It seems like the bank is closed for the night, so Nayoki will try that again in the morning. 

"I think knowing some of the human stories here will help blend in," she offers. "In Velgarth you will stand out as a foreigner if you do not know any of the ballads or legends that are popular in a country." 

The Andalites agree! They recorded some more TV shows and they can keep watching them back at the camp while everyone eats hamburgers (!) with fries (!!) and milkshakes (!!!).

Donni finds the hamburgers disappointing and says they don't taste like good meat, but the fries are great! What a good concept! 

Leareth generally minimizes eating meat, given the fact that they know from Animal Mindspeakers that livestock have feelings and experiences, but he samples it for this. Maybe humans here have a better way of raising animals for meat; he'll look for books on that when he's next in a library.

He sits by himself and reads the rest of the book on World War II; Nayoki only made it through the broad-summary chapter at the start, reading out loud is slow. 

Andalites did not know that the hamburgers were dead animals and have somewhat mixed feelings about this. Given that all food is incredibly delicious they can probably stick to eating food that is not also dead animals. How do you ...tell if the food is dead animals.

"Usually if it's called meat. You can ask if something has meat in it when you go buy it. People here also eat milk and cheese and eggs, it looks like, which come from animals but don't need you to kill them." 

"You can say you are 'vegetarian'," Nayoki suggests helpfully. "They have that word. It means you avoid eating meat for ethical reasons, usually. The travel book had some pages on which countries you can visit that have good vegetarian food." 

The Andalites are reluctant to claim any particularly marked human identities, particularly not one Yeerks might expect Andalites to have, but it's good to at least know what the word means. The fries and milkshakes are not dead fry-creatures or milkshake-creatures, presumably?

No, by tasting them Donni thinks the fries are made of potatoes, which are a plant, and the milkshakes are made of milk, which you get from cows - technically humans too, for feeding babies. Presumably Andalites don't breastfeed their babies so wouldn't know this was a thing. 

Andalites do not breastfeed their babies. They are born able to eat grass, and they do that. They are politely baffled about the whole concept but it doesn't seem ethically concerning exactly.

Weird. Even the livestock animals that eat grass aren't born that way, usually. (It's interesting that Earth seems to have a lot of the same animals as Velgarth, as well as humans.) 

Leareth finishes his book and goes out to pace and have feelings for a little while, and then goes to bed. 

Can Rasha join the Andalites for herd-cuddles again? 

Of course! Also for herd gossiping about human TV and how the Velgarth humans are adorably enthusiastic about learning how Earth works and how they can't wait to free this place of Yeerks and then be able to enjoy it without secrecy.

This is really nice. Rasha likes the Andalites a lot, even if they're still weird-alien in a couple of disconcerting ways, like the part where it's not really okay to gossip about someone being injured or sick or even just, like, sleeping badly and having nightmares because they're stressed. (Given who Heralds are as people, this constitutes a decent fraction of the Companion herd gossip.)

Donni is having such a good time, though, and she and Nayoki get along well, so despite the danger, overall Rasha is pretty pleased with this mission. It's not like you can keep Heralds from running headfirst into danger. 

Leareth has vague unsettled dreams of aircraft bombings (in grainy black-and-white, like the pictures in the book) and starving children behind barbed wire fences, and a city full of innocent people going up in flame - except then the city shifts into Urtho's Tower - 

He wakes up shaking, and spends the next candlemark pacing before finally going back to sleep. 

The next day they will have some shielding up and can Gate people over. He asks Donni and Mardic if they want to pass a message along to be passed to Haven while the Gate is up.

That's a good idea. Donni writes up a summary update on their work so far, says it would be good if they could get a few more Heralds at some point because Rasha is lonely. 

Leareth has figured out how to modify his communication-spell to work like the interplanar Gate and reach Velgarth, and it's much less detectable than a Gate, so once he and his mages have the shielding up, he gives a candlemark's warning first and then raises a Gate and holds it in concert for a while. Earth doesn't seem to have ambient magic the way Velgarth does, which is frustrating - living things have life-force visible to his Othersenses and to Healing-Sight, but it doesn't pool - he's musing on whether they can convert electricity to mage-energy and substitute that for nodes. 

Most of the rest of the Andalites come through, though they're keeping a couple back in Velgarth as a last resort if the mission on Earth fails catastrophically. They get their turn morphing human and eating candy. They can set up a generator in the underground base for Leareth to use in exploring the usability of electricity for mage-energy, and then set themselves to enlarging the underground base. (Andalites don't like enclosed spaces much.)

Nayoki gives the newly arrived mages and Healers, about a hundred of them, a quick training on what they've learned of the local culture, and then reattempts the bank account quest with her new fake bill. 

Leareth starts assigning people to cities and explaining their objectives. 

This time the teller gets their manager who tells Nayoki he can't use an Ethiopian ID, sorry, she'll have to bring her passport. 

Matirin wants to steal a local doctor. Well, hire one; it's much politer. He has a newspaper and thinks he can put an ad in the newspaper for an emergency medicine doctor or nurse in rural Alaska for an astonishing sum of money. They can interview candidates and read their minds and figure out how they'll react to learning they're actually supposed to be teaching Earth medicine to aliens with magic powers and advanced technology but limited ability to apply the advanced technology to humans or combine it with the magic powers.

Nayoki visits some libraries again to see if she can find any travel books that have information on passports.

Leareth thinks Matirin’s plan is a reasonable one. How does one place a newspaper ad?