He knows which planes morph uses, he can design a morph cube from scratch, the problem is which additional ones it needs to rope in in order to get Gift-channels properly. Leareth might be able to help once he's been caught up on the problem, though.

He's happy to help. (It is, in fact, actively fun working with Cayaldwin, and he can briefly feel hopeful about solving problems through clever inventions, rather than tired and dull and sad about all the problems he wasn't here in time to solve.) 

He's pretty sure he can get it eventually but it's going to be hard, there's a reason the existing set of planes was chosen for morph, most other possible setups are much less stable.

The next day Leareth Gates out to the north location and waits for someone to go down south and fetch Alloran over for him. 

Alloran trots through a Gate a few minutes later. He is thinking about how Gates must work, he isn't an engineer or anything but he got a usual Andalite amount of education on hyperspace math and he doesn't see how you'd do it, not offhand.

He's moving so much more smoothly already; Leareth can't help but smile. :Alloran: he calls out. :Thank you for being willing to speak with me: 

<Of course.>

He has a list of questions to glance at. :I'm trying to understand a couple of things. One is - gods, what exactly went into Mhalir making the decisions he did, when from my perspective it was apparent as soon as I arrived that there were better options available, and he decided the moment he looked in my brain that we were - similar. But I think even when I was very young, I would have tried harder than that for peace, and - I don't know whether I'm missing something or whether he was: Pause. :Sorry, if that's too vague I can break it down more: 

<I am not sure I know what information would help you answer that. I assumed that he was not looking for a better solution because he was a Yeerk and did not consider a solution better if it didn't involve Yeerks being able to take whoever they wanted as a host. They meant to eventually transition to 'voluntary' hosts - I think that is a dishonest word. They wanted cooperative hosts. They don't like it when we yell and fight and can't safely be set aside for a minute if something comes up.>

Sigh. :I do think the 'voluntary' host recruitment during the occupation were - dubiously so, whether or not Mhalir was right that this was harm-reducing. The ones chosen by means of how they answered hypothetical questions, I mean, but they could not choose to leave afterward. It is different now that I can use magic to mind-control Yeerks to let their hosts override when they wish; it seems many humans on the Internet are interested in this, but it is rather a different proposition, and not really the point: 

He frowns. :...I am trying to figure out what Mhalir was so afraid of, to take options as extreme as he did. I am not under the impression that Matirin ever intended to genocide his entire species, which is - pretty much the only outcome I would consider worth enslaving five billion people even temporarily to avoid, and perhaps not even then. What did Mhalir think the Andalites would do to his people if they lost?: 

<He thought we'd kill them. Matirin's - very careerist, he's not going to do anything unpopular, you don't have to worry about that.> Alloran would absolutely kill all Yeerks if you presented him with a button that would cleanly do this. <They would have annihilated us, if they'd won.>

:Would they have? I was not under that impression at all: 

<Not - directly. They don't like killing people, not when you can wear them instead. But we would never have permitted that.>

:Is it almost universally true of Andalites, do you think, that they would prefer death to a Yeerk controlling them?:

<Of course.>

:Mhalir must have found that so alien. Leaving aside the consequences of an evil Yeerk having my skills, which would be very bad and arguably worth my death to avoid, I - would absolutely prefer a Yeerk to death. I very strongly prefer existing over not; I am sure you noticed that when you were in my head: 

<Mhalir asserted this too. I don't have an explanation for what the difference is. There are no Andalites like you, or very close to none. I very strongly prefer existing over not. But I tried very hard to kill myself, for twenty years, and it was not just because it was dangerous to my cause for the forces of evil to have morph and the use of my mind. It is better to be dead than Yeerked, always, in purely selfish terms, forgetting everything about strategic implications.  ...I guess excluding the case of a morphed Andalite doing necessary research with advance consent.>

:Sometimes species are different, I suppose: Sigh. :Do you have any idea why he did not at least try opening talks with the Andalites to come to some kind of terms that the Andalites might accept in exchange for a cessation of hostilities - he could have suggested they stay only on the Taxxon world, for example. That is what I would have done, I think, made the case that the Taxxons clearly find Yeerks net-positive and gone from there: 

<Huh. Those terms would obviously be acceptable if the Yeerks could be trusted to stick to them, but they can't. If they were willing to have us blockade the planet from orbit like we do with their homeworld, maybe.> He doesn't really want to say words that would be in Mhalir's defense but Leareth is presumably reading his mind, he was inside Leareth's and knows how he operates, and he is willing to grudgingly think that even if Mhalir wanted that the Council was very unlikely to go for it. They were angry with Mhalir, when he first took Alloran. They thought he was too sympathetic to Andalites, which was ridiculous. 

:Something that is true of me: Leareth says, slowly, :is that I do not break my word lightly, and when I agree to formal terms, I keep to them - I am willing to do very ruthless things but not - dishonestly. I think you must have seen this in my mind. You think Mhalir is different?: 

Alloran does not really believe that there are people who would enslave five billion people but would draw the line at breaking a promise. Leareth does not disprove this because he wouldn't have enslaved five billion people. He expects Mhalir to - have a meeting with his staff, have one person who objects that they should keep their word, that if they break it they lose the possibility of ever arriving at peace with the Andalites. He expects Mhalir to sigh heavily and say that it is terrible that the circumstances make it necessary but the Andalites are constrained by nothing and if Yeerks are not also constrained by nothing they will lose, and to say that he understands the heavy cost he is paying blah blah blah blah

:I had remarked to Matirin that, before meeting me, Mhalir seemed to think of Andalites much as I think of the Velgarth gods. As alien beings that seem incapable of understanding my values and cannot be negotiated with or even really communicated with. I...am not sure why he thought this, though, since it is obviously false. Do you have any idea?: 

Well, it's not as if Alloran was at all interested in negotiating with Mhalir, at all, about anything. He is not, himself, the kind of person who wouldn't break a promise if millions of lives were at stake? That's a stupid kind of person to be? Obviously burning communications has some costs, he's not stupid, but sometimes in war things have costs and you pay them. 

Alloran doesn't think of Mhalir as a person who does things for reasons, really, so maybe it's fair if that is mutual. Mhalir is an embodied force of evil and destruction in the world - a clever one, though much of that was Alloran's brain which he was using. Not one with a lot of characteristics. Alloran has always just assumed he'll do the most clever evil thing and been right, up until the moment when Mhalir read Leareth's mind and decided to surrender.

Leareth takes a deep breath, lets it out. :So...the Andalites believed that Yeerks could not be trusted to keep any terms and would enslave the galaxy forever, and that was worth the price of the bioweapon used on the Hork-Bajir world, and nearly used on Earth. And the Yeerks believed the Andalites could not be trusted and would kill all Yeerks, and that avoiding that was worth the price of enslaving five billion people. And so almost inevitably one of those outcomes - but probably the deaths of everyone - would have happened, had I not been in exactly the place I was at the right time. I, just...: He lifts both hands, helplessly. Lets them fall. He's angry and mostly overwhelmingly sad, neither of which he wants to aim in Alloran's direction because that's the last thing Alloran deserves, and he doesn't know what else to say. 

Alloran mostly thinks this problem would be solved if Yeerks had never existed, or never been taken out of their pools and showed the stars. Though also if the Yeerks had just....not enslaved people on the Hork Bajir world...obviously the Andalites wouldn't have resorted to the lengths they did...