The next two days were something of a blur. We staked out as many of Orkath's fellow Yeerks as we could. Primarily, it was Cylus and Jason that Orkath chose to partner himself up with, although occasionally we went with Martin and his Yeerk, whose name I finally found out was Ornet Three-Three-Two of the Sulp Niar pool. Usually Orkath would have his subordinate do the human morph while we flew the refuge Yeerk back to the pool, although occasionally we did it the other way around. When we did it, it was really a crazy experience, because, y'see, each morph comes with the basic instincts of the animal mind… and in this case, the animals were individual human beings.
For example, we morphed an overweight lady and, for the next two hours, neither Orkath nor I could get eating out of our minds. I'd heard about Taxxon hunger, and felt like I could finally identify with the feeling. Also, we morphed a girl from school who was going through her menstrual cycle, possibly making me the first human boy alive to ever really understand what it's like. Trust me – everything the girls say about how horrible it is is true. If anything, they're understating it.
Just as weird as the girl morphs were the adult ones. We did a computer tech for Lucent Technologies whose wife had insisted on a three day camping trip in the wild, to make sure none of the kids were Yeerk-infested. He was in his mid-thirties, and had a full beard, not to mention thick hair growing just about everywhere else. Definitely out of shape, his body felt like a ton of lead whenever we tried to get it to do anything, but it wasn't just the body – the brain had a sort of inborn laziness that was infectious.
The desires were controllable, but we experienced almost every urge a human being can have. I knew now what it was like to be a boy attracted to girls, a woman attracted to men, an adult attracted to children. I knew what it was like to feel intense, irrational optimism, and then barely controlled despair. I even felt cravings for foods that I was normally repulsed by. It was amazing to me to discover how much of what appeals to a person was simply a matter of genetics.
By Monday night, I probably had about twelve different human morphs, each one representing one of the weirdest hours of my life, not to mention the cameo appearances we put in to school on Monday to attend the classes Orkath couldn't get out of, the ones that were still being taught by non-Controllers. And somewhere in all of that, Orkath actually managed to find times for us to sleep. How, I'm still not sure of.
Relations between Orkath and I continued to improve after the movie memory. As the shock of discovering Craig's location had started to wear off, I started to eagerly anticipate the moment when we would go with the detectives to see him on Tuesday. Orkath readily engaged me in conversation about the event, and promised that, as it was something of a "hospital occasion" similar to my dad's, that I would be allowed control of my body for the entire reunion. He also gave me control for Sunday morning services in church, and for the first time in quite a long time, I was able to perform my duties as an altar boy with the proper reverence.
«This religion of yours makes very little sense to me,» Orkath had complained, as I slipped on the traditional cassock and surplice uniform that I used for the mass.
«What's confusing?» I thought back to him.
Orkath was silent for a moment, but I knew that it was because he was struggling to put his thoughts into order for me. I waited patiently for him to elaborate, lighting the candles that my fellow altar boys and I would later carry forward in the procession.
Finally, he responded. «It's the inconsistencies,» he explained. «For instance, you make a sacrifice of bread and wine, which isn't really a sacrifice, since you end up eating it yourself.»
I shrugged, for no other reason than that I could. «It's symbolic. We believe that the bread and wine are transformed during the ceremony, and that what we eat is God's return gift to us.»
«But it still /tastes/ like bread,» Orkath insisted.
«You, of all people,» I noted, «should understand that things can seem one way and be another.»
I moved to the back of the church and, as years of tradition instructed, slowly bore my candle forward until we reached the altar. Then I took my seat at the right of the priest, and he began to speak. During the Gospel, I got up again, and held my candle to the right of the book while the priest read from it.
«See?» Orkath said. «This story is another one. Your deity makes claim to save you by sacrificing Himself, a pointless act because He knows he will be able to undo it.»
«It may seem pointless, Orkath,» I explained, «but the whole point of religion is to believe that, to our God, it all makes sense. Besides, I can sort of understand it. We all commit sins, and the sins are like a disease that starts to kill our souls. Like as if we don't have enough pure blood anymore, not enough to live forever in paradise. Enter Jesus, who, by dying, gives us His blood. Like a transfusion. So with His blood, we can live forever.»
Orkath sighed. «I guess I can understand the nobility of it. Dying to save your people. It's just strange to me, is all.»
«Do Yeerks have religion?» I wondered.
Orkath replied, «We have a Creation Myth, yes.»
At the time, I was too engrossed in serving mass to really ask more about it. But when Monday night came along, and we were walking towards the school so that Orkath could go down into the pool and feed, I brought it up again, and asked him to tell me the story.
«Many moons ago,» Orkath recited to me, «our world, as many others, was a dead rock, lifeless in space. It was the time of all-powerful beings, gods, you would call them. In the Yeerk language the word is Desmidar, which roughly means, 'Players.'»
Orkath took a moment to enjoy my sense of wonder and appreciation, emotions that he could sense through our mindlink, before continuing. «The Players were running a game, one with cosmic consequences. There were two of them, the Red-Eye and the Old Sage. Red-Eye represented the most base of desires, the raw needs and urges of society. Violence, yes, but also passion. Pleasure. Raw power. He is described as a single, large eye, on a throne miles high.» I tried to picture that image, but the sort of serious tone that Orkath gave to this Red-Eye was something I couldn't replicate in my own imagination. An image of an eye sitting on a throne was just way too funny for me, no matter what it's size.
Orkath waited for me to get over it. «The Old Sage,» he went on, «represented the more sophisticated side of society. Logic and reason, speculation, passivity. You could say that he was the mental to Red-Eye's physical. He's represented as an old, sagely humanoid with a beard… the old archives show a strange body that doesn't look anything at all like a Gedd, although there are some comparisons to Ssstram and humans.» Now the story was starting to be more than just words… images were popping into my head, images of the Yeerk home world, a sort of beautiful electric green, hovering in the sky around it's red sun.
«Red-Eye and the Old Sage looked down on our planet, and argued over how the Yeerk race should be created. Red-Eye wanted us to be warriors, a superior species that could rule over all the others. The Old Sage wanted us to be great thinkers, creatures who could concentrate on the powers of the mind and not the body. Orkath's mind conjured up the image of the two beings hovering over the world. Eventually they compromised, and agreed that the best method would be to make us parasites without bodies. Old Sage agreed because he had hoped to trick Red-Eye, believing that we would evolve to be the peacemakers of the galaxy, able to truly see into the minds and hearts of those we inhabited. Red-Eye agreed because he had hoped to trick Old Sage, believing that we would evolve to take our place as the overlords of the universe. And to this day we walk the line between these goals, joining ourselves with other species and, by doing so, bringing them the peace of unity and relaxation under our control. The light of the Kandrona, our red sun, is the ever-watchful Red-Eye, keeping his children warm. The Council of Thirteen is descended from the ministry of Old Sage, keeping our sights on unity and the hope that one day, there will be no more need of violence. Someday, though, we believe that the Prophets of the Players will enter our society and divide our race, forcing us to choose one goal or the other. Civil war will erupt, and the winners of the war will guide our race into the New Age.»
I was silent for a short time while I absorbed all that Orkath had taught me. «It's a fascinating story,» I admitted. «Thank you for telling me.»
Orkath shifted my eyes around. We were in front of the school now. «Ewell Five-Nine-Three will be here soon. Remember, Chris… don't tell Eric about how I've been treating you lately. Being a Sub-Visser now, I doubt anyone would believe him, but if he makes enough noise he might just get one of the higher-ups to notice how long it's been since I submitted to a memory dump. And we don't want that.»
«I promise,» I agreed to Orkath. A moment of silence. Then I said what I knew that he knew I was thinking, anyway. «This is it, isn't it? Three days from the governor's speech, and we've saved a lot of Yeerks, but nowhere near all of them. They're going to starve to death, and then your people will have to react by quarantining this town and infesting everyone. Soon as they do, the government will get wind of it and it's open war. Game, set, match.»
«Maybe not,» Orkath said, trying to sound hopeful. «We still don't have the full numbers on how many Yeerks are out there. Besides, even if we did have to take the town, the Lieutenant Governor is in charge, now, and he's one of us. He can order the National Guard to send in specific units, Controller units. We could still do it without the rest of the world knowing.»
«There are three interstate highways within the city limits,» I pointed out. «Don't you think people will notice when they drive by?»
Orkath was about to reply, but then Eric arrived. He was smiling that oh-so-beautiful smile, but it was just depressing to see, because I knew it was Ewell smiling. And I didn't know what the real Eric, the slave inside that body, was feeling.
«Orkath, I'm scared,» I admitted. «Maybe I shouldn't room up with him this time.»
«It'll be better if you do,» Orkath comforted. «Even if it's bad… not knowing is hurting you more.» Out loud, he said, "Do me a favor, Ewell… when we go onto the pier, tell them you're morph-capable involuntary."
Eric… Ewell seemed shocked. "Sub-Visser?" he questioned. "I'm not morph-capable, I…"
Orkath held up my hand. "I know you're not, but I've been under a lot of stress lately and, between you and me, I need to batter my host a little bit. It'll be easier going through the next few days if he's whining and moaning about time spent with your host in the cage."
Eric's face looked grim as he nodded. "Yes, Sub-Visser," he acknowledged, falling into step beside us as we headed for the Yeerk pool entrance. Orkath started to steal glances at him, maybe because he still felt my attraction to Eric, or maybe because he was trying to be nice to me. I remembered how he used to tease me – it felt like so long ago – by looking at Eric briefly and then looking away just when I started to feel that romance excitement. Now, he was taking good, long, hard looks, and I couldn't have been more depressed, the uncertainty of how Eric was adjusting to life as a Controller eating away at me. «Stop, please,» I murmured, and Orkath quietly obeyed, turning my eyes back towards the stairs and the sludgy pool below.
The stares hadn't gone unnoticed, though. "Something wrong, Sub-Visser?" Eric/Ewell asked, trying not to sound intimidated.
Orkath said the first thing that came to his mind. "Not you, Ewell. I was thinking about the group your host is in… Civil Air Patrol, was it?"
"Yes, Sub-Visser," Ewell agreed. "Their squadron was mobilized briefly on the morning after the National Guard attacks, turning spectators away from the battle scenes."
Orkath nodded my head. "Do we have any people in command-level positions?"
Ewell shrugged. "My own host himself commands a flight of cadets, mostly non-Controllers. I believe a couple of the adults, the 'Senior members,' are also our people."
Orkath rubbed my chin as we stepped onto the infestation pier. "We may be able to use that to our advantage," he said. Walking up to the Hork-Bajir guards, he declared, "Morph-capable involuntary. Ramonite box seven."
«Well,» Orkath said, «Time to eat. I'm starving. Good luck with Eric.»
Perhaps because I understood it to be a religious phrase, I felt the urge to wish my Yeerk well as he left my body. «May the light of the Kandrona shine on you, Orkath One-Seven-Two.»
As he slipped out, the Yeerk replied, «And may the Lord be with you, Christopher Windward.»
For the first time since I'd been paired up with Orkath, I missed him.