Author's note: Those of you who subscribe to my account may recall that I vowed at Christmas not to post on this site again until PM alerts and the bottoms of Favorites lists went back online, and may be wondering about my inconsistency. It isn't that I no longer care; I've just concluded that my duty to console those oppressed by tyrants – and I can't be the only person here whose governor or other local authority currently fits that description – overrules any boycott I may be attempting. (Anyway, given how many people have already left this site for AO3, a boycott is probably superfluous; a better approach, surely, would be to persuade the companies who advertise here to threaten to stop bidding for space on the site unless the management gets its act together. If any of you want to join me on that project, you're welcome – but, for now, let's attend to the story at hand.)

Before the Sulp Niar Earth pool was revealed to the world, the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia was Oceanside's greatest, and arguably only, claim to large-scale fame. Founded in 1798 by the successor of St. Juniper Serra, it had attained a preeminent place among the California missions by the time of its dissolution in 1833, and its 20th-Century restoration had added a touch of aesthetic glamor to a place that had a positive surfeit of the historical kind. The United States government had officially declared it a historic landmark in 1970, and, while Bishop Isaac Perlmutter didn't always see eye to eye with the United States government, on this point he agreed entirely with it; the presence of the King of the Missions in his see was, to his mind, one of the sweetest plums of his office, and he never made a trip to the northern end of the diocese without stopping there if he could help it.

As Toloth walked into the Mission's sanctuary on Teresa's legs, he found himself rather sympathizing with this feeling. There was nothing pretentious about the small adobe chapel; it was a modest, sensible building, gracefully proportioned and decorated with a few tasteful frescoes and statues, but otherwise plain and unassuming – a fitting theater, as it seemed to Toloth, for the invisible miracles that its visitors held occurred there.

«Do you know, Teresa, I could almost tolerate these Spanish Franciscans of yours,» he remarked. «There must be something about carnal abstinence that makes humans more sensible than they would otherwise be.»

«Yeah, I guess so,» said Teresa vaguely. At another moment, she would have endorsed this dictum with all proper fervor, as being a recognized theme throughout Sacred Tradition, but just now her mind was otherwise occupied. «Listen, Toloth – is it okay for me to ask a favor of you?»

Toloth was brought up a bit short. Rather than reply directly, he peeked forward in her mind to see what the favor in question was – and, having seen, replied coldly, «And why would I grant that, exactly?»

Teresa sighed. «No, I didn't figure you would,» she said. «I just thought maybe… since it's not as though you couldn't stop me from saying anything compromising. I'm not even really sure I need to say anything myself; you could say it for me, if you didn't mind not telling anyone else…»

«I understand your reasoning,» Toloth retorted, «and obviously I have no intention of sharing any part of the story of these three days. But I…»

«Anyone else, I mean,» Teresa said hastily. «Not just the Empire, but Gef or the hostless Yeerks or anyone. That's the point; it has to be as though you just never heard it to begin with.»

«Yes, Teresa,» said Toloth. «I am aware of all that – as I am of everything you know, which fact you would do well to bear in mind. What I am not aware of, as I said in the first place, is what my motive would be for granting you such a favor. Even granting that it would do me no harm, I don't see how it would do me any particular good.»

Teresa sighed again. «Never mind,» she said. «It was stupid of me to ask; just forget I said anything.»

This, of course, was exactly the reaction to which Toloth's words had been directed; it was high time, it seemed to him, that the impudent human he was Controlling got a good sharp reminder which of the two of them was the Yeerk. After all, what business did a host have asking favors of her Controller? And there was something satisfying about seeing her consciousness shrink away from his, chastened and humbled after the proper manner of a slave.

For a moment, at least. Then came the memory of Althematwi, and of everything Toloth had learned that morning about his threefold kinship with Teresa. There was nothing sentimental about it – just a sharp reminder that superiority over others was something he had to earn, not merely presume to have on account of his Yeerkhood alone. But that was enough to momentarily stupefy him, and give him the feeling of being suddenly cut adrift in a motiveless void. For, after all, if he wasn't to act on the basis of Yeerkish superiority, on what basis was he to act?

…Well, there was that Golden Rule of Teresa's, of course. "Do as you would be done by": there was a certain satisfying airtightness to that, for all that a human had come up with it (or not, according to Teresa – and anyway that wasn't supposed to matter so much now). But, even if he accepted that, it didn't mean that he was under any obligation to satisfy Teresa's request. She herself would have been the first to admit that loving one's neighbor as oneself didn't mean indulging beliefs of his that one regarded as delusory – though, to be sure, that was partly because she had stern ideas about where such beliefs were likely to lead a person, and didn't wish to help anyone in that direction. Since he didn't share that view, there was nothing preventing him from…

…but why should he think of it as preventing? He didn't want to do it to begin with; he wanted to keep his head down, and Teresa in her place, and… no, that was wrong, not in her place, but… well, yes, her place in a sense, since the brute circumstances of her life and his had put her there, and, regrettable as that might be, it wasn't something he could do anything about. Or nothing significant, anyway – though, of course…

Ah. Ah, so that was it. No, he was in no position to correct the misfortune under which Teresa was suffering – but he could alleviate it, could make it less of a misfortune than it might have been expected to be. Not only could, but should; that was what his new recognition of her value demanded of him. And that was the meaning of the impulse that was driving him, against all apparent common sense, to…

He stopped by the side of the pew, into which Mrs. Chiodini was carefully navigating herself with her son-in-law's assistance, and addressed himself to Mrs. Sickles. "Hey, Mom?" he said. "Do you mind if I go try to corner His Excellency before Mass, and see if he'll hear an emergency confession?"

He thought, rather, that Mrs. Sickles did mind, in the way that parents of precociously pious children do mind such things: pleased that her daughter's faith was so sincere, but still exasperated that she felt the need to make such a nuisance of herself about it. (What she would have felt if she had known who was really asking, and why, he of course had no way of telling.)

But she made no objections – nor, when Toloth had located him, did the Bishop. If there had been nothing else to be said for the particular spirit of that age in Church history (and many, having been ravished by its favored clergy or made atheist by its catechetics, might have questioned whether there was), at least there was this: that it produced, in those who embraced it innocently, a ready and easy liberality with the graces they had received, such as befitted the adoptive royals of a universal kingdom. There must have been more than mere double-hearted anomie in a mood so ready to make overturned canoes into altars of mercy, to soothe angry mobs with the kiss of peace – and, also, to dispense the grace of absolution at the shortest of notice, and in the most outlandish of settings. And Bishop Perlmutter was, in this respect, an ideally typical product of his age: when a young woman came up to him and explained, with every proper show of flusterment and apology, that she had some things weighing on her conscience of which she hadn't had any earlier opportunity to be shriven, it was almost a galvanic reaction for him to turn to the deacon assisting him, politely excuse himself for a few minutes, and accompany the girl to the little confessional booth near the back of the mission.

None of the three people involved, of course, ever revealed what was said there, or even precisely who it was who said it. But Toloth, late in his life, did let fall some remarks about the incident in general, in the course of giving instruction to one of the first Andalite converts to the Faith.

"No, you won't necessarily feel any different after receiving absolution," he said, "and I shouldn't recommend that you hope to. To seek emotional consolation from the sources of grace is to set oneself up for disappointment; if it's feelings of serenity you're looking for, a handful of illsipar roots would serve you better than all the sacraments together." Then he smiled, and added, "But that's not to say that such things don't happen. I remember a captive human I once helped to get confession during the invasion; her usual Controller, apparently, preferred to use the confessional as a place to scheme with her usual priest's Controller, so it had been some time since she had gotten any actual good from her visits there. And when the confessor said the words of absolution, I saw a change come over her mind and temper that no mere natural relief could explain; it was as though her psyche was an elastic cord that had been weighed down by some invisible ballast, and now I was seeing it spring back into place after some mighty force had whisked the weight away. It was a very beautiful thing, and I don't suppose I'll ever forget it – but whether you, Katter-Morutan-Selamis, will feel the same, is more than I dare say."

Katter (the daughter of a noted Green-Andalite poet, and later the first Abbess of Vanthrel Fjord) cocked her head. «A captive human during the invasion, was it?» she said. «Is it possible, Reverence, that I know this human's name?»

Toloth only smiled the wider.

The human whose name Katter-Morutan-Selamis knew shook her head mentally as Toloth steered her body out of the confessional. «Toloth, why are you so good to me?» she said. «It isn't right, you know. Your superiors would never approve.»

Her tone was light, even playful; nonetheless, her words were too plainly true for Toloth to hear without a qualm. But he swallowed it down, and replied coolly, «How so? If I choose to indulge a host life-form's whims, what grounds have my superiors to complain? The more placidly contented you and your kind are, the better, surely, for us your masters.»

It actually sounded reasonable enough to him, and he said it in quite the proper tone: brusque, callous, dominating – in a word, Yeerkish. Teresa, though, just laughed. «Okay, fine,» she said. «It's none of my business anyway, I suppose. But, whatever made you start caring about my well-being for its own sake, I just want you to know that I'm grateful for it.»

«I do know that,» said Toloth. «Of course.»

«I know you do,» said Teresa.

Her mind added, Just as I know you know the other thing I'm thinking about all this.

Which Toloth did.

But he didn't let it bother him.

Much.