Cassie and Tobias had been keeping their distance, letting Toby focus all their attention on me. I guess the three of them had already had plenty of time to get to know each other. Still, this seemed like a good time to check in with them.
"Hey, Cassie? Did you know about-"
"About Toby wanting access to the Morphing Cube? Yes. All of us do. And we all agreed that it's a good idea."
(There's not many of us to begin with,) Tobias added, (And I can't morph anymore. We need all the allies we can get.)
"But you're the only one who knows where the Cube is hidden," Cassie said, "So you kind of have the final say about it."
Our very first Animorphs mission had been to sneak back into the construction site to recover an artifact that Elfangor had tried to give Tobias - a strange metal disk, almost like a CD, that he said contained a message for his son. We recovered it, and the mysterious blue cube that Elfangor had used to give us morphing powers. And I had both of them safely hidden.
I turned back to face Toby again.
"All right," I said, "It does sound like a good idea. I just want to ask you a few questions first before I agree to it."
Toby nodded their head.
"First question. And I'm sorry if this sounds weird, but are you a boy or a girl?"
I had no idea how to interpret Hork-Bajir facial expressions, but something told me that the look on Toby's face now was supposed to be 'annoyed', or 'irritated', or 'oh, here we go again'. They must have already had this conversation with Jake and the others.
"You must understand, Hork-Bajir do not have a concept of 'gender' in quite the same way that humans do. Our personal identities are not tied to having a particular set of sex organs. I am female, if that's what you wanted to know, but I simply don't attach a great deal of significance to that fact."
Female, but not a girl. It was a relief to hear somebody else come up with that idea.
"All right. Second question," I said, "How did you end up with the name 'Toby'? It sounds like it could be an Earth name."
(It is,) Tobias said, (Toby named herself after me!)
"Really?" I asked.
"That is true," Toby said, "Tobias helped me escape the tunnels, led me here, and became trapped in morph in the process. So I chose to rename myself to honor his sacrifice."
I started to ask another question, but Toby held up their hand.
"If you were going to ask what my name was before, don't bother. It is already forgotten. My name now, and for the rest of my life, is Toby. That is my choice."
That was something I could relate to. I'd also changed my name. Kind of. I'd never liked the name my parents had given me. It was way too feminine. A few years ago, I'd shortened it down to 'Lee', and stubbornly refused to answer to anything else. Within a few months, everybody I knew called me 'Lee'. But all of them still remembered the old name, and every once in a while somebody would slip up. My parents were the worst offenders. That's part of why we don't talk to each other very much.
"Now it is my turn to ask a question," Toby said. "Lee, do you know what the full stakes are? What it is you're fighting for?"
"Yeah. We're fighting to stop the Yeerks from kidnapping people and making them prisoners in their own bodies. Or to at least slow them down enough that there's still people left to save when the Andalites come back."
"Is that all?" Toby asked.
"What else is there?" I said, "Those sound like pretty high stakes already."
Toby sighed.
"When the Yeerks enslaved my people, they didn't just take our bodies. They erased our language and culture. Our identity as a group. It is not completely gone, but after four generations of only being able to share scattered fragments of the old stories during the brief hours when our enslavers go back into the Yeerk Pool, our memory of Hork-Bajir culture is almost extinct. In another decade, there may be none of us left who know anything about what it once meant to be a Hork-Bajir. And if the Yeerks win here, they WILL do the same to you. Every Human language, culture, and custom that is not of immediate use to the Yeerks will be suppressed until not a single human is able to remember any of it. They will kill that which makes you yourselves, just as they did to my people."
Have you ever dropped an ice cube down the back of your shirt? Now imagine that same sensation, but on the back of your soul. I FELT Toby's words hit me with a terrible force. Because, on a smaller scale, I'd heard this story before. Not just heard - I was PART of that story.
"'Kill the Indian, save the man'," I said. "Toby, by any chance do you know anything about Indian reservations?"
"No. In the time the Yeerks controlled me, I learned your language, but very little of Earth history or culture."
"Any geography?"
"Limited. I have seen maps. I know your planet has seven continents, where some of your major cities are, and that we are in California, one of the United States."
"All right, then... I'm part of the Apache Indian tribe." Well, strictly speaking, I was leaving out a lot of nuance and detail, but right now that was a secondary concern. "My ancestors lived in the mountains and deserts of New Mexico for hundreds of years, until American settlers forced us out of most of our homeland in the last century. The Apache were raiders and warriors, and fought back the way they had against the Mexicans and Spanish and other Indian tribes, but this time they lost. A little over a century ago, the Apache finally surrendered and were forced onto reservations that were just a fraction of the territory we once called home. And for decades after that, most Indian children were taken away and sent to the reservation schools, and basically were forced to forget about their own cultures and religions."
"And this still goes on?" Toby asked.
"Well, the reservation schools shut down a long time ago. And we're not confined to the reservations anymore. But the damage is still there. Even from what we still remember of the old ways, there's a lot of things we just can't do anymore. But you said that's what the Yeerks will do to everyone if they win?"
"On a planet-wide scale, yes."
"I'll bring you the morphing cube."
Author's Note: While reading the books as a kid, I always understood that Tobias's name was pronounced "Toe-BYE-us" - and that theory was reinforced by the TV show. But then Toby's name presumably has a long "E" sound, and suddenly the two names don't quite match as well. So for the sake of auditory harmony, Tobias in "The Extraneous" is pronounced TOH-bee-is. In-universe, at least. In my own head, I still can't help but pronounce it the other way.
