"He called himself the Ellimist," said Elly, when the six of us had reached the forest clearing where we were wont to confer. "Or an Ellimist, actually; apparently there's a whole race of them. I never found out if he had a name of his own."
«Ellimist?» I repeated. «My nurse used to tell me folk tales about Ellimists. Wicked, crafty creatures, as I recall, and possessed of immense power.»
"This one had immense power, all right," said Elly. "As for wicked and crafty… well, those that are without, God will judge, right?" She sighed. "Anyway, I'm in no position to, that's for sure."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" said Abby.
"It means I'm a coward," said Elly. "And a crybaby, and a monster of selfishness, and almost a deserter. Remember that other version of me in the parallel universe, whose head the rest of you starved the Yeerk out of? Well, while I was covering for her, I just about decided at one point to let her come back with you instead of me, and stay in that other world myself."
«You did?» I said, startled. «Why?»
"I told you," said Elly. "Because I'm just a no-good little puddle of self-pity. I felt like the Yeerks had cheated me out of a normal girlhood, and I was ready to not care about you or this universe or anything else if I could somehow get it back again. And I might have done it, if this Ellimist hadn't appeared and showed me all the things that would happen if I did, both in that world and…" (she took a shuddering breath) "…and in ours."
She turned and looked up at Prince Josh, with the beginnings of tears in her human eyes; then she blinked fiercely, and shook her head. "Anyway, that's where I got the Pemalite morph from," she said. "It was the Ellimist's gift to me for making the right choice. And it's a good thing that it was, if there are Qualls running around on the other side of the country and it takes a Pemalite to find out where."
"So you know about these Qualls, then?" said Richard.
Elly nodded. "That was one of the things the Ellimist showed me," she said. "There was this possible future where the Animorphs – that's what Cassie and Jake and their friends call themselves, in that other world – went back in time and erased the Yeerks from existence, and so then they had to deal with the Qualls instead."
"And what are the Qualls?" said Prince Josh softly.
Elly shuddered. "They're witches," she said. "Not funny ones made of wood, but the real thing. They had this power where, if they looked you in the eye, they could take control of your senses and make you see or feel anything they wanted you to. They could burn you in fire that wasn't really there, throw you into a nightmare while you were wide awake, talk your body out of being able to heal itself – you name it."
Abby puckered her lips thoughtfully. "They'd make a fortune on Broadway," she remarked. "Imagine if you could actually feel Mariah blowing while Bullnack sang about her. But I'm guessing these Qualls couldn't be bothered with anything so uplifting."
"Uh-uh," said Elly. "They'd had the whole galaxy, in that other future, as their slaves for thousands of years, and the Ellimist said they would have done the same thing in real life, only these cousins of the Yeerks had gotten to them first and taken the fight out of them. I'd assumed the same thing had happened in our universe, but maybe it didn't; maybe they just got a slow start here for some reason, and now they're finally ready to take us all on. Or maybe our Yoort never reformed, and there are still Quall-Controllers out there biding their time…" She shook her head helplessly. "I don't know. All I know is, if there are Qualls wandering around abandoned construction sites on the other side of the country, it's bad. It's really bad. And I don't even know what we can do about it, but we need to do something."
Prince Josh considered this for some little time. "Okay, then," he said. "First order of business is to find out what exactly Erek saw. That entails… Chester, how long would it take Elly to master these Pemalite guild secrets?"
"Hmm?" said Chester, shaking himself as if in a daze. "Sorry, are you guys done with the Qualls now? I got so many Oubliette reroutings in the last minute, I guess I kind of zoned out."
Prince Josh repeated his question, and Chester thought for a moment. "Well," he said, "if she'd been entered under articles to an actual master back in the day, probably about six years at a minimum. But, in the absence of a living guild tradition, we mere artifacts aren't in a position to be so stringent; if she could learn enough to cobble together a simple Pemalite crystal, I think we'd have to accept any claim she made to mastery. And that, I think – with us to coach her, and that other crystal you recovered from the Yeerks to copy from – she could manage with just about a week of intensive study and labor. But I do mean intensive," he added. "She'd have to spend pretty much every waking moment either memorizing schematics or forging circuits – and she wouldn't get nearly as many sleeping moments as she's used to."
Prince Josh glanced inquiringly at Elly, who took a deep breath and nodded resolutely. "Sure, I'm up for it," she said. "If Katy's willing to pose as me for the week, that is." (Katy is one of a group of Chee who have agreed to impersonate my human friends to their family and acquaintances when we go on long and distant missions.)
"All right, good," said Prince Josh. "Though it'll be more than just that week that we'll need Katy for. I'm guessing that the Oubliette Protocol has to be overridden in person?"
Chester nodded.
"Right, then," said Prince Josh. "So either Erek will have to come to our side of the country, or we'll have to go to his. And it doesn't make sense for him to come to us, since, if there really are Qualls roaming around on his end, we'll just have to go there anyway to take care of them."
"So you're saying we'll need to take a cross-country trip before the month's out?" said Richard. "How? It's not as though we can just get on a plane; if four unattended teenagers take a transcontinental flight out of Rohan Airport, and the next thing you know the 'Andalite bandits' show up right by where that flight touched down, the Yeerks are bound to put two and two together. And let's not even talk about Anifal having to demorph repeatedly in a confined space filled with potential witnesses."
"Couldn't the Chee help us out?" said Abby. "If Chester came with us and covered us with a hologram – or if I morphed the Ssstram ship again, and he flew us out…"
Chester shook his head. "Sorry, Abby, I'm afraid I can't do that," he said. "Programming issues."
Abby stared. "But… you were just talking about teaching Elly how to get Erek's memories out," she said. "If your programming will let you do that…"
"It's not the same," said Chester. "So long as it's just a question of retrieving information from the Oubliette, sure, we can help you do that, no problem. But, like Josh just said, if that were all you needed, you could just bring Erek here; your motive for going to him is based specifically on your having violence in prospect. And you know I can't help you with that."
«But is that our only motive for making the journey?» I interjected.
All the others' eyes turned to me – for humans, and even Chee, only have two, and must turn them in unison. "Well, yes, it is, Anifal," said Prince Josh. "Chester's right about that, much as I wish he weren't. Our first duty is to keep the Yeerk invasion at bay, and that invasion's concentrated right where we are now; we'd have no business gallivanting off to other states if we didn't have reason to believe there was something worse than the Yeerks there that we had to deal with."
«And what of Cassie Freeman, then?» I said. «Do we have no duty towards her – we who have, however inadvertently, disrupted her mind with visions of another world till she fears even to make contact with those she loves? Does she not have the right to receive reassurance from us that the things she dreams of are indeed real – and protection, as well, from those of them that would destroy her because she dreams of them? For her condition is bound, sooner or later, to come to the ears of such Yeerks as live in her area – and, whether her knowledge is useful to them or not, they will surely assume it to be so, and pursue it with all the ruthlessness of their race.»
The silence that followed on these words was broken, after some moments, by Chester. "Well," he said, "so far as reassurance goes, that's also something that we Chee could do without your having to go out there; so far as protection goes, that's also something that I can't directly help you with. So I don't think what you say really changes anything – but I just want you to know, Anifal, that I fully endorse the sentiment that made you say it."
"It changes one thing," said Elly softly. "The time frame. If part of our job is protecting Cassie, we need to leave right away; a week from now is probably going to be too late. Or you all need to leave, anyway," she added. "I guess I'll have to stay behind until I've finished with my guild initiation. If I need the Pemalite crystal to crib from, that's not something we want to be carting all over the country, is it?"
Prince Josh nodded. "Fair enough."
And so, I had to agree, it was. The Pemalite crystal is perhaps the most sophisticated and powerful piece of technology in the known galaxy; since we seized it from the Yeerks some months ago, the Chee have guarded it with nigh-religious zeal. So it was quite reasonable for Elly to remain behind rather than expose it to recapture – but, obscurely enough, the prospect of her doing so distressed me. It is never pleasant to be separated from one's faithful comrades-in-tail, and Elly has been perhaps more faithful to me – and certainly a fuller comrade – than even the rest of the Morph Force.
"Right, then," said Prince Josh, and folded his hands. "Chester, let Katy and the rest know that we've got another impersonating job for them; then take Elly back with you, and get her started on the Pemalite guild secrets. The rest of us will meet back here at sunrise tomorrow morning; in the meantime, Richard and I will brainstorm possible ways of getting across North America in under 72 hours without being recognized or trapped in morph."
He elevated his head slightly, and fixed the rest of us with his most princely gaze. "Morph Force: dismissed."