"All right, I'll do that." 

She finds Leareth first, so she braces herself (he's kind of scary although not as much as the Andalites) and asks him about it, and then asks whether the Andalites decided to be vegetarian because they object to factory farming, that's so reasonable of them but she really thinks Dave should get an exception, here, he just got a Yeerk out of his brain and might not see his family ever again. 

They can get the poor man a cheeseburger from Anchorage via Gate, along with some 'TV dinners', he has to get clarification from Marian on what those even are. (They're meals you eat in front of a TV, not recipes you see characters on TV shows eating.) 

...That night, Leareth is again found pacing up and down the hall in the base with an unreadable expression. He usually does this when he's found out some new horrible fact about Earth's past. 

<- did something happen just now?>

:- Nothing happened, exactly, just - did you know how the humans on Earth raise livestock for food?: 

< - I don't think anything notable about it has been brought to my attention.> It has not been mentioned on television or in any history books.

:Marian has just told me in detail how they raise animals in tiny cages in enormous warehouses full of their own shit, and breed them so they grow too fast and are sick their whole lives, and - cut off their claws or horns and such, so they will not kill each other from being stressed, and feed them unnatural diets that make them ill so they will gain weight faster, and - some are slaughtered by being boiled alive because it is more efficient than killing them first...: 

<I haven't morphed very many Earth animals, I don't - know where the ones raised on farms fall on the spectrum from, uh, beetles to dogs, of how much they experience pain or panic ->

:Cattle and pigs are probably close to dogs; pigs in particular are apparently quite clever, comparable to human toddlers. They certainly experience pain and emotions; Animal Mindspeakers in Velgarth can read animals' feelings and intentions, and communicate with them. Chickens are birds, which vary widely in intelligence and they are not on the smarter end, but can still experience pain and emotional distress: 

<They don't have Animal Mindspeakers here - do they not know...>

:It is difficult for them to study it! They have no way to infer subjective experiences, and many humans think animals are not people. But - they do treat dogs and cats with empathy, humans keep them as companions and bond with them. There is also a faction who are in favour of abolishing these farming practices and ideally meat-eating altogether - Marian told me she minimizes eating meat for that reason, she was entirely vegetarian but was told she had health problems as a result, I am not sure if that is actually true though. Anyway, I suppose the farms are incentivized to do what is economically efficient, and the majority of consumers do not care enough to look up how they treat their animals: 

<I don't think it would even be hard - to grow meat without animals, like we regrow organs when people require them ->

:I was going to ask you about that. It is...not worth fighting this battle now, the Yeerks come first, but - afterward, can we fix it? The humans may not quite be there with their technology, but...: 

<Yes.>

- an unhappy thoughtspoken something-like-a-laugh. <I keep thinking to myself, you know, this must be how Seerow felt, and he went - we can fix all of this, we can fix all of this right away, and we know how that ended - but - I think perhaps his error was not in the deciding to fix all of it.>

:I would have said he had an error in judgement but it was not there. Then again, you...already know what sort of person I am: Someone who's willing to pay awful, unforgivable costs, if that's what it takes. 

<I would not say that I know what sort of person you are but I am making some progress, at least, on figuring it out.>

Leareth doesn't really know how to parse that, but it's not unfriendly at least. 

It's still eating at him, quietly in the background, but right now doesn't feel like the time to put it aside, not yet. 

:I should be happy: he sends, slowly. :That there are other worlds. It means more resources, more - potential allies... Places free of Velgarth's gods. But - also it means more worlds in need of fixing. I suppose I had hoped that someday I would be finished: 

<...I would expect that someday you will be? You can...build a race of androids, right, if nothing else, and then they can race through the galaxy doing your will and if your will isn't horrible no one will fight you about it and you can...do whatever it is you were planning to do once you've finished...>

:- That is an option I might have, now, and did not have before. Though somehow I do not expect it will be that simple. It never is, in my past experience: 

<I guess I would be unsurprised if there were some complications.> Half a laugh. <I have not considered what I might do after the war in a long time.>

:Normally I do not think about it much. It is not worth dwelling on when victory is still far away. But...I suppose that was an update to be made here, as well. That the universe is, for better or worse, much bigger than I had thought: Pause. :I am glad for the chance to have met you, though, and your people: 

<We are very grateful for your help. 

Speaking of which. It looks like the set-commands do work as we had hoped, which means we should be taking more risks. What do you need to Gate onto a ship in orbit? Can you do it from visuals of the ship interior without knowing its location? Can you do it to a known person on a ship?>

:I could do it from visuals plus its approximate distance from Earth, I think, to get the planar distance right. Or, yes, to a known person - though I am the only mage who can manage that kind of Gate, it is an advanced skill: 

<I would like the Thoughtsensers to try to identify people who can be known to at some later point be on the Yeerk ships in orbit. Then we can raise a very very small Gate to them, send a robot through and take some pictures which your other mages could Gate from. This will likely be detectable as something but not identifiable as any known kind of enemy action, I don't think, and we need to bring down those ships.>

:That makes sense. And we could move very fast, from that point on, it would not give them much time to react: 

<Yes. The most straightforward approach would be to, using the mind-control powers liberally, seize some of the ships and fire on the others; my people are competent to use the ships if we can get them in there. I expect casualties from that approach to be fairly high and if we remain confident we are undetected we might be able to place conditional mind-control copiously enough to make it much safer. But either way we could act very fast if anything changed. And - we should act fairly fast even if nothing changes. There will be a lot more damage to undo in another month. And eventually they might discover us by sheer chance.>