And thus it came about that, three days after Esiln Kalkat, Teresa was once again sitting in her cage in the Yeerk pool, telling Toloth Two-Nine-Four about Jesus.

There was a difference now, though. For the first time, Teresa began to suspect just how much might hang on these little conversations she was having with Toloth. Hitherto, she had thought of the affair only as an obligation (when someone asked her about her faith, she had to respond as fully and truthfully as she could); now she began to entertain the notion that it might also be a vocation. Maybe, just maybe, her job in life was to bring aliens to Christ: to help the Gospel spread to that "uttermost part of heaven" that Jesus had talked about gathering His elect from. She'd never dreamed of such a thing before – but, with God, all things were possible.

This mental upheaval sprang from a number of causes. Baptizing Gef had been a significant one; the mere realization that she had helped make one Christian alien made it imaginable that she might be called to help make more. Nor had Toloth's comment about someday being baptized himself, glib though she realized it had been, done anything to hinder her growing sense of mission. Ironically, though, the one who had really made the difference was Malcar; the energy her Controller was putting into undermining her – and, in particular, the line about her being God's "self-appointed Messenger to the Stars" that Malcar had let slip during their argument on Thursday – had been the thing that really convinced her that she might have started something important.

But, however it had come about, the awareness was now in her – and it terrified her. How was she – a random girl from California who was no closer to sainthood than nine-tenths of the rest of the people she knew – supposed to evangelize the galaxy? Wasn't there a priest or a trained theologian somewhere in the Yeerk pool who would be better cut out for the job than she was?

Don't be silly, Teresa, she told herself. This is how God works. He chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise – if you can call the Yeerk Empire wise. Just stay close to Him, keep doing what you've been doing, and it'll all work out somehow.

Her courage was revived at this thought, and the next day, when Toloth came to her cage, he found a more serene, self-confident young evangelist than he had yet met. "Hello, Toloth Two-Nine-Four," she said, with an apparently genuine smile. "How's my new brother doing?"

"What?" said Toloth, momentarily baffled. Then he realized she must mean Gef, and made a note that worshippers of Jesus considered each other kindred. "Oh, I see. Thank you, my host is in excellent health. This 'new life' of yours seems to suit him admirably."

"Glad to hear it," said Teresa. "So what do you want to know today?"

Toloth took a deep breath. "Your ethical code," he said. "How is one who believes the things that you believe supposed to order his life?"

Although he didn't say it, Teresa guessed that he was asking this on Gef's behalf. She tactfully didn't say anything about it, however – for which Toloth, who was all too aware how easily Teresa could see through him, was duly grateful. "Well, that's kind of a large topic, you know," she said. "I mean, I'm sure I can give you some kind of summary, but it would be a lot easier if I had a Bible or something to refer back to."

"A Baibul?" Toloth repeated. "You mean like this Baibul?" And he reached over his shoulder and produced the Skrit Na Bible from his carrying dimension.

Teresa jumped. "Where did you get that?" she said.

"From the captain of a Skrit Na freighter," said Toloth, with a certain satisfaction at having for once unsettled Teresa Sickles. "Apparently your little religion has picked up some adherents among the Foraging People."

"Oh," said Teresa. "Well, that's good. Okay, let me see it."

This proved to be easier said than done. The Skrit Na Bible was just too wide to fit through the bars of Teresa's cage, and it took a few seconds' fiddling before it occurred to Toloth to open it in the middle and slide it through top-first. This worked admirably, and in a matter of moments Teresa was holding the Bible in her hands.

She looked down at the page to which Toloth had opened it. Most of it, of course, was completely illegible to her with her rudimentary Galard, but she could sound out the symbols if she concentrated, and she recognized the word at the top of the page as a variation on the verb "to sing". This, combined with the presence of three-digit numbers at the tops of several columns of type, led her to conclude that she was somewhere in the book of Psalms.

That left her with two questions. First, did this Bible put the books in the same order as she was used to? Second, what passage was she looking for, anyway? Where in the Bible did you go when an alien asked you for a summary of Christian ethics? The Ten Commandments? The Sermon on the Mount? 1 Corinthians 13? None of them seemed quite complete, and all of them were fairly long; she didn't know how much time she had, and she wanted something concise.

She thought hard for a minute or two; then a way appeared to her, and she started turning to the end of the book. As it turned out, from what she could translate of the titles, the books were in more or less their traditional order; there were a few whimsical arrangements among the minor prophets (she was fairly certain, for instance, that her Bible at home put Habakkuk before Zechariah), but she still managed to find Galatians without much trouble.

Now the trick was finding the right section. She knew it was somewhere in the last two chapters, but she couldn't remember the exact verse numbers. Fortunately, though, she knew the Galard word for "fruit"; finding this, she traced back (with the help of a few other words, such as "flesh" and "law") to what appeared to be the beginning of the passage, and held it out for Toloth to read. "All right," she said. "Start at the place where the number 16 appears and read it aloud; I'll tell you when to stop. In English, please," she added, realizing just in the nick of time that Toloth might just read the Galard words that were written, which wouldn't do her much good.

Toloth looked down, and squinted at the branching letters. "'I say, then,'" he began slowly, "'Walk in the breath…'"

"The Spirit," Teresa corrected him. "That's the third Person in God, the one that puts Jesus's life in you."

"Your pardon," said Toloth sardonically. "'Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the…'" He paused, and seemed to search for the appropriate English construction. "'The flesh-desire,'" he said at last, and chuckled. "So your religion doesn't approve of desiring flesh, does it? Well, it may do well for Hork-Bajir, then, but I doubt it will ever catch on with Taxxons."

Teresa smiled. "That's not quite what it means," she said. "'Flesh', in this context, means the whole realm of natural impulses: all the ordinary, selfish, Earth-bound wants you were born with. The stuff that came with your flesh, you see."

Toloth cocked his head, and gave her an odd look. "You do like using ordinary words in strange ways, don't you?" he said. "Your realm of perfection is 'Sky', one of the persons of your God is 'the Breath', natural desires are 'flesh'…"

"Well, we have to use the words we've got," said Teresa. "If we went around inventing new words for each of our special ideas, we'd have our own separate language in no time flat. And that's not really good when we're trying to explain things to the rest of you."

"No, I suppose not," Toloth admitted. "Still, it must cause you problems not to use these words in the same way that other people do."

Teresa rolled her eyes. "You can say that again," she said. "You'd be amazed how many people think 'the flesh' in the passage you just read means 'sex'."

"Why should they think that?" Toloth inquired.

"Because that's the way we humans are," said Teresa. "Everything means sex. Never mind, just keep reading; they might come to take me to the pier any minute now."

Toloth saw the justice in this, and lowered his eyes to the page again. "'You will not fulfill the flesh-desire,'" he repeated, "'for the flesh-desire is different from the Br–' excuse me, 'from the Spirit-desire, and the Spirit-desire from the flesh-desire; and these are opposed to each other, so that you cannot do the things that you choose.'" He blinked. "What does that mean?"

"It means that, if you're a Christian, part of you wants to follow God's will, while the other part wants to do what it's always wanted to do," said Teresa. "And you have to let the Spirit direct everything you do, so that the natural part doesn't get the upper hand."

"Oh." Somewhere deep in Toloth's psyche, a small part of him responded to this. Perhaps if the Spirit directed you, it whispered, you would no longer be concerned with whether you lost your Hork-Bajir-Controller status. It was only a minute pinprick, but it left its mark.

"'But if you are led by the Spirit,'" he read on, "'you are not under the law.' That would be the law of Nature, I suppose?"

"Um… kind of," said Teresa. "We'll get to that later. Just keep going."

"'Now the flesh-deeds are obvious, and they are these…'" Toloth frowned at the list that followed those words: there were sixteen terms in it, five of which he had never heard before, and three more of which made no sense at all in context.

"Something wrong?" said Teresa.

"Ah… no," said Toloth. "'They are these: puralesku, ubramulku, dirtiness, kali-kalii…'"

"Whoa, whoa, slow down!" said Teresa. "Pura-what?"

Toloth sighed. "I don't know," he confessed. "I thought I was quite fluent in Galard, but I have never heard any of these words before except for the third one."

Teresa considered. "Those are probably the sexual sins," she said. "You wouldn't talk about those much, since they're not really an issue for Yeerks, but the Andalites who invented Galard would naturally have words for them." Another thought struck her, and she nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense, since I remember the first one on the list was adultery…"

"Was what?" said Toloth politely.

Teresa blushed. "Adultery," she said. "That's when a man and a woman promise themselves to each other, and then one of them goes off and has sex with someone else. I don't suppose…"

"Oh!" said Toloth. "Kalashi-kur."

Teresa blinked. "What?"

Toloth grinned. "Kalashi-kur. That is the Hork-Bajir phrase for 'wife-badness'."

"Oh." Teresa had to take a second to digest that. She may not have had the usual noble-savage illusions about the Hork-Bajir, but it still came as something of a shock to learn that they had a word for a mortal sin that was unknown to Yeerks. "Well, yeah, that's what St. Paul's talking about. So, Gef? Don't go committing any wife-badness."

"He thanks you for the advice," said Toloth, although Gef had said no such thing. "Now, let's see; the next flesh-deed would appear to be 'statue-honor', whatever that means…"

"Idolatry, probably," said Teresa. "Worshipping false gods."

"Ah. Then sorcery, hatred, 'variation', 'emulation' – I take it those last two do not mean what I think of as variation and emulation?"

Teresa sighed; the way this was going, maybe 1 Corinthians 13 would have been faster after all. "Variation means quarrelling with other people," she said. "Emulation means wanting to have what they have, or be what they are, instead of being satisfied with what God gives you."

Toloth nodded. "'Anger, strife-causing, sedition, "lies-teaching"'…"

"Heresy."

"'Envy, murder, intoxication, revelry, and so on: of which I tell you, as I have told you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.'" The last phrase brought Toloth up short. "Now, what might that mean?" he said.

"What might what mean?" said Teresa.

"The kingdom of God," said Toloth. "I would have thought, from what you have told me of your God, that he was king everywhere and over everything. I don't suppose you mean to assert that God plans to give everything in the universe to those who follow your religion?"

Teresa smiled. "Well, yeah, actually, He will," she said. "If we follow through faithfully until we die, He'll put us as judges over angels and give us the morning star. It's all in here; you can look it up later."

Toloth stared at her. "You really mean that," he said.

"Of course I mean it," said Teresa. "And Gef? That goes for you now, too."

Toloth's mind was awhirl. Did these Jesus-worshippers – these Christians, as Teresa had called them – set no reasonable limits on their beliefs? It was one thing to say, as the Kandronists of his own world did, that one who behaved in a generally upright fashion would be rewarded with peace and contentment in the afterlife – but here was someone who seemed to think that her God had promised her everything she could possibly desire, and, at the same time, expected her to surrender her body itself to others out of sheer compassion.

It was absurd, of course – but, all the same, Toloth couldn't shake a nagging feeling that it was the absurdity of truth. That was, after all, how history generally worked: you developed a sober, reasonable vision of the world, and then a Gedd fell into a pool or an Andalite ship descended from the sky, and you discovered just how much that vision fell short of the reality. This was a disturbing thought; to avoid it, Toloth lowered his eyes to the Bible and continued reading. "'But the Spirit-fruits are…'" he began, and then hesitated as he searched for the appropriate English words; most of the words on this list, though he recognized them, were not words one heard much in the Yeerk pool. "Just a moment; they are…"

"Charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, long-suffering, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, and chastity," said Teresa. "Against such as these, there is no law."

Toloth blinked. "Um… yes, that seems to be about right," he said. "Is that the point I was supposed to reach?"

Teresa nodded. "Yeah, that's it," she said.

Then she caught sight of a pair of Hork-Bajir-Controllers heading toward her cage, and frowned. "And a good thing, too," she said. "Unless I'm much mistaken, Malcar's expecting me right about now."

A cold chill shot through Toloth: if a fellow soldier saw him discussing religion with a host, he was done for. "Give me the Baibul," he said sharply.

Teresa slid it through the bars, and Toloth thrust it back into the carrying dimension and strode briskly away. When he was a safe distance from Teresa's cage, he looked back over his shoulder; the two guards were escorting Teresa to the pier, and neither of them seemed to have noticed anything irregular.

With a sigh of relief, he turned and headed back to the Sub-Visser's Bug fighter, his contentment disturbed only by the unsettling thoughts Teresa had introduced into his mind – and by Gef, who was quietly but diligently repeating, «Charity, joy, peace, patience…»