After three days of ostensible research into various alien religions, Toloth Two-Nine-Four announced that he was ready, and the Sub-Visser and several of his fellow guards accompanied him to the infestation pier.
"Good luck, Toloth Two-Nine-Four," said the Sub-Visser.
"Thank you, Sub-Visser," said Toloth. "You will, of course, see that no-one re-infests my host between now and the next feeding cycle?"
"Naturally," said the Sub-Visser, seeming surprised that he had to ask. "The Empire rewards its heroes; it doesn't wait till they're in the pool and then make off with their hosts."
Toloth said nothing, but reflected that Visser Three – or any other full Visser, for that matter – would have hardly let such a scruple keep him from reassigning so fine a Hork-Bajir host as Gef Makkil. He would, he thought, rather miss Sub-Visser One Hundred and Sixty-Three when their ways eventually parted.
"Well, then," he said, "I will see you all at the end of the next feeding cycle. May the Kandrona shine and strengthen you."
"And you, Toloth Two-Nine-Four," said the Sub-Visser, and a murmured chorus of concurrence went up from the rest of his guard.
Toloth nodded, and knelt slowly and deliberately on the pier. This served a double purpose: besides heightening the drama of the moment, and thereby reinforcing in his comrades' minds their picture of him as a bold hero of the Empire, it gave him time to send one last urgent message to his host. «Now, remember, Gef: not one word about Jesus to the other Yeerks. Not a word about Baibuls, not a word about beginning things, and definitely not a word about Teresa. You understand?»
«Yes,» said his host. «Gef not tell Yeerks about Jesus.»
«Good,» said Toloth, and began to detach himself from Gef's brain.
«Toloth tell Yeerks about Jesus?»
Toloth quickly reattached himself. «No,» he said firmly. «Toloth most certainly does not.»
«Who, then?»
«No-one,» said Toloth. «Now, if you'll just…»
«Then how Yeerks get saved?»
«I…»
"Are you waiting for something, Toloth Two-Nine-Four?" the Sub-Visser inquired acidly.
Toloth looked up at him, and attempted to assume an air of wounded dignity. "I am merely putting my thoughts in order, Sub-Visser," he said. "I wish to be as eloquent as possible when I address my hostless brethren."
The Sub-Visser seemed to accept this, and Toloth returned his attention to Gef. «Perhaps Yeerks aren't supposed to be saved,» he said. «Isn't that possible?»
«No,» said Gef firmly. «"Anyone in the universe can join". Teresa say. Gef believe.»
With great difficulty, Toloth refrained from telling Gef precisely what, at that moment, he thought of what Teresa said and what Gef believed. «Well, then, perhaps Oliss Three-Eight-Three will tell them someday,» he said. «But it is not my job, and it is not yours. Is that clear?»
Gef didn't answer immediately. His synaptic patterns were of a type Toloth had never seen before; as near as he could make out, his host was inquiring of Jesus whether it was lawful to obey one's Controller in such a case as this. Precious seconds ticked by while this curious struggle was deliberated; then, abruptly, Gef said, with decision, «Gef not tell Yeerks.»
«Thank you.»
Thirty seconds later, Toloth was in the pool, wondering, for perhaps the fiftieth time, why he couldn't be one of those forceful, resolute Yeerks who achieved mastery over their hosts without apparent effort. One couldn't imagine Lissim, or the Sub-Visser, having to cajole their hosts into silence on some important matter; they would have simply said, «If you talk about this, you will regret it very soon afterward,» and that would have been that.
On the other hand, neither could one imagine Lissim or the Sub-Visser doing what he, Toloth Two-Nine-Four, was about to do. So perhaps he made up in audacity for what he lacked in decisiveness. He could flatter himself, anyway.
With an effort, he put the matter out of his mind and turned his attention to the pool around him. It was much quieter than the reports of three days before had described, which was hardly surprising; everyone currently in the pool had already fed at least once in the past three days (except the very newest Gedd-Controllers), so there were no new Controllers left for the izcots to interrogate. Toloth rather regretted this, since the relative silence of the pool would make his own actions that much more conspicuous, but he consoled himself with the thought that, even if he was overheard, only the maddest visionary would be able to guess what he was about.
He worked his palps for a moment, and then let out a call that echoed through the sulp niar: *Oliss Three-Eight-Three! Report to the northeastern corner of the pool immediately!*
With that, he settled down into his place and waited, noting with bitter satisfaction the consternation that his message had caused among the other residents of the pool. Probably the little troublemaker and its izcot friends were panicking right now, wondering whether they were all about to be Kandrona-starved by order of the Sub-Visser. Well, it served them right.
After about five minutes, a small Yeerk swam up to him, its pheromone signature indicating plainly that it came from a low-ranking spawn. *Oliss Three-Eight-Three reporting as requested, zueee,* (5) it said.
*Very good,* said Toloth. *Tell me, Oliss Three-Eight-Three, are you familiar with a Yeerk of the Malcar spawn, designation Seven-Four-Five?*
Oliss hesitated. *I know of her, yes,* it said cautiously.
*Could you identify her in this pool?*
*No,* said Oliss, *but Arssis Five-Nought-Nine or Illim Eight-Seven-Seven could.*
*Good,* said Toloth. *Now listen carefully…*
*Malcar Seven-Four-Five to the infestation pier! Repeat, Malcar Seven-Four-Five to the infestation pier!*
Malcar rose from the bottom of the pool and shuddered softly. Time to go see how much damage that host of hers had done to the fabric of the Yeerk Empire in the past hour.
If only she could do something about it – but, for the life of her, she couldn't think what there might be to do. She'd tried undermining Teresa's sense of mission, and had only succeeded in strengthening it; she felt sure that an audience with the Sub-Visser would be pointless, and possibly hazardous to her human-Controller status as well; and as for that other wild notion that had crept into her mind while she was feeding – well, she wasn't sure she was quite that desperate yet.
She attempted to put it out of her mind, and headed for the pier. There would be time enough to brood once she was inside Teresa's head, and she didn't want to keep her fellow Controllers waiting…
Whap!
Malcar reeled backward, disoriented. She wasn't sure what just happened; it was as though another Yeerk had descended upon her with astonishing speed and flung itself with all its strength at her mid-section. The Yeerk capacity for pain is limited, but Malcar was smarting from the impact about as badly as her nervous system would permit, and she imagined that the other Yeerk had a similar feeling.
Clumsy creature, she thought. Probably one of those poor wretches who tried to survive on oatmeal while the Kandrona was being repaired. (This sociological development had not yet been confirmed by the Visserarchy, and therefore had not officially happened, but Malcar was the sort of person who trusted in feeding-area rumors.)
She waited a moment or two for the throbbing in her mid-section to subside, and then resumed her path to the infestation pier.
Whap!
Another direct blow, this time from below. What was more, it seemed, so far as Malcar was able to judge, to have been the same Yeerk as the first time. Something was very wrong here, but Malcar, woozy from the repeated blows, couldn't even begin to guess what it was.
The pier… she had to get to the pier. She roused herself, and moved forward again…
Whap!
And again…
Whap!
And again…
Whap! Whap! Whap!
Had Malcar been less of a child of pride, she might have realized what was going on, and conceivably even managed to fend off her assailant. In her five years as a Controller, however, she had made every effort to forget about the hostless sub-culture she had left behind, and had very largely succeeded. She had completely forgotten, for instance, that there were Yeerks among the Sulp Niar pool's izcot population who still practiced the ancient art of k'kuuut'triih – the unique martial art developed on the Yeerk homeworld in the generations before Jimur, by which the capacities of the Yeerk body were honed to such a pitch that it became something like a living torpedo. And ignorance, however human thinkers may extol it, was neither bliss nor strength for Malcar in this incidence.
At length, after about a minute and a half, the barrage of abuse let up, and Malcar was once more free to proceed to the pier. She was so disoriented from her ordeal, however, that she was no longer entirely sure where the pier was relative to her (or, for that matter, which side of her was up and which was down); while she was trying to work this out, the pool-speech simulator gave voice once more. *Creshkol One-Eight-Three to the infestation pier! Repeat, Creshkol One-Eight-Three to the infestation pier!*
A dim feeling of panic went through Malcar. Wait a minute, she thought. Creshkol… that can't be right. I haven't gotten to the pier yet. They should be waiting for me still, not for this Creshkol of whatever designation.
But there was no question about it. She sent out an echolocation pulse, and perceived a male Taxxon lowering his head into the pool, with a Yeerk – presumably Creshkol – swimming towards it. And after Creshkol had infested his host, Luzik Nine-One-One was summoned, and then Parsem Two-Six-Double-Nought – and so on for nearly an hour, as Malcar waited, in vain, for her name to be called again.
At last, she gave up and sank to the bottom of the pool again, her mind a frothing cauldron of fear, anger, and bewilderment. Who was it who had attacked her? Why had he/she/it done so? And, above all, who was now Controlling Teresa?
The infestation paralysis subsided, and Teresa felt her body raise itself from the pier. She felt her head nod curtly to the pool guards, and her feet carry her out toward the stairway that led to the pool egress.
She felt all this, but her mind was too clouded by self-pity for her to give it any particular heed. For the first time in over two weeks, Toloth hadn't showed up at her cage while Malcar was feeding – and, although she hadn't realized it, she had come rather to depend on her conversations with Toloth to keep the agony and despair of the Yeerk pool from overwhelming her own soul. The Word of God strengthens those who preach it as well as those who hear it, and the inability to preach can leave a young missionary quite bereft of strength.
Nor did it make matters any better when a mocking voice in her mind said, «Well, Teresa Sickles, have you no word for your old friend?»
«I'd hardly call us friends, Malcar,» Teresa snapped. She knew it wasn't the charitable thing to say, but only a small portion of her cared at that moment.
«What was up with you today, anyway?» she added. «You've never taken that long to reinfest me before.»
An amused chuckle echoed through her consciousness. «No, I certainly haven't,» her Controller said. «However, if it will console you any, I have taken that long to reinfest Gef on a number of occasions.»
Whatever response Teresa had expected, it hadn't been that. «What… what do you mean?» she whispered.
There was no response in words. Instead, Teresa's mind was suddenly flooded with a series of brief mental images: the inside of Sub-Visser One Hundred and Sixty-Three's Bug fighter, a Na scurrying forward with a blood-red Bible in his hands, her own face as seen through the bars of an involuntary host's cage. All of them images that, so far as she knew, only one person of her acquaintance had ever seen.
For some minutes, Teresa was as incapable of mental speech as of physical. Only when her new Controller had left the pool area and was halfway to the Gleet BioFilter did she find the strength to murmur, «You'll be the death of me yet, Toloth Two-Nine-Four.»
(5) Zueee: The opposite of shapluk – a form of address used by low-ranking Yeerks to their extreme superiors. Because of the disparity of rank it represents, it is rarely used by any other than hostless Yeerks, and consequently is generally unknown in Verbal Yeerkish. The spelling given is therefore a rough attempt to transliterate the high-pitched whistling sound that Oliss Three-Eight-Three used on this occasion, which is the correct form of the word in Pool, or Pure, Yeerkish.