A/N: I initially intended this all to be from Tom's point of view. The voices in my head-aka the voices of the characters Tom and Terlin-told me otherwise. I don't know if I will alternate between their perspectives with every chapter (and possibly throw in some of the Animorphs' later on), but this chapter is from Terlin's point of view. It's more dry than I had intended, and you can blame him for that. :) Hopefully, the others from his POV will be more interesting! Also, I'll indicate in future chapters who's speaking...although, I hope that the context will make it clear enough!
Terlin
I "watched" as Tom fell into an uneasy sleep, glad that he could take this time to recover, mentally, before joining his family for their evening meal. Things had been difficult for him over the last few hours. I had learned that the initial infestation was always trying on hosts, even if they had been raised knowing that it would occur at some point. We never infested our hosts until they matured to some degree, as infants are essentially helpless and we suspected that without some natural development, the maturation of both mind and-more importantly-body would be interrupted. Even with preparation, I had learned, the first experience of a Yeerk entering one's head, taking over their body, and reading their thoughts and memories would feel, at best, unsettling. And those were all for hosts that were of lower intelligence than a human teenager.
All of my other hosts had been with a Yeerk before being assigned to me. Tom was the exception in that not only was he my first human, but I was his first Yeerk. Even more unorthodox was his infestation.
Visser One, the Yeerk who had discovered this planet and its billions of available hosts, had established an organization called The Sharing. She believed that the sense of community and belonging it promised would entice humans to not simply attend the initial meetings, but become "full members". At this point, some sort of summary of Yeerk infestation would be described to the human, and infestation would take place whether they consented or not. The statistics of explaining infestation correlated with a high percentage of voluntary Controllers, and even though most Yeerks would shy away from saying outright that they were opposed to involuntary infestation (the ever present threat of treason by sympathy with an alien species), nearly all Yeerks preferred a cooperative host. It was easier to perform your duties to the Yeerk empire without the voice of a host screaming at you during all hours of the day, and often during the night.
It was my personal belief that the voluntary component was a major reason that we had infested most of the Taxxon race. Their host bodies were adept at flying our ships, and their eyesight was certainly superior to a Gedd's, though inferior to a Hork-Bajir. Still, their eternal hunger that was difficult even for a Yeerk to control, even right after feeding on pounds of fresh meat, presented difficulties for most Yeerks. I had heard that at least one of the Council members chose to retain his Taxxon body even after being promoted to his current position on the Council, but most Yeerks associated them with low rank. True, any Yeerk would prefer a Taxxon to no host, but had they not been willing, I doubted that the empire would have taken a large amount of time and resources to infest by means of conquest. Rumor had it that there were still some free Taxxons on their home world, because those preferred hunger over Yeerk control. The fact that they hadn't been taken by force-IF they existed-demonstrated that they weren't valued as much for their capacities as hosts than Hork-Bajir or humans.
I knew that some human hosts had been taken by force. Visser One's human host body, for instance, had never joined The Sharing. At least, no one could recall seeing her at any of the meetings. Other humans had been kidnapped, often children, if a human association (such as a parent) couldn't be persuaded to attend Sharing meetings or become a full member. Still, voluntary infestation was ideal, and even though Visser Three may have been in favor of an all out invasion, Visser One had convinced the Council otherwise, claiming that most humans would join the Yeerks willingly if given a chance. No need to fight an all out war if it wasn't necessary. They had agreed, wanting to preserve the maximum number of humans for hosts, other hosts as weapons, and other resources.
Tom's infestation hadn't exactly gone as planned. He had only been a member for a couple of weeks when the behavior of a pretty teenage girl, who he had joined to impress, alerted him to the gap between full members and trial members. That, and he feared she was romantically involved with a full member. Instead of attempting to speed up the process and become a full member in order to compete, he abruptly burst in on a full members only meeting and came across Visser Three in all of his Andalite host glory. To Tom's credit, it wasn't the alien costume-as he thought it was-that caused him to panic, but the thought speak. As Andalites do not have mouths, they communicate mind to mind. This is actually preferable to the vocal methods of communication, because you can direct your thoughts specifically at those you choose. Humans and Hork-Bajir may be able to modify their volume, but even that doesn't entirely establish privacy.
Once it became clear that a human was sitting in on a Yeerk meeting, the only viable solution was to infest the human. Such were the perils of an invasion by stealth. Tom had attempted to fight back, but by the time I had made my way from the Yeerk Pool to his ear, there had been far more damage to his body than his attackers.
I'd never had a human before, only a Gedd, Taxxon, and Hork-Bajir, in that order. Perhaps it was the fact that the Taxxon had been voluntary and my Hork-Bajir had been VERY involuntary that made me attempt to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with Tom. Not that I was entirely mercenary with my motives. I did feel bad for involuntary hosts, especially since they quickly learned that even if their Yeerk would be moved to another host, they would always be a host to a Yeerk. Minus a few hours every few days, and for the involuntary ones, that time would be spent locked in a cage. Upon seeing Tom's well above Hork-Bajir level of intelligence and very real fear at what had just happened to him, I knew that I did not want him to look at me as an enemy, or view his life as something that had become a nightmare.
It was not entirely altruistic of me. A voluntary host would be easier to control, of course. The circumstances behind Tom's involuntary infestation meant that I had to take extra care if I wanted to "transform" him into a voluntary host. At the same time, I certainly did not want his unhappiness as a burden on myself.
Even though Yeerks were supposed to maintain control of their hosts at all times, I knew that many Yeerks allowed them some degree of freedom. My immediate superior even encouraged this, and when she spoke to humans who were attempting to decide whether or not to become a voluntary host, she would throw this in as a bargaining chip. IF you are voluntary, she basically promised, your Yeerk will trust you enough to have control over your body at times. Since lack of control was one of the main reasons humans hesitated before "allowing" a Yeerk into their head, the promise of allowing Tom some control turned out to be smart at beginning to earn his trust.
It was one that I had made Tom early on, and had no intention of breaking, unless he misused his freedom. With the exception of when I was with my brother Yeerks, there was no need to control Tom's body. It might be more pleasant for me to be the one in charge, but if the exchange was an unhappy host, I could make the trade without complaint. Besides, the fear of losing control over your body was a common one among humans, even those who had never heard of Yeerks. Take old age, for instance.
By the time Tom and I had reached his home, he had not promised to become a voluntary host, but I also trusted him enough to use his body for extended periods of time. I had slipped at one point, taking control without meaning to, and even then, his reaction had been more annoyance than fury. There were things we hadn't discussed yet, such as the "safety" of his family, but he trusted me far more than he had when I had first taken over. Which I saw as encouraging, given that I had only been living in his mind for an hour or so.
After getting himself cleaned up from his being manhandled by his fellow humans and the Hork-Bajir, he opted to rest for awhile. I thought this was a good idea, in part to give him a chance to look over things anew after waking up, and also because it would give me a chance to go through his memories without him feeling as though I were invading his privacy.
Searching a host's memory is not merely a Yeerk's privilege, but for a stealth invasion like this, a duty. I had avoided opening any memories upon first infesting Tom, knowing that in his state, it would be another trauma. He already wasn't happy that I could read all of his thoughts, whether I wanted to be privy to his musings or not. Many Yeerks opened their hosts' memories while they were awake, but whether this was out of ignorance to the potential suffering of their hosts or as a way of displaying power, I didn't know. Since Tom would be sleeping before I would have to interact-or let him interact-with any of his family, it seemed like the best time to get to know my host.
I felt a little guilty about doing this without informing him first. However, he seemed fragile enough that had I told him I would be doing so, he might have dreaded falling asleep. Even if I put it off for awhile, he would still dread its inevitable occurrence. Better to do it now and let him know later, like a vaccination administered to a sleeping child. Better for Tom to be angry about it after the fact than fear it and then be angry-or worse. Even if I allowed Tom control most of the time around his family and friends, it would be irresponsible for me not to have seen all of his memories so that I could act as he would.
Human memories are not chronological, and the order in which they appear does not make any more sense to them than an alien visitor. The first memories I saw were from earlier that day, which I had already seen from his own memory when I first infested him. Entering the room, being taken by first humans and then Hork-Bajir. The fear drowning as his head approached the pool. The disbelief as his body's functions betrayed him as I made my way to the center of his brain. None of which had been present in my previous hosts, because I had not been their first Yeerk.
Seeing it through his eyes gave me a better understanding of what he had experienced earlier. It was one thing to react to a host's emotions and experience of their memories after such a-well, traumatic, at least to them-incident. Another to see it lived out entirely. I couldn't blame my species entirely for reacting as they did. Tom's knowledge of the Yeerks posed a danger to the invasion, even though it was unlikely that many humans would believe his word without proof. Humans claimed alien abduction on a regular basis, and their fellow humans generally treated them as lunatics. Even those who believed in the potential for alien abduction admitted that there was little to no proof that the humans who claimed to be abducted could prove it. Even if Tom had gone to the human newspapers claiming that an alien with stalk eyes had spoken in thoughts to him and the others, and even if it earned a few lines in the next day's newspapers, it would all fade into the background in less than a week.
Still, it wasn't a risk we could afford to take.
Ignoring my discomfort, I searched though my host's less recent memories. It appeared that he had lived in his current house, in a community in California, for all of his fifteen years. The house might be considered small by someone who did not live in such a populated state, but it was consistent in size with his classmates. Moreover, he did not need to share a bedroom with his younger brother. The sense of privacy was important to humans and was present in his values, as-he assumed-it was for most humans of his age, and even those of his parents' age. As we spent all of our time not infested swimming in a pool, surrounded by our siblings, privacy felt like a meaningless concept to me. Not to the extent of being unaware of "taking" Tom's privacy by living in his mind and searching his memories. That would probably feel like an invasion universally, regardless of its necessity. But the physical proximity to others, the need to be near people yet have one's own space, was something that only became more clear as I searched through his thoughts. I supposed that as you learned more about your host, their way of seeing the world became more familiar to you, made sense even if you did not share the same views.
Anyway, Tom was the oldest of two boys, and his family unit consisted of a mother and a father. This was, I noted, fairly similar to the Hork-Bajir family unit, wherein a male and a female chose each other as lifelong mates and produced at least two offspring, and occasionally three, but almost never as many as four. Hork-Bajir didn't live nearly as long as humans or Yeerks, so even with a shorter maturity period and length of gestation for the mother, the shorter lifespan was not conducive to multiple offspring. Especially since there had never been a case of "twins", much less triplets. The shorter lifespan also meant that while female Hork-Bajir may live up to ten years, they ceased being fertile after their fifth. I saw that while human life expectancy was at least seventy years, and although Tom had initially joined The Sharing because he hoped to enter into a romantic relationship with another female, he was not planning on getting married anytime soon. At fifteen, he probably would not have begun searching for a spouse for at least seven more years. Still, it was considered normal for human teenagers to begin dating as a form of recreation, and for some to begin to consider what qualities they would like in a prospective spouse.
While not at The Sharing, Tom spent much of his time at school, with family, or with friends. He did what humans refer to as "hanging out", which I understood to mean spending time together while possibly participating in an additional recreational activity. The primary one, however, was spending time with friends. Tom occasionally "hung out" with his younger brother, who clearly looked up to him, but not with his parents. He "spent time" with his parents, and other family members, and did not mind doing so, but it was not a source of recreation for him. At least, not as a teenager.
Having never had another human host before Tom, I could only interpret what I saw through his own eyes. He saw himself as a regular teen, exceptional only in that he had a gift for basketball. His intelligence, for someone his age with humans as his peers, was average or a little above average. His grades at school were decent because his parents pushed him-and his younger brother-to work hard and get "good grades". In their minds, "good" meant A's and B's, with a "C"-despite the designation as "average"-being a low grade. D's and F's, for obvious reasons, were cause for concern, if not punishment. The form of punishment his parents used on Tom and his brother for bad grades and poor behavior (both of which, I saw, were fairly rare) were "extra" chores and being confined to the house for an extended period of time, with the exception of going to school. This was known as "grounding", and the primary reason it was a punishment-since Tom spent a good portion of his time at home or school anyway-was that it deprived him of social interaction with his peers. While I could understand that this was an inconvenience, it was nothing compared to the Yeerk punishment of Kandrona starvation, removal of parts of a host body, or having one's host body killed by a Hork-Bajir, Taxxon, or Dracon beam. Not that any of those had happened to me, but I knew that they were common enough occurrences within the Yeerk Empire.
As I looked further into his mind, I could see that most of Tom's memories were either positive or neutral. "Neutral" described the academic aspects of his school experience, and I had to agree with him there. Human academics appeared to be very primitive, especially their understanding of math and science. I imagined that were I to infest one of the so-called great mathematicians or scientists of the current age, even their knowledge of the world would be far inferior to that of Yeerks or Andalites. Human intelligence was certainly developed well beyond that of Hork-Bajir, but their technology was frightfully primitive. They had only recently been to their only moon, and while they had sent spaceships out to other planets in their solar system, they knew that these ships would never return to their home planet because they could not be flown by a human. Very primitive.
Still, Tom was clearly sentient, and capable of understanding ideas that once seemed foreign to him. We had learned that the human brain was divided into two segments and that humans often second guessed their actions, even after deciding on a course of action. Tom, for instance, had started out as a fearful involuntary host. My information and reassurances had not exactly made him decide to become voluntary, but they had made him reconsider the idea of me in his head indefinitely as a negative prospect. Were he to officially decide to become voluntary-ideally, before my next trip to the Yeerk Pool-he would probably have doubts about his decision later. Granted, if Tom decided not to be a voluntary host, even if that didn't mean fighting me constantly for control (as my Hork-Bajir had done, despite never succeeding in making me lose my hold on his mind), he would second guess that decision as well.
I hoped that he would opt to become voluntary. I never liked having to assert dominance over hosts, and I knew that few Yeerks really enjoyed it. If Tom could be pacified with control most of the time, I was happy to oblige him in that way. But I knew that there would be other problems. I detected earlier, even if he had not been fully away of it, a fear for his family. Especially his younger brother. He did not know exactly how many Yeerks existed or how many of them needed hosts, but the fact that he had been available to be a host meant that other Yeerks wanted human hosts as well. This meant that his parents and brother were fair game. He assumed that if they were motivated to join The Sharing, by me, they would become Controllers. Since he was still unsure how he felt about his own existence as one, he did not want his family to have to "go through" something similar.
He didn't know how human infestation typically went, but he was more correct than incorrect in thinking that full membership to The Sharing wasn't something you could back out of once you learned about the Yeerks.
So far, he had not said very much about The Sharing to either of his parents, and nothing at all to his younger brother. Nor had what he said done much to promote the group. Tom was not one of those people who joined a group or activity and then attempted to convince all of his friends and family to do so as well. He was not exactly a loner, as I could see from his interactions with his friends. But he was comfortable doing some things on his own, and even though he had joined The Sharing to spend more time with the young female member of his species, he was also aware of their promise of meeting other people and making new friends.
Since the topic of his family would probably come up within the next three days, I had to make a decision. After some pondering, I settled on the one that made the most sense. Tom was a full member now, so he would be going to Sharing meetings-along with "meetings" that were essentially just visits to the Yeerk Pool for me to feed-fairly regularly. It was my duty to maintain his cover, and if promoting The Sharing was not something he would have done normally, there would be no cause for alarm (in his family) if I continued to not promote it. I would mention my participation in it, perhaps invite Jake to an event for other people who were not full members and no infestation was likely to occur. If anyone from his family became interested in becoming a full member-and I suspected that the person most likely to do that would be Jake, who, ironically, was the one Tom was the most concerned about-I would use whatever reasonable means were necessary to ensure that this person received a decent Yeerk.
Not that this would be very difficult. Most Yeerks preferred voluntary hosts, and even though there was the odd one who enjoyed torturing and breaking their host, you would be unlikely to find more than a handful of those in a pool of siblings. If it came down to overseeing the infestation of Jake, and it probably would be be because he was my host's brother, I would find a Yeerk who would be decent to him.
Still, it was hardly as immediate a concern as, which I mentioned earlier, gaining Tom's cooperation and, ideally, his trust. I waited until he woke up on his own to decide what my next move in this operation would be.
A/N: A little darker than I had intended, but rest assured, Terlin's trustworthy, even though he's not in the Peace Movement. Please take a minute and leave me your thoughts on this chapter!