Visser One examined the Blade ship poised to depart from the Anati homeworld. It was a beautiful craft, and its weapons were second to none.
He inspected the engines. Not bad, but not impressive either. Better to check them in full flight.
((Everything in order for the departure?))
"All clearrr, Visserrr."
((Good.))
The Blade ship soared through the frigid atmosphere—not exceptionally, but it was not designed to do so. The jump into Z-space, however, felt unreasonably slow.
The Visser opened a communications link with a Z-space technician and politely asked if she could look into the problem. The courtesy was unnecessary; he could order her or anyone bar the council around.
Edriss was still on Anati, waiting for her transfer request to be filed. After the conference had ended and Esplin had been promoted, he had been scurrying to and from various appointments. This momentarily confused her—he'd never had much patience for bureaucracy—but she quickly understood. It was a way for him to justify to himself as much as her that he was too busy, too important, for any distractions. She had not tried to see him again.
She had considered returning to Earth to continue with The Sharing, but ultimately decided against it. There would be a new challenge elsewhere in the galaxy.
As Visser One rode through Z-space, his computer beeped. The "problem" was a deliberate feature to automatically confirm jumps into and out of Z-space. It hadn't been installed on standard fighters, which often needed to make the quickest escapes possible, but had been deemed useful for private ships.
To prevent Vissers from unilaterally disappearing? he wondered wryly. Returning to the computer, he began drafting the order to disable such functionality.
As much as she could, Edriss kept to her overlarge quarters. It got easier over time; Yeerks that had come for the conference eventually departed. But whether swimming in the pool or providing her host sustenance, there were plenty of questions that she tried to turn aside while inwardly wondering if the questioners were on to something.
Millennia had passed since the first brain cells evolved in slime under an acidic sky. Cells floated through the muck, absorbing Kandrona rays, but nothing more. Then, gradually, they developed brains.
There were little practical occupations to which to devote the Yeerks' nascent mental powers. All their nutrition was provided for them, and they had nowhere to go but swim. Free from the hassles of work, the Yeerks became self-aware.
Elsewhere, the Gedds were learning—as best they could—to stand, walk, forage for food. And even beyond that, the Skrit Na flew through space as they had done since time immemorial. It was a lonely trader who landed on the Yeerk homeworld one day and gathered up samples of every species it could find.
It would sell all the plant samples to become a very rich being, but the feeble Gedds were too demanding to exhibit. So the trader put the animal life-forms in stasis, where they were forgotten until the ship was auctioned off. Planet by planet, system by system, the frozen slugs were transported, eventually being deposited over half a billion light years away.
Back on their homeworld, the Yeerks grew smarter. And one fateful day, one of them swam up to and into the ear of an overly-inquisitive Gedd.
They were limited at first, constrained by the relative location of Gedd dwellings and their own, but the Yeerks quickly infested their neighbors. They could walk from pool to pool, and interact with their fellows. A system of leadership was needed to coordinate interpool activity, with representatives from each. And so, the Council of Thirteen was born.
Then the Andalites landed, intimidating but well-intentioned visitors from the stars. The Yeerks quickly got over their initial fear and gratefully accepted all the Andalites had to offer. Stories of other worlds, other creatures—not like themselves, perhaps, but like the Gedds. Bodies that could walk. Talk. Hear. See.
With the gift of spaceflight, the Yeerks took off and began expanding their empire. Their greatest weakness was their physical form, but it could be converted into any number of strengths: the powerful body of the Hork-Bajir, the infinitesimal reaction times of the Taxxons. With every species that fell under their sway, their abilities increased. Rather than evolve from cell to vertebrate, the Yeerks could take advantage of many parallel lines of evolution, each producing species uniquely adapted to their surroundings. The synthesis was an Empire whose like the galaxy had never seen.
Visser One and Sub-Visser Ninety-Five had many doubts in the days that followed the conference. Looking back on the previous generations, they wondered how foolish they were. Whether it all had been worth it. Whether they were right.
And then, they looked even farther back, thinking about what had led them to Earth and beyond. And they both reached the same conclusion.
They were Yeerks, members of the greatest race in the Empire. At times, Yeerks were outmastered. At times, they were victims of flukish accident. At times, they were defeated.
But they did not make mistakes.
On Earth, a man nervously stood at a sign in a government office. For the privacy of others, please wait here.
They weren't so different deep down, Yeerks and humans. His people's technology was greater, their security better. But he had just as little desire for any of the humans to know what he was doing as he did for any other Yeerk to discover him. If his actions on the planet long ago had been treason, this was another level of betrayal.
He had come alone, or as alone as he could—he still needed a host, and could not find the man with whom he had wanted to share the moment. Essam was in a voluntary Controller now. Good enough.
And the other person he'd wanted to be there? She'd missed her chance. He couldn't look back.
As a tearful human stepped aside from the desk, walking into another room, the receptionist waved him forward.
"H-hello," he stammered. After all this time, he'd finally made it, but his mouth felt numb. "I'm here about Charles and Madeline Gervais."