Trouble is in the kitchen, eating oatmeal, when they come down.

"Morning," says Bella, helping herself to oatmeal.

"Good morning," he chirps. "You guys sleep okay?"

"Yeah, fine. You?"

"Peachy."

"Would you rather have our talk without Andi around?" asks Bella neutrally.

"Yeah."

"'Kay," shrugs Andi, and she takes her bowl of oatmeal upstairs.

"So... I don't think I can just figure out what I need, and tell you," he says. "I don't think I can guess that well what you might do that I should warn you off of."

"I don't know either. But if I run headlong into something that turns out to be a huge problem for you, I cannot safely replace you, and that's if your reaction is 'flee to Australia' and not 'sell us to the invading force'. Anybody could be piloted by a Yeerk, to say nothing of your particular talents as bear bait and so on."

"I'm not gonna sell you to the invading force," says Trouble. "There is nothing that could get me to do that on purpose. Not really keen on fleeing to Australia, either." He sighs. "What I mean is... fucking things up with me is pretty easy, some ways, there's stuff I'm touchy about. But fucking things up with me forever is really hard. For you, anyway."

"Temporary screwups could jeopardize delicate things, too."

"Sure," he says. "But, like, I know that. If you manage to piss me off in the middle of kidnapping your dad, I'm not gonna bail on you out of spite."

"Okay. That's good, then."

"For that matter, if he manages to piss me off, I still won't bail on you. But I might wanna stay out of his way as much as possible."

"I don't anticipate needing you to spend much time in close quarters with Charlie."

"Okay, good."

"It would still be good if I could avoid pissing you off."

He shrugs. "Yeah. But - I don't know, I didn't know you were going to say the thing that set me off this time until you said it, I don't know how to guess what the next thing might be. Do you?"

She shrugs. "Do you have a reasonable model of me being desperate, paranoid, overclocked, and some amount of traumatized? Because that's how I'm going to be for the foreseeable future."

"Nnnot really," says Trouble.

"Then that makes it harder to guess. And I can guess what I'll do but not which of those things will upset you."

"...I could try to tell you what about that thing just now got to me," he offers, "if that'd help."

"Potentially very much."

"It's something like... it seemed like you didn't know that I'd think about what it might do to you before running off and planting explosives somewhere," he says. "Like you figured that was a pretty obvious thing for me to do and you had to warn me off it because I wasn't gonna get there myself unless you gave me a shove. And there's something about the way you said it, too, but that's harder to nail down - I could just say I don't like it when somebody tells me what not to do, but that doesn't get all of it."

"You don't work the way I work. I don't know you the way I know my twin. I can model you, but sometimes I think my model of you is pretty terrible. I don't like to trust it if there's a way I don't have to. If you ran off and planted explosives somewhere thoughtlessly, it would - I wouldn't assume that it would happen if I forgot to mention that it shouldn't, but it would fail to stun me the way it would stun me if Andi did it."

"Okay," says Trouble. "So... maybe say that? I mean, if something like that comes up again? There's a big difference between 'I don't really think you're gonna do this, but it's important enough to check' and 'I totally think you're gonna do this, so don't'. First one I can handle. What you said came off more like the second one."

Bella writes this down.

"Think we can dig up any more land mines this way?" he says wryly.

"Maybe. I don't know. Can you tell me what else sets you off?"

"...Well, there's the thing about being told what not to do," he says. "Rules. Threats. But not just threatening threats. Like - you remember when I made my first pie for you guys, I wouldn't eat any vegetables? It was 'cause someone was telling me I had to if I wanted any pie. Not much of a threat, but it counts. And on the flip side, not every time somebody tells me to do something is a show-stopper - I was all right with Elfangor telling me to run and hide."

"What makes the difference?"

He shrugs. "I'm not exactly sure. Something about - context, maybe. What it meant."

"Renée wanting you to eat your vegetables meant that she was trying to play the role of the responsible adult who cares about your vitamin intake. Does that fit into some category that might generalize better? I mean, is it - per-case or is there a pattern I could learn?"

"The thing that mattered about what your mom did is that she did it that way," says Trouble. "She wanted something from me, and even though she wanted it for my own good, she tried to get it by taking something away from me and holding it hostage. That's just never a good idea. Telling me I can only have this nice thing if I do this, or you'll do something nasty to me if I do that."

"...How far does that go? Like, I don't have a specific real example in mind, but there are fairly natural consequences for all kinds of things that could look like a threat in that way - there are friendship-ending offenses, the end of a friendship means the end of all associated perks, how does that fail to fall into this category?"

"...That's more like - telling me you can't open the peanut butter jar so if I want any I'd better do it myself. You're not really holding something over me, it's just that the way things fall out, you can't make it so I can have the one thing without doing the other."

"...What do you mean?"

"What if I can make it that way, what if I can write my own mental programs in my little notebook and install them any which way I want, what if the only thing between me and being able to let you have the one thing without doing the other - or whatever - is an hour and a pencil and finding it necessary?"

"—If we're talking about friendship, it matters what you want, too," he says. "Like - back to the pie. The pie was a lever. Your mom didn't, like, have a superstiton or something that it's bad luck to have pie if somebody hasn't eaten their vegetables, the pie wasn't her pie that she was trading to us for vegetable-eating, the point of not giving people pie until they eat their vegetables is that they want the pie and they'll put up with the vegetables if that's the only way they can get it. That's different from, like... if you don't wanna be friends with somebody who's nasty to you, and they have to not be nasty to keep being your friend. Even if you could make yourself put up with it. You could probably get the lid off the peanut butter jar, too, with a big enough wrench. Doesn't mean you have to go to the hardware store and buy one just 'cause I want some peanut butter."

"Friendship was just an example that came to mind. I do have to go buy the wrench if you going without peanut butter means some significant increase in the chance that brain-infesting alien slugs take over the Earth and you don't feel like getting off the couch to open the jar. I will buy the outcome of brain-infesting alien slugs not taking over the Earth with any currency I can get my hands on, whether the transaction is fair or not, whether I like it or have to make myself like it or have to live with not liking it, none of that remotely approaches the magnitude of importance of brain-infesting alien slugs not taking over the Earth."

"I... also don't want brain-infesting alien slugs taking over the Earth," Trouble points out. "And when I said 'doesn't mean you have to', I meant it in context. The point of the peanut butter jar isn't that God himself decreed there's no way you can open the jar so I can't blame you for making me choose. It's that you're not trying to make me choose, you're just pointing out that there is a choice. That's not a threat, that's information. If you, I dunno, designed the jar specifically so that only I can open it because you have some kind of weird fascination with watching me open jars, and then you vaporized all the other peanut butter in Arizona, that would be the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say 'threat'. It's the difference between something that's already there and just happens to be the way it is, and something that somebody's setting up specifically to get something out of me. If, I dunno, you could open the jar and you just don't want to because you don't want any peanut butter, 'open it yourself if you want some' is still fine. Get me?"

"I understand that you also don't want the Yeerks to take over the Earth. Whenever I say something that makes you feel compelled to remind me you can skip it. I was explaining the level of need-to-get-results I am working with inside my own head, not trying to contrast your preferences with mine in terms of their contents." She shakes her head. "Anyway. My knowledge of human resource management is seriously limited, but if both carrots and sticks make you explode I don't know what else to do - make a plan for if you feel like joining us on a particular Tuesday and another plan for if you don't and consult you to see if the stars are right?"

"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."

"Yes. Let's go catch me a butterfly, and I can go practice with Andi supervising while you find Robin?"

"Sure."

"There should be some in the garden. Little drab ones."

Within five minutes, Trouble has a little white butterfly caged in his hands. He brings it to Bella.

She accepts it, acquires it to keep it from escaping, and carries it in in case Andi wants it too.

Andi does want it too!

"You guys are gonna be a cute butterfly," says Trouble, admiring the original.

"Yep!"

"So I guess we'll see you later, Trouble?"

"Yep. Hug?"

The twins play with the butterfly until he comes back.

He returns about an hour later, accompanied by Ethan and a map. A really good map.

"Hi, guys. It turns out Andi is some kind of morphing prodigy. She can include clothes, and control order of operations, and she's six times faster than me at the butterfly. She also figured out how to stop in the middle, but I can do that too, now."

"How about clothes, can you do those?"

"Working on it."

"I can't do just any clothes, they have to be pretty snug," says Andi, who is in fact wearing a tube top and leggings. "But they just sort of come along, if I want them to - not when I'm turning into Bella, though, then I want them to stay where they are."

"Fascinating," says Ethan. "Could you attach one outfit to each shape, I wonder?"

"We were about to try that when you showed up, actually."

"Well, don't let me stop you," he laughs.

"She's not going to do it in front of you. Andi, you think you can take notes by yourself while I watch these guys?"

"Yeah, no problem."

"I do love an audience," says Ethan.

Trouble bounces gleefully.

"No fatal wounds, nothing we cannot possibly explain as 'Trouble fell off the roof' or something if he winds up unable to morph like Elfangor - you're morphing Robin, Trouble, not one of the Andalites?"

"Yeah," he says, "otherwise I'd bust my clothes - I guess if I figure out Andi's trick that won't be as big of a problem, but one thing at a time, and this thing's more fun."

"Because one of the questions I have is whether anything peculiar happens if you lose a part you don't normally have."

"...Ooh," says Trouble. "Yeah, I'm game for that. Should I go hide behind a box?"

"Does this not actually matter to you? I can be, you know, experimentally detached if you don't care and neither of you are going to be juvenile about it."

"I'm perpetually juvenile," says Trouble. "And I'm gonna be perpetually something else if Ethan's gonna be mauling me for hours. It doesn't bother me, but it'd bother me to bother you, you know?"

"I don't give a damn at all," Ethan contributes.

"I'd rather skip the juvenile part, so until we're checking something less objective, I guess you go behind a box, and I suppose at some point when you are sufficiently 'something else' I leave you two alone and hope you have the presence of mind to write anything down."

Trouble morphs. It takes a few minutes.

"If it doesn't disappear when he demorphs? We have a little campfire and when Renée gets home 'we decided to roast marshmallows'."

"Tasty," snorts Ethan. "Well, he's demorphing, and it doesn't seem inclined to disappear."

"It does not." Bella gets a box, lines the bottom with bubble wrap to contain the spread of ichor, and offers it.

Ethan wipes his hands and the knife. Then he makes the knife disappear.

"I'm all demorphed," says Trouble, from behind his box. "No missing pieces. Should I try morphing back to see what happens?"

"Yes, please." (Write, write.)

Quiet morphing noises ensue.

"Recording the results?" inquires Ethan.

"What else?"

He shrugs. "Further insights, unrelated thoughts, your favourite apple pie recipe? It's not as though I can read it."

"I am taking notes on the experiment and what it might mean about future experiments and the uses of non-experimental type morphing in extremis."

"Aha."

"The fact that the stalk eye is persisting, in particular, is interesting - that and the fact that Visser Three was able to eat Elfangor and then turn into a creature the same size as Elfangor without apparent discomfort suggests that it's possible to cheat at food, basically. Morph fleas or something, bite each other, persist indefinitely. I'd rather never have to, but it's good to know."

<Got my eye back,> says Trouble, poking his indeed pristine Elfangor-shaped head up over the boxes. <Should we cut something else off before I turn back? Maybe better not, the fewer Andalite parts we have to dispose of the better, right?>

"Yeah, I don't even know how well it'll burn. And we're going to have to get all the blood off the floor, too, but -" She dabs a paper towel on the end of the eye. "It should come up okay."

"Still better to have relatively less, so if you have methods of injury available other than the knife, probably best for further tests. You holding up okay back there?"

No answer.

Bella waits for the morphing noises to stop, then repeats the question.

"Kinda tired," he admits. "I could maybe use a break and something to drink."

"We have water. Or iced tea, or milk. Morphing is kind of tiring."

"Ooh, iced tea," says Trouble, appearing from behind the boxes. "I would love an iced tea."

"I'll go get you one, then. Ethan, anything for you?"

"No thanks," he chirps.

At which time, Ethan and Trouble are kissing.

"You're welcome. Should I leave you be?"

He shrugs. "Nah, if you do we'll probably just start making out again; stick around while I finish this and then we can do some more science."

"Okay. One thing I was trying to figure out is how morphing interacts with breathing. Me and Andi noted that we continue breathing while morphing, occasionally with a moment of changeover between systems - we didn't have enough trials to see if we can reliably demorph with our lungs full of air, which would be really handy if we could do it every time, for underwater if we ever need to do things underwater. If you could keep an eye on that that would be useful, although it's the kind of observation you can make any time you morph so it's not worth dividing your attention if the experiments you're actually here to do are distracting."

"Ooh," says Trouble. "Yeah. I'll try it some other time."

Bella nods, and sits down, and goes and annotates her notes so far.

Trouble drinks his iced tea.

Ethan eyes him speculatively.

"Penny for your thoughts."

"Who, me? Just wondering what to break first."

"It's really very convenient that we have someone willing to perform the experiment."

"Isn't it?" he agrees.

Trouble beams.

"Have you decided," Bella inquires delicately, "what to break first?"

"Mm, not quite."

"Okay. Can you break things with your bare hands or should I go scrounging for instruments of blunt trauma?"

Ethan giggles. "Oh, scrounge for instruments, by all means, I can't imagine that making it any less fun."

Trouble laughs and keeps drinking his iced tea, slowly.

"I think we have a hammer."

"Ooh," says Trouble. "Yeah, bring the hammer."

Bella goes looking for the hammer. It takes her three minutes to find; the garage is kind of a mess.

When she comes back, Trouble has finished his iced tea and is kissing Ethan again.

Bella coughs politely.

He disengages. "Hi, Bella!"

"I'll take that, thanks," says Ethan, reaching for the hammer.

She hands it over, and sits down, and flips her notebook open again.

Ethan eyes Trouble some more.

Trouble grins back at him.

Trouble is exquisitely cooperative.

"Morphing's tiring and we don't want him stuck - see if this makes it any harder, I think, then work up from there?"

"It's sure as hell distracting," says Trouble, beginning to morph. "Not that much harder, though..."

Bella watches his arm as he changes. "Note when during the morph it stops hurting, and if there are intermediate stages."

"Still hurts," he observes, although in fact the morph has yet to touch his damaged arm; it's going for the hair first, and Robin's brilliant green eyes. Then he shrinks, all of the barely-an-inch height difference, and his face begins to shift...

Bella writes this down, checks her timer, writes that down. "Takes longer than me morphing Andi. Seems relatively proportional to how big the changes you're making are."

<And I can thought-speak now,> he (or she) says cheerfully.

"...Ooh. Me and Andi did not come across that particular feature morphing each other, although we can do it when we're butterflies - how do you do it?"

"I - just do?" he says, in Trouble's accent from Robin's mouth. "It's not any different than doing it as an Andalite."

"Huh." Bella turns into Andi -

"Tes"<ting?>

<You got it!>

<Wow, we might have to spend a lot of time morphed as each other just to get this advantage.>

She morphs back. She writes.

"Mm, pass," he says.

And shows no sign of injury to that arm. He checks.

"It could be different, injuries to morphs versus injuries to baseline shapes," Bella says, "is there some reason we can't do that experiment?"

"We can if you wanna hold the hammer," says Trouble. "Ethan doesn't feel like fucking up his best friend even when she's actually me."

"I'll think about it. You were faster demoprhing than morphing, any idea why?"

"'Cause I wasn't trying to figure out when the pain stopped, I think."

"Okay, can we repeat that or something effectively similar without the confounding factor in case the injury all by itself is affecting your speed?"

"Sure," he says, holding his other arm out to Ethan.

Who cheerfully breaks it.

This time the morph is much faster. A little slower than coming back from Robin the first time, maybe, but not as obviously so.

Bella times it and writes down the times.

"Incrementally nastier. Don't overdo it, and I don't think we should experiment with anything that could cause brain damage."

He shrugs. "All right, so don't hit me in the head."

Ethan playfully taps the handle of the hammer against Trouble's forehead.

"C'mon, that barely hurt," he giggles.

So Ethan does it again. Several more times.

Bella times him. When he's done, she says, "Distracted or actually slowed down by being hurt?"

"Distracted," he says. "That's how it slows me down - it's hard to concentrate through it, you know?"

"Do you think practice would affect it?"

"Maybe. Probably. Let's see."

This round, Ethan puts the hammer down and breaks all of Trouble's fingers. And then picks it up again to finish the job, prodding carefully to verify that no bone in hand or wrist remains intact.

"Are we inspiring you?"

"Inspiring me? I don't think I'd describe it like that, what do you mean? Trouble, do of course say so if you need another break."

"Inspiring you to unscientific observations."

"I am fiiiiiiiiine," says Trouble. "If I take a break it'll be to drag Ethan behind some boxes and fuck him."

"Well, say so if you need to do that, so I can leave."

"Trust me," he laughs, "it's not gonna sneak up on you."

"Right then. Carry on."

"'Kay."

Trouble spends most of this time whimpering ecstatically.

Bella scribbles. Her expression is very, very neutral.

Ethan pauses to inquire, "Are we making you uncomfortable?"

"I'm fine."

Very happy mush.

And when he's finished, his breath still not quite caught, he says in half a gasp: "Get lost, Bella, we're taking that break now."

Bella writes down the time. And she goes up the stairs, and closes the door.

They are not especially quiet down there.

Bella and Andi will be up in their room on the top floor working on the clothes thing. Also they will - probably not coincidentally - have on loud music to see how this interacts with understanding thoughtspeech.

When next they venture downstairs, Ethan will be sitting on the couch drinking tea.

And Trouble will be curled up with his head in Ethan's lap, sleeping peacefully.

Bella comes down the stairs, with her hands behind her back. "Despite her protests, Andi has been practicing morphing-in-order and has learned an adorable trick. Does Trouble want to wake up and see, do you suppose?"

"Oh, probably," says Ethan.

<Trouble! Wake up and see what I can do!>

Bella brings her hands around in front of her.

"Holy shit," says Trouble, "that's so adorable, I want to hug you but I'm afraid you'd squish. Can I hug you when you demorph?"

Even Ethan grins.

<Sure!> says Andi. <I'm not a perfect fairy. I can't fly like this and I'm pretty sure about half of me has an exoskeleton I couldn't postpone till after the wings and I can only do it one try in three. But I'm so cute!>

"You are unbelievably cute. I don't believe how cute you are."

<Bella says photographic evidence of the cute is too dangerous. It's sad.>

Ethan rather absently pets him.

<I wanna demorph now. And call it a day, I'm tired.>

Trouble is asleep again.

Bella sits at the kitchen table and writes inscrutably.

Andi unearths popsicles from under frozen pesto cubes and broccoli, and takes a blue one and gives Bella a red one and waves an orange one questioningly in Ethan's direction.

"Ooh. Yes, please and thank you."

He gets an orange popscicle. Andi flops into an armchair with her blue. "I'm tiiiired."

"So is Trouble," says Ethan, gesturing down at his lapful of same.

"Yeah. I'm not sleepy, though, I don't think I could just take a nap right now. I feel like I ran a marathon though."

"I suppose that makes sense. The energy has to come from somewhere."

"Yeah, I guess. Bella's pretending she's not tired even though she morphed almost as many times as I did."

"Only almost, and more of mine were just to you and back," Bella says.

"Yes, morphing another member of the same species does seem to be less taxing," says Ethan, petting the sleeping Trouble.

"Yep. I wonder when Robin will be here, do you know?"

"Not a clue. She was reportedly already buried in books when Trouble found her."

"Sounds productive."

"It will be."

"...What are you doing?"

"Thinking. At the moment, about easily-obtained substances, especially anything likely to be effective in dense and solid form, that could be slipped into Yeerk pools we might find and disagree with the inhabitants. Might have to send Robin on a run for chemistry research after she's back with the verdict on birds."

"I like the sound of that," says Ethan.

"I thought you might."

"Robin won't, she'll get squeamish. I should go with her to keep her on track."

"I didn't know she was the type to be squeamish about killing invading slug parasites."

"Well, not if you handed her one to step on." He considers. "Maybe if you handed her one to step on. Chemical weapons, though, that's a different beast entirely in her eyes."

"Why?"

"Harder to be sure of your aim. Probably less pleasant for the Yeerks. Definitely less pleasant for Robin to think about."

"Efficient. Infrastructure damage. No hosts in the way."

"Unless someone falls in, or an insufficiently poisoned Yeerk causes brain damage later. The possibility of baby Yeerks. They have to come from somewhere, and presumably they have to eat while they're at it."

"Well, fewer hosts in the way, at any rate. Higher Yeerk-to-host ratio. I don't think I can afford to worry about baby Yeerks. Not with five morphers and one box and no other tech, we don't have the leeway."

He shrugs. "I'm not bothered."

"Marathons," he murmurs thoughtfully.

"Hmm?"

"Quote, 'I feel like I ran a marathon', end quote. I'm just wondering if we morphers would benefit from endurance training," he explains.

"Not a bad idea, are you volunteering to test a regimen to see if it's worth it for the rest of us?"

"Why not," he says. "I'll drag Robin into it too."

"Don't pull her away from research for it, but otherwise yeah, can't hurt to have two case studies."

"I'll drag Robin into it because otherwise I won't do it," he explains.

"Ah. By all means, then."

"I thought so."

The doorbell rings.

Bella gets up to answer it.

"Hi!" says Robin. "I know everything there is to know about pigeons."

"Awesome! Good news?"

"Yeah, lemme in, optionally feed me, I'll tell you everything."

Bella lets her in. "Popsicles have been going around."

Andi hauls herself up to fetch a green popsicle for Robin.

Andi flops again.

Bella relocates from kitchen table to living room.

"The homing pigeon," she says, "has an average flight speed of fifty or sixty miles per hour over distances where fifty miles is a short leg of the trip. Crows go about thirty. Also, I found a pigeon loft in Phoenix run by the most incredibly sweet little old lady who let me come in, talk to her about the history of pigeon racing for an hour, and feed and pet all the little beauties. I'm sure she'd be thrilled if I came back with friends."

"Your friends," says Bella, "are fascinated by the history of pigeon racing."

"Yes, I do."

"I would say you were my new favorite person, but Andi would throw something at me."

"Too right I would."

"I'll take second," Robin says cheerfully.

"Excellent, don't have to sling any projectiles."

"Seriously, beautiful notes. Ethan thinks you might not like my next proposed research project, though."

She grimaces in advance.

"Should I trust his assessment and just do the research myself?"

"He said I wouldn't like it; did he say I wouldn't do it?"

"No."

"I don't want to use up your goodwill on day one when I could do it myself, though."

"Why don't you tell me what it is first," Robin suggests.

"When we find Yeerk pools, I want to know what's obtainable, relatively compact, and likely to disagree with the inhabitants. I don't know if the right answer looks more like 'elemental sodium' or more like 'bleach' or what."

Bella shrugs. "They might turn out to be too heavily protected. For all I know there are force fields around the damn things. But from the sound of it there's two ways to find Yeerks. Lots of them, vulnerably swimming around in pools. Or one at a time. Hiding behind their hosts."

"I don't like that any better," sighs Robin. "I don't like any of this."

"It's lousy," Bella agrees.

He pets her hair.

"If I ever think of something better to do with Yeerks than kill them, I will be all over it," Bella promises.

Robin sighs again. "Great. ...No, I mean that, that is good, it's just..." She shrugs helplessly.

Bella spreads her hands. "I don't have a way to put them on a comfy space prison colony. If I were handed a lot of Yeerks in slug form who wanted to be Yeerk Switzerland and sit out the conflict, I could sit them on the blue box and then give them all pigeons and supervise them for two hours to make sure they could wreak only limited havoc if they changed their minds, but I have no way to be sure we can trust any given Yeerk with even the powers of flight and thoughtspeech, given what they as a group or a political unit or whatever are doing with the powers they currently have. I don't have a way to render them magically incapable of infesting people. I might be able to kill them, and as long as that's all I have, this planet needs to be as uninhabitable-to-Yeerks as I can make it until the Andalites come along to save the day, if ever they do."

"And where are the rest of us, in all this?"

"That's up to you. I could really use help. I'll do without it, if I have to."

"I mean, I sort of get it. If I didn't think I could get any help, I'd be thinking like that too. But we are all in this together, all right? Even Ethan, God help us." She pats him fondly on the knee.

"Bella's all introverted and doesn't understand how group projects work," Andi says, "also generally despairs of other people being useful at important things."

"That's an exaggeration."

"From what I've seen, not much of one."

"Despair is too strong a word," insists Bella.

"Is it?"

"Yes, for it to have been despair I'd have to currently be experiencing revelatory astonishment, not pleasant surprise." She shrugs. "The fact remains that I am a very self-centered person, and I expect things of myself that I wouldn't dream of demanding from anyone else, so I hope you'll all forgive the occasional slip of phrasing when I start talking about plans."

"Sure," says Ethan. "What matters to me isn't the language, it's the facts. I want to start hearing more about all these no doubt fascinating plans and ideas you keep scribbling down."

"That too," says Robin.

"A lot of what I'm writing isn't even plans. There are plans in there, but I'm doing a lot of - psychological groundwork. I'm going to have to be on, I can't live with myself if I slack off more than I have to for long-term maintenance purposes. Not with these stakes and these tools. I'm trying to figure out how not to burn out."

"...Good question," says Robin.

Ethan just shrugs.

"I don't think I can apply anything I'm coming up with to other people," Bella says apologetically.

"Oh well. I'll manage."

"If you need help then of course you should ask."

She looks up at Ethan again. "Oh, I will."

"You're gonna try not to burn me out, too, right, Bella?"

"Yes. And I know I need a wider margin of safety on you than I do on me."

"Let's try not to burn anyone out," says Robin.

"I'm not sure burning out Trouble is even possible," muses Ethan, "but I'm also sure I don't want to find out at close range."

"Agreed on both counts."

He pets the still-apparently-sleeping Trouble.

"Is he still asleep? Do I even want to know what you did to him after I left?"

"He looks it, doesn't he? And you're welcome to ask."

"I think I will refrain."

He laughs.

"Robin, how far away are the fascinating pigeons?"

"Close enough," she says. "We could nip over there and say hello right now, if you wanted."

"Let's go as soon as Trouble wakes up."

"All right," says Robin.

Bella heads back to the kitchen table to spread Robin's notes out and skim them. She translates bits and pieces into her notebook.

Andi is a flopped heap of inertia.

Robin leans on Ethan and finishes her popsicle.

"We're supposed to go a place and pet birds," says Andi vaguely.

"Pigeons," contributes Robin.

"Great," laughs Trouble. "Are we waiting on me?"

"Yeah. You ready to go?"

He yawns. "Sure."

"Are we walking or busing?" Bella asks Robin.

"Busing."