Amanda kind of thinks he should run for it? Like, Yeerks all look alike, there are pools with a hundred thousand of them, he could just vanish. It seems like the thing to do when people are going to put you on trial for war crimes. She thinks the Nazis went to Argentina and she's not sure why Argentina but they could look it up. (She is not personally delighted about this outcome because her life will go back to being much less interesting but it seems like the smart move for Mhalir.)

Mhalir is not going to do that, but it seems actually pretty hard to explain why to Amanda, so he doesn't and just thanks her for the suggestion, says he's going to be thinking a lot about it. 

They discuss some more routine matters and Earth politics, human and Yeerk and Andalite and the set of intersections between all of those, and then Mhalir bids Amanda goodbye, telling her that he hopes she enjoys the break, and slips out of her head. He's been to the Yeerk pool just last night so he's good for a while. 

Leareth collects him, and it feels oddly familiar and comfortable to have Mhalir back in his head, how Mhalir is within seconds caught up on everything Leareth himself has experienced and discussed and thought through in recent months. 

He Gates back to the base and heads to find Cayaldwin and corral him into the shielded room for the transfer. 

Cayaldwin has MISSED HIM. He doesn't say it but it's kind of all over his mind, as he tries to catch Mhalir up on what work he's done without him. He is vaguely embarrassed that there's not more of it. The hole in his head is bigger, because he's been lonely, and he picks at it when he's lonely. 

Mhalir also says nothing to acknowledge the loneliness or the hole, but he's missed Cayaldwin too, he feels so much more, so much brighter and clearer and stronger, when they can think together. He's also vaguely - not embarrassed, that's not within his repertoire any more than it's within Leareth's, but at least mildly disappointed that he hasn't made more progress to show, though he explains what he has covered. 

And then he tries to fill as many of the empty corners of Cayaldwin's mind as he can, with math and the sparkling feeling of insights to chase and the satisfaction of building something together.

He's been lonely too. Amanda is nice enough, he supposed, but she isn't the same. 

Leareth sits down with his computer and works, not within line-of-sight where he'll be distracting, but where he can keep a close eye on the shielded glow of Cayaldwin's mind, and whether any other minds are nearby and what they're thinking.

He gets rather less work done this way, but that's fine. 

Around lunchtime, Melody gets back to the base. She collects lunch and heads out to eat it in the field. While she's doing that, though, she discreetly peeks at Cayaldwin's tapestry. She's been worried about him; it really seemed like having Mhalir around was helping. Her insistent attempts to talk to him once in a while might be helping a little as well, but it's so hard to tell, and by itself it hasn't felt like enough. 

Having Mhalir around seems to help considerably; he is engaged, and using his brain more than usual, and less stressed, and fewer of his thoughts dive into the gaping pit of grief. He has taught the modelling program to respond to his tail, which can move faster than his fingers, and he's sketching something.

Well, that's something. Melody smiles and hums to herself and eats her lunch. 

Leareth gets some work done, eventually, once he thinks to put up a lot of wards so he can trust them to do some of the watching. He stays up just as late as Cayaldwin, which is a lot later than his usual even when Mhalir nags Cayaldwin to sleep more than he'd prefer, and he does even more wards around the sleeping area, and nags Cayaldwin about wearing his shield-amulet against mage-attacks as well as the Thoughtsensing one. 

But none of the Andalites whose thoughts he can read are plotting to harm Mhalir, right now, and eventually he sleeps, and in the morning goes back to watching, but slightly less on edge about it. 

The Andalites are mostly diving through a data dump from their homeworld and also watching Star Trek, which is apparently a nightly routine for them; someone got a big stack of VHS tapes with decades worth of it.

It's pretty good entertainment although if Leareth pays too much attention he ends up wanting to Mindspeak all the characters and tell them not to be STUPID, which is a frustrating instinct to have toward actors on television.

Leareth spends the next day on Earth as well, and on the morning of the third day he peels a reluctant Mhalir away from Cayaldwin, promising to bring him back in three days' time. 

He had better; they're finally making progress again.

Leareth is so glad to hear that! If he can ever get a brain chip that works for him, he would be willing to spend more time on Earth, he's just constantly struggling not to get behind in his class because he needs a calculator for arithmetic that Andalites find trivial, which is really such a dumb reason to be having a hard time.

He returns Mhalir to his human host, and then effortlessly activates the Gate and enters his codes to cross back to the Andalite homeworld and check in with Matirin. He can inform Matirin that nothing went wrong, Cayaldwin was delighted to work with Mhalir again and the other Andalites in the herd seemed fine with this. Mhalir is tense about the trials, of course, but was very understanding of the whole situation, and seems to be managing his anxiety well, not letting it affect his work. 

(Mhalir did make sure, this time, that Leareth had very clear instructions on how to find his complete brain-scan computer backup, if that arises; he's now finally at the point where he can hook up to his morph-adapted backup, but only when he's in the body of someone who at least has morph, and Amanda doesn't, and it's not guaranteed to work reliably if they're not morphed with Mhalir's body tucked away in the morph pocket. Leareth doesn't discuss this even with Matirin, though.)  

Matirin keeps at the politics. He's making progress; the things he wants to show off to Leareth no longer require ten minutes of explaining the subtext for Matirin to make it clear why it helps them. The courts rule that they'll try the Council first, as testimony in that case will be relevant to determining to what extent the Vissers acted independently enough to be, by Andalite law, accountable for their actions. (They will be accountable, but it's the desired delay, and Matirin thinks they'll press the Council on who was on which side of the disputes about whether to take unwilling hosts.)  

Once the site is secure, the Andalites request of Velgarth the transfer of the Council of Thirteen to the homeworld to stand trial.

That can be arranged. Leareth, while of course he wants a fair trial and for the Yeerks to be safe during that, has much less of an opinion on how he wants this one to go. He doesn't know any of the Council well, just the brief meetings when he captured them and some later snippets of interrogation, and he does know that Mhalir didn't care for most of them. 

All the security precautions are ones Leareth designed or approved, but there are enough other trained mages that he doesn't need to be there in person to implement them. He'll come anyway for Mhalir, of course, but he doesn't need to watch all of these trials close up, it'll be very time-consuming and he would prefer to get summaries from Matirin on most of it. 

Matirin does attend the trials, of course, and is even busier while they're ongoing. He occasionally stops by to point out a vague triumph to Leareth, or alternatively to vent about some people who are being particularly dense and frustrating. There is apparently a strand of Andalite thought that feels the Yeerks ought to be given nothlit bodies so they can have the dignity of committing suicide themselves. Matirin paces, a lot, goes to sleep late and is often gone in the morning by the time Leareth wakes.

<Next time you see Cayaldwin,> he says as the trials wrap up <ask him how close they are.>

Leareth misses Matirin a bit, when they're barely seeing each other, but it's not productive to dwell on, so he focuses on his studies and the space Gate design and logistics for the Velgarth satellite installations, and mostly avoids fretting pointlessly. 

<I will. I am going over tomorrow.> Pause. <Do...you think it will be difficult to delay much more?>

<I have shoved through another batch of excuses and considerations, but - at some point delaying it trades off against resources needed to win it. 

I do think I'll win it.>

Tail-nod. <That is something.> Leareth considers it for a moment, and decides that he trusts Matirin's assessment of this. He leans against him. <Thank you. I know it has been very hard.> 

<I like this kind of work. - admittedly usually I am pushing towards things I feel more uncomplicatedly positive about. I - hope Mhalir doesn't feel, assuming I manage to pull this off, that he didn't cause - so much harm that he could have prevented - that will be harder to heal because of him ->

<I think he is very aware of it. At the very least he sees my feelings on the matter up close, every time he is in my head.> Mental sigh. <I still think that the world a thousand years from now will be better for having him in it. I know that is not the same thing. So does he.> 

It makes Leareth feel tired again thinking of it, even though it's not, at this point, any new evidence that the world is worse. He falls asleep in the herd next to Matirin, still thinking vague unformed thoughts about it. 

In the morning he heads to Earth. Cayaldwin's around, so Leareth catches him first to ask about progress and how much longer he estimates they need. 

<Are we supposed to hand him over soon?> Tail-twitch. <I don't know. Maybe it'll work the way we have it right now. Maybe another two months. Not longer than that, I don't think.>

<I will pass that on. Matirin thinks he can stall somewhat longer but he is unsure, and it may start to trade off against getting the outcome of the trial we want. Anyway, I will be back with him shortly - wait for me at the shielded room?>  

And he demorphs to human and Gates over and collects Mhalir and is back within ten minutes; he's gotten the process very efficient and he didn't have a lot of new updates, just the quick one about the trials wrapping up soon but it's not a surprise. He heads to meet Cayaldwin there, checking the room-shields, like he does a thousand times a day but with a little extra focus for this case. Looks fine.

Cayaldwin reaches for Mhalir. 

And Mhalir vanishes out of the air between their hands.