"Are carrots and sticks just the literal only ways you can think of to convince anybody to do or not do anything? How about, since I don't want the Yeerks to win, I am probably gonna want to stop them, and if you want me to do something to help with that you could start by saying so and then explain why you think it's a good idea if I don't buy it from the start?"

"I am aware of the fact that I can sometimes convince you to do things. I'm trying to deal with the fact that I might need you to do things and cannot arrange that you will do things. I think I'm good at coming up with things. I am worse at explaining myself to other people - we have had miscommunications before - I'm worse at working with free variables than with fixed ones, especially if I have to think many steps ahead."

"Well, I sure as hell can't open that jar," shrugs Trouble. "Wouldn't if I could. I'm not arrangeable. If you need me to do something, you can ask. And if you need me to, and I can, I probably will. But 'just shut up and do what I tell you until either we win or the slugs kill us all' is definitely a can't."

"...If I tell you I'm gonna do something, and I know it's important, I'm not gonna go do something else unless it's more important that I do that," he says. "And if it's really important to you that I be consistent on something, it'll have to be something really important that gets me to not. I don't think that's something really special about me, I just think I notice it more. Most people will break a promise if something comes up that's worth breaking that promise to them."

"And if something does come up, I'll try to tell you about it," he adds. "Soon as I can."

"Thank you."

He smiles.

"Have we missed anything?"

"Damned if I know."

"Right. Well. If you think of anything. As long as Andi's upstairs - can we tell the others your stepdad is in the Sharing? No other details, necessarily, just that he's someone we can follow if we need to find Yeerk hangouts."

"I feel like I want to help you with something, but I don't even know where to start."

"Well, I'm going to spend the rest of this bowl of oatmeal thinking of relatively low-risk experiments to do with morphing, then I'm going to call Robin and ask her to find and photocopy a detailed street map of Phoenix while she's at the library today, then I'm going to catch a butterfly."

"I could help you catch butterflies," he laughs. "Or think of morphing experiments. I lost some scars on my way to Elfangor and back last night. Nothing anybody but me will miss. Maybe I should get a human morph so I can go back and forth without taking my clothes off - I bet Robin'd let me - and see what else it fixes. You'd probably want to take notes on that, right? When's good?"

"I'd like to get as many experiments as possible handled before going to Forks, and today there's no school and Renée is out all day. I would appreciate help catching butterflies, since I'm certain to be dismal at it. I would like to take notes on any experiments like that."

"Then I'll help you catch butterflies," he says. "And find Robin long enough to acquire her, and then drag Ethan back here so he can torture me in your basement."

"Got it," says Trouble. "Can I hear your list of bright ideas?"

"Check speeds, check healing tolerances, check if we can control the order of operations at all, figure out just how tiring it is and how many times in a row we can pull it off, you already checked if we come with knowledge of how to move around in morphed bodies but I'll double-check with the butterfly, same with thoughtspeaking, it made some noise so I'll want to see if we can cut down on that for stealth. That's what I've got so far."

"Yeah," says Trouble. "And I can't thoughtspeak when I'm human - I tried. Forgot to say."

"Good to know. Pity, that would have been tactically precious."

He shrugs. "Yeah. Oh well, I guess."