Ax
I now understood why Marco frequently expressed the desire to go home and "veg out" in front of the TV after a mission. The day after our capture and torture by the Yeerks, I fed, performed the morning ritual, then stood in front of the TV in my scoop and did not move for hours. I usually do not understand the meanings in These Messages or why the young and the restless are arguing with one another, but there are patterns in the music and the way the camera moves from one face to another, as soothing in their way as the patterns Andalite gardeners sweep into drifts of fallen leaves.
As the sun passed its zenith, the soap operas ended, and the channel changed to a news program in between These Messages. I did not care about human news. I changed the channel. The television program was of the type humans called "science fiction." All of the so-called aliens were humans with cleverly applied makeup. Perhaps it is the inevitable for the limited minds of the pre-contact civilization to imagine aliens like themselves, I mused. Before we left our own world, Andalites imagined aliens that were much like us, but with four stalk eyes instead of two, or green fur, or as scavengers with sucking, toothed hooves.
«Watching Star Trek?» I said Tobias. I startled. I hadn't noticed him fly in.
«Your visual effects in your entertainments are laughably primitive,» I said. «I like this Spock character, however. He has an admirable ability to set aside his emotions.»
I tracked Loren's prairie falcon morph with a stalk eye as she landed in my scoop. «Of course you'd want to be a Vulcan,» Loren said. «Elfangor was always jealous of him, too.»
«Spock does have feelings, though,» Tobias said, perching atop my television. «He just controls them with his Vulcan meditation and stuff.»
I knew they were trying to draw me into a conversation that I almost certainly did not want to have. Probably I could not resist it for long, but I would not encourage it either. Loren demorphed. "I had a nightmare last night," she said. Clouds rolled overhead in the brisk wind, casting us in waves of light and shadow. "We were back at your old scoop. But you were still in that box. No matter where you went, the box came with you, like a force field or something. You didn't even seem to notice it was there, even when I beat it with my fists and tried to break you out."
«Andalites do not remember their dreams,» I said, «though brain scans indicate that we do have them.»
«Then these things just come back to bite you when you're awake, I guess,» Tobias said.
«Nothing is biting me,» I said.
«Yup,» said Tobias. «That's why you want to be Spock so badly. Because you have no emotions overwhelming you ar anything.»
«Very well,» I snapped. «I am afraid. Though that should be no surprise to you, given my shameful display yesterday.»
«What 'shameful display'?» Tobias said. «The part where you walked into a room that had a machine that could destroy your soul? The part where you managed to run away fast enough you didn't get hurt?»
«The part where I was cowardly before the enemy,» I replied.
«Well, you weren't a coward, so if you want me to be the voice of your conscience and beat you up about it, you're gonna have to find somebody else for that job,» Tobias said.
Loren flashed a smile at Tobias. "And if you want to do beat yourself up about it, we're going to distract you so much that you can't. So you might as well give up now."
«How do you propose to do that?» I had been trying with the television all day.
«We're going to the Hork-Bajir valley,» Tobias said. «I think that machine might have done something to my hrala. Kind of like what's going on with yours. I'm getting a hrala check-up. You could use one too.»
I had not considered that Tobias might have experienced side effects from the severance chamber, even if it had not succeeded in severing Elhariel. I had been selfish, thinking only of my own regrets. «Of course I will accompany you,» I said, and turned my mind to my northern harrier morph.
Tobias often speaks of the thrill of flight. It has never lost its appeal, even after nearly two years as a hawk. The effect on me is similar. The freedom of flight may have been an illusion, but it was an effective one. My problems seemed very distant from my vantage point in the sky.
Swooping down into the valley, I could see the small settlements where Tom and the former voluntary human-Controllers lived. They seemed to be adjusting, though I had no desire to speak to the former voluntary hosts. They unnerved me. One of them realized that we were not true raptors, and waved at us in recognition.
Elgat Kar came to greet us. "Andalite and human friends," she said, before Loren and I were demorphed. It must be relatively simple for a Hork-Bajir knowledgeable about hrala to recognize individuals in morph. A point to remember at a later date. She added, "Tobias is hurt. Hrala-sick, like Andalite."
"Sick how?" Loren said. "What can we do?"
Elgat climbed the nearest tree in a few deft leaps. "Toby!" she called.
Toby came in swinging through the trees. "Yes, Elgat?" She looked at us. "Hello."
Elgat spoke to Toby in guttural Hork-Bajir language. By the time my translator chip began to make sense of it, the conversation was over. Toby turned to us and said, "Elgat wants you to know that Tobias has a temporary, acute version of Ax's chronic condition. To put it in medical terms. While Ax must constantly manage his hrala flow to minimize leakage, Tobias can expect his to heal on its own if he takes some time to rest and focus on hrala-generating activities. May I suggest going to visit our human guests in the valley? Forming new connections is always a strong choice."
"That's a great idea, thank you, Toby," Loren said.
"How Tobias hurt?" Elgat said, tilting her head at Tobias.
Tobias said, «The Yeerks made a weapon to cut Andalites away from their Guide Trees. Their anchors. I made sure they tested the weapon on me, so they would think it didn't work. It hurt me, yeah, but it would have done worse to Ax.»
Elgat and Toby flinched back in shock. "Evil," Elgat said. "Worse evil than making slave. Slave can one day be free. Break Andalite from anchor, Andalite broken. Never whole."
"Yes," Loren said. "And the Yeerks are doing the same thing to humans. Severing them from their dæmons."
"Tobias and friends will help, yes?" Elgat said.
«We will,» Tobias said. «Toby, Jake's been meaning to ask you if we can bring anyone we can save from intercision to the valley.»
"I need to ask my people," Toby said. "But I think they will say yes."
"Yes," Elgat agreed.
"Do you think Tom could handle a visit?" Loren said. "You said Tobias should try talking to people in the valley."
Toby looked to Elgat. She said, "Tom is angry. Free is hard. Tom sometimes hurt. Hurt Tom. Hurt others."
"We don't mind," Loren said. "Right, boys?"
It took a moment to realize I was one of the "boys." «No,» I said. «We do not mind.»
Elgat led us to the lean-to where Tom lived. He could not abide the company of the former voluntary hosts, and so lived separately from them. I could understand his discomfort. He was not inside at the moment, however. He had climbed a tree, and shared a low branch with the Hork-Bajir named Dref Fakash, who had been especially badly treated as a host and was now a vecol. Dref was slowly carving a pattern into the bark of the tree. Tom watched him intently. His dæmon, Delareyne, was on the ground, as any four-hooved mammal would be, and saw us first. She seemed to focus on me in particular. "Hello."
«Hello,» I said. «What are you doing?»
"I think he's drawing a hrala pattern," Tom said, his voice a soft monotone. "That's what his kalashi, Ghat, says he does."
"Yes," Elgat said, swinging up into the tree to study it. "Is hrala shape."
Tobias settled on a branch with a view of the pattern. «Amazing how much control they have over their blades, isn't it?»
Tom made a humming noise with his lips. Delareyne looked up at me. "I want to learn about Andalites," she said. "I want to know how you fight the Yeerks. How your military works."
I might have been more flattered by this approach a year ago. But by now I had come to realize that only Tobias and Loren had ever expressed true interest in my people beyond our role in the war. There was much more to Andalites than war. Teaching Loren and Tobias about my culture in order to maintain my hrala flow had reminded me of the great flourishing of our peace. I would not refuse Tom and Delareyne this request. But it made me sad in ways I had never felt before. «Of course,» I said. «I will return on my own and teach you what you wish to know.» I pointed a stalk eye at Dref. «Why do you spend your time with him? He cannot speak.»
Beside me, I saw Loren stiffen. Elgat only tilted her head, as if I had said something very odd.
"He doesn't have to speak," Tom said. "I like watching him." Indeed, he hadn't taken his eyes off Dref for our entire conversation. He seemed to have nothing more to say.
Loren and Tobias thanked Elgat for her help. I said nothing, sensing that I had angered Loren. I was proven right when we morphed and began our trip back home. She said, «Haven't I taught you anything?»
«Of course you have,» I said.
«Then why were you so surprised Tom wanted to spend time with a vecol?» Loren said.
I knew she did not like that word. It sounded wrong in her voice. «Why would Tom spend his time with someone who cannot engage with him fully?»
«You think Dref Fakash can't engage with people fully?» Her thought-speak voice trembled with anger. «That's what Taylor thought, you know. That she couldn't engage with people fully. Because she was a cripple. A vecol. That's why she sold out herself and her family to the Yeerks.»
«Taylor was weak,» I said.
«Really? You don't think any of the vecols you keep penned up on your homeworld wouldn't sell out to the Yeerks if it would let them lead normal lives again? You don't think maybe it's easier for people to say no to the Yeerks when they're happy with the lives they have? The crippled lives they have?»
I couldn't deny that Loren was right. According to Taylor's own story, she had become isolated after her accident, like a vecol. The loss of social power and influence had driven her to despair, and to the Yeerks. The burns on her body had not made her weak. Her loneliness had. «I find it hard to sympathize with this treacherous human,» I said. «But… she should not have felt that the Yeerks were her only viable choice.»
«No,» Loren said. «And I think Tom needs to learn that he has other choices, too.»
Rachel
The raid on the severance chamber was only the beginning, of course. Now that we'd done that, we could finally stop those Nazi wannabe monsters from severing dæmons from homeless people.
I was worried that Jake would say no, that we needed a break after what happened last time. Not that I would have argued. I didn't get captured and tortured, so I didn't get to tell him how to feel about it. But really, I should have known better. Jake is my cousin. He wanted to kick some Yeerk butt.
So with help from Marco's mom and the Chee, we found out where the Yeerks were taking the people they captured, and started morphing in an abandoned building next to it.
"Do you think you could cut out the power in the building?" Jake asked me and Cassie. "Like you did when Taylor had us?"
I traded a look with Cassie. "We didn't do that. We thought maybe one of you figured out how to do it."
"So if you didn't," Jake said, stroking the feathers on Merlyse's fluffy white legs, "who did? The Blue Bands weren't there yet."
I shrugged. "Maybe it overloaded from when I broke the air conditioning. Or from what Taylor was doing."
Jake looked thoughtful. I wished he would stop. He'd be much better off smashing up the Darmstadt guillotines the Yeerks had in the next building over. All of us would.
"Maybe it was one of the Controllers," Bachu put in. She, Safiya, and Lourdes were here on standby to help anyone we could rescue from the compound.
I raised my eyebrows. "You really think a Peace Movement Yeerk would risk his sluggy neck to save us?"
"They risked their lives to help the voluntary hosts in the Valley escape," Bachu said.
"That doesn't mean they'd do it for us," Marco said. "We're the dreaded Andalite bandits, remember?"
The plan was pretty simple. The Chee had already opened up an underground tunnel between the basement of this building and the next. We just had to storm in, smash up the equipment, grab any prisoners, and get out. The only catch was that not all our battle morphs would fit through the tunnel. Cassie and I were morphing wolf, while Loren morphed to Hork-Bajir – Elgat Kar, at a guess. She had to crouch to get into the tunnel. Jake was out in front, since he had the most firepower right now.
Through the tunnel, into a moldy basement full of spare parts and cleaning equipment. The Chee had shown us blueprints of the building, so we knew where to find the stairs. Jake charged up, snarling.
Just like we'd expected, the place wasn't nearly as well defended as the community center. The Yeerks didn't expect a bunch of Andalites to care about a facility where they severed humans. I was right behind Jake, growling and snapping at Hork-Bajir legs, hamstringing them, while they screamed and cursed in their mish-mash language. Welts of pain from their knee blades rose up over my body, but the pain gets easier to ignore, eventually, when you know you can just morph it all away.
When we had them all down, Tobias said, «I saw one of them hit some kind of panic button and call for help. We need to clear out.»
But I was frozen. Hypnotized, I guess. With the Hork-Bajir on the ground, the Darmstadt guillotine stood in the middle of the room, two linked chambers with a gleaming silver gate in between, ready to fall and cut them off from each other. The only time I'd ever seen one before was in a picture, in Hebrew school, when we'd learned about the Holocaust.
Jake roared, charged at it, and wrecked it with his huge tiger paws.
«Hey. Hey, there. Easy,» Cassie said. «Can you tell me where your dæmon is?»
I turned around. Marco was opening doors coming off the main room. Cassie stood in front of the open doors. It was a single stall bathroom with a dirty, bearded man inside, lying limp on his side. His chest rose and fell, but his mouth didn't move. He had no dæmon.
«Hey there pal,» Marco said, at another door. «We're busting you out. Here, dude, come with me and my animal friends. We're the good aliens.»
"You – you killed them," said a cracked woman's voice. "The monsters." She wasn't severed, then. Good.
«Sure did. Now follow that tiger over there and get out of here before more monsters show up.»
Dazed, blinking, the woman followed Jake through the tunnel. She had an iridescent scarab dæmon gleaming in her matted blonde hair.
Loren walked up to the man lying in the bathroom. His eyelashes fluttered against his cheek, but he didn't move. She tilted her head and seemed to trace something in the air with her hand. Something I couldn't see – hrala, I realized. She followed whatever it was across the room to a shelf with two small lockboxes on it. "There's another," she said, picking up both boxes.
Marco slammed open another door. «Oh,» he said, and picked up the person he found there. I saw his tear-streaked face loll over Marco's thick gorilla shoulder. It was a teenager. Our age.
«Let's get out of here,» Cassie said softly. We went back through the tunnel.
I thought this would feel better, Abineng thought. Like a victory. But we'd only gotten one person out intact.
Loren gave the lockboxes to the Chee. «I don't know what you can do for them. But… their dæmons are here.» Her thought-speech broke like she was crying, though her morph couldn't. «Will they live?»
The Chee took the man and the kid from Marco's arms. "No," Safiya said. "The cuts were not done neatly. They'll die from the shock. But we'll try to make it as easy as we can."
«You'll take her to the valley?» Jake said, looking at the woman with the scarab beetle dæmon.
"I will," Lourdes said.
Blood dripped hot into my eyes. I started demorphing. «I'll go with her.»
The other Animorphs looked at me, surprised. Except Tobias. He expects us to do things like this, Abineng thought, and somewhere out in Z-space, he felt warm.
Safiya and Bachu took the victims back with them to one of their Chee dog parks. I flew as an eagle with Lourdes and the woman with the scarab dæmon, who were named Ruby and Keowe. They were covered with a hologram of a big burly backpacker so I could keep track of them from above. When we got into the cover of the national forest, Lourdes dropped the hologram and started carrying Ruby, who was weak after days in Yeerk captivity.
"Rachel," she said softly, into the planes of Lourdes's chrome arm. The tired curve of her body, her half-hooded eyes, made me realize she probably wasn't any older than twenty.
«I'm listening.»
"Lourdes told me about the war. What's going on. I guess I get it. A little. But this place I'm going now. What is it like?"
I wasn't the best person to ask about this. Tobias knew the valley way better than I did. But Tobias wasn't here, and Ruby needed an answer from a human. «It's beautiful,» I said. «The Hork-Bajir take good care of it.»
Not good enough, Abi said. She's not a tourist going for a walk there. She's going to live there.
I tried again. «It's… I don't know. A healing place, if that's not too corny. It's where people go who've been hurt by this war. A place where they can be safe, and get better, and be with people who know what it's like. It's just that most of those people are Hork-Bajir.»
Ruby sighed and closed her eyes. Keowe crawled down from her hair and settled between her collarbones, like a jewel pendant without the chain. "Well. It's not like a had a home before this. Maybe one with aliens won't be so bad." Then her breathing evened out, and she fell asleep right in the android's arms.
«Lourdes,» I said to her privately. «She's been through hell. What can we do for her?»
"All of you in this war have been through hell," Lourdes said. "You do the same thing you all do for each other. Tell her war stories. Listen to hers. Just hang on and don't let go."
Cassie
The day after our raid on the Darmstadt guillotines, five days after the disaster at the community center, I went to visit the Hork-Bajir valley after school. I like visiting the Hork-Bajir, but mostly I wanted to check on our human refugees, Tom and Ruby and the Peace Movement hosts.
But when I perched on a branch above Tom's lean-to, I saw he wasn't there. Ket Halpak saw me waiting there and said, "Tom not here. Tom with Ghat and Dref."
«Where are they? I'd like to see them.»
Ket hesitated. Then she said, "Yes. Ket know. But Tom not want to see human friends."
Jake had told me that Tom didn't want to see him anymore, after he realized we and the other humans in the valley were allies with the Peace Movement. I didn't realize that extended to all of us. «Okay,» I said. «Could you tell him I came by?»
"Ket will tell."
«Thank you, Ket. Say, can you tell me where Ruby is?»
"New human?" Ket said. "By fire pit with Meret."
«You think they want company?»
Ket flashed a Hork-Bajir smile. "With Cassie? Yes."
In Southern California, you don't really need a campfire, even when you're living out in the woods permanently, especially not when you have a nice stove the Chee brought you. The Hork-Bajir only lit them on special occasions. But humans have a deep connection to fire. It's been key to our survival for thousands upon thousands of years. So the human refugees in the valley set up a fire pit, deep and protected enough to keep everyone safe from forest fires. There were logs arranged in a diamond around it. Ruby sat on one of the logs, dressed in a sweater and leggings, Keowe sitting in her now-clean hair. She was turned with her back to the fire, watching Meret Kar gather flowers.
I demorphed behind a tree and came over to sit on the log with her. "Hi, Ruby. I'm Cassie." I waved at my dæmon on my shoulder. "This is Quincy."
She glanced at me. "Which one were you, yesterday?"
Right. She hadn't seen me as a human. I was so used to recognizing the others in their morphs I didn't think of it. "I was one of the wolves."
"Oh. Okay. Well, thanks. I thought I was gonna die in there." Or worse, she didn't say.
"I wanted to check on you," I said. "See how you're doing. Have you settled in with everyone okay?"
Ruby shrugged. "There was an argument over which latrine I should use. But it's okay, I guess. Still really weird."
"Why would anyone care which latrine you use?" I said.
"That's what I said." She turned her head to watch Meret again, and when the sun hit her face I saw the barest hint of golden stubble on her face.
Quincy ruthlessly squashed the part of me that was startled by that, and the ten different questions that leaped into my mind. She's stuck here, with these people, and they're not treating him – her right, he said. Focus on that. So I said, "Do you want me to tell them to stop hassling you?"
She shook her head. "Telling people never works. They just have to come around."
I saw Melissa join Meret, pointing out clumps of flowers to her. "What's Meret up to?" I asked.
"I think it's for someone she has a crush on. It's kinda sweet," Ruby said. "It's so strange seeing them act like this, picking flowers for a crush, after what…" She trailed off and stroked Keowe's orange-green carapace.
"Those weren't Hork-Bajir. They were Controllers. You haven't really met the Hork-Bajir yet." I smiled. "I don't know anyone yet who didn't end up liking them."
Melissa and Meret came toward the fire. "Mind if we join you?" Melissa said.
I looked to Ruby. She said, "Sure."
"Who are the flowers for, Meret?" I asked. Quincy flew over and landed on the bouquet in Meret's big clawed hands.
"Thashet is private," Meret said primly, looking down at Quincy on his bed of milkvetch.
I had no idea what thashet was, but I caught Meret's drift. "Sorry."
"So," Melissa said. She watched Ververet walk over her knuckles. "What happened?"
"Huh?"
"We don't get a newsletter or anything," Melissa said. "How did you end up rescuing Ruby? What was the Empire trying to do this time?"
So strange, Quincy said, looking at Melissa. Usually we're the only ones who say "the Empire" instead of "the Yeerks."
I looked to Ruby again. Keowe flashed his wings. "Okay," I said. "It's not, you know, a nice campfire story or anything."
Melissa rolled her eyes. Someone in the distance yelled, "Wait!" We waited. The boy, Miguel, came over, his dæmon a lizard on his shoulder. That surprised me. Miguel had been very quiet, at first. He sat on a log across from me. "I want to know what happened."
Melissa looked at him. "She doesn't know what happened to our Yeerks."
Miguel's dæmon flowed into a snake over his fingers. "I know. But. It sucks, staying out here, not knowing what's going on."
Quincy flew back to my open hand. My cheeks heated with guilt. Of course the refugees would be worried about their Yeerks. I hadn't even tried to find out what had happened to them, after they'd taken such a great risk to free their hosts. "Chee-bachu – that's Wena Shih – would be the one to know about that. Sorry."
"It's okay," Melissa said. "Just tell us what you know."
"Sure." I thought about where to start. "The Empire captured Ruby and – and the others, because they wanted to figure out a way to sever Andalites from their Guide Trees."
"Guide Tree?" Meret craned her neck forward in interest. "What is Guide Tree?"
"They're connected to trees with hrala," I said. "Like…" I gestured at the air between me and Quincy, even though I couldn't see the connection like Meret would.
"So the Andalites have, like, tree dæmons?" Melissa said.
"Or maybe we have Guide Animals," I said.
"I don't guide Miguel," his dæmon said quietly. "I'm just as lost as he is."
I shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not."
"Hork-Bajir not need guide," Meret said. "See hrala."
"Okay," Melissa said. "So Andalites have Guide Trees. We have Guide Animals. Hork-Bajir don't need guides, because they work with hrala directly. But Yeerks don't see hrala. So what guide do they have?"
It's almost as if Melissa is avoiding the subject of what actually happened, Quincy observed. Even though she insisted she wanted to know. I just said, "I don't know. Do you, Meret?"
Meret looked up, at what seemed to me like empty air. "Some Hork-Bajir see things. Tell stories."
It seemed like she might go on, but then Bachu appeared, her hand on the neck of her holographic Chow Chow dæmon. "Melissa, Miguel, would you come with me to the yurt? I have something to discuss with you and the other Peace Movement people."
Melissa and Miguel stood up. "I guess we'll hear the rest later, huh," Melissa said.
"You should think about whether you want to," I said. "Some of our missions make good stories. You should ask Marco about the Helmacrons sometime. This one doesn't."
A heavy silence fell around the campfire after that. After a long pause, Ruby said, "The other people here. They were all voluntary Controllers. Except Tom, I guess, but I haven't met him yet. I just don't get it. Why would anyone want a Yeerk in their head?"
"Meret not know," Meret said.
"I've been a voluntary Controller," I said. "I know."
"What?" Ruby said. "But – you fight the Yeerks."
"I don't fight the Yeerks," I said. "I fight the Yeerk Empire."
"What does that mean?" Ruby said.
"Do you agree with everything the American government does?" I said. "There's a war going on in Kosovo right now. American soldiers are killing people out there. Is that your fault?"
"No," Ruby said. "But that's different."
"Why?"
"Yeerks aren't people."
"That's the thing," I said. "They are."
Both Meret and Ruby seemed struck by that. I stroked Quincy's back with two fingers. If Aftran were here, she'd press the point. She'd tell Ruby and Meret what it's like to be a Yeerk living under the Visserarchy, make them see the horror of it. Aftran loved rubbing people's noses in the worst of Yeerk life. She had to live with it every day, after all, and she saw no reason why anyone else should be spared from that reality. She had never spared my feelings, not ever, since the moment we met. She shouldn't have been able to win my loyalty that way. The other Animorphs spare my feelings all the time, and I'm usually grateful for it. But Aftran was the one person who never held back from me. She knew that just because I think about right and wrong all the time, just because I try to care, doesn't mean I need to be shielded. She would say it means that I shouldn't be shielded at all.
Bachu came to us from the yurt. Her face was solemn. She stood by the fire, like a camp counselor about to make an announcement. "You may need to give them some space."
"Why?" I said. "What happened?"
Bachu hesitated, looked at Ruby and Meret, then back at me. "Visser Three executed their Yeerks."
I let out a breath, then held Quincy's furry neck to my lips. I'd known in the back of my mind that this would happen. There was no way a Yeerk could help their host escape the Yeerk Pool and get away with it. But it still hurt.
I looked up at Ruby and Meret. "Their Yeerks gave their lives to help these people go free," I said quietly. "Does that clear anything up for you?"
Ruby bit her lip and cupped Keowe with her hand. Meret's face was inscrutable. I sighed. "Let them mourn, okay? You may not get it, but this is going to be hard on them. I'm going to go home now. Bachu, tell them I'll come if they want to talk about their Yeerks. I'll listen."
I walked away from the fire, letting the tears slip down my face until I didn't have tear ducts anymore.
Melissa
Her name was Garmiray 779. She was born in Generation 693, late-cycle. Her first host was a Gedd, working janitorial duty on the Pool Ship. Her second host was me. She wouldn't get a third host, because now she was dead.
"How do you think they did it?' Miguel mumbled, his face pressed into his dæmon's coarse badger fur. "Dracon beam? Dehydration? Kandrona starvation?"
"Don't think about it," Robin said.
"How can I not think about it?" Miguel snapped.
On the bunk they shared, Julissa was holding Jamal while he rocked against her and cried. Julie's snake dæmon coiled around the neck of Jamal's flamingo dæmon, his tongue flickering, soothing. I'd never seen a grown man cry out of pure sadness before. In the Yeerk Pool I'd seen men cry from anger or fear or hopelessness, but never sadness. My own eyes were dry. I envied Jamal, for being able to cry, for having someone to hold him while he did.
"Let's go see Elgat Kar," I blurted out. "She's good at this stuff, right?"
I spent the most time with her, but Robin went to every meeting of new-free circle, and Miguel sometimes came too. Julie had only been a couple times, and Jamal never, but they talked to Elgat too, just the two of them and her, up in the trees.
Robin nodded slowly. Miguel made a "mmm" sound of agreement into Andromeda's fur. I wasn't sure if Jamal and Julie were paying attention, but they didn't say no. "Meret is out by the campfire," I said, "if someone wants to ask her where her sister is."
At first, no one moved. Then Robin nodded at his dæmon and stood up in one firm move. He walked outside. While I waited for him to come back, I leaned my head back against the post of my bunk bed and put Ververet on my face. I felt him beat his wings against the thin skin beneath my left eye, gentle as a breath.
Robin poked his head back in. "Come on. I know where she is."
We followed him to the creek, where Elgat was shaking herself off after a bath. The moment she saw us, she said, "Human friends! What is wrong?" I guess we must have looked as bad as we felt, even to a Hork-Bajir.
We all looked at each other. I looked down at Ververet on my knuckles and said, "How do Hork-Bajir mourn?"
Elgat crouched down, bringing herself to our height, something she liked to do to help connect with us. It did help, not having to look up to see her face. "Who die?"
A silence fell. None of us wanted to say it out loud. Finally, Robin managed to say, "Our Yeerks."
Elgat's dark eyes sharpened. "Human friends free. Owe Yeerks nothing."
"We don't have to," I said. "But we want to."
"Death-song for family. Friends," Elgat said.
My throat burned and closed up. I couldn't speak. Robin said, "They were our friends."
"Friends are free," Elgat said. "Friends choose friends. With Yeerks, no choice."
She was right. I didn't choose Garmiray. We were forced together, and we'd become friends anyway. Was it some kind of Stockholm syndrome? Did I make myself like her because it was better than hating the person I had to spend all my time with?
Julie said, her voice hard, "I chose. Jamal told me what it was like, having a Yeerk in his head, and I wanted it. I went with him to the Yeerk Pool and let his Yeerk's friend into my head. It wasn't what I expected, and I eventually decided I didn't want it anymore. But I don't regret it."
Elgat tilted her head. "Julie not want humans free?"
Julie folded her arms. "Did I say that?"
Miguel, surprisingly, rose to her defense. "Just because she wanted a Yeerk doesn't mean she wants the Yeerks to take over the Earth!"
"Is what Yeerk want," Elgat said.
"It's not what all of them want," Robin said. "It's not what Derane wanted."
"Robin Yeerk still part of Yeerks. Obey Vissers. Help Vissers hurt humans, Hork-Bajir. Yeerks enemies, not friends. Hard for some new-frees to remember. Yeerk know head, know thoughts, know stories, like friend. But Yeerk not friend."
I could hear a distant buzzing in my ears, slowly drowning out the rest of the world. Elgat was talking about Stockholm syndrome. And she could be right. Garmiray had known me, known everything about me, she could have used that to say exactly the right things to make me think of her as a friend, and how could I ever know if it had been real when she could manipulate me down to my bones and all I'd known about her was what she'd told me?
Breathe, Melissa, Ververet said. Breathe, you're not breathing –
"That's enough," Wena Shih said. I blinked, and the Chee was there, standing between us and Elgat, her dæmon's ears pricked forward. "I see it was a mistake to leave you alone after giving you such a shock. Elgat, you are not helping these people. You are hurting them to no purpose. Leave them be until you can actually help them."
"Elgat can help new-frees," Elgat said.
"You are very good at helping Hork-Bajir new-frees, Elgat," Wena said. "You've been very good with Tom, too. But these new-frees, you don't know how to help."
Elgat looked at us and Wena for a long minute. Then she leapt up into a tree and swung away.
Wena said, "Let's go back to the yurt, shall we?"
None of us could think of anything better to do, so we did. When we were all inside, Wena said, "I was a voluntary host too."
"But you're a robot," I said.
"'Android' is more accurate," Wena said. "But yes. That means I was able to wire Aftran into my neural circuitry such that she could access my sensory and motor functions if I allowed it. I chose to do it because I didn't know what Yeerks were like, and I wanted to learn."
It was different for her, then, Ververet thought. She shared her life and her body, but not her thoughts, memories, or feelings. She could draw the line somewhere. Less messy.
Robin was lying on his bunk, Nessarey sprawled over his torso. "You learn a lot, don't you?"
"Yes," Wena said. "I did. And I am thousands of years old, and had thought there was not much left for me to learn on this planet."
"That was one of the reasons I decided to pair up with a Yeerk," Julie said quietly, stroking Jamal's hair. "You know, besides the free healthcare."
Robin laughed. "I was involuntary to start with, but I gotta admit, that was a perk. Finally got to get some dental work done."
"And Jamal got permanent housing and help with some of his compulsive behaviors," Julie said. "But hell, I was a social worker. And you try real hard to work on your empathy, you know, so you can connect with people in all kinds of situations. And still there's always so much you're never gonna get, because you'll never really know what it's like to be another person. But I realized, after Jamal and Essak told me about them, you know who really does know what it's like to be different people? A Yeerk. A Yeerk could show me, from the inside. And you know what? She did. Lord, she did." Julie's dæmon, Enther, rubbed his head below her eyes, wiping the film of tears away.
Jamal's dæmon, Rois, said quietly, "I miss Essak. Sometimes I wish I hadn't run away. Then they'd be alive. Maybe things would be less hard."
I agreed, silently, but then I heard Miguel say "mmm" and I let myself nod. I could never admit that outside of the yurt, where the Hork-Bajir and Ruby and Tom could see, but in here, it was allowed.
Robin said, staring up at the bottom of the top bunk of his bed, "I feel so guilty about running away. I was the vice principal at the elementary school. Derane and I had to recruit kids of important people, and it made us sick, but at least we put them with Peace Movement Yeerks, who'd make it as easy for them as they could. Now that I'm gone, and Derane's dead, they've probably put a loyal Yeerk in my place. Someone who'll do who-knows-what to those kids. If I'd just sucked it up – stayed with Derane – " He shook his head and folded his arms around Nessarey.
"Aftran isn't dead," Wena said, "so I know it isn't the same. But still. I often imagine what she would say, when I'm in certain situations. I know she would have some kind of comment, and I can try to imagine it, but it's not the same. And I know my life is missing something because she's not there to experience it with me."
"We've got to do something," I said suddenly. "Like a funeral, a memorial, something. We don't need the Hork-Bajir's help. We'll go out to the edge of the valley and – and – "
"I can carve a gravestone for you," Wena said. "Or a memorial plaque. Whatever you like."
We climbed up past the tree line on the eastern side of the valley, to a rock shelf covered in tangled brush. Wena effortlessly lifted a large flat rock and settled it against the stone face. She waited for us to decide what the plaque should say. We talked about it for a long time, as the sun set behind our backs, casting our shadows over the stone.
When we decided, Wena dropped her hologram. Her dæmon disappeared. She was a chrome, vaguely dog-like thing, not remotely human. She extended a finger and rotated it like a drill. When she was done, this is what the plaque said.
THESE YEERKS GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR HUMAN FREEDOM
Essak 2877 secondary of the Hett Simplat pool
Derane 901 of the Culat Hesh pool
Garmiray 779 of the Hett Simplat pool
Odret 1129 of the Culat Hesh pool
Efflit 812 of the Sulp Niar pool
WE SWIM IN THE WAKE OF THEIR MEMORY
