:I dislike missing information but I will trust that you understand your constraints here and will make the sensible choice given that:

<I do not want you to be missing information, but it's going to take a long time to get you usefully up to speed on Andalite politics. If anything happens to me in the next month you can ask Cayaldwin, though he's going to have a ...very specific perspective on it.> Tail-shake.  <The very short version is that we left for Earth ambiguously against orders though I expect the ambiguity to be resolved in our favor given it turning out well, and that there are substantial isolationist factions and substantial step-up-the-war factions and substantial against-my-father-specifically factions which are all possible but nontrivial to appease.>

Nod. :It certainly does sound complicated. Is there anything else we should discuss before we meet Mhalir?:

<I don't think so.>

:Then I will Gate down to bring him here: Well, not personally, again he's having another of his mages (with Yeerk-precautions in place) do it so he doesn't tire himself. 

Leareth feels a weird urge to ask Matirin if he can spend five minutes petting him again first, so he can start this meeting from a stance of being less stressed and sad, but - it's a strange thing to ask for, and he can manage fine either way, so he says nothing. 

Matirin cannot help humans meet their mysterious quadruped-related emotional needs if he doesn't know about them. He paces, instead, and waits for Mhalir.

Mhalir arrives shortly later with Leareth. He's wearing a human female body, right now. He seems - tense, and very controlled, but he greets Matirin courteously. "War-Prince Matirin-Ashal-Nelinfir. I am grateful for your offer to speak here." 

<Visser Three.>

He does not at all want to say this and he's not at all sure it's true but he thought about it a lot and it seems like the most strategic opening, so. 

<It is my understanding that you are owed a profound apology. If - there was a Yeerk faction working against conquest and towards good relationships with host peoples - they should have had our backing, and whatever resources were required to make their case convincing to the rest of their people. I wish we had offered them that.>

Visser 3 seems momentarily surprised - a flash of suspicion - he looks to Leareth, whose expression is impassive, and then bows his head, something in his shoulders softening.

"Thank you. I think that mistakes were made on both sides, here, and had I been able to nudge the Council toward less haste, greater patience, to wait on any action until we could assuage Seerow's misgivings, then - it could perhaps have gone differently. I think that is what Leareth would have done, in my place. It might have asked for political acumen I did not have, at the time, even if I had seen the necessity, but - nonetheless I deeply wish it had gone differently, and I am sorry." 

He looks down. "And - I understand if you and your people are not yet able to accept it, I do not expect to be forgiven, but I owe an apology for Alloran." 

<I think forgiveness there is not mine to grant. I do wonder if he is typical of a person who has been in the possession of a Yeerk for twenty years, or if he was unusually poorly treated, as that is relevant to what kinds of voluntary host arrangements I have reservations about.>

A flicker of something that isn't guilt, exactly, but contains regret. "I would guess he is much worse off than most. For one, nearly all hosts have periods in control of their bodies when their Yeerks are feeding in the pool, but there was no way to - keep Alloran secured - except by keeping him unconscious. The suggestions for Yeerks on Earth, even with involuntary hosts, include talking to their hosts and accommodating their preferences wherever this is not costly or strategically unwise, for example in what to wear or what food to eat, since living in the brain of a very unhappy person is suboptimal. Alloran was - unwilling to engage with such attempts." 

:Understandably so: Leareth sends to Matirin, dryly, in private Mindspeech. :Since the only angle he had to achieve his goals of making a Yeerk victory less likely was to be very miserable at Mhalir, and perhaps reduce his effectiveness: 

Matirin is imagining how he would react if he were the prisoner of a Yeerk who asked him what color of artificial skin he wanted his body clothed in while he helplessly watched all his skills put to use on the destruction of his civilization. Because this was the recommended approach to get him to calm down enough he wasn't unpleasant company. He - respects Alloran immensely, actually, for holding to who he was for twenty years, for putting none of himself up for sale. ...of course, maybe if Alloran had liked Yeerks better - but that's not a fair thought. Matirin would not be thinking vaguely sympathetic things about how being a Yeerk must be very hard if he were a prisoner, he'd be thinking about how intensely he hated them. 

<I see> he says. <That is encouraging. I have been considering what a reasonable solution for voluntary hosting is, and I do not know, though perhaps your input will be helpful. One problem is that different species seem to - vary, a great deal, in what circumstances make hosting a Yeerk tenable for them. And in general that is a situation where their own governments could set rules, and our role would just be ensuring that those proceedings are not unduly influenced. But - several human governments have been in your hands for years, which complicates their legitimacy and the attitudes of their rulers, and also I believe that many human governments would immediately decide things like that political dissidents should get Yeerks to help them be more law-abiding and I am not comfortable enabling that.

Beyond that - having good standards of informed consent is hard. No one does it in wartime. I do not remotely expect that I would be impressed with your existing standards for considering a host voluntary. If there are long term effects of having a Yeerk, especially ones that make it very hard to live independently without a Yeerk, it seems they are underexplored. I'm glad it is not usually as bad as it is for Alloran, at least. And humans have a bunch of problems they might be tempted to solve with a Yeerk that could instead be solved with the end of material scarcity, and while if I'm not going to manage that I have no right to not let them at least accept Yeerks about it, I might be able to manage that. Especially if I convince my superiors that the alternative is people turning to Yeerks.>

"I am aware that the situation with the human governments makes it more awkward to shift to something ethically acceptable here, that - is one of the costs of having approached Earth as we did. - For what it is worth, if it had been my command from the start, I would have chosen a different tradeoff there, even if we acquired resources more slowly that way." 

He's still annoyed with Visser One about that. The White House staff and such were one thing, much harder to avoid, but for the general population of hosts, there was far less reason to default to kidnappings rather than, say, recruiting through the various very niche human hobbyist groups and the newly-forming Internet social channels that exist. 

"Our standard of consent is not remotely good for - the version of this that would be good, as opposed to - tenable at all in a war for our right to exist. I think it would be best on several angles if someone who is not me were to come up with something from first principles, there." 

He nods. <We will work on that alongside human governments, probably. If you have people you recommend I speak with, I will do that.

Do you have the authority or resources to bring a halt to Yeerk invasions on other worlds?>

Mhalir laughs. It's short and dry and bitter. "I do not have the authority at all to bring the war to a halt elsewhere. It is - somewhat dubious that I have the authority here, there is at least one faction that might have succeeded at a coup already had I been less careful, and I am putting a great deal of my time and effort toward finessing this. I do not know how the other leadership will react but one assumes they will feel I betrayed them. However, if the transition over the next month or so goes smoothly enough, then perhaps there are resources we can place alongside yours." Sigh. "I am not pleased by the prospect of fighting my own people, but - believe it or not, I was one of the moderating forces before. I think it would be quite bad if the Yeerk Council and leadership minus my influence were to retain significant power in the galaxy." 

<Can you get him protective amulets or something?> he asks Leareth. It makes a lot of sense that Visser Three would be a target from among his own forces and also everything will get so much messier again if he dies now. 

<I understand. We have a lot of resources from Velgarth, and we may be able to learn to morph Gifts, and I think we can bring fighting on the other planets to an end quickly. And hopefully if Yeerks elsewhere hear word that surrendering here was - less catastrophic than imagined - that will help. 

Is there any route by which word of the surrender on Earth could have already reached Yeerks elsewhere?>

:Yes, it is a good idea and I should do that: 

"I do not believe so. Our only method of communication would have been if one of the scout ships departed, and I would know if any had." 

<So we have some time to consider - how, and maybe even whether, to break the news. Do you have thoughts about how the war can end from here with the least bloodshed?>

"I have been considering that." He looks thoughtful (and tense.) "I think that acknowledgement from the Andalite command that Seerow started the war, and that - some kind of reparation is owed for this, even if we also owe the Andalites something for our later conduct, would go a long way. You could of course investigate this; my understanding is that Velgarth has truth magic, and I am not the only one among our people who was there when it happened. I think that you should let us stay on the Taxxon world; you are welcome to verify that they want this, but at this point it would be a humanitarian disaster if we suddenly stopped helping. I think it would help if the initial negotiations with the Yeerk Council happen primarily not with Andalites, because they feel all the bridges have already been burned. Sending Leareth as your envoy would, I think, go better. It would help if there were an upside for our people, perhaps if Leareth offered access to Velgarth magic on the condition that we cease the war. I think that would make it much less galling to surrender to the Andalites."  

He nods thoughtfully. <I have been thinking we could maybe present Velgarth as - more of a geopolitical entity in its own right than it really is, and thereby make many things much less awkward. For example, none of my actions in the last two months are objectionable if I encountered a scouting unit in hyperspace from an advanced human civilization not on Earth, and they were angered to hear that Earth was under attack by Yeerks and allied with us to force the Yeerks to stop, and are now interested in joining the war against the Yeerk empire elsewhere. Unfortunately the strong version of this is fairly unsustainable on account of being -> tail-swish - <verifiably untrue, but maybe there's a weaker version that isn't.>

Wry glance at Leareth. "My sense is that Leareth somewhat counts as a geopolitical entity and advanced civilization in his own right, but he does not speak for all of Velgarth." 

"You know," Leareth says, thoughtfully, "it is actually true that I was already experimenting with Gates in a direction that was, theoretically, a step on the path toward what I ended up discovering with your people. Of course, I was not researching it with the intent of reaching other worlds per se; I wanted to see if routing a Gate through other planes in addition to the Void would make it untraceable-in-theory even for someone crossing it, as opposed to merely untraceable-in-practice nearly all of the time. But there is a reason it took only a week to reach Earth once I had the math to target it." 

His lips twitch. "It would have been amusing if at some point, without even knowing the existence of other worlds, I had pursued this research further and ended up on one of them by accident." 

<Now I am tempted to make a full report of my activities including contact with the two-thousand-year-old civilization of Leareth and the loyal soldiers it at once pledged to our cause without specifically clarifying that Leareth is not a planet.>