When we first went inside the building, I was all keyed up. I was ready to help wage a political battle, a war of minds and powers, with words as the only weapons. This kind of battle I could participate in, help Kareis along. However, I was to be a little dissapointed. A little like a foreigner visiting the United States, who might be excited at the thought of seeing live broadcasts from an actual free elected Congress, only to find that the average day of C-SPAN would put almost anyone to sleep. Although I found out many things I didn't know before, like how the Yeerks operated inside, in some hienous way it began to be boring. Conventional. Maybe the Andalites, in their guerilla warfare, would have given their tails to be able to come in there and listen, but I was just trying to help Kareis's cause (a cause that I didn't even know that much about, except that it seemed to be some kind of rebellion) and get in a position so that I could rebell. Finally, someone stood up and addressed me. Actually, they addressed Kareis.

"Kareis 924," a middle-aged woman, a represenative, if not a member, of the all-ruling Council of Thirteen, stood up and gestured for me to do so also. As I rose, she continued, "You are representing those of the lower ranks here on Earth, the expendables, those with less fortunate hosts. The issue here is what we are to do concerning them in the most recent attacks by the Andalites. They have done extensive damage to our Kandronas and the Earth-based pool in the past. Whenever such a distaster has struck, they have always been our first loss." Kareis started out on her speech. It was part address, part debate, because some others would interject if they disagreed with her, and she would have to be like a complacent lawyer respectfully arguing for her case.

<Ah . . .> I began, speaking in my mind for the first time in a while, <this is all very facinating, but where do we get to the part about making pacts with the Andalites and revolting against our superiors?>

<Later,> she replied. <I'm not allowed to raise an issue until I've spoken on theirs. And you can be assured that I am not going to even imply that. Then again . . .> As a conclusion, she finished, "I only ask that in matters of rights and safety, all of us be given at least the basic consideration and regard for life that even the humans try to give to their citizens in this country."

More than a few eyebrows were raised. Human sympathizers were not regarded highly in the Yeerk war society, but she continued on without pause. "This would benefit everyone, no matter what the rank." She directed her gaze in the general direction of a man seated next to the Council represenative. I felt a wave of darkness from him, knew instinctivly that he, or actually the Yeerk inside him, was evil, an evil I could not imagine. <Don't you realize?> Kareis asked me. <That's Visser Three. That's his human morph.>

It was abhorrent at first. I knew that he could morph as an Andalite could, but it seemed horrible that such an utterly evil creature could pass itself off as "human." The phrasing of this sparked some deep thoughts, and I watched his face carefully as Kareis went on. "However, some of us, especially those in the higher ranks, tend to ignore this, and abuse their authority over their inferiors to enjoy extra luxuries, or to take out the frustrations of their own failure." The human Visser Three's eybrow twitched slightly, but otherwise he appeared unmoved. "These leaders should be kept in check, for the good of the operations, and inevitably, ourselves."

There was no applause. That simply wasn't a Yeerk thing to do, whether they liked her speech or not. They only cooly regarded her (a little more notable chill from Visser Three) as she took her seat and the Represenative stood up once again. "Thank you, Kareis nine-two-four," she said, not sounding at all grateful. "Is there anyone else who wishes to speak before the meeting ajourns?"

Kareis was about to stand up to speak again, but she waited, tense but patient. <I cannot anger any of the higher officials,> she said to silence my impatient buzz. <Let them speak first, then I'll give my issue.>

However, in that respect, Kareis seemed a little late. Up stood Visser Three, with an oily diplomatic air which I was willing to bet was a good part of the reason he was where he was: two promotions and a throatcutting away from being on the Council of Thirteen. "I wish to speak partly on the issue that Kareis nine-two-four has brought up." He laid a slight emphaisis on the derrogatory "nine" beginning, which usually suggested one of lower rank, which was now bare and without title. He was Esplin 9466, Kareis told me, but he had a Visser's title and a long history of victories. "It is true that some of us have been guilty of such crimes, but we have found that largely the problem lies within the inferiors themselves."

<His researchers would discover that Gedds had superior intelligence and telekinetic abilities if he saw fit,> Kareis snarled, her words drawn in indignation. He went on, his words eventually getting even me furious. It was almost like a movie or a book, where an actor or a character was speaking in a way perfectly orchestrated to manipulate the emotions. When I realized why I could have laughed, though the humor was bitter. Visser Three was giving subtle digs at Kareis throughout his speech, many of them private things between them from long ago which even I did not know about, but Kareis's anger had gotten my adrenaline and other chemicals running and thus had affected me. Even my hormones were more subject to Yeerk control than they were to mine.

When his speech was finally done, Kareis let out a deep breath and stood up once again. <By the Kandrona Star, may they listen, or all is lost,> she said so that I could hear. Gazing over at the cold faces, mostly human, but some alien, her eyes rested on the human Visser Three. I wasn't sure why he was in human form; it would seem that he'd want to show off his wonderful host that everyone else coveted. But maybe it was because this was part of a meeting of leaders, and he didn't want to intimidate his fellow Yeerks by his Andalite form which instinctivly created fear and loathing in them, or by his deadly blade which they all knew all too well. Or maybe he did want to intimidate them, just his superiors wouldn't let him. He returned Kareis's stare with a peircing shot of anger, almost tangible, and I felt a wave of fear run through both of us. But she looked away, and instead focused her main attentions on the Represenative, and as she called upon the powers of all the forces that she contructed to be her God, she began her speech.

  I cannot remember the words of it. It was actually pretty boring anyway, since every six words were infused with formalities and politeness to buffer the shock of the real messege it contained. And even that was masked, so that it could only reveal itself in a subtle way, just enough to open everyone up to the idea that she was planning. Otherwise, she'd have Visser Three and half the others screaming "treason" at her before she was done. Her being in my head, though, I understood it. And I was just as shocked as they would have been, by an idea that to mention outright was a request for extermination.

She wanted to form an alliance with the Andalites.

And it was sincere, too. It wasn't like I thought, or like she had made me think for a while; partnership, then stab them in the back when it was convinient. Because in that case, she would never have revealed her sentiments, since part of that plan was for no Yeerk except her little group of rebels know that she had had any dealings with the Andalites at all. But here she was, telling them how the war had been so long and taxing to their people, how the Andalites fought the Yeerks because they felt bound by their archaic honor systems to contain again what they had set free. If only we could work something out, she told them in her code, there must be a solution. We could make peace and live together. But we must have unity for that. We have to end the politics of power among the Vissers and sub-vissers. For unless we do that, we can never really win, and we can never have peace.

Of course, her messege was so clouded by double-speak that to those who could not interpret it, it came out to something like: The Andalites have oppressed us ever since their technology was given to us. It is time for that to end! We must unite! Eliminate the Andalite filth! But it was a start. No one had any further buisness or comments, so the council was ended. I was so surprised I could not say anything. But Visser Three could.

As we humans left the meeting room through a hall out to the front lobby, he walked by me and looked down a little at Kareis. He played to full advantage that I --Kareis's body-- was younger and shorter than his middle-aged man, his human morph, was. He loved that feeling of power over me -- and Kareis -- that he difference in stature gave him, even though, to my beleif Kareis had a special standing in the hierarchy. Although she had no title, not even claiming the rank of under-Visser -- she was more like a Visser Nine on probation than anything else. She had done, something, in the recent past, that had gotten her demoted, but I don't think it was very big, because she never lost the acheivement's her life had earned her.

"So, Kareis nine-two-four," he addressed her in a sickeningly casual, friendly way. "You've developed some noteworthy opinions." This was what she had feared so much when she had started to speak; she was afraid of what Visser Three would say.

"I'm glad you found them interesting," Kareis replied politely, but with an icy chill.

"But, you know," he continued in a way, that, with my increased resistance and a breif moment of Kareis not trying to stop me, almost caused me to slap him in the face, "those sentiments seem very familar. In fact, they remind me of the time that you were accused of . . ." he looked around as if he cared who heard. "Well, we all know that that wasn't true. Foran was such a traitor."

I could feel anger, a horrible blinding fury that burned through my veins and set my blood on fire. <Visser Three was the very one to accuse me of the "crime" that got me demoted,> Kareis hissed to me. <He had no proof, and because he would look suspicious in punishing his rival for circumstancial evidence, he pinned the primary blame on . . . a subordinate.>

"Certainly, Visser," she replied complacently. "I should have never trusted him."

<Foran?> Visser Three must have put the blame on him. Now it made sense. Kareis had shown me the picture of Foran, her friend and ally, and their secret plot. I had also seen him kill Foran. So that was why he had died. And that was their secret plot: form an alliance with the Andalites.

<Yes. Then I, too, was punished, for complying with Foran's acts of treachery, even if I supposedly didn't know what I was doing. Visser Three punished me, but I appealed to the Council, and as Visser Nine and their best stratigist, they put me on what you call "probation.">

"Remember that," he said in a lower voice, so low that even I and Kareis could barely hear. "There may have been no proof against you, but if it happens a second time . . ." he elegantly desmonstrated a human gesture which all too well translated into one of a tailblade slicing a throat. With that he walked further, out the door and got into a limosine that was waiting there for him. That was funny, that he, who should be focusing on not drawing attention to himself lest the Andalite bandits find him alone, would get a private limo just so he could enjoy all the luxuries of the planet. But then I realized the true signifigance of his words.

<So it's true?> I asked, hardly able to beleive. <But, what you told me before: you wanted to use the Andalites to ruin Visser Three, and then betray them so you in turn could get promoted. Why did you suddenly change your mind?> Or did she simply have some hidden agenda, which even now I did not know?

Kareis paused for a second before answering. <I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.> I had the feeling that she was revealing something, some intimate detail which she rarely even thought to herself. <I wasn't sure if I wanted to try to succeed where Foran and I had failed before and ruin all the chances of getting promoted, or even loose my life. Peace sounds like such a good thing, but it's so hard and dangerous to get, and then when you have it, how do you know that the results are not a hundred times worse than what you had before? In a way, war is more comfortable. War is what we are, it is part of being a Yeerk. You know who your enemy is; they are the ones trying to kill you. You simply wage battles, pick a proper strategy, try to bribe fate. But peace, that is a deadly and precarious game where you never know who is for or against you, never know if you have led your people on a platform from which they can fall further, or simply brought them to their doom.>

I had never thought of that. In any of our own wars on Earth, peace was always everyone's goal. Except they usually had drastically different ideas of the condition of that peace. So they fought. At the end, when the two signed an armistice, the one whose conditions were met was considered the victor. But then again, this was not like any Earth war, with the circumstances like nothing any of us had conceived before. <What would happen to the humans, if the two of you made an alliance?>

There was another hesitant pause. Kareis was picking her words carefully. Was it because she wanted to know how to say it, or if she was deciding which of her array of stories would be most suitable? <I am not sure,> she said simply. <It depends on what kind of agreement we can make. The Andalites want us all dead, or at least banished to our homeworld, taking all our technology and hosts away from us so we can no longer do any harm. Some see us as a tumor in their galaxy that they must irradicate at all costs, even if it involves cutting off normal flesh in the process.>

Kill us? Kill us all, just to eliminate the human-Controllers? No, they would not. The Andalites -- I knew little of them, but I had head they had an "archaic honor system." <They would never do such a thing.>

<They have in the past.> Her voice was hard. In the past, when they were supposed to be gentle and moral. A quantum virus . . . they used a quantum virus on the Hork-Bajir, to eliminate those of us who had taken their bodies. It killed, many, many of our people.> She showed me people, faces, personalities, bearing Hork-Bajir forms. <Rilvath 752,> she told me, listing more names as they went by. <Hicheb 806. Tekan 635. Sorla 982. Those were the ones I knew best. And so many others, all those others died the horrible death of gradually being broken down until they no longer existed in the fabric of space-time.>

It was regretful, that all those Yeerks had to die -- That's five hundred or so less Yeerk slugs loose in the galaxy the cruel and to-the-point part of me commented -- but another part of me had to look past that and to the point. <But what would the deal include?> I probed, praying and hoping there was some way I could influence Kareis to work out a better deal than the one I feared. <Obviously, part of the bargain is that your two sides make peace and no one kills one another, right?>

<That is the ideal.> There were seveal abstract thoughts that accompanied this phrase, but I could not pick them up very well.

<So, would you Yeerks leave all your human hosts? Could you get everyone to leave us alone?>

<Leave you alone?> Kareis laughed at my choice of words. <Well . . . I don't know. Do you really expect us to just leave so many of our hosts? Because you, the humans, the Andalites, you're all alike. You'd all be against us. We'd be trapped again, back in our pool, without hosts or technology, blind and deaf and mute and incapacitated. Would there be another way? Would it be possible for us to live, to really live, and be in peace with everyone too? Can we not take over anyone, and still be free?>

I didn't know either. Perhaps we could work something out, but it could not be just between me and Kareis. Perhaps if we could organize a council . . .

But I could not worry about that now. Right now, our most important concern was contacting the Andalites. At first, although I there had been hundreds of possibilities of ways to pull it off, it seemed as if it had only been a secondary concern, as if I hadn't given my full thought to it. But now everything hung in the balance. I could help end the conflict, prevent them from enslaving all of humanity and tearing apart the Earth. Although Kareis might have simply made this up -- this could be an elaborate form of manipulation, though I preferred it any day to the "breaking" she sometimes talked about -- one thing I knew for sure was that Kareis would do almost anything to spite Visser Three, and she would, in some way, make contact with the Andalites sometime soon, and that she wanted to be Visser Nine. All of which were important to me.

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