Aftran felt a pang of sadness as Cassie disconnected from her mind. Even though she should have been relieved at the return of control, and the absence of probing. She had been alone in her mind for so long, after all. Even if the roles had been reversed for nearly two hours, with Cassie acting as the Yeerk and Aftran as the host body, it had felt right to have another mind beside hers. She reminded herself that this loss was only temporary. Shortly after she returned to her Yeerk form, her true body, Cassie would place her in her head. She had promised to do so, and even though Aftran could not read Cassie's mind, she knew that her host was telling the truth.
It was, perhaps, a consequence of being in the form of an adult female. Humans were emotional creatures, but females even more so.
Of course, she no longer believed that this made them weak, as she had inferred to Cassie so many years ago.
Aftran wanted to wait for Cassie to demorph before doing so. To see her face in her human form. But the male human who had been with them in the room the entire time spoke up.
"You only have three minutes before you before stuck in this form, Aftran. You, uh, don't want that, do you?"
She shook her head. Cassie might be quick at morphing, but not that quick. Even if they could administer another dose of the antidote, Aftran didn't want them to waste the resource. Or the time. It would be another two hours before she would become Yeerk if she became trapped as human.
Closing her eyes, Aftran focused on her Yeerk form. The changes began immediately, and before she knew it, her sight and limbs were gone. She could feel herself being lifted up-knew it was Cassie by the scent-and placed into a tank of water. Once again, she waited. She swam around the tank, just to have something to do. Besides, Aftran knew, she ought to get used to being a Yeerk again. If Cassie did not want her in her head the whole time, Aftran might end up spending more than two hours every two and a half days in the Yeerk Pool. Thinking of the Pool made her recall being in Karen's head. Seeing the involuntary humans and Hork-Bajir. The screams.
It was not like that now, she knew. No one hosted a Yeerk against their will anymore. She wondered what the Pool area looked like. The cages had to have been removed. Destroyed, probably. Was there still a voluntary area? She'd heard that it was a pleasant enough place. More than simply a room off to the side with a TV, even though that was how it looked if you were just seeing it from the outside. Not that she would have known, with two involuntary hosts. Her Gedd hadn't been, but Aftran had infested her Gedd host before Earth had been invaded. She'd been on the Hork-Bajir homeworld at that point. For the majority of her time with Het, as well.
In the midst of her musings, Aftran found herself lifted up by Cassie. The human child-adult, now-held her carefully. Aftran didn't believe that Cassie was hesitating as she held Aftran in both hands. More likely, she was taking everything in. Perhaps, examining her, studying her body. Aftran felt a little self conscious, but she trusted Cassie.
Then, she felt herself being lifted, and then-finally-was the ear. She pushed her way inside after releasing a generous helping of painkiller, then flattening herself as she crawled into Cassie's ear. In some ways, Aftran mused, it felt as though she had last done this recently, instead of over twenty years ago. She reminded herself not to take control as she moved further into the human's brain. Physically, this wasn't complicated. If anything, it sped up the process. But instinctually...that was another story. Simply put, it went entirely against them. While Aftran didn't think Cassie would mind if Aftran had to release control to her after taking it-it had been over two decades since Aftran had infested a host, and she was bound to be rusty in certain areas-Aftran felt strongly that she would not render her new host powerless.
She would not take control unless Cassie specifically gave her permission to do so, and that included the initial connection to her mind.
Once Aftran had completed the journey to Cassie's mind, she settled herself around the center of the brain, not taking any control from the human female, but allowing her to experiences all of the senses. It was as awe inspiring as she had remembered. The two hours spent as a human host had been just that-a human host. While she could see and feel, her senses felt muted as Cassie had taken them over. She couldn't enjoy them, revel in them, as a prisoner in her borrowed body. Not really. More than that, the focus had been on her memories, and while some had been good ones, there had been plenty of pain. Aftran felt relieved to be back in her body. Her real body. And in a host-a willing host who not only accepted her presence, but had sought her out. Aftran didn't know of any Yeerks in the Peace Movement during the war who could make this claim!
Before Aftran could focus too much on the past, though, she heard Cassie's gentle voice.
(Hello, again.)
Aftran felt her host's affection in her words as well as in the emotions.
(Hello, Cassie,) she replied, sure that Cassie could feel the warmth behind her words.
Cassie laughed, mentally. (I'm still in control,) she observed, as she glanced around the room, moving her hands a little.
(I didn't want to take over control until you gave me permission. If you do,) Aftran explained. Then, she clarified, (I mean, of course, if you want to be in charge at all times, that's fine. If you want it to be partial, or at certain times-)
(Aftran!) Cassie cut off, laughing. (It's okay! We can take it one day at a time. See what feels easiest. Don't worry-I definitely want you to be able to use my body. And that includes my morphs. You only got to try out a couple those two times.)
Aftran let out a mental sigh of relief. (Thank you. I promise, Cassie, that I won't hurt you.)
(I know,) her host told her, simply. (I trust you.)
If Aftran had a heart in her Yeerk body, she was sure it would be, to borrow the human phrase, about to explode. With happiness.
She didn't open any of Cassie's memories, so she did not know what had transpired since Cassie had left her head. Cassie simply nodded to the men, and they left the room. She walked down a series of hallways and used a keypad at various checkpoints. Other humans, some wearing lab coats, spoke out brief greetings to her as they walked by. Cassie didn't stay to talk.
(I might, on an ordinary day,) Cassie confided to Aftran. (But, today's definitely not one. I just want to get us home. Show you around, and all of that.)
Aftran realized that she didn't know very much about Cassie's current life. More, really, about what had happened since the war.
(And all that?) Aftran asked, tentatively, as Cassie headed outside.
(Where to begin?) Cassie mused, laughing a little. (Well, Ronie and I got married a little after I turned twenty-five. We were engaged for a few years, and I wanted to wait, in case there was any news. I knew that Jake and I weren't going to become a couple of anything, but I guessed I didn't want to go ahead with anything while he was still missing,) Cassie answered. (But after three years, we both thought it was enough. We should either tie the knot, or break things off. I made the choice to commit, and nine months later, we got married. It was beautiful, Aftran. You can see the memories, later. Basically, we had a pretty typical honeymoon on a tropical beach, and I got pregnant then. Twins-a boy and a girl. We agreed on Rachel for the girl and Tom for the boy. They'll be sixteen in March. I had another daughter four years later. Ronie and I decided on Katherine, after his grandmother. We call her Katie. She'll be twelve in May.)
Aftran saw descriptions of the memories as Cassie recalled them. Two children becoming teenagers. The girl with long black hair. The boy with dark eyes, and very tall. The younger girl, with her slightly lighter hair in pigtails, chasing after them. The same kids, all riding bicycles. Family picnics. Cassie and Ronie on a beach, five years ago, still very much in love. The way Karen's parents looked.
Then, the memories changed. A woman, coughing up blood, being taken to the hospital by a man. Cassie's parents. The same man, unable to breath. The ambulance.
(Mom died two years ago. This rare form of cancer, undetected. By the time they caught it, there was hardly anything they could do to treat it.)
(What about morphing?) Aftran wondered.
Cassie shook her head. (They gave her the morphing powers immediately. She morphed me, and demorphed. We thought that it might be enough to cure her, but when she went in for testing the next day, the cancer was still there. Same stage. Mom could have become a nothlit. Morph another human, with their permission, or an animal. But, she said that she didn't want to lose her body. She said that she had already lived a long life, and was ready for what God had in store for her. Well, six months later, we buried her.) Aftran could hear the sorrow in her host's voice. (And then, last year, my dad had a stroke. We thought he was in good enough health, but-) Cassie gave a mental shrug. (Died at the hospital two days later. Mom was 75, Dad was 80. They weren't young, but they weren't old, either. Not really. Still, Aftran, I miss them.)
Aftran, wordlessly, pulled her host into a mental hug. She could feel her host's grief, even the unshed tears in her eyes. Even though Yeerks didn't have any bond with their parents, due to the necessary death that enabled the next generation, Aftran did have bonds with her siblings, and still felt some pain over Estril's death. Cassie's parents may have lived nearly as long as Yeerks who chose not to reproduce, but she knew that for many humans, no amount of time with their parents could be sufficient.
Of course, Aftran had also heard tales from Yeerks with voluntary hosts-and it no doubt influenced the humans' decision to become voluntary-that there were those parents whose demise could not come rapidly enough. Not that the hosts ever said this out loud.
Usually.
(I'm so sorry, Cassie,) she murmured.
Cassie wiped at her eyes. (Thanks, Aftran. Anyway, you'll meet Ronie and the kids tomorrow. We both thought it might be sudden for all of us, today, so he took them camping overnight. Give us a chance to catch up, to acclimate,) she added, pushing past the feelings of grief.
A new thought occurred to Aftran, one that would have made her blush had she been in human form. (Cassie, when you and your husband...)
Aftran knew the very basics of human reproduction, from Cassie's memories. Karen was too young to have been given what parents called "The Talk", but Cassie had allowed Aftran to open all of her memories after her rescue from the Yeerk Pool. Even the ones that were, to the teenage human, very embarrassing. Cassie and Jake had not, at the time, done as much as kissing, but Cassie had spent much of her life on a farm, and her parents had given her "The Talk" when she was young.
Cassie, now about to start her car, turned a very bright shade of red. Not that her Yeerk could see it, but she could certainly feel it.
(I figured you'd leave my head each night before we go to bed. Not that we have sex every night, but...)
(I understand,) Aftran told her. She did. Well, the logic of it. (I'll need water to remain in overnight.)
(Of course,) Cassie agreed. Then, she added, (And, Aftran, I don't want you to open those memories. If you happen to see them...I mean, if I can't help think about them...)
(Of course,) Aftran replied, simply.
There was an awkward silence as they tried to think of a less embarrassing topic. It helped that Cassie was focused on driving.
It also segued into a far less embarrassing question. (Cassie, where do you live?)
(Oh, I finally caved and bought a big house on the beach,) Cassie replied, laughing a little. (Marco was the one who ended up living the big life after the war, but we all did pretty well on the financial end. I spent a lot of the early years working with the nothlits and the Hork-Bajir and the Taxxons, so I didn't care much where I lived. But after Ronie and I got married and we had the twins, we both knew that we needed something with a lot of room. One thing I put my foot down on, at least in the beginning, was a pool. I mean, we have the ocean right there! But the kids and Ronie got their way in the end,) she admitted. (I sold the clinic after my parents died. There were too many memories, there. And their house.)
(Do you use the pool?) Aftran asked, imagining that she already knew the answer.
Another grin. (Probably more than the kids and Ronie. I like to swim laps in the morning and in the evening every day. It's good exercise, and it's calming.)
Karen's parents used to take her to the beach, Aftran recalled. It was one of the perks of living in southern California. Many of the inland states had bodies of water, but Aftran didn't think they could compare to the ocean. Enough people must feel that way, too, because she knew the cost of real estate in California was enormous. Then again, when your host's parents were billionaires, several million must feel like pennies.
Cassie, Aftran imagined, must be worth at least several million, if she could afford a house on the beach with a pool. After everything she had been through, Aftran was happy for her.
And, selfishly, for herself. Because living in Cassie meant that she would experience all of this. In a human body, with a mind who wanted her there. Not confined to the body of a whale which, really, had never entirely felt like home.
(Perhaps, we can go swimming tonight?) Aftran asked, hopefully.
Cassie nodded. (Ronie took the kids camping yesterday. Since today would be when you were likely to come home with me, he thought that we could use the time to catch up. They're supposed to be back tomorrow afternoon. Probably, closer to the evening, if they have any say in it. Especially since it will be Saturday, and with their summer vacation just starting, it's not as though we have anywhere we need to be.)
(If it hadn't worked out...)
Cassie smiled at her. (You know I had my doubts when I saw how you had treated Het. But I remembered that you had been in my head twice since then, and once was before you had founded the Peace Movement. Besides, Aftran, I didn't want to punish you for revealing yourself to me, when you didn't have to.)
Aftran hugged her host again. (There's still so much to catch up on.)
(We have time,) Cassie reminded her, as they walked into the large house on the water.
Another thought occurred to Aftran. (How does feeding work, now?)
(There's a pool about ten minutes away. I also have a portable Kandrona, for when we're away on trips. College students sometimes use them when they study abroad, or when the nearest Yeerk Pool is too far to be convenient,) Cassie replied. (We've made some improvements on them. They last at least a year, if you feed every two and a half days. The Yeerk just sits in a glass of water for a couple of hours, with the Kandrona a few feet away. It's about six inches.) Cassie sent Aftran an image of a small disc, vaguely resembling a hockey puck. (And, of course, they can be recycled.)
Aftran smiled. (I imagine the Pool is quite different now.)
(With the exception of the giant Pool in the middle, yeah,) Cassie agreed. (Want me to show you?)
(Please.)
Cassie sent her an image of a massive room. Just as Aftran recalled from her time with Karen, the pool was in the center, and there were lines of humans waiting for their Yeerks to feed and enter their heads again, but that was where the similarities ended. For one thing, Aftran felt a general sense of happiness in the room. Here were people-it was all humans-who were friends with their Yeerks. There were no guards forcing heads into the pool, dragging screaming people into cages while they waited for their Yeerks to feed. No screaming, no crying, no pleas for help. Just people and Yeerks living together as though it was the most commonplace thing in the world. The room was divided into separate areas for various interests. Some humans were painting. Others were doing crafts projects. There was even a playground area for kids.
The last part struck Aftran.
(Children are voluntary hosts?) she asked.
Cassie shook her head, heading to the kitchen counter after depositing her purse and keys on a side table. (Ten's the youngest we allow, and that's for special circumstances. Like for therapy, from abuse. And only if the kid really wants it, and there are three doctors who have signed off. We have special Yeerks for that-they've been trained for what we call "crisis situations". Otherwise, you need to be at least sixteen. There's been talk of raising the age to eighteen, since that's the legal voting age, but there are enough sixteen year olds who want Yeerks that this would be difficult. No, the kids you saw are ones whose parents need to feed. Or babysitters, sometimes. It's not a bad place to bring kids, and it teaches them a little about Yeerks.)
(What about the children hosts after the war?) Aftran wondered.
(Back then, the age was eighteen to apply for a Yeerk. Children who were voluntary with Peace Movement Yeerks were allowed to remain with them. We also kept about twenty Peace Movement Yeerks for kids and teenagers who needed a Yeerk because of mental or physical damage.)
(Physical damage?) Aftran echoed. She knew all about mental damage, of course, having been the cause of it.
Cassie sat down in the living room. (We had some former Controllers, all humans, had been hosts for so long that they couldn't really use their body after their Yeerk left. Control-it didn't return after a few weeks. Not for anything that wasn't automatic. 99% of the cases were in people who had been infested at age seventeen or earlier.)
Aftran could see images flood Cassie's mind. Kids and teenagers in hospital beds, being nourished by feeding tubes. Able to blink and swallow and breathe on their own, but that was about it.
(They could still hear us. Still understand everything that was going on. A lot of them, after a few months, developed small amounts of control on their own. Basic communication, able to move their hands. Enough to use keypads that "speak" for them. You know, like Stephen Hawking?)
Cassie sent Aftran an image of him, and Aftran nodded. (And these humans could communicate afterwards?)
(Yes. Most of them wanted a Yeerk. A good one, naturally. They didn't want to spend their days in a hospital, immobile. There was only so much our medical technology could do for them. So, we gave them Peace Movement Yeerks, and for most of them, complete control returned over the next two years. At least half of them chose to remain with their Yeerks afterwards.)
Aftran should have felt happy about this, and she was. To an extent. But how desperate the situation must have been for these people that a Yeerk-who they knew would take what control they had-was their best option.
(I'm glad. What about morphing? Doesn't that repair damage?)
(You need focus to morph, and they were barely able to move their hands or focus their eyes,) Cassie reminded her. (Morphing would have been out of the question.)
(They're all right, now? And there's no other damage like that to the current hosts?)
Cassie shook her head. (I think two of them still need their Yeerks to this day to function, but the reports the doctors released state that the rest made a full recovery. It certainly helped with popular opinion towards Yeerks. And today, Yeerks share control a lot more than before-it's far more symbiotic-so there haven't been any problems to date about this.)
(I'm glad,) Aftran told her.
Another reason it had been essential to take down the empire. How many more humans would have suffered this fate, had Cassie and her friends not intervened.
(Tell me more about the Yeerk Pool, please,) Aftran requested, the image Cassie had previously sent her still vivid in her mind. (What are the other rooms, beyond the main one?)
(Bathrooms, the quiet area, the gym, and the offices,) Cassie explained. (Oh, and the media room. You know, for people who work 24/7 and need access to computers and wifi.)
(Wifi? Is that some sort of human drug?)
Another laugh. (May as well be. Wireless internet. You know how Marco and Jake had computers with dial up Internet?) Aftran nodded, mentally. (It's a lot faster, now. But you need to be connected to a tower or something...I don't completely understand it, but basically, all Yeerk Pools have it for free. I have it at home, since everyone in my family uses it for work or school or fun, but I have to pay a monthly fee. I mean, technically, it's not free for the Yeerk Symbiont Alliance, but it is for the people who use it every couple of days.)
(Yeerk Symbiont Alliance?) Aftran echoed.
(Basically The Sharing, except it's not a secret. That's where people go to sign up to get Yeerks. Or, until recently, to apply to be placed on the wait list. Like I said, part of the reason for developing a cure for nothlits was that there were way more people who wanted Yeerks than Yeerks who were available,) Cassie explained.
Aftran considered this. (In all likelihood, had the empire not fostered a culture about control and Yeerk superiority, and had simply approached the human race with the benefits of infestation, we could have avoided the war and involuntary infestation.)
(Probably,) Cassie agreed, and Aftran could tell that she'd given this a lot of thought. (But, even with that, you ran the risk of our leaders blasting you out of orbit. As much as we liked to imagine life on other planets, before, there was always this fear that if we came across any, it could mean the end of civilization. Not to mention, it's taken more than thirty years for us to develop a working relationship with you, after forcing you to take on new bodies because we thought your original ones were too threatening.)
This was true, but Aftran knew that the Yeerks had caused most of the damage. Well, the empire, anyway.