"He seemed inclined to ask you, or - more so. I would not have anticipated you'd be the sort of person who would not get along with yourself."

"I really should have just asked him about his brothers. I think it's only partially that and partially that he's been getting his information from sources he expects couldn't get a lie past him, though."

"...am I meant to parse coded brother-related messages..."

" - oh, I don't think it was particularly coded? He's sharing Andalite military secrets against an explicit directive about doing that. I said maybe his government would be pragmatic if it won them the war and he said they would most certainly not be pragmatic on those grounds and I said that if he was prepared to kill five billion people to win the war but not prepared to die for it than something was very wrong. But I didn't ask - avoided asking - if it'd be treason for all of them, or -

- it doesn't change the math but it'd change how I felt, about doing that to him. Or cornering him into it."

"- ah."

"Stupid way to run a justice system, really."

"Ours is very good at incentives."

"The tech differential's still going to be significant enough that we can't really refuse to give him back and I'm not sure he'd even want that. And it seems like it might be hard to sell them on having anything to learn from us. But I am fond of serving a country that would probably not go 'that was the greatest service anyone has ever done us and still treason'."

Nod.

And he goes to meet Matirin. "Figuring us out?"

"Organizing all the military agreements has occupied most of my time, really. I've wondered about it in free moments, maybe."

"Yeerks aren't unclean, just kinda gross. They're alive and sewage and garbage don't come into it."

"I see the pragmatic case for that but Yeerks are the closest thing we have to something that provokes the - disgust you feel for your sanitation workers."

"Yeah, I bet. Nonetheless. It won't help anything. We'd fight them just over the planets, honestly."

"That's one of the things that concerns me."

"Are there species which aren't like that?"

"Lots. I think you are unusually - rigged to be trouble, what with the necessary expansionism. Do you suppose you'd ever collectively agree to genetic engineering to spring less intensely or find other peoples' babies adequate or not spring until you're ten or something."

"Some people might go for it. As a society? No."

"Then maybe I should have considered this too high a price for the end of the war."

"We can learn to build artificial living environments we can expand as necessary. We can restrain ourselves to picking fights with bad guys."

"Yep. How can I help you achieve that?"

"Yeerks are clean."

"I am not very credible on the topic but I'll try."

"And I'd kind of rather you didn't give Olvala spaceships but I guess if it's as part of their theologians declaring that Yeerks are clean -"

"Because they murdered all those people, you mean? I am not sure that actually reflects unusual-for-your-species attitudes or readiness to violence on the part of their leadership."