung in drips from the ceiling. Everywhere, Taxxons ate the mud, soaked in the mud-puddles, and climbed the walls as easily as if they were house centipedes. It was like walking into an underground cave.

As Eva and I stood gawking, the mud around her ankles and Mercurio's feet sucked and pulled. The face mask muffled her scream as she fell on her back. Mercurio screeched, falling to his front. Both human and dæmon were pulled by a sucking force toward the tub, then fell in with a shlorp. Eva grabbed onto Mercurio, more capable in the liquid, and he guided her up to the surface to gasp in air as best she could through the mask.

«QUEEN!» Sky Hive rumbled all around us. The neck-deep mud in the tub vibrated and bubbled. The Taxxons hissed along in sympathy. Eva shivered, and not just from the cool mud. «THE YEERK PROTECTORS LIED TO US! THEY SAID THEY WOULD EASE OUR TAXXONS' HUNGER. THEY GIVE OUR TAXXONS MORE FOOD, BUT HERE IN THE SKY, FAR FROM ANY HIVE, THEY ARE HUNGRIER AND SICKER THAN EVER BEFORE! EXPLAIN THIS DISGRACE!»

«Holy mother of God,» Eva thought, her grip tightening around Mercurio's neck as she looked around at the dozens of angry Taxxons in this strange slice of their homeworld in space. Already, she was coming up with possibilities about what this could mean for taking over the ship from the Empire. «We had better come up with a good explanation. Come on, Aftran, morph

I focused on my least favorite morph. Edriss 562. My connection with Eva's brain broke for a second as my body rearranged itself a little. Then I said to Sky Hive in private thought-speech, «I can't explain it. It's wrong. The Yeerks lied so they could get Taxxons to volunteer to help them. But I won't lie to you, Sky. I haven't lied to you.»

I felt Eva's discomfort. No, we hadn't lied to ver, technically. But there was a lot we hadn't said, that we still weren't saying. Would we be so much better for Sky and the Taxxons than the Empire Yeerks before me? All I could do was believe that the Taxxon-Controllers of the Peace Movement would make sure we were. «So believe me when I say that I am going to change this. I am going to make it right for the Taxxons. But I'm going to need your help.»

The glowing fungal mud tightened all around Eva and Mercurio in a strange, wet alien embrace. «OH MY QUEEN, I KNEW YOU WOULD KNOW WHAT TO DO! TELL ME HOW TO HELP AND I WILL DO IT RIGHT NOW!»

«No! Wait!» I blurted. «Not right now, Sky! We have to wait until the right moment. Like, uh – you have seasons on your planet, right? Things have to happen in their right season, don't they?»

The mud seethed and bubbled. «MY TAXXONS CANNOT WAIT AN ENTIRE SEASON!»

«They won't have to,» I promised. «It will be sooner than a season. But please, wait until my signal. It'll be…» I waited for Eva to fill in with an idea.

«We're going to have to make our move, once enough of the ship is infected, but before total chaos ensues,» Eva thought. «If Sky Hive can move out of this storage bay… think of what ve could do with whatever ve did to us when we came in.»

«Sky, do you think you could make the whole ship look like this storage bay? Could you… spread out?»

«YES! I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO DO THIS, MY QUEEN. IT WOULD BE GOOD FOR THE TAXXONS. BUT I NEED MORE FOOD! THE TAXXONS ARE GIVEN ALL MEAT, WHICH IS NOT GOOD FOR THEIR INTERNAL BALANCE OR FOR MINE. THEY NEED LESS MEAT AND MORE SOIL IN HERE!»

«I'm starting to get a sinking feeling about what this stuff is made of,» Mercurio said miserably, watching luminescent mud drip from his beak.

«Impossible to get more dirt from the Taxxon homeworld on short notice, and it's been very expensive to haul in,» Eva calculated. «But getting dirt up from Earth would be even easier than meat. It'd be an overall savings. I just hope Sky and the Taxxons can eat it.»

«I will bring you all of the soil you and your Taxxons need,» I said. «Keep everything in here, for now. Build your strength. I will tell you when it's time to expand to the rest of the ship. The signal will be my secret name. The one you asked me for. I will announce it for everyone on the ship to hear. That's how you'll know. Then this whole ship will be ours. A Living Hive in the sky. But Sky? Until I say my name, you must keep this a secret.»

«I WILL TRY,» Sky said dubiously. «BUT I MUST TELL MY TAXXONS THAT THEY CAN HAVE HOPE.»

«Yes, Sky. Of course you can tell them that.» Unexpectedly, I found Eva's eyes welling with tears. I didn't bother to suppress them. No one on the ship would be able to tell she'd been crying anyway, with all the gunk on her face.

Sky Hive sent us careening back out of the tub toward the door. We smacked against it. Mercurio got up first, then Eva, both totally brown and red with mud. The Taxxons hissed in what I recognized as a laugh. Eva opened the door and staggered out, trailing muck on the floor outside. She took off the face mask and hung it up, leaving one perfectly clean area around her nose and mouth.

«Once we have a shower,» Eva declared, «we are going to sleep like the dead

«Wait,» I said. «If we're going to tell Sky Hive our names as a signal, how is ve going to understand us? The comms on the Pool Ship don't transmit thought speech.»

Eva shrugged. «Ve understands the Taxxons, right? We'll just have to say it in their language. The Animorphs have Taxxon allies. We can just ask them.»

«You're going to learn to speak Taxxon,» I said. «Just like that.»

Eva scrubbed ineffectually at the mud on her face with the heel of her hand. «I learned English and Mandarin. English is a mess and Mandarin has tones. Two sentences in Taxxon can't be that bad.»

17