My name was Garatron-Sitek-Shaveer.
When I was born, my mother screamed.
I cannot blame her. Andalites do not use sonograms, although they have the technology – they believe that the growth of an infant in the womb is among those things that ought to remain hidden – and so she had no way of knowing that she was giving birth to a monster.
Not that I was some sort of huge, six-legged beast, like the prehistoric behemoths that my grandfather used to dig up. Indeed, by the standards of Andalite newborns, I was quite small: only about five and a half pounds, and mostly legs. But my face was squashed outwards, as though it had grown into an illsipar bowl; my eyestalks were fused into a single, immobile growth that stared uselessly out the back of my head; my chest was absurdly inflated, while my legs were half again as long as my body type warranted; and, perhaps most disturbing of all, my tail had no blade. I was a grotesque, dwarfish parody of the true Andalite form.
Nor was I alone. In the months following my birth, over five dozen similar misbirths were reported to the Andalite High Council. All the mothers were females who either lived along the Ilarda River or had visited it early in their gestations. When my grandfather discovered this, he was furious, both with my mother and with Scholar Falkrith-Ispadagar-Konin.
«It must have been his experiment,» he said, pacing up and down my parents' scoop on the Island beyond the Warm Current. «His accursed Z-space transmitter – why didn't he check for the possibility of matter-destabilizing byproducts? Any fool could see that that was bound to be a risk in that kind of reaction…»
«You mean Scholar Falkrith's Z-space demonstration tainted the river?» said my mother.
«Of course,» said my grandfather. «Releasing, I would guess, over three million kass particles into the most frequented waterway in the world. The bloody fool, if he ever asks the Science and Technology Sub-Council for another lirit in funds…»
«But, if the water was contaminated,» said my father, «why were Ethalan and I unaffected? Oughtn't our bodies to have been misshapen just as Garatron's was?»
«Hilanal,» my grandfather snapped, «please attempt to think logically about this. When you and Ethalan dipped your hooves into the Ilarda, you couldn't have absorbed more than a few thousand particles, each scarcely a fermi across. Even granting the reality-warping potency of the kass particle, an amount of that size could hardly have done more than distort a few cells. But, if there happened to be an organism living within one of you that only amounted, at that time, to a few cells… you follow me?»
My father dropped his tail in shame. «Yes, I see,» he said.
«Yes,» said my grandfather. «And now you also see, I trust, why I have every right to invite you outside and challenge you to a tail-fight to the death. If I had known, fourteen months ago, that I was giving my daughter to the sort of Andalite who takes advantage of young females before being lawfully wedded…»
«Oh, father, don't be harsh with Hilanal,» my mother pleaded. «We were both at fault, and I probably more than he. If you must have blood for this act, take mine.»
She knelt and exposed her throat to my grandfather's tail-blade, and my grandfather's eyes softened. «Get up, child,» he said brusquely. «Do you wish me to become a filicide? Your shame shall go unavenged, if you wish it so. However, the shame of my grandson, and of the others like him, is another matter.»
My mother closed all four of her eyes. «Yes, I know,» she said. «Forgive me, father. I never intended that my misdeed should cause Garatron to be born a vecol. I believe I would have thrown myself upon my own tail-blade that night, if I had known that I was condemning my son to a lifetime of isolation.»
My grandfather smiled softly. «But are you sure that you did, Ethalan-kala?» he said. «For it must be admitted that this is a highly unusual situation. There has never, to my knowledge, been another case where several dozen vecols, of exactly the same type, were born within a month of each other. I wonder whether the usual custom, in such a case, might not be susceptible to modification.»
My mother frowned. «You mean that Garatron might not require a sanctuary?»
«Not precisely,» said my grandfather. «His dignity would still depend on his being isolated from healthy Andalites – but what of the other mutated vecols? Might he not be able to live together with them without psychic injury?»
My father considered. «Possibly,» he said. «And that would provide him with something that most birth-vecols never know: the sense of community, the herd-life that the psychologists say is so vital to the development of a healthy mind.»
«I think it is an excellent idea,» said my mother.
«Yes,» said my grandfather. «Unfortunately, there is a difficulty. In order for the place of isolation to hold some two dozen Andalite youths, it will have to be enormous. At least five hundred square miles, I would say – and there are very few areas of grassland left in the world that are both that large and sufficiently isolated.»
My father coughed. «If you will pardon me, Father Nimavar,» he said, «I may be able to provide a solution for that difficulty. In the year 12239.7, the High Council acquired an extensive area of savannah on the Northern Continent. It was expected that this would be allotted to provide living areas for some half-dozen or so families, until one of the speculators discovered a peculiar variety of kathsil growing on it…»
My grandfather's eyes widened. «Ah, yes,» he said. «The Selicar Refuge.»
«Precisely, sir,» said my father. «Over a thousand square miles of unpopulated grassland, which happens to be owned by your own Science and Technology Sub-Council. And I also believe that you have been under some pressure from the Sub-Council for Commerce to open it up for settlement, on the belief that Selicar kathsil has been sufficiently studied over the past seventy years; perhaps you could propose this as a compromise measure?»
The advantages of this course of action presented themselves to my grandfather like a succession of shooting stars. It would satisfy the Commerce Sub-Council; it would benefit his poor, mutated grandson; and it would restore the prestige that the Science and Technology Sub-Council would certainly lose when it became public that Falkrith's Z-space mass-transfer experiment had caused the mutations, as well as the prestige that he himself would lose when the Andalite public realized that his daughter had mated illicitly with her betrothed. If it was not a perfect plan, it was something very close to it.
«Well, we shall see,» he said. «One can never be certain, with my colleagues on the Council, how they will react to a new idea. But I think, my children,» he added, with a sly smile in his eyes, «that there is a good chance that the morrimils of Selicar may soon find their dens disturbed by the patter of little hooves.»
He touched tails with my father, and stroked my mother's face. Then he turned to where I was sleeping, knelt down, and hesitantly stroked my misshapen face as well. «Sleep well, Garatron-Sitek-Shaveer,» he whispered. «May your childhood be one of happiness and tranquility; may your mind grow as strong as your body shall be frail; and may you bear your destiny with courage.»
Then he rose, took his leave of my parents' scoop, and set out for the Council Plains, little dreaming that the scheme he would there propose would determine the future of three races.