We have green kryptonite here! We have something that can make Yeerks go nuts. Why is that not a good thing?"
"It sounds to me like they get addicted to it. Like a drug," Tobias said.
I winced. "It's oatmeal, okay? Not anything illegal."
"A drug is in the eye of the beholder," Tobias argued. "lf you get addicted to the illegal stuff and it messes you up, that's a drug to you. If you get addicted to oatmeal and it messes you up -"
"It's still just oatmeal," I said. "Oatmeal is oatmeal. Jeez! I can't believe we're having this conversation."
"Look," Marco said, "the bigger question here is WHO CARES?! They're Yeerks. They're the enemy. They attacked us, not the other way around."
"What about the hosts? The humans?" Ax asked. "The Yeerks are made invulnerable to their normal hunger for Kandrona rays. They can live inside their human hosts forever, even if the oatmeal is later taken away. These hosts would lose all hope."
"If we lose this war we're all going to be without hope," I said. "Ax, I can't believe you, of all people, would even hesitate."
Ax swiveled his stalk eyes toward me. "We Andalites have been at war longer than you. We understand the temptation to sink to the level of your enemy."
"Sink to the level of -" I started to yell.
Ax cut me off. "We also know that you can't win if you are not prepared to be a little ruthless. It's a question of balance. How far into savagery do you go to defeat the savage?"
I looked around the barn. Marco and I had drawn closer, almost unconsciously. Tobias was up in the rafters, using his hawk senses to listen and look for anyone approaching the barn. Ax was shifting on his four legs and stretching his scorpionlike tail.
Jake and Cassie were the only ones not to say much. Jake looked troubled. He was staring, but not at anything real. I could guess his thoughts. His brother, Tom, is a Controller.
But it was Cassie who surprised me. Usually she's the one getting all moral.
"Cassie?" i asked. "What do you think?"
She hesitated. Like she just wanted to keep tending to the badger. She sighed and stood up. When she turned around, I was shocked. She had a stricken look.
"I ... I don't know anymore, okay?" she said.
I was confused for a moment. Then it hit me. We'd had a bad run-in with a human-Controller whose Yeerk was Visser Three's twin brother. This Yeerk had found another way around the Kan-drona. He cannibalized fellow Yeerks. Sometimes human hosts got in the way.
In the heat of the moment, hearing that evil creature speak, Cassie had demanded his destruction. She'd asked Jake to do it. Jake had refused.
I don't know why, but it frightened me to think of Cassie not knowing what was right and wrong. Or at least thinking she didn't know. Cassie was my best friend. I counted on her to balance me. She was supposed to be sensible when I was reckless. She was supposed to be moral when I was ruthless.
But things had gotten more and more confused for all of us, I guess.
"Look," I said, "okay, maybe this oatmeal is a drug to the Yeerks. But you know what? This is a war. Sooner or later, if we are successful, if the Andalites send help, if the human race rises up, we're going to try and destroy every Yeerk on planet Earth. Right? That's our goal. This isn't like some normal war where you hope you can make peace and compromise. We can't compromise. The Yeerks are parasites. How do we compromise? Let them have a few million humans as hosts?"
"They will never compromise, anyway," Ax said. "They must be forced back to their own home world."
"So we try and feed them addictive drugs," Tobias said with obvious distaste.
"It's OAT-freaking-MEAL!" Marco exploded.
Cassie suddenly laughed. It was a cynical laugh. I didn't know she was capable of a cynical laugh. "And all the rights and wrongs, and all the lines between good and evil, just go wafting and waving and swirling around, don't they?"
Jake shook off his funk and stepped to the center of our little group.
"I have to ask myself: If it were Tom, and it may be Tom in the end, would I do this to him? On the one hand, life as a slave of a Yeerk. No free will at all. On the other hand, as we saw with Mr. Edelman, some free will, some ability to communicate, but with this insane Yeerk in your brain."
"So?" Tobias asked him. "What's your answer? " Jake shrugged. "In the Civil War, they were ending slavery. Most of the Southern soldiers who were killed weren't slave owners. They were just guys trying to be brave. Maybe they could have worked out a compromise.
Maybe they could have ended the war earlier if the North had agreed to leave some people as slaves. But would that have been right? No. So the war had to go on till everyone was free."
"Or dead," Tobias added grimly. "But okay, that's a pretty good example.
You're right. I hate it, but you're right. We have to win." I laughed without any humor at all. I'm pretty gung ho. Unlike Cassie, unlike Tobias perhaps, I'm ruthless at times. But even I have enough sense to know the words "we have to win" are the first four steps on the road to hell.
And I noticed that Jake never answered himself about his brother. Would Tom be getting the magic oatmeal slipped into his breakfast?
Not a chance. Jake still hoped to rescue Tom some day. And from what Edelman had said, there was no rescue from an oatmeal-altered Yeerk.
"Where do we find a bunch of human-Controllers sitting down to eat?"
Marco wondered.
I sighed. "The Yeerk pool, Marco. The Yeerk pool."
The Yeerk pool. I dreamed about it that night.
I didn't use to dream much. Or at least, I seldom recalled my dreams. I dream a lot now. Terrible dreams where I'm trapped in some hideous shape, half-human, half-insect. I dream about that awful battle in the ant tunnels. I dream about the screaming, slashing massacre when we took the Kandrona at the top of the EGS Tower.
But I dream most about the Yeerk pool. I hear the screams and curses of human hosts held in cages while their Yeerks swim in the leaden water of the pool. I hate that sound. I hate the sound of despair. It makes me mad. In my dream I'm mad at those poor people and I want to yell, "Why don't you fight? Why don't you fight?"