:Donni!:

:What?: 

:Never mind: Mardic focuses his attention on Leareth. 

He imitates Leareth's bow almost-perfectly. <Leareth. We are grateful for your offer of help, and eager to arrange to take you up on it. There is a conference room -> he flicks his tail. On the recommendation of the humans he has even acquired a chair for it, though the engineers resented the requisition of their desperately needed parts-printer. 

His thoughts are - tense, miserable, and also quick and hard to read for that reason, mostly focused on trying to read Leareth, but reading body language across a species gap is hard, and it might be additionally complicated by Leareth wearing this other person, who Vanyel says is dead, gone, not watching to feel betrayed by this alliance, not that Matirin can afford to care either way. There is so little he can afford to care about here, and that hurts, which is one of the things he cannot afford to care about. 

I respect him, Melody said. You could try being someone he doesn't want to betray, Talik said. (Empty spaces where there'd be more advice to hold in his mind, from people who are dead and cannot offer it.) And - Vanyel, the person Leareth's staff thought he liked as much as he likes anyone - worrying about the Yeerks -

Mostly Leareth is hard to read because, after long practice, in tense situations or when he's distracted he reveals very little with his face or body language. He accompanies Matirin to the conference room. Sits, his face still, his eyes level.

"What is your current timeline on repairing the ship?" he asks. "And, could it be shortened if I were to lend you people - mages, Fetchers perhaps, I also have un-Gifted artificers though your technology may be vastly ahead of their abilities. And that is what will determine how much time I have for the logistics of moving my own people." Pause. "If you would prefer, we can discuss and finalize terms for this collaboration and talk about the particulars afterward." 

<I think it will require about three weeks more work with no additional magic help. It goes more quickly with Fetchers, and we have limited capacity to make use of mages as well, straightening out bent pieces that don't require relevant precision. It will require at least five more days' work even if we have access to an arbitrary number of those; we are bottlenecked by the printer, there, unless you have a means of manufacturing components to a precision of 4 micrometers. At which point we would still be bottlenecked by the printer for the electronic components, for which much more precision is required, but to more like three days.>

Leareth's eyes dart to the doorway and back as he wraps his head around the measurement. "...I think I should have that precision, working with most kinds of metal, some artifact work requires that. Approximately nobody else will, though, and if I need my people fully ready to go in three to five days I am not sure how much additional time I could spare, though I would not mind working on it while I wait for responses on other logistics. I can certainly lend you arbitrary numbers of Fetchers."

He looks thoughtful. "How many of my people can your ship feasibly transport? That would help determine whether I want to bring just mages, or also Healers and other Gifted personnel, or un-Gifted logistical support staff." 

<I do not advise bringing people without the ability to commit suicide unless you are confident you can manage that remotely. The ship can fit a thousand, though it would be uncomfortably close quarters and I might have my people rotate into morph.>

Brisk nod. "Mages and Healers, then. And - probably Fetchers can be taught to instantly kill themselves in this manner. I realize it would be very, very bad if the Yeerks obtained access to Gifts." 

<I am interested in whether Healers can alter the human or Andalite ear canal so as to make it impossible for Yeerks to infest a person without impeding brain function - if the person requires electronic replacements for the function of the ear that would be acceptable - but I do not think it warrants more than a week of delay to explore. We do not have current intelligence on the situation on Earth but I would expect it to be worsening rapidly.>

Leareth looks very intrigued. "Are the Yeerks able to penetrate soft tissue but not bone? It is not as though there is a direct passage already open, there. I think a good Healer could straightforwardly grow bone to cover that space, but there might be soft tissue passages through other orifices, depending how much space a Yeerk needs." 

<They can only penetrate soft tissue> he confirms. <I am not sure how much space they need, but one of my soldiers has a Yeerk morph that could be used for testing, ideally on animals until we were reasonably confident.> There are several layers of distaste in his thoughts; he does not like the idea of subjecting someone to this test or his soldier to the other end of it, though it is practical so he's going to do it, and he strongly does not like the idea of modifying his head in this fashion, though that too seems practical enough to be worth doing.

Nod. "I will have my most skilled Healers brought over after this discussion; they will have a much better idea of what is possible, and the downsides." Leareth feels little distaste toward the idea, but can't fault Matirin at all for disliking it. 

<Another test worth conducting if you had a willing volunteer is whether your Yeerk-magic, placed on a body, constrains a Yeerk controlling that body; if it did, you could additionally magic your people to be unable to use their Gifts should they be taken captive, though if the Yeerks learn enough about Velgarth at all they may be able to find it themselves or replicate what you are doing.>

Leareth nods. "I have been very curious about that. Also I wish to test how a Yeerk shows up to various Gifts, and I am curious whether it is possible to place compulsions on the Yeerk but not the host, for example."

He sits back a little in his chair. "Anyway, we had better discuss terms. I do not object to being under your command, though I would like a chain of command where only I report to you, and all of my people take my orders; I think I am better placed to make smart use of them and my leadership is what they are used to. I also am willing to commit to not mind-controlling any of your people - except at your request, if there ends up being some reason this is useful, for example if it is protective against Yeerk infestation. I am not, however, willing to commit to no mindreading, though I will if you wish provide some magical talismans that block Thoughtsensing, for any key personnel you wish to be shielded against Velgarth Gifts. I realize that for tactical reasons it may be of value to keep secrets from me." 

This is reasonable enough and he's not surprised about it. <That is acceptable. I do want the talismans; if nothing else I want to have a plan for if you are taken prisoner, and it is important both that you not know of it and that we are not all arbitrarily vulnerable to you should it happen.>

Nod. "Of course. How many will you need?" 

Who would he want to - no, that's precisely the sort of thing he doesn't want to think about in much detail now. <Ten,> he says instead, because that's definitely enough.

Leareth seems unsurprised. "Yes, that is fine. On other aspects: I will agree to your people's laws on treatment of prisoners, except that I will not commit to no use of mind-control with them, or in general against the enemy. It is a very useful fallback option to have, sometimes. I will of course minimize it." 

He - can't even disagree with that but he does not trust this man who seizes other peoples' bodies to wear himself so he can live forever to be balancing those tradeoffs appropriately. <After the war there'll be a review,> he says, <of whether transgressions of the laws regarding the treatment of prisoners occurred under extreme circumstances, were appropriately limited in scope, etcetera. I would expect that they would be understanding of - limited and temporary use of your Yeerk powers in circumstances where no good alternatives existed. If there is habitual use in cases where alternatives existed, I would expect that to affect relations going forward.> The reviews are conducted by soldiers, who know what war is like; he reads cases, sometimes, to figure out what to emphasize in training, and they have always seemed well-decided, to him, though he would also himself consider many uses of mind control to be inappropriate. 

Leareth looks steadily at him for a long moment, then nods. "That seems a sensible way to handle it. In situations where it is feasible to consult you or your commanders first, I will always do that, since I do think you would agree with me if and when it were the only viable option." 

<I would.> He wishes that the first thing Leareth learned of them hadn’t been the contingency plan; he feels it gave a very unusual measure of him. But, well, not a wrong one.

"I trust my own judgement more than that of the mages working under me, especially under time pressure, so I would prefer to give them clear guidelines for situations where they need to make a quick decisions independently. For example, I would consider it clearly preferable to temporarily compulsion an enemy if the only other option is killing them, since death is rather irreversible - and might be even more so in your world, we should discuss that also, it changes the ethical landscape somewhat - anyway, I am not sure Andalites would agree with my intuition here. I do think it is important to note that Velgarth mage-compulsion are much more limited in scope than what Yeerks do. I cannot, in fact, control someone else to serve my goals if it goes against all of their native drives. The most straightforward use is merely blocking certain actions, for example, ordering someone to hold still and not fire on me." 

He nods. <- you should be aware that if you try that on an Andalite they won't be able to guess the scope and they'll kill themself if they get a chance. You probably have a better guess than me about how humans will react. I agree that most things are more reversible than death, and accordingly preferable when that is the available alternative. I would expect that intuition to be at least comprehensible to most of my people, whether or not they share it. - there has been a lot of pressure, over the last few decades, to inculcate the message that you kill yourself quickly when it's necessary, that you cannot hesitate, which probably has effects on how people evaluate these things even though technically it is distinct. 

There is also the complication that - this is an ambition I would not have dreamed of two weeks ago. But if we win cleanly enough on Earth, and if our actions are broadly defensible to my commanders, then I will have more latitude in how to conduct the rest of the war, and that - might matter significantly, in how well we can arrange things for the Yeerks. If the things I am doing or permitting look absurd to everyone then I have less flexibility to do things that look absurd to everyone elsewhere - giving them morph, say, once they can behave themselves. Winning is much more important than winning in an appealing fashion. But winning in an appealing fashion is a strategic consideration as well.>

Leareth nods. "It does change the calculus here, that your people have a very salient example of mind-control that is more thorough and permanent than mine. And - yes, that makes sense. I...can think about different standing orders to give my people, based on whether it seems we are winning with a comfortable margin versus in serious danger of losing, and then it would be possible to start out fighting in a more palatable way, but change methods very quickly if it became necessary."