Leareth is quiet for a while.

:I should ask more specifics: he says finally. :What were the other Yeerk leadership like, compared to Mhalir? What was your impression of his relationship with them?:

<There are thirteen Yeerks on their Council. He got along with a few of them. He thought many of them were unstrategic. - he was usually right about that. Their opinion of him varied with how well his bits of the war were going.> On a few occasions Mhalir tried to tell him about how he felt constrained by the council, about how he could be more flexible if he could bring them reason to think it'd work, but Alloran had particularly hated it when Mhalir tried to defend himself and obviously wasn't going to change his mind based on information fed to him by someone with full access to his brain and Mhalir stopped that pretty quickly.

:They thought he was too sympathetic to Andalites, after the Hork-Bajir world - which is hard to imagine, gods, what were their opinions of Andalites like?: 

<They're Yeerks. They hate us. They want to enslave us all.> Mhalir would tell Alloran sometimes that he didn't want that, but all available evidence about him is that he did enslave Andalites when he had the chance, and anyway it's not really a relevant distinction; if they were losing badly enough, if pulling out all of the dangerous options that aren't yet under consideration had been tried and had failed, the Andalites would obviously have destroyed themselves rather than be enslaved, and it wouldn't really have mattered if some Yeerks thought some of them ought to get to live in a zoo Yeerk-free.

Sigh. :And I do not imagine my little trick with Mhalir will work again, even if I were willing to risk it which I am not. Any chance you have any ideas of - avenues for winning on the other fronts that do not involve blowing up planets?: 

<I don't know how you did the hyperspace jump directly to the ships but you could just show up in orbit and do that and send some explosives through. Without backup in orbit they'll lose the war on the ground, in the places where it's being waged openly, and you can track down all the pools quietly in places where it's not.>

:Had Mhalir - or other Yeerks on Earth - been to the ships in question?:

<Mostly no. They have shipyards in orbit around the Taxxon planet building new ones.>

Leareth nods. He consults his list and asks some more questions about specifics of Yeerk operations elsewhere; presumably Matirin has already covered this, but Leareth can ask from his own angle, find out who's in command where and what Mhalir thought of them and try to run his own predictions of their strengths and weaknesses and likely future decisions. 

:Did you ever have an impression of areas where Mhalir's tactical judgement was flawed?: he asks eventually. :I do not mean where he made evil decisions, but where he made stupid ones: 

<I tried not to think things through for him. He was - certainly intelligent, and careful, at least when he was using my mind. An Andalite that paranoid around his own staff would have something wrong with him but Yeerks are pretty untrustworthy so it might've been reasonable...he spent a lot of time trying to pretty up the slavery, but that might've been to shore up support among the Yeerks with enough of a fragment of a conscience to find it kind of tiring how badly their slaves wished to die...I think he made significant tactical mistakes on the Hork Bajir homeworld, maybe because he thought we'd just give up if we lost.>

:Hmm. That - seems like a surprising thing for him to think, I would not have predicted that. What sort of mistakes?: 

This is so long ago and he doesn't have a very good memory of being free, somehow, but he remembers thinking at the time that the Yeerks were taunting them, sending messages insisting that they'd won when they hadn't yet, offering the Andalites safety if they surrendered - obviously lying - as if the Andalites could accept a peace where whole planets were enslaved even if they trusted it to end there, and of course it wouldn't - 

Leareth nods, slowly. Mostly he - doesn't know what to think, how far to update on Alloran's faded twenty-year-old memories, perhaps distorted through decades of imprisonment and torture.

...He wants to promise Alloran that he, Leareth, would not have kept him a slave like that, but he's not sure that's true. Alloran is one person and Leareth had been willing to murder ten million... 

:Is there anything else that Mhalir repeatedly found surprising and confusing about Andalites?: he says finally. :Just from the perspective of, I am not Mhalir but I am also an alien, and - do have some things in common with him - and I will need to work with your people to end this war, and do not wish to trip up on species differences I am failing to account for: 

Mhalir sometimes seemed indignant that Alloran thought that Andalites were more valuable than other people but it cannot really have surprised him. Andalites are smarter, and longer-lived, and not evil. Andalites respect their government and its laws and do their duty even when it's difficult or they disagree with it, which Mhalir had trouble understanding because he was evil. ...Mhalir thought it was odd that Alloran had six morphs, all standard utility morphs acquired in the military, and ended up with three hundred more, whenever it was even slightly convenient. This was all twenty years ago, they didn't talk much after the beginning, so Alloran's not confident in much more.

:Huh. There is no limit to number of morph forms? ...I have to admit, if I had morph, I would go acquire most of the species on Velgarth just out of sheer curiosity: Those are - really useful points, actually, none are on reflection completely surprising to him but it helps pin down some things that were vague in his mind before. 

He checks his list again, puts it away. :I think that is all I wanted to ask about. This has been extremely useful; thank you: 

<You are welcome.>

Leareth asks someone to Gate Alloran back to Haven, and gets a ride back to the Dome ship in another world. 

He's so tired again. Which basically confirms it's not a physical tiredness at all, because he felt fine earlier this morning. 

Matirin is still researching human behavior for voluntary host arrangements. <How did it go?>

:I am not sure. Fine, I think. It - made it a little clearer why Mhalir feared the Andalites would genocide his entire species if they lost the war. Mostly it was very depressing: 

<I am sorry. Do you feel like there is something important you're still confused about?>

:Maybe. I - am not sure if I am confused about how reality is, or if I am not confused and just - wish it were a different way. ...I suppose I am unsure whether, if Alloran's predictions about the - what I would call inflexibility and close-mindedness - of the Andalite high command are accurate. If so I am more stressed about a non-horrible resolution to this than I was before: 

<...I mean, they don't like Yeerks. They do like winning wars, and winning elections which is not wholly unrelated. I am not sure what you are anticipating but I think they will be basically agreeable about any terms that end up in front of them that are presented right, end the war, poll well and have some precedent.>

:That makes sense: He relaxes a little. :I - think that is compatible with Alloran and Mhalir's observations. They are not... I am unsure how to gesture at this without sounding horribly insulting to your leaders, but I predict they are - not people I can just communicate with the way I do with you, because I know that if you come to a more correct understanding of the world you will make decisions I consider better according to my own goals? I am not sure if that makes sense: 

<I think they would find you very confusing and be stressed out about ambiguity about your purposes in the things you were communicating and probably you would offend each other at first. I don't think of them as difficult to communicate with but I found you very hard to understand, at first.>

:Probably I should communicate with them primarily through you, then. I am aware I may offend many people at first by - being the shape I am. What did you find difficult to understand about me at first, and what ended up resolving that confusion?: