Several minutes later…
"This is holy ground," Teresa murmured, fully aware of the irony in the lyrics. "We're standing on holy ground… for the Lord is present, and where He is, is holy…"
"Well!" came a voice from just outside her cage. "So this is the great Hero of the Republic, is it?"
Teresa glanced sharply up, thinking for an insane moment that the words referred to her. She realized the next minute, however, that the human-Controller in front of her cage was actually addressing the Hork-Bajir on her right.
"Gelathiir, gelathiir!" the Controller cried, bowing and waving her arms mockingly. "By all the Kandrona's radiance, you creatures just never learn, do you?"
The Hork-Bajir said nothing.
The human-Controller laughed, a dry, nasty snigger. "I'd just like to see you escape from here, you know that?" she said. "You couldn't possibly hide on this planet for very long – if we can't get some foolish human to find you and call the tabloids, we'd just follow the bark-stripped trees. And even if you could steal a starship, you'd still be too dumb to drive the thing. Maybe you expect one of the great and mighty Ellimists to come down and waft you away, hmm?" And with another nasty laugh, she walked away.
Suddenly, the Hork-Bajir snapped. "Getul-kato-resker-dapsin!" he screamed. "Filth! Gef Makkil hates Yeerks! Estud'mok!"
The Controller paid no attention, and Gef was about to let fly some more choice phrases when Teresa murmured softly, "You shouldn't, you know."
Gef turned to stare at her. "What?" he said.
Teresa started. She hadn't meant him to hear her – but there was no turning back now.
"You shouldn't hate Yeerks," she said. "Hate what they do, sure… hate their arrogance… their cruelty… their filthy, disgusting government… but don't hate the Yeerks themselves."
Gef seemed amazed. "You are a host of the Yeerks," he said, "and you do not hate them?"
Teresa sighed. "I try not to," she said.
"Why?" said Gef.
Teresa, being only human, would have preferred to give any answer other than the true one, but for the life of her she couldn't think of a good natural-law reason why hosts shouldn't hate Controllers – so she took a deep breath and made the reply that would change the Galaxy.
"Because Jesus wouldn't want me to," she said.
"Jesus?" Gef repeated, trying out the word as if it were a new toy (which, given the Hork-Bajir attitude toward language, it may well have been). "What is Jesus?"
"He's the Being who created the universe," said Teresa. "You, me, your planet, my planet – Jesus made them all with a single word."
Gef considered this. "Jesus make Yeerks, too?" he asked.
Teresa nodded.
"Not good to make Yeerks," said Gef darkly. "Why Jesus do it?"
"I don't know," Teresa said. (Truth to tell, she had often wondered about that point herself.) "But I suppose they were good at one time, just like we were. Maybe before they sinned, Yeerks didn't have to infest people."
"Sinned?" Gef queried.
"Did wrong," said Teresa. "You know how you'll do something, knowing that you shouldn't, but you do it anyway?"
She was taking a risk here. The tendency of the twentieth-century human mind was to suppose that the Hork-Bajir, having no conception of deliberate cruelty, could therefore have no conception of sin. Teresa herself wasn't sure what sort of sin would convict a Hork-Bajir conscience; she simply took it on faith that, since no-one could say that the Arn were unfallen, the curse had to affect their tree-tending offspring.
And it seemed that she was right. Gef lowered his head, gazed pointedly at the ground, and murmured in a low voice, "Yes, I know."
"Of course you do," said Teresa. "We all do. It's a sickness in us, something that needs to be gotten out. Only, the only people who can get it out are us, and we're not strong enough to. Jesus would be strong enough to, but he's not us, so he can't. You see?"
If Gef had tried to follow this little speech, he would in all probability have quickly become restless and brain-weary, and the conversion of the Sulp Niar pool would have ended before it had begun. It is therefore pleasant to record that he did not, in fact, hear a word that Teresa said.
"Gef Makkil does wrong, yes," he murmured. "He does not want to, but he does. Gef Makkil is a miserable thing."
Teresa swallowed. "Yes, okay," she said, "but Jesus loves you anyway. He made you, and he loves you the way a father loves his child. Hork-Bajir have fathers, right?" she added, as an afterthought.
Gef nodded.
"Okay, then," said Teresa. "That's what Jesus is like. And to free you from your sin, he took the nature of a human and died on a cross, and if you repent and believe in him, you can be a new creation."
This was, perhaps, a rather hasty précis of Christian soteriology, but there was a good reason for its brevity: While Gef had been bemoaning his wretchedness, Teresa had noticed two Hork-Bajir-Controllers coming to take her from her cage, realized that she had perhaps thirty seconds more to talk to her fellow-slave, and resolved to run through the most important points as quickly as she could. Even as it was, she had had to shout the words "new creation" as the two guards dragged her away toward the pool.
It may be that this caused the phrase to have a greater impact on Gef's mind than it would otherwise have done. At any rate, he raised his head and called, "Daklit?"
Teresa, recognizing this as a Galard word meaning "young female", craned her head to look back at him.
"I would like to be a new creation," said Gef.
Teresa wished she could respond to this statement properly, but there simply wasn't time, so she had to content with a warm smile and a nod.
It was some time before she knew just how proper a response that had been.